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Iron rolling on iron is cheap and low friction. Magnetic stuff is even less friction but mooooore expensive. Much more. Planes are high friction and need much more expensive energy. Forget cars, friction is killing their efficiency.
When you optimise for cheap and low friction trains are king.
It’s not just friction, it’s also the space per passenger (aka number of passengers relative to vehicle size). That’s why airplanes and bicycles work too, despite not being iron rolling on iron.
Planes have a historically bad record testing their friction coefficient against iron
Usually rather short tests.
Bikes are low friction as heck, the rolling resistance of a wheel on a road is low with that small amount of weight.
So yeah, amount of machine per passenger (which in a car is often only 1 person) and amount of infrastructure it takes to support that per person
Friction isn’t bad, it just defines starting/stopping distance.
It also defines energy loss at speed.
Just to be clear, this meme about carcinization has gone too far in the public consciousness, even accounting for irony. The only extant examples of carcinization are in the sister infraorder (Anomura) of the true crabs (Brachyura).
It’s still a remarkable phenomenon (and as someone who reads a lot about king crabs, you should look into it!), but the meme has gone waaaaay too far. It’d be like if New World monkeys (parvorder Platyrrhini) tended to evolve toward an Old World monkey-like body plan (parvorder Catarrhini), and the conclusion drawn was “well surely on a long enough time scale, everything returns to Old World monke.”
Edit: I forgot to mention that there was a good study about this
lastthis year in case anyone wants to brave the jargon.Traincrab when?
Beautiful.
Placed it in a pond… London better get ready for invasive pond crabs.
I remember some science fiction author, probably Asimov, invented a cool version of a train. Basically, next to the train is a series of moving walkways that progressively get slower as they get away from the train. So, the train never stops and people just get on or off wherever they can.
I imagine this style of train would have all sorts of problems, like people guessing wrong about when to start getting off, and ending up in the next town. Or how wherever a popular destination exists, there would be a constant mosh pit of people trying to push their way off.
It’s not even science fiction, they actually tried that back in the day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue_de_l’Avenir
Moving walkways were initially conceived as a true form of public transit.
That’s funny that the video on that page (last under the gallery section) has two hooligan kids standing in front of the screen just happy to be blocking the view for the novelty of being recorded on video.
They got away with it because I’m still seeing them over a hundred years later.
Yeah, good to see kids are still kids, lol.
ADA Compliance Challenge: Impossible
Basically, next to the train is a series of moving walkways that progressively get slower as they get away from the train. So, the train never stops and people just get on or off wherever they can.
so…a bunch of (open) trains running in parallel?
I originally viewed it as a series of moving walkways where the center one had seats. I guess that’s why I thought of it here, since I realized it was a novel type of train.
yup, Asimov. The Caves of Steel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Caves_of_Steel
you can see an artist rednition in the wiki article.
I forgot about the walkways. The underground megopolises however never left my mind since I read those books as a kid
Heinlein had it. Havent gotten to asimov yet but on my shortlist!
More organisms have turned into trees than into crabs.
I wouldn’t mind seeing more trains, though.
So the absolute peak specimen would be the fusion of a tree, a crab, and a train.
Trackless trams seem to be an example of this.
To be fair those are just buses with lofty ideals
