The future of transport

[Zoe]

All weather and climate is and always has been subject to the laws of physics. Do you not agree?

You can't deny the fact that CO2 concentrations in the atmosophere are much higher now though.

 

[flymo]

Compared to what???

 

[Wyvern]

Blimey there really are crazy people, I wouldn't drive from where I live to London, let alone from somewhere like Edinburgh (or vice versa)..

Until I retired this would be a typical journey for me, usually 100 to 150 miles each way in a day. The furthest was 225 miles. I worked in technical support and, besides having to carry tools and spares, there was no way I could hang around waiting on public transport.

Since I was by no means alone, there clearly will have to be fundamental changes in working practices.

 

[Zoe]

Compared to what???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide-en.svg

 

[flymo]

I'm not trying to argue that the Earth is hotting up or there is climate change. Climates change, that you cannot deny. The Climate of the Earth has changed over the years and will continue to change whether you like it or not.

OK so what happened in the last ice age? This was about 10,000 years ago so what happened then? Nope, nothing man made, just a natural change in the weather patterns.

I stand by my prediction that in 2015/16 there will be a scorching hot summer followed by an freezing cold winter, yes even colder than this year, all set out by solar maxima & minima,.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide-en.svg

Well I guess recording media has been improved, albeit on the largest volcano on Earth..? Does the CO2 you mention come from the volcano??

Love the exchange of views , but it's already tomorrow here in Asia, see you in 8 hours or so for the continuation.

 

[LE Greys]

Well I guess recording media has been improved, albeit on the largest volcano on Earth..? Does the CO2 you mention come from the volcano??

Love the exchange of views , but it's already tomorrow here in Asia, see you in 8 hours or so for the continuation.

By boring holes in the Antarctic ice cap, it's possible to get a record of the atmospheric concentrations of most gases, including CO2, going back about 420,000 years. Calibrated by other records from weather stations, including the one in Hawaii (which is generally upwind of the volcanoes) that gives a reasonable estimates for what the atmosphere was like when that ice fell as snow.
Graph showing the data

Notice where the peaks are, roughly every 100,000 years for the main cycle, with lesser ones every 40,000 years and 20,000 years. Now wind forwards a bit, and you see that CO2 levels really ought to be going down. They're going up, and that's unusual.

 

[142094]

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned is why is there the need to travel in the first place? If we can answer this question, and reduce our need to travel in the first place, this will have a much better remediative effect than electric cars and hydrogen cells.

What I predict we'll see in the future will be more electric cars, electric buses (didn't we used to have these in Victorian times ), and improved public transport. Electrification of the railways will also be a key part to reducing not only CO2 emissions, but other emissions associated with climate change and atmospheric problems. More and more electric will be coming from renewable resources, and if you doubt this look at Drax power station near Selby, which is looking at biofuel instead of coal. 1/5 of current output is from biofuel sources. Expect to see new and improved technology such as CCS coming on stream and further helping to lower emissions.

 

[LE Greys]

To get back to the subject, I would certainly support the idea of nuclear cargo ships, but not passenger liners. Not because I think they're unsafe, but because I reckon that nobody will travel on them. I would, but the general public wouldn't. So if liners are using fossil fuel (most likely coal, if oil is extremely expensive) then they will have to carry passengers at much higher density than current cruise liners. Very well, the Olympic and her sisters carried 71 pax/1,000 GRT; the QM2 carries 20 pax/1,000 GRT. In other words, she could carry 3.5 times the number of passengers if she was packed out like the Titanic. Currently, she produces about the same CO2 emissions per passenger mile as a 747-100, meaning that it would be possible to reduce it to one third of that level, allowing for the relatively small extra weight. Only question is whether it is possible to find 11,000 people willing to spend a six days crossing the Atlantic, and do the same every two weeks.

 

[Greenback]

To get back to the subject, I would certainly support the idea of nuclear cargo ships, but not passenger liners. Not because I think they're unsafe, but because I reckon that nobody will travel on them. I would, but the general public wouldn't. So if liners are using fossil fuel (most likely coal, if oil is extremely expensive) then they will have to carry passengers at much higher density than current cruise liners. Very well, the Olympic and her sisters carried 71 pax/1,000 GRT; the QM2 carries 20 pax/1,000 GRT. In other words, she could carry 3.5 times the number of passengers if she was packed out like the Titanic. Currently, she produces about the same CO2 emissions per passenger mile as a 747-100, meaning that it would be possible to reduce it to one third of that level, allowing for the relatively small extra weight. Only question is whether it is possible to find 11,000 people willing to spend a six days crossing the Atlantic, and do the same every two weeks.

Modern day cruise ships are hotels that float - much of the space is used for entertianment options that simply didn't exist, and were completely unnecessary on ocean liners whose reason for being was to transport passengers as quickly as possible from one continent to another before jet aircraft came along.

So, if we were tor each the stage where surface sea travel was again the only option for intercontinental travel, the ships be designed to reflect the commercial realities of the situation. Easyboat would probably be running a low cost sailing vessel with hammocks at a supplement, whilst British Seaways might have a wood burning steam ship with several classes of accommodation, but nothing like the Cunard ships of today that are solely for holidays!

 

[Peter Mugridge]

The QM2 was deliberately designed with more space per passenger than a cruise ship would have; the simple fact that she was built as a liner instead of a cruise ship apparently meant she cost 40% more than a cruise ship of the same size would have done!

Another thing to bear in mind is that with passenger ships, comparing the gross registered tonnage means you are actually comparing a enclosed space on board rather than the weight of the ship; the QM2's grt is about 151,000 but her actual weight is "only" about 76,000 tonnes.

but nothing like the Cunard ships of today that are solely for holidays!

Not completely... the QM2 does carry out true line voyages between Southampton and New York for much of the year.

 

[Greenback]

Yes, but I would say that the number of passengers who are not actually on some sort of holiday experience is rather small!

 

[Peter Mugridge]

That is true, a lot of people do book the line voyage as their holiday simply because it is the only line voyage remaining!

Last April there were massive waiting lists of serious business travellers for standbys on the Atlantic voyages at inflated prices though... something to do with some volcano in Iceland...

 

[Mojo]

Surely even if climate change is not happening, and oil is not running out (both claims I dispute) doing nothing is not the answer still down to the visual, noise and atmospheric conditions, the injuries and deaths caused by road vehicles, the social inequality, the economic damage, and so on.

 

[Zoe]

the injuries and deaths caused by road vehicles, the social inequality, the economic damage, and so on.

Self-driving cars are on the horizon and should remove these. Driverless cars may not be good for public transport though as I'm sure people would prefer to call one and have it take them where they want at any time.

 

[SS4]

Self-driving cars are on the horizon and should remove these. Driverless cars may not be good for public transport though as I'm sure people would prefer to call one and have it take them where they want at any time.

Driverless cars sound interesting but they'd have to have a manual override for emergency use and social attitudes which are very hard to change would mean many drivers simply using manual override and driving in the traditional way. It would be interesting to see if a convoy would work though - one person driving 4 cars down the road with the obvious implications for business.

As for the topic title I believe rail will use electrification as it's relatively static and there will be a better high speed link with mainland Europe and Western Asia perhaps even a fast track to China.

I imagine we'll see the end of the no-frills airlines phenomenon and short haul flights will virtually cease to exist as fuel will become too expensive to maintain their current fleets. I can still see air travel common for travel to the USA and Canada.

Cars and other road transport (as well as a few rail services) will move towards batteries since they're not as static as trains are (relatively speaking). Perhaps military technology will filter down into civilian use as the Armed Forces guarantees it's fuel and it's future operations. Either way I think technology in batteries will improve and not require charging as often as they do now nor for as long. Plus if it's simple to change consumers can swap a dead battery for a charged one.

 

[Zoe]

Driverless cars sound interesting but they'd have to have a manual override for emergency use and social attitudes which are very hard to change would mean many drivers simply using manual override and driving in the traditional way.

Not if it was made illegal.

 

[SS4]

Not if it was made illegal.

Political suicide though. Mobiles are banned but it still happens after all.

How could you prove it wasn't an emergency?

 

[Zoe]

Political suicide though. Mobiles are banned but it still happens after all.

There are other ways, make the insurance for a manually driven car unaffordable.

 

[SS4]

There are other ways, make the insurance for a manually driven car unaffordable.

That would remove most of the manual only cars but I can't see how it would stop a manual override. Of course my central premise of having to install a manual override could be wrong but I don't see it given that the ATO on the tube has a manual override IIRC

 

[142094]

Weren't Volvo testing a car that had anti-crash technology, that went and crashed into the back of a truck, sometime last year?

 

[Zoe]

Google have been testing a car that has so far driven itself thousands of miles over California without any incident caused by the car.

 

[LE Greys]

Personally, if I called a taxi and a driverless one showed up, I would send it on its way. The computer I'm typing this one has a habit of doing things I don't want it to do and occasionally crashing, and I'm convinced that a minor programming glitch will probably kill me one day. I don't trust autopilots on aircraft for the same reason, but at least there you know that there is probably enough time to switch the thing off and regain control (except on ILS - which I hate) before you hit the ground. Human drivers have a sense of self-preservation, so they are highly unlikely to drive straight into a tree just because the navigation system tells them to.

Self-driving car = deathtrap!!! hock:

 

[Metroland]

The future of transport is:

- More automation: If not true driverless cars, then more aids to parking and crusing along roads, similar automation of the driving/piloting process in other forms of transport, including rail.

- Cleaner fuels, because of fossil fuel depletion and climate change. Although there is no magic bullet, because of the sheer scale of the challenge, electric cars will become the norm eventually.

- As the world urbanises more, even more new rail and metro lines in urban centres.

- Pay as you go driving, and smart cards for public transport systems, which eventual integration of bus, train, ferry and air.

- High speed rail and airships will become increasingly important

- More restrictions on movement of freight and transfer to more fuel efficient ship and rail transport where possible.

 

[ChrisCooper]

For freight, I can see automation becoming a bigger player there. When it comes to automatic car systems, freight is never seems to be mentioned, but I'm sure we will see cases where shopping can be automatically delivered to your door using the same system. Larger versions of the same vehicles could be used to deliver to shops and warehouses. When it comes to the other way around, I can see communal bins which would when full automatically drive themselves to a recycling plant, again using the same systems.

I think social attiudes are a big issue though. We already are at the point where many journies are pointless. Far more work could be done from home, and much work could be done online instead of face to face. It's society that holds it back though. Nececity will also drive the change though. At the moment it's viable for someone on an average wage to travel many miles to and from work each day, and for others to travel hundereds or thousands of miles to sort out deals etc, but in the future with rising energy costs this may change.

 

[Ivo]

As much as I don't like the idea, I wonder if schemes such as the TBus in Leeds might actually be worthwhile. Horribly unsightly it may be (especially note the section in italics), but imagine a series of main roads through various large towns and cities with caternary networks suspended above them. Buses could then run double-deck services with catenary poles or tram-like pantographs (maybe even alternately with trams), and even cars could achieve something similar with a huge pole rising out of the top of them. Or, alternately, dual roads to be given such capacity, and have higher cables in certain lanes, for public and commercial vehicles, and lower ones for private vehicles.

Of course, every scheme has drawbacks and this (even before the aesthetics) is no exception. To provide juice to every road the world over would be horrendously expensive and uneconomical (not least because of little used roads in the middle of nowhere), so these vehicles would need a battery of some kind as well. The battery could then be charged either at a future equivalent of a petrol station, or (preferably) when actively wired.

We then need to provide myriad power stations, which would need to take advantage of the local conditions. So Britain, for instance, could use tidal power for the most part, while Texas could go for solar power. And maybe something could be invented to take advantage of rain for the very same purpose (some kind of hydroelectric scheme).

/Green Party propaganda

 

[SS4]

I think rain would be better suited to being a source of drinking water than power. Capture it in winter, clean it and store it for summer.

I definitely agree local conditions need to be taken into account though

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Ivo, about 20 - 25 years ago Dennis in guildford produced a prototype of a hybrid trolleybus; it had a diesel engine for working off core routes ( and during power cuts ). unfortunately nobody bought the idea - it would have been a very good compromise that would at least have heavily reduced urban pollution.

As for the electric wires, well... we did it before in London and with careful design the wires can be made less obtrusive ( for example having dual purpose masts to support streetlamps and signage instead of a separate pole for everything ).

Power supply... I do agree fossil fuels are unsustainable in the long term, and since wind power is notoriously unreliable I must admit being firmly in the nuclear electricity camp - subject to appropriate safeguards being in place, of course ( they will have learned lessons from the past failures ).

With an extensive enough trolleybus network in urban areas there is also no reason why there could not be hybrid trolley lorries as well is there...?

 

[LE Greys]

Ivo, about 20 - 25 years ago Dennis in guildford produced a prototype of a hybrid trolleybus; it had a diesel engine for working off core routes ( and during power cuts ). unfortunately nobody bought the idea - it would have been a very good compromise that would at least have heavily reduced urban pollution.

As for the electric wires, well... we did it before in London and with careful design the wires can be made less obtrusive ( for example having dual purpose masts to support streetlamps and signage instead of a separate pole for everything ).

Power supply... I do agree fossil fuels are unsustainable in the long term, and since wind power is notoriously unreliable I must admit being firmly in the nuclear electricity camp - subject to appropriate safeguards being in place, of course ( they will have learned lessons from the past failures ).

With an extensive enough trolleybus network in urban areas there is also no reason why there could not be hybrid trolley lorries as well is there...?

Thinking about that, you could have dedicated lanes on motorways for electric vehicles. Trolleytrucks would be the main users, but it's possible that electric cars might do the same. I find it a bit hard to imagine private cars running around like dodgems on the overhead wires, but I suppose that it would be possible.

 

[Spaceflower]

Unfortunately, during economic meltdown proceeding the great war for non renewable resources, many nuclear power plants budgets were squeezed so much, they were operating dangerously. A number had major incidents and much of the waste is still unnaccounted for.

A futuristic horror story?

 

[Eng274]

Very interesting topic here - it's easy enough to say mass-electrify all the mainlines that don't yet have it, but where will all that extra power come from?

If no extra power generation capacity is created in tandem with mass electrification then what you'll have is huge swathes of people who live beside railway lines will lose their lighting and telly while a pendolino or class 91 (circa 5MW power draw each) fly past the window. Then the power will return no doubt after the Eastenders cliffhanger..people ought to be grateful

I'm interested in the claim that there's 200 years of oil left, even accounting for improvements in extraction technology that is ambitious. My university (as are a few others I'm sure) are doing a lot of research into fuel cell technology so hopefully a breakthrough is made there.

As one of my lecturers mentioned on the subject, it's a shame the military aren't using hydrogen technology in some form, then the MoD would plough millions into R&D for fuel cells and accelerate progress!

Re trolleytrucks, there are fully electric LGV lorries available http://www.smithelectricvehicles.com/index.asp which could easily do most of the short-range deliveries such as newspapers, bread/milk drop-offs and Royal Mail could find plenty use for them. And they are claimed to cover 100 miles on a single 8hr charge. While this compounds the electricity supply problems I mentioned earlier, it could encourage a shift to using electric fleets where high mileages aren't required.

Originally Posted by Peter Mugridge
Ivo, about 20 - 25 years ago Dennis in guildford produced a prototype of a hybrid trolleybus; it had a diesel engine for working off core routes ( and during power cuts ). unfortunately nobody bought the idea - it would have been a very good compromise that would at least have heavily reduced urban pollution.

Mayflower (once the parent company of Dennis) also pioneered the e3 variable motion engine which could reduce/increase the displacement as demanded by the road and load situation (increased for scaling hills, decreased for flat road cruising) through a variable con-rod connection, giving significant fuel economy and engine efficiency improvements. Unfortunately Mayflower suffered a cataclysmic implosion before it went into mass production.