SelTrac has been around since the mid 80s, and was originally a German developed product (Standard Elektrik Lorenz) based on LZB technology.
My understanding of LZB is limited, but it appears to be a fixed block system with wayside detection of trains, albeit with shorter blocks than lineside signals would usually have. This is different to SelTrac which is moving block.
Yeah, LZB internally is based on fixed blocks - but on a system with block lengths down to 50 meters (as in the Stammstrecke München [1]), the difference is negligible.
Crazy to see that SelTrac was actually developed in Berlin, failed there, but is still in widespread use across the world.
I had it done twice, both times without sedation by choice. I did have analgesics, and a cannula in my wrist in case I changed my mind mid-way.
It was quite tolerable, just a few moments of short lived cramping pains (similar to diarrhea pains) as the endoscope turned the corners of my insides. My recovery was about half an hour of sitting up and having tea and toast, while those that were sedated slept off the drugs.
I'd do the same again if ever I get another one, and recommend it to anyone who can't have or doesn't want sedation.
>Not sure why the conspiracy theorists have decided to make Oxford their place to protest all this stuff
Because they have maliciously or stupidly confused the permits which would allow residents to drive through traffic filters (instead of taking a longer route), with a passport system that wouldn't let them leave the zone at all.
But they will be able to travel without a permit, it's just that those journeys may need to be rerouted to take a less direct route to avoid the traffic filters.
Traffic filters are not new to the UK, and plenty have existed for decades in cities like London without controversy or conspiracy. They do not form an impermeable cordon around an area.
They restrict through traffic on certain streets, in order to provide faster and safer routes for either bikes or buses. As far as I can tell the Oxford proposal is less restrictive than traditional filters as permits allow car driver to bypass the restrictions a certain number of times a month.
> those journeys may need to be rerouted to take a less direct route to avoid the traffic filters.
I don't know enough about Oxfordshire to be sure, but it seems unlikely that the goal here is simply to move the traffic to different streets - especially after they said the goal is to eliminate 50% of car traffic.
>First, let's establish that the Netherlands is a car country...On a typical day, 1 million people use public transport. Cars are the norm, not trains or bicycles.
Anyone visiting a Dutch city can see what a distortion this comment is. The sheer volume of bike traffic on largely safe infrastructure is phenomenal. Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock. Life may be good for Dutch drivers, but only because so many others leave their cars at home.
> Anyone visiting a Dutch city can see what a distortion this comment is. The sheer volume of bike traffic on largely safe infrastructure is phenomenal. Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock. Life may be good for Dutch drivers, but only because so many others leave their cars at home.
I was actually considering making the same point, but sarcastically: "B b but, when I was a tourist visiting the walkable tourist areas Amsterdam where tourists go, I didn't passively observe any locals needing a car!"
It's a mistake to think tourist/visitor experiences give you a good idea what it's like to live anywhere.
That assumes that the tourists and visitors confine themselves to the major tourist areas. If you bother to cycle outside the major tourist areas of the Netherlands, whether to minor cities or villages, you'll still notice many people cycling for local journeys.
The mistake is people used to car dependence being unable to imagine any alternative, thus refusing to believe that it can be true.
> That assumes that the tourists and visitors confine themselves to the major tourist areas.
Which is a valid default assumption, unless it's made clear the speaker didn't do that.
Especially in this case, where you have an actual Dutch person who lives in the actual Netherlands getting told they were wrong by someone who cites visitor experiences.
Cycling is ubiquitous in the Netherlands though. Even in small towns. The only place where it's not convenient is if you're living out in the fields in say Flevoland.
How is that a distortion? It seems like you’re violently agreeing with the parent that many people bike to work but far, far fewer than the majority (which is essentially what the American anti-car rhetoric suggests).
> Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock.
There are 10 million employed Dutch (Statista) of whom 65% drive (Statista), so an additional half a million would be a 10% traffic increase, which is probably not “gridlock”, but in any case I don’t see how this refutes the original claim that Netherlands is a car country.
I think the problem is that American anti-car rhetoric doesn't speak with one voice. There are people who know what they're talking about, who are mostly saying "If we follow some of the Dutch practices, we can get a city where people can get to a local destination by bike safely. But we should also take note that even in the Netherlands, the need to engineer roads for bike safety is something they continually forget". But there's others who say "The US is a hell-hole, Americans are evil and dumb, cars are evil, they will destroy the earth, we must all copy the enlightened Europeans who are good and wise people".
It is like that for so many reform proposals. Heterodox economists (MMT or gold standard or anything really) will say "we ought to consider this evidence in making our economic decisions", and their acolytes on forums like this will say "If we adopt this reform, we will be able to solve all our problems, but it's just corruption and self-interested politicians who stop us". Voting system reform people say "The US is screwed by FPTP, if we adopted proportional representation we will depolarise and have a nice consensual politics", but people who study the politics of countries that use proportional representation don't really indicate that (I think in this case there are some political scientists who get close, but only by circularly defining perfection in politics as exhibiting the consequences of proportional representation).
I agree that it’s hard to represent groups accurately, but I don’t think your “person who knows what they’re talking about” falls reasonably within bounds of anyone’s “anti-car” definition. For one, it’s not actually an anti-car argument, it’s a pro-cycling argument and lots of Americans favor safer cycling without getting anywhere near anti-car. Moreover, every identifiably anti-car community I’m aware of (e.g., r/fuckcars) has a tone that is more akin to your “Americans are evil” example—are there identifiably anti-car communities that embody your former example?
I don't know of any such communities online, but in real world local politics the first example is more common. People who support things like bike lanes, bus lanes, and light rail don't describe themselves as "anti-car", but their opponents call them that among less polite names, so I'd argue it's the more mainstream definition of anti-car.
Yeah, I think we're talking about different groups. I'm talking about people who self-identify as "anti-car". I've never heard of anyone who uses "anti-car" as a derogatory term for others, but I wouldn't be surprised if they exist somewhere. Personally, it seems unreasonable to me to define "anti-car" as "supports other modes of transit"; "anti-car" by my definition (which I think is the main definition) requires emphatic opposition to cars.
> ...but only by circularly defining perfection in politics as exhibiting the consequences of proportional representation
Oh, I love "logic" like that. Another common example is: "the free market is the best economic system because the perfect allocation of goods in society is how the market does it."
The original poster claimed that car usage is the norm in the Netherlands, which implies that anything else is outside the norm, or unusual. This is obviously incorrectly.
There are various other posts in this thread that also give statistics, and the number of car vs bike journeys is not so far apart.
In a country that famously has more bikes then people, the idea that if half the bike journeys converted to cars there would only be a ten percent increase in traffic is quite clearly ridiculous. Especially within cities bikes carry volumes of people that would overwhelm roads if those people used space-inefficient cars.
> The original poster claimed that car usage is the norm in the Netherlands, which implies that anything else is outside the norm, or unusual
This isn't a reasonable interpretation. "the norm" only implies that it's the majority mode of transportation (in contrast with the anti-car rhetoric). This implies that other modes are not the majority, but it does not imply that those other modes are particularly rare.
> In a country that famously has more bikes then people, the idea that if half the bike journeys converted to cars there would only be a ten percent increase in traffic is quite clearly ridiculous.
I mean, I showed my math--feel free to point out where I erred, but just stating "it's quite clearly ridiculous" is like putting your fingers in your ears and shouting, "I can't hear you".
You need fine-grained statistics. It certainly isn't true that 65% of the people living or working in big dense Dutch cities like Amsterdam drive to work. That statistic more reflects how much the population of the Netherlands is spread out as a whole, not concentrated in its biggest cities as is more common in many other European countries.
Generalising from the centre of a city to the whole country is a distortion. Last time i was in the Netherlands, i arrived in Amsterdam, then went out to the countryside, somewhere near Dedemsvaart. I looked at doing the trip by public transport, but it would have taken forever. Instead, we rented a car and drove there, along wide, fast, busy roads. The Netherlands is indeed a heavily motorised country.
Dutch cycling infrastructure is close to ubiquitous, extending practically the length and breadth of the country. The idea that bikes are used only in city centres is another distortion. But of course the bike tends to be used for shorter, local trips.
Your (roughly 130 km) journey would have been less fast had those people making their shorter distance journeys by bike got into their cars instead.
You'll find plenty of people cycling in Dedemsvaart itself though. Nobody is claiming cars don't have their place. It just shouldn't be the default mode - or even worse, the only viable option - for every single trip.
> The sheer volume of bike traffic on largely safe infrastructure is phenomenal. Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock.
Having visited Amsterdam by chance after missing a flight to London due to NYC gridlock traffic, this was one of my first thoughts on arrival.
It seems you're assuming that majority of the people live in the city or would love in a city? Many people, me included, do not want to live in a city, at least not in an American city. What a city boasts to offer are not relevant to my life: bars, shops, boutique stores, fancy restaurants, active social circles, loud parties, fashion shows, you name it. All those activities are just either too noisy or too crowded. On the other hand, there's not enough outdoor activities in a city. Things are so small in a city too. I want to stay in a spacious coffee shop talking to my friends without raising my voice. I want to have a huge gym instead of those crammed multi-floor ones in a city. I want to have a house that has large enough backyard and front yard and quiet streets for my kids to play around. I want to be able to play drum on my front yard and my neighbors won't hear a thing (I'm exaggerating but you get the idea). I want to be able to hop on a vehicle to ski in a place no more than 30 minutes away from my home whenever I want to. And I certainly don't want to take a bus for grocery shopping for a family of 6. The only thing in a city that I miss is those amazing huge libraries. God I enjoy spending my whole day there.
And if I can afford such life without a car, I'm all for it. But I don't know how.
>>Anyone visiting a Dutch city can see what a distortion this comment is.
Your parent comment is saying the same thing. Stay inside the city, close enough to your office that you can reach it by a bicycle. Of course in that case you could say the rent you would be pay would be equally higher. Plus not every one can afford to do that(given school availability, and your spouse office has to be close by too).
On a net basis, its again the same thing. You just pay for your time with higher rents.
Even in the most urbanised part of the country most people still drive for most distances over ~5km. If you have to get from one side of Rotterdam to the other side a car is much faster than a bike or public transportation.
The 'elderly parent to the doctor' case is still an argument for bike infrastructure. The more people choose to travel by bike instead of by car, the more space is available on the roads for those that need motor vehicles.
I've rented bikes in the Netherlands several times as a UK citizen, but perhaps in different areas.
Part of the reason the Netherlands is the perfect place for a car owner is that so many people are able to go by bike instead, freeing up space on the roads.
Not sure if your comment was confined to the USA or not, but I live in outer suburban London, and I have the schools, small Sainsbury's supermarket, libraries, a small gym, soccer grounds and tennis courts within an easy walk. Larger gym and larger supermarkets are an easy bike ride away. There is nothing at all unusual or remarkable about my particular part of London.
It certainly seems progressive to me. Charging private vehicles to access the roads reduces demand, which allows other modes such as buses, trams and bikes to move more people more quickly.
I don't see what's progressive about letting private cars clog the roads up and slowing down London's vast and comprehensive bus network.
I guess the point is that it's not related to the person's income. For someone on minimum wage, the £15 congestion charge prevents them using the car. For a high-earned, it's just a fee to pay as you continue to drive in London.
But food at the supermarket, clothes, even water from the tap are all priced without regard to individual income. Why would road usage be any different?
The wealthy are always able to buy the nicest things, and addressing income inequality is a very valid goal. But what realistic alternative is there to the price mechanism that still allows for a level
of individual choice, and permits vehicle journeys that are economically necessary (e.g. tradespeople) while discouraging car journeys that could me made by other means.
As for the minimum wage earner, they are the least likely to be able to afford to keep a car. The current roads free-for-all means their bus journeys are far slower due to the traffic, and more expensive due to the larger number of buses required to maintain frequency on congested roads.
A possible solution to reduce inequality from road charging while still maintaining the benefits of the price mechanism would be to return the proceeds (after maintenance costs) to the residents of the city in the form of transport credits. These credits would be able to be spent on road access, public transport, or cycling as the individual preferred.
I don't really agree with the original premise, but I would point out that:
> The wealthy are always able to buy the nicest things,
the problem is that there is no product differentiation when it comes to road usage. You're either on it and paying the same fee, or you're not.
It's not like food, clothes, housing where you might be paying a lot for these things, or you might be paying less. We price specific items of food without regard to income, but there's a wide variety of items of food to choose from, at different price levels.
The local water company does not provide deluxe or budget versions, water is water. The same applies to gas and electricity. All are major household expenses.
In the context of a large city, there certainly is differentiation in transport. You can grab a large amount of the scarce road space for yourself with a car (even more if you park on-street) or taxi, or you can take a smaller share of it by getting on a bus, bike or tram.
Why not go entirely surveillance system. And record all use of roads. Mandatory 24/7 tracking with penalty payments on any public road. Then track which roads and sections of roads person travelled during each day using which method. And divide the bill between all of them.
Use routes that other people use and get it cheaper, have the private low use roads cost more. As poor people are more likely to live in denser areas it would be cheaper for them.
> But food at the supermarket, clothes, even water from the tap are all priced without regard to individual income. Why would road usage be any different?
If you buy more/better clothes you end up paying more. You also end up paying more to upkeep said clothes.
If you consume more water, you end up paying more for it; Progressive water pricing is very common around the world.
A progressive road usage pricing scheme would not be out of the ordinary.
Urbalis Fluence works as you describe, but that is a very new approach to CBTC and as far as I'm aware has only one installation.