Oh, you wanted to get off the train? Tough shit, GPS is out.
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Now, La Guardia on the other hand...that might be the worst airport in the USA.
Newark, NJ. It's the only airport where I've used air stairs to get on a plane instead of a jetway.(1)Of course, that might have been just the People Express hub/terminal in 1985, but it was pretty awful. A sort of V shape where my incoming flight arrived at the outer end of one side and I had to go to the outer end of the other side to get to my outbound flight. And no jetways, because the terminal building was one floor, at ground level. But they let us who were doing this change cross the middle part of the space between the arms of the V rather than go all the way down and up inside the building.
(1) I've been in at least one other airport with a ground-level terminal, but I didn't get on or off a plane there. It was Edwin A Link Field, up on top of a big hill a few miles north of Binghamton, NY. My father travelled a lot when I was in high school and I used to go up there with him so we'd have the car while he was away. It was cool in one way because it meant I got to drive to school if he left early on a school-day.
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No, we want platform-mounted automatic door openers, so the train doesn't even need to stop.
Actually, what you really want are those moving walkways from Asimov's Robot novels; the ones where you have several side-by-side, running at increasing speeds until you get to the central one, which is basically a train ;)
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Asimov's Robot novels
o.O
I'm sure I read that somewhere else. Heinlein?
*digs through his books folder*
Yup!
I didn't read huge amounts of Asimov, but I don't remember those from anywhere in his work.
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increasing speeds until you get to the central one, which is basically a train
You'd have to have a series of separate sections of belt at the ends as well, in decreasing speeds, for getting on and off if you go the whole way.
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I didn't read huge amounts of Asimov, but I don't remember those from anywhere in his work.
Both Caves Of Steel and The Naked Sun have them IIRC; the former definitely does.
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Well, that's interesting.
Now I wonder if he was inspired or it's just a coincidence.
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Trams?
Not trams because they don't mix at all with normal road traffic. The Lille Tramway is somewhere between an Amsterdam-style tram and metre-gauge light rail - it runs mostly at ground level, but the tracks are mostly separated from road traffic, except where it must cross a road at ground level, where there is an at-grade crossing with NO barriers or train-like signals, just traffic lights. The Metro, on the other hand, is fully isolated from road traffic, and runs mostly either in tunnels or on an elevated track.
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Newark, NJ. It's the only airport where I've used air stairs to get on a plane instead of a jetway.
You see a lot more of them if you're travelling in Europe. I don't know why jetways are so popular in the US; they force a lot of building of fixed structures when a bus out to a remote stand would be a lot cheaper to operate, at least for smaller aircraft. (I'm guessing there must be some sort of WTFy regulations involved…)
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You see a lot more of them if you're travelling in Europe. I don't know why jetways are so popular in the US; they force a lot of building of fixed structures when a bus out to a remote stand would be a lot cheaper to operate, at least for smaller aircraft. (I'm guessing there must be some sort of WTFy regulations involved…)
I've done the smaller aircraft thing, once. It was a 30-seat twin-turboprop jobbie going from Fresno to LAX, and it had its own stairs built into the door, so that doesn't quite count as air stairs (which I thought referred to the stairs-on-wheels that you see people using in films and TV news broadcasts of heads of state visiting this or that country.Or ordinary citizens in Newark NJ's north terminal in 1985...
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I've done the smaller aircraft thing, once. It was a 30-seat twin-turboprop jobbie going from Fresno to LAX, and it had its own stairs built into the door, so that doesn't quite count as air stairs
I've seen air stairs used with a 737 at Frankfurt, and with a 767 at Amsterdam (though in that case it was because the aircraft was late due to adverse winds and missed its slot at a stand with a jetway; this happened last year, and was annoying because I missed my connection).
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I don't know why jetways are so popular in the US; they force a lot of building of fixed structures when a bus out to a remote stand would be a lot cheaper to operate, at least for smaller aircraft.
Smaller aircraft tend to make you walk out and up some stairs. I know the personnel get pretty paranoid about people walking around on the tarmac. Lots of liability issues there. Jetways are also a lot easier on disabled people and everyone during inclement weather.
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Newark, NJ. It's the only airport where I've used air stairs to get on a plane
SNA (John Wayne Orange County) I've only been there once, and it's been a long time, but I don't remember any jetways. (They built a new terminal in 2011, and it does have jetways visible in the Wikipedia photo.)
BUR (Bob Hope, formerly Hollywood-Burbank)
Once at SJC, to exit the plane. It was a packed flight, and to speed unloading, they used stairs to exit from the rear door, as well as the jetway to unload from the front.
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You'd have to have a series of separate sections of belt at the ends as well, in decreasing speeds, for getting on and off if you go the whole way.
Nah, that takes the fun out of it for the locals watching the tourists.
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people walking around on the tarmac. Lots of liability issues there.
Not to mention security theatre issues.
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I moved 16 posts to a new topic: In which DiscoMarkHTML is discussed. Again.
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I moved 3 posts to an existing topic: In which DiscoMarkHTML is discussed. Again.
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Usually not the conductor's fault. They aren't in any way informed about arrival and have to carry on checking tickets until they figure it out. Then move back through the train to the last carriage to leave the station for departure protocols, then use their Alan key (super secure) to unlock the door controls, then unlock the doors. On busy trains moving through can be really slow, and if the operating company requires them to announce each station or get punished that adds even more time.
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Usually not the conductor's fault. They aren't in any way informed about arrival and have to carry on checking tickets until they figure it out. Then move back through the train to the last carriage to leave the station for departure protocols, then use their Alan key (super secure) to unlock the door controls, then unlock the doors. On busy trains moving through can be really slow, and if the operating company requires them to announce each station or get punished that adds even more time.
Allen, not Alan.
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Heres some bullshit that allows me to feel like I am right and you are wrong.
They are a different thing from Allen Keys, because they are specifically for trains. They were invented by a guy called Alan, and he put his name to it. Alan is quite famous in permanent way circles and while it is easy to understand why you might expect them to be named after the more common Allen keys we all use for putting furniture together or tinkering with bikes or many other activities, it is nevertheless insulting to his memory to call them anything different.
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Then move back through the train to the last carriage to leave the station for departure protocols, then use their Alan key (super secure) to unlock the door controls, then unlock the doors.
That depends on the configuration of the train. On the commuter trains round home, each carriage has door controls in it (protected by that super-secure square key system!) so the distance the conductor needs to go is limited. The only times it would be really critical to do anything else would be when either the train is longer than the platform or when the driver fucks up.
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don't get me wrong the controls are everywhere, the protocols they are forced to follow (at least round here) just ignore them.
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No, we want platform-mounted automatic door openers, so the train doesn't even need to stop.
That's the way to a faster commute
How should those poor non-Dauntless people exit the train?
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hu-uh..... that is cool.
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That… is way past cool. [s]Only the Japanese can come up with something so wacky, and yet so brilliant at the same time.[/s] OK, so I didn't read the description to find out it's actually Chinese…
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Absolute genius. Who invented this? I want to send them flowers. Or money. Or kidnap them and make them put these in England.
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Proposed idea in China. I've also changed the Youtube link to a less potatoey quality
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Isn't that slow as fuck? Or don't you need lots of trains for it to work? Who wants to stop in every station for another train to arrive?
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I think the idea is, once you're in that little car and the little car is on top of the train, you can climb down into the main train through a hatch or some such. Then the people going off go up into the little car and it's dropped off at the next station.
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I think the point is that you switch into the main train when the main train is at speed.
I would say this works at most with small stations, because the capacity of the 'piggyback' train is small compared to the main one. Also, you can't have the stations too close together, to give passengers enough time to switch to/from the main train.
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There is also a relation between the speed the main train is going, and how much longer the main train needs to be than the piggyback train. The difference would need to be the 'stopping distance' of the piggyback train, which is constrained for comfort reasons.
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Ah, I get it now, I'm dumb.
I would say this works at most with small stations, because the capacity of the 'piggyback' train is small compared to the main one. Also, you can't have the stations too close together, to give passengers enough time to switch to/from the main train.
Yeah, this still sounds rather questionable in some spots, but maybe the piggyback could be bigger or there could be more piggyback cars per train. It doesn't sound like it completely solves the issue, especially for already established train lines and old cities with badly distributed stations (in terms of the amount of people getting in/out of each one).
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Idea: maybe the extra cars could be on the sides? So that it didn't involve people fighting to get up/down a ladder in order to exit the train.
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JapaneseChinese…You realize Japanese and "Chinese" sound as different to each other as French and German?
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Yeah, this still sounds rather questionable in some spots, but maybe the piggyback could be bigger or there could be more piggyback cars per train.
Then you run into the problem of my second post: you need a certain length of clear train roof to accelerate in.
It doesn't sound like it completely solves the issue, especially for already established train lines and old cities with badly distributed stations (in terms of the amount of people getting in/out of each one).
I'm not sure this would work on existing infrastructure at all. You'd need a larger horizontal envelope than an existing line is likely to offer.
Idea: maybe the extra cars could be on the sides? So that it didn't involve people fighting to get up/down a ladder in order to exit the train.
True on the transfer time, but may be less feasible for balance and aerodynamics reasons. A hard link with the side cart on separate tracks wouldn't work in curves.
An additional issue I just thought of - what if the piggyback car cannot leave for whatever reasons (unruly passengers &c). You'd have to have sufficient room to drop off one or possibly multiple piggyback cars, and you'd be short one further up the line. In cases where you have multiple piggyback cars per train, you'd have to drop all piggyback cars, even ones that you expect to keep and which people may be transferring into/out of. Or you'd have to halt the main train.
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You realize Japanese and "Chinese" sound as different to each other as French and German?
- I'm not around those languages enough to have developed an ear for them
- I already corrected myself
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Chinese is a tonal family of languages. Japanese is not. If the pitch varies in a nonsensical pattern to your Anglo-trained ear, it's probably Chinese.
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List en to this audio (from here) to hear the Mandarin word for train: 火车 (huŏ chē). Notice that the second syllable is pronounced in a long high tone, it should be fairly prominant. You can hear this same word if you go back and listen to the original video, it's said several times, as the video is mostly about trains...
Japanese proved a bit trickier, Google translate suggests either 列車 (res sha) audio or 汽車 (ki sha) audio , but these are completely different words to the Mandarin.
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Really excited Japanese people talking about trains:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5fbiTFJKYY
Notice that while they're enthusiastic, there's no tonal shifts like in the Chinese video.
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Power Rangers, but with trains. Because Japan
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That shit was on like, every commercial break when I was in Japan last year. I caught an episode of the show and despite not being nearly fluent enough to understand what was going on, my overdub appeared to correctly predict the plot twists. You can tell who has what problems by their outfits in these shows: the red guy's the leader, but in the episode I saw, the blue guy kept giving orders, indicating that he was having a bit of jealousy of the red guy, but then by the end the red guy saved the blue guy's life so they became best friends again. Meanwhile the green guy was comic relief.
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Linking me to TvTropes 20 minutes before the end of my workday? Evil ideas thread is
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Is he auditioning for the part of Palpatine in a furry Star Wars?
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Maybe...?
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