@PlanOnPlanB @dr__dwayne @Waymo I'll bet you $1,000 that Tesla won't be doing one million paid rides per day by the end of 2026.
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Daniel Schramm
570 posts
@TheGradyConnell @LewisHoldenNZ That's a shame. The current 65km/h average is ridiculous.
There are plenty of track constraints (level x-ings, Whangamarino swamp, Ngāruawāhia bridge) but it should be able to go 100km/h in other areas.
I'm assuming the main constraint is scheduling against freight?
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@dpschramm @LewisHoldenNZ Sounds like KiwiRail doesn’t think it will help that much. x.com/nztransitbuzz/…
NZ Transit Buzz@NZTransitBuzz
KiwiRail says the comparison between a 100/80km/h is negligible and the impact on the timetable would be deemed minimal (around a few minutes in total transit time.) MORE: #incoming-139577" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">fyi.org.nz/request/33660-…
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Good. I understand they're also testing the DLs running at higher speeds
NZ Transit Buzz@NZTransitBuzz
#RailNews: KiwiRail has been conducting ETCS Level 1 trials for freight trains across the Auckland Rail Network. ETCS will be required for freight trains ahead of the City Rail Link opening, which will see an increase of passenger trains on the network.
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@EricCrampton Why target AVs specifically, rather than all vehicles?
They have the same cost to society in terms of space taken up on the roads / congestion.
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NZ has most of the pieces in place already to avoid the real problem that Ben outlines here.
Very short thread.
Ben Southwood@bswud
We need a tax on self-driving cars. Beneath eight states of the American Great Plains lies the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the largest bodies of groundwater on Earth. For centuries, extraction was constrained by the modest capacities of wind and hand power. At that rate, this 'fossil water' resource was effectively limitless. Farmers could draw as much as they wanted without ever running it down. worksinprogress.co/issue/escaping… But in 1949 Colorado Farmer Frank Zybach invented centre-pivot irrigation. Combined with electricity and the centrifugal pump, farmers could now draw thousands of gallons per well per minute, enough to irrigate 40 acres at a time. Since then, the aquifer has gone down 10%, losing a Lake Erie's worth of water. It is down 50% in the dry parts, where it recharges just 0.02 inches per year. Without intervention, modern pumps will bring about the total end of irrigated farming in the arid parts of the Great Plains in 20-30 years. This is what I call the Ogallala Trap. Technological change can create a new tragedy of the commons. The telegraph enabled the destruction of the passenger pigeon; sonar, radar, and diesel enabled the industrial trawling that devastated the North Sea cod in a decade; chlorofluorocarbons came close to destroying the ozone layer. Self-driving cars are about to do the same thing to roads. When you can sleep, work, or drink with friends in a moving vehicle, you will take many more journeys by car. Roads, which are free at the point of use almost everywhere, will grind to a halt. People who have to go to the office or the hospital will be stuck sharing the road with people having beers, working remotely, and taking naps. There is a fix, but it depends on acting now, before autonomous vehicles go mainstream. Voters balk at being charged more for something they already depend on. The tax needs to come in as soon as possible. Waymos are already in dozens of cities and do millions of journeys per month. We have very little time left. If we want to save our roads from omnigridlock, we must introduce road pricing for autonomous vehicles.
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@curdledSoy @LewisHoldenNZ Since it started - here's the latest timetable: tehuiatrain.co.nz/timetables/
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It's a bit odd the Capital Connection is one return trip a day, whereas Te Huia is multiple trains per day
NZ Transit Buzz@NZTransitBuzz
#RailNews: The Future Is Rail is calling for an urgent expansion of the Palmerston North to Wellington Capital Connection rail service, pointing out that the train sits idle for nearly 9 hours a day while NZ'ers struggle with a fuel crisis. Via Scoop: scoop.co.nz/stories/AK2603…
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@MayorOfLA I would be THRILLED to be wrong. Since you are so committed to community voices you should announce and release your motion asap so that people have time to digest it before the meeting (and more importantly before comment).
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@MayorOfLA The motion put forward is the exact opposite of what you are claiming here.
For anyone unfamiliar, see Nandert's video that gives an overview of the lies and corruption: youtube.com/watch?v=q5m52K…
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@raeforla Nandert's video gives a quick overview of the scandal for anyone out of the loop.
youtube.com/watch?v=q5m52K…
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Karen Bass is actively blocking the extension of public transit into her own high-income neighborhood. The K line extension is set to become the line with our highest ridership, but Bass would rather listen to a small set of NIMBY homeowners in Hancock Park than the will of the people. Join us tomorrow at 6PM at the Getty House to tell Bass: Do not kill K line north!
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New rolling stock and more frequent trains when @JohnGrahamALP?
Eddie Redcliffe@fictillius
NSW Transport Minister John Graham on Tuesday revealed the Metro from north-west to south-west Sydney had experienced its two biggest days of patronage ever in March, in part due to fuel prices. afr.com/politics/petro…
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@MusicalChairs14 @pungaohiko Got it -- OECD rankings include social security as tax revenues.
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@dpschramm @pungaohiko The caveats / differences are explained at the bottom of the page quoted in the OP.
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NZ has the 5th highest taxes in the world compared to GDP. The 4 countries above us either have tiny GDPs (Nauru and Lesotho) or Rolls-Royce public services and state pensions (Norway and Denmark). We are officially the most wasteful country on Earth. statranker.org/economy/budget…
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@NZTransitBuzz They should be quad tracking to Pukekohe at the same time, as it will need to be done eventually (to allow express/regional trains to pass local) and will only get more expensive in future.
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#StationNews: KiwiRail has shared a six-month progress photo of works at Ngākōroa Station.
Crews have been completing earthworks, drainage and surveying.
Two piling rigs have been set up on either side of the rail corridor to install piles for the overbridge.
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@pungaohiko Nah, that's nonsense. The Worldbank data is terrible, unusable basically. The OECD data is broadly consistent and would typically be used for analysis of the relative NZ position.
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@rakeau @central01000011 It’s well connected and high valuable land.
At the moment that land provides no benefits. Not developing it is the insanity.
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@central01000011 It’s not a gap. There is infrastructure there.
Honestly, I don’t get the impression it would be suitable for residential and we don’t need more offices when we should be diversifying away from the “hub and spoke” singular CBD.
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I'm sorry, but you have to be insane to prefer leaving a 200m wide gap here than allowing construction of new buildings above one of the world's largest and busiest railway stations
Nirgal451 🇦🇺🇺🇦@Nirgal451
Central Station in Sydney over station development. And like that, it’s gone.
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@fiof_25 @transitfanner @evanzyangg @Christo28120856 Would love to play around with this if you make it public!
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we won the Google Build with AI prize track out of 200+ teams at Hack Canada this weekend! 🏆
we built an interactive sandbox for transit design. had such a blast working on both design and frontend for this project yipeee!
@transitfanner @evanzyangg @christo28120856
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75 years ago, 1 out of every 5 dollars a US family earned went to food. Today that's closer to 1 in 10.
A slow, steady, easy-to-miss kind of progress.
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@fictillius Is there a better viaduct / surface route direct to Parramatta? Or is it better to just deal will the property acquisition and national park challenges instead of tunnelling?
I was surprised they tunnelled just to avoid national park, but then I remembered the HS2 bat tunnel 🙃
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@dpschramm Annoyingly they’ve not provided much on the costs of sections, it’s all redacted.
This is the broad idea behind going straight through Sydney.
I’d also do less tunnels up
North to keep line speeds faster fastrackaustralia.net/sydney-route
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HSR should go straight through the geographical centre of Sydney and you cannot change my mind.
Eddie Redcliffe@fictillius
I just saved $30bn
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@TrueBelievers15 @ILM126 The key time saving would be cutting a stop (and associated decel, dwell, and accel times).
This has far more impact than smoothing the track geometry (tunnels are 200km/h limited).
You're probably looking at 20min Central to WSI versus 27min via Parramatta.
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@ILM126 Honestly skipping Parramatta is probably more warranted than skipping Central, you can smooth the arc of the tunnel if it went direct from Central to WSI, instead Central - Parramatta - WSI.
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Quick thoughts on Australia's HSR business case release. Stages 1A/B seem fine, a bit more tunnelling than expected, sensibly future proofed. But stage 1C needs a rework, the simplest rework is skipping Paramatta to remove the dogleg and those getting there transfer to metro.
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@fictillius Fair - if they had a north and south stop, that would alleviate concerns around overcrowding.
Do you know what the cost difference is for a straight through route (with north/south stops)?
I haven't found a detailed cost-benefit analysis.
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@dpschramm It’s not skipping anything, that puts it in the centre of Sydney’s population which will be well connected. You’d have a northern stop a middle stop and a southern stop. It wouldn’t flood anything. A full train would be 500 people
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@fictillius The route they've chosen future proofs for Melbourne and Brisbane. If it only stops at Parramatta, you're adding 10-15 mins extra to most trips.
I'd love to see the cost-benefit analysis of the different route options considered. They haven't released that right?
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@dpschramm Just building Westmead to WSI metro will add more benefit,connect to the HSR. The route is absolutely ridiculous and very unserious. It won’t be built if they stick with it.
Central connection can be done initially using the main lines to central. ST has loads of capacity.
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