whispering more trains
Sometimes too many trains is a thing.
Do you have an example of this?
Some parts of London. I used to live in a building next to three sets of railways: the tube, regular intercity and express/higher speed intercity. That’s a bit too much railway outside the window. And that’s not even the worst location, in the New Cross area some residential buildings are sandwiched between railways on all four sides.
Don’t get me wrong, I love trains in London, so many trains means I don’t need a car, but London has the oldest railway infrastructure in the world and the way they were built in the 19th century makes some areas a total disaster today.
On the other hand, riding a DLR train through a skyscraper is bloody epic!
I’d like to see recycable bike tires, too! Bike tires suffer similar problems. And my bikes go through tires fairly quick.
Schwalbe at least takes old tires back to recycle them. I can hand mine in at my bike shop. Maybe other brands have something similar.
Bike tires suffer similar problems.
But at a much smaller scale, since the tires are made out of so much less material each.
And my bikes go through tires fairly quick.
Quit doing whip skid stops all the time, ya hoodlum!
go back to wooden cart wheels
So this big breakthrough in tire technology is . . . making them harder and reducing their grip?
EV are much heavier than petrol cars, maybe the offset weight will help regain some grip? Normal tires wear out so fast on EVs.
maybe the offset weight will help regain some grip?
…what? LOL The added weight also offsets the grip…
That extra weight will also mean that more force is required to accelerate and change directions.
The nimbleness of a vehicle can be expressed as the ratio:
(Tire Contact Area * Tire Stickiness) / Vehicle Mass
Increasing the vehicle’s mass while making the tires harder will lead to longer breaking distances and will cause a vehicle to understeer at lower speeds.
it sounds like these wheels need to be much larger to offset the lower grip. Wonder how that affects the environment.
Just staple Post-Its to regular tyres.
Username checks out.
Yeah, make them out of metal, that rolls on metal roads. And those metal tires can carry a ton more weight, so put a lot of people in them who are going the same way.
Oh right, we already have those.
Any economical ways to run farms on rail? A lot of the roads where I have lived were just built and paid for by famers to move equipment between pay dirt and make their way to town occasionally
Do we? Sounds too futuristic.
Though “those” are wildly inaccessible and/or unrealistic in parts of the world.
That’s a policy issue, not one of engineering or physical constraints.
No, there are definitely physical and engineering issues, like massive rolling mountains and valleys, or island chains or deserts whose sand is unsuitable to durable railways.
You know that Switzerland, a country in the literal Alps, has one of the best train infrastructures on Earth?
As the other comment said, of course there are fringe cases. There shouldn’t even be a city in Dubai, let alone trains getting there, but fortunately, most cities on earth are in accessible places because, well, otherwise why would thousands upon thousands of people go there.
Those are Edge Case. There will almost always be edge cases where we have engineering or physical constraints, but we have solutions for almost all individual trips.
Agreed, I updated my comment for clarity.
Definitely realistic, just not as profitable for rich billionaires.
Agreed, I edited my comment for clarity.
Noooo, you don’t get it, bro. Just one more lane, please. I promise, it will be better than last time. One more lane, that’s all we need. I’m begging you, please.
I’m on my knees here. One more lane, just one more! This time it will be different, I swear. We won’t have traffic jams, I promise! Just one more lane and we’ll be free.
Come on, man, think of the children. Just one more lane. I’m begging you. For the love of liberty, just one more lane!
¿Por qué no los dos?
Adam, is that you? 😉
Hah!
It’s going to be all about the price.
My hybrid recommends “eco” style tires to get the best gas mileage. Those were $100 more, per tire, than the standard low-profiles. At the time, I commuted about 110 miles/day, so tires typically only lasted me about a year before they were either officially worn out or too worn to be safe to drive in winter.
I only noticed about a 1-2 MPG loss with the “standard” tires versus the “eco” ones that came with it. Over the course of a year, I doubt that 1-2 MPG added up to the $400 difference.
So, these cleaner tires are a good thing, assuming they’re not more expensive than current-style tires.
Yeah, that closing point is likely gonna be screwed by economies of scale. You need more adoption for the price to fall and with the price high you won’t see that large adoption. So, I suspect we won’t see those prices until many more EVs are on the road.
Price is definitely important, but so is traction. If stopping distance increases because eco materials grip less, that would be a concern.
My criteria are performance results, wear rating, and price.
I wouldn’t think stopping distance would be noticeably impacted by less rolling resistance. My original “eco” tires stopped the same as the standard ones. They’re “eco” because they have less rolling resistance and are slightly lighter.
Plus, with ABS, you’re not likely to lock the wheels up such that the decreased resistance would be significant.
On slick roads would be my only concern, but a good and season appropriate tread should mitigate that.
My original “eco” tires stopped the same as the standard ones.
No they didn’t.
They’re “eco” because they have less rolling resistance and are slightly lighter.
They have less rolling resistance because they’re made of a harder compound, with reduced grip.
Plus, with ABS, you’re not likely to lock the wheels up such that the decreased resistance would be significant.
…huh? ABS has nothing to do with rolling resistance…
No they didn’t.
In a strictly technical / laboratory sense, maybe not. But in practice, they stopped just the same. I also slow down to a stop (regen braking is amazing) and don’t slam on my brakes at a stop light (like some drivers I routinely scowl at). And driving through the country and having to slam on the brakes when a deer jumps out (which was common where I lived), I noticed no appreciable difference in stopping distance between the two tire types.
…huh? ABS has nothing to do with rolling resistance…
ABS prevents the tires from locking up and skidding (anti-lock braking system, hence the name). Under normal driving conditions, it merely helps you maintain control, but on slick roads, locking up the wheels can skid you further than without it. So, no, ABS doesn’t directly relate to rolling resistance, but it’s part of a system along with the tires that contribute to stopping distance…which is what I was talking about.
In a strictly technical / laboratory sense, maybe not.
In every sense they do not.
I also…don’t slam on my brakes at a stop light
How you drive under normal conditions has absolutely nothing to do with the capability of the tires in an emergency situation, which occurs regardless of how good or careful you are.
I noticed no appreciable difference in stopping distance
You won’t if you don’t get out and measure it. But I guarantee it is there regardless. The difference, regardless of how noticeable, can easily mean the difference between life and death, or even crashing at all.
In a car with ABS, two sets of tyres with different grip will have a different point at which tyres lock up, with grippier tires locking up later and ABS letting the brakes bite harder before acting.
Now a harder question is whether a tyre with less rolling resistance will be less grippy. All things equal, yes, it will. Tyres grip by deforming and creating friction in the contact patch, and the point of these tyres is to reduce friction.
To make up for this, manufacturers use clever designs (e.g. where tyres can deform more under certain conditions) so that they can retain characteristics similar to tyres with more rolling resistance. Of course, everything in engineering is a compromise, which means that A) these tyres are more expensive because of the additional complexity and B) the design and materials science can only go so far and they have indeed slightly less grip; otherwise all the tyres would be like this.
As an anecdote, Toyota sold the GR86 with Michelin Energy Saver tyres fitted as standard (in Europe at least) for “grip” reasons: they allowed the car to drift at really low speeds (some car journalists commented that it was remarkably easy to take roundabouts sideways at legal speeds).
And now to make lighter EVs that don’t wear on the road so much.
Done:
I keep fingers crossed for wireless charging built in road 🤷♂️
Hot take: tire particulates are a conservative anti-EV talking point. “My V8 mustang weighs less than an EV, therefore its better on pollution than a EV because tire particulates”. Totally disregarding the impact of tailpipe emissions.
I think it’s just reminding people that EVs aren’t a panacea to all our issues with transportation, and they actually exacerbates at least one of those issues. This is while we know there are better solutions for >90% of our personal transportation with public transportation, bicycling, walking, micro-mobility, etc. Moving one or two people around with a multi-tonne machine is insanely inefficient!
Exacerbate = the rare minerals issue?
It seems pretty obvious, but also, it would be nice to see improvements in this area.
No it’s not, because conservatives don’t think micro plastics are a problem. Pretty soon there will be truck bros making tiktoks competing to see how quickly they can destroy a set of tires just to “trigger the libs”.
Anecdotally, so far I’ve noticed cars getting louder
They’re loud because of safety reasons!! /s
I saw a thing on some US people welding fucking whistles in their car’s exhausts so that they could annoy as many people as possible. Apparently it’s legal in some places there.
One person I know claimed to have run calculations, and found that the tire dust alone was putting out more pollution than the tires and tailpipe of the average gas car. Idk where they got their numbers or how that could work out, since the average gas car in America is a large truck.
It could be true. Catalytic converters do a pretty good job of filtering out most pollutants. They also increase CO2 emissions in a variety of direct and indirect ways. Everything else is lower, though.
The way to make EV tires pollute less is to not chase 600+ mile range. Keep them around 300-400 miles, and use further battery improvements to reduce weight. There’s no reason EVs have to be heavier forever. With better charging infrastructure, 400 miles is more than enough.
The way to fix everything else wrong with them is to not make cars the default mode of transportation.
The way to fix everything else wrong with them is to not make cars the default mode of transportation.
Say it again louder for the folks in the back!
The “everything else” wrong with cars dwarfs the issue of pollution. Cars being the default mode of transportation is ultimately responsible for everything from obesity to the housing crisis!
There’s no reason EVs have to be heavier forever
That’s a bit of a stretch, unfortunately. The energy density of batteries is nowhere close to that of gasoline - joule for joule, gasoline weighs about 100 times less than batteries. Also, a fuel tank big enough to give its vehicle a 400 mile range will get lighter over the course of the trip, as the liquid fuel gets converted into polluting gas and exhausted into the atmosphere - batteries don’t get appreciably lighter as you discharge them.
Agree that 400 miles range with charging stations as ubiquitous as today’s gas stations would help EV adoption. I do worry about the rollout of charging stations being slowed down by competition with expensive and fragile hydrogen tech (keep the hydrogen on boats and trains pls).
Hardly a stretch. The comparison isn’t to the power density of gas, but overall curb weight. EVs are roughly 10% heavier than an ICE equivalent. Batteries are the main reason for that (electric motors and the electronics to support them aren’t that much). Batteries have also been improving Wh/kg by 5-8% per year. It only takes a few years of improvements to get there.
In fact, since the 10% number has been the case since around 2020 or so, the battery tech might already be there and we just need to get them into new models.
expensive and fragile hydrogen tech (keep the hydrogen on boats and trains pls).
Frankly, I’m skeptical that hydrogen belongs anywhere.
Also, trains have no excuse to be anything other than electric! If you’re spending the money building the track in the first place, it’s really not that much extra cost to put up overheard wires too.
Hydrogen is probably going to get pushed out of every niche where it might be viable. Batteries tend to get better by 5-8% per year, and there’s every reason to believe that will continue to be the case. Run that forward for another decade or so, and even things like heavy construction equipment and transpacific airplanes are viable on battery power.
It’s a waste of time and money at this point.
Considering that the vast majority of hydrogen isn’t even “green hydrogen” (produced from electrolysis) but rather “grey” or “blue” (produced from cracking hydrocarbons), I don’t think it was anything more than a straight-up greenwashing scam in the first place. Even the niches where people claim hydrogen is suitable (long-haul trips without battery charging infrastructure) would be better off just burning the damn hydrocarbon as-is to begin with!
Even in the best-case scenario – “green hydrogen” produced from electrolysis – I think it would be better to immediately (at the point of production) combine it with CO2 pulled from the atmosphere to make synthetic gasoline and then handle that with our existing ICE vehicles and infrastructure. It’s just so impractical to store hydrogen (since it’s so small it leaks through everything, yet so low-density that it requires either extremely high pressures or cryogenic temperatures to fit enough of it in a reasonable amount of space) that it’s simply not worth the effort.
Now how about using iron tires on iron road? And using public transport?
I support public transport but I really don’t know how to convince people. I live in North America.
a fancy new startup will start calling them decentralised pods for personal transportation. Promise to be revolutionary.
Preforms worse than all know forms of transport so farPromise to be revolutionary.
Revolution:
Preforms worse than all know forms of transport so far
Pretty low bar
Although I agree that using cars on pointless journeys is a waste and not good for the planet, but using public transport isn’t always an option.
If I’m travelling 6 miles in to town then I’m taking the tram, but it really isn’t feasible when travelling 40 miles to work and back 3 times a week. Sure there are trains, but I would have to get up an hour earlier, set off an hour earlier, wait 50 minutes for the train home, and get home two hours later. As I would also have to take the tram 40 minutes to the train station and walk 20 mins before that.
I have a car that I use for work. Outside of that I’m walking or taking public transport.
If I’m travelling 6 miles in to town then I’m taking the tram, but it really isn’t feasible when travelling 40 miles to work and back 3 times a week.
“My city is fucking designed wrong so the public transport sucks” isn’t really the rebuttal you think it is. Obviously, the real problem there is your city is fucking designed wrong and the vast majority of people shouldn’t have to be living 40 miles away from work to begin with!
I live in Manchester. Which is an amazing city for public transport. I work in Cheshire which isn’t.
As I said. To take the train. I must walk from my town 20 minutes to the Metrolink, then take that 35-40 minutes into Manchester, then take the train 45 minutes to Cheshire, and then finally walk another 20 minutes to the office. That’s without counting any waiting periods in between. VS 75 minute drive.
We haven’t even factored in it rains 70% of days here. Or even the cost.
You can moan at my boss for not allowing fully WFH. But my point was some people can’t just commute everywhere. Perhaps when I’m more experienced I can find a job closer to home or more remote, but for now this is all I can do.
Edit: I have nothing to rebut to people online. I was merely giving an example. Get off your high horse mate.
You can moan at my boss for not allowing fully WFH.
IDGAF about your boss. If I were gonna moan about something, it’d be about the shitty state of British Rail or some other macro/policy issue, not anything specific to your situation.
That said, I live in fucking Atlanta – the poster child of terrible American sprawl and traffic – and have figured out how to make cycling for most trips work. I have no doubt that you can do better. Get yourself a damn Brompton (so you can easily take it on the train) and turn that 40 minutes of walking + 35 minutes of Metrolink into however many minutes of biking, for example.
I live in Manchester. Which is an amazing city for public transport. I work in Cheshire which isn’t. … Perhaps when I’m more experienced I can find a job closer to home or more remote, but for now this is all I can do.
Nothing you could say will convince me that there isn’t even a single suitable job for you right now in Manchester. Or that there isn’t a single suitable residence for you right now in whichever town in Cheshire you work in, for that matter.
Why are you so angry bro, can’t we just talk without the anger.
I clearly stated that Manchester has incredible public transport, sure the train prices could be improved as they’re some of the most expensive in Europe, but it isn’t a case of poor infrastructure. It’s just the nature of having to take multiple modes of transport to get to work. Do you want us to build train stations in every shitty little town? What are the implications of that undertaking for the very few people that have a commute like mine.
Imma say if you live in the US then you’re in no position to lecture me about our infrastructure.
As for the job. No there wasn’t a more suitable job for me. I’m a new software developer and I had 60+ interviews with many companies in Manchester and several in London and none of them would hire me, due to the unorthodox method I entered the trade.
Also, no I will not relocate away from my family to spend three days in the office.
You have unrealistic expectations on someone who is vastly in the minority with commutes like this.
Do you shop on Amazon? As I don’t, I don’t support businesses like that. What’s the carbon footprint I’m saving here.
Do you purchase from fast food places like McDonalds? Because I don’t. I don’t support businesses like.
In fact I rarely buy new things and if I do I am supporting my local businesses, even if it means I am paying more.
Do you consume alcohol and all the carbon footprint that that entails? As I don’t.
I’m a simple guy. I drive to work and i rarely leave my home town outside of that. I walk everywhere, 3.6 million steps a year, and on weekends I walk around the woods and just chill out. My commute leaves me driving 12k miles a year and that’s my largest carbon footprint. I don’t go on airplanes, I don’t take taxis as I can go anywhere in Britain on train, heck I can go across Europe on train.
You have unrealistic expectations on someone who is vastly in the minority with commutes like this.
If you admit you’re vastly in the minority, then why did you feel the need to chime in in the first place? If you actually aren’t a reactionary concern troll, you need to realize that making the perfect the enemy of the good like that adds nothing to the conversation and only discourages people from embracing alternatives.
And if I’m angry, by the way, it’s because the sort of shit you just did happens every single goddamn time and is THE major impediment to actually getting shit changed. It’s not some small-but-loud minority of coal-roller (or “Chelsea tractor” in your case, I guess) blatant right-wing assholes who are stopping improvements from happening; it’s all the allegedly-well-meaning moderates quibbling everything to death for not being perfect who are the real problem!
I’ll admit it was a reactionary comment as I see the sentiment a lot without any nuance and it kinda annoys me, considering I make conscientious choices all the time and people like you (maybe not you in this instance) will pass judgement and make me question myself.
It was also a little strange shitting on a places public transport infrastructure when my city likely has the second best in the whole of Britain, so it seemed like you’re coming from a place of ignorance rather than passion. Pretty easy to go online and check out the public transport in Manchester, and realise yeah they’ve got it good there. Although, the buses in smaller towns leave something to be desired.
Hey you are doing your best and actually thinking of ways to be better. Don’t let critics keep you down. (Just throwing my support your way)
Thanks for taking the time, you really didn’t have to.
The other person just seems unreasonable to me. All we can do is our best and try to make conscientious choices and hope we leave this place better than before we got here.
wait 50 minutes for the train home
Same was in Moscow until Moscow Central Ring was opened and people said “wait, so trains can arrive at 2 minutes interval? Why suburban trains doesn’t do same?”. And that is how D1-D4 were born with 5m peak hours interval instead of few hours of lunch break.
