I boarded at San Mateo at 08:01. Door shut, destination berth reserved, arrival time on the display. My pod stayed there until the 08:20 release. Then it took the straight section at 40 km/h.
The empty test pod did 600 on that stretch yesterday. Name every official who thinks a ready, occupied pod must sit twenty minutes and then crawl for safety. Make them commute in it before they sign another order.
I work on those guideways. The interim passenger permit says 40 km/h. The empty certification vehicle ran the same straight section at 600 km/h under the passenger-motion limits. Your pod can do it; its permit cannot.
The twenty-minute release is in the entrance approval. A different piece of paper makes a different set of officials responsible for this absurdity. Stop calling it a cautious machine. It is a fast machine forced to impersonate a parade float by people who have never opened a guideway.
boreline · #2Your pod can do it; its permit cannot.
An empty test says the guideway can carry an empty pod. Carrying people and joining two systems adds failure cases. I want someone to show what happens if a receiving route is closed before I volunteer to be the demonstration.
The proposed connection of the two Peninsula systems triggered federal railroad review. The national operating certificate is still being argued over. Speed, interconnection and entrance departures have separate approvals. The operator knew that, bundled its requests anyway, and made this mess itself. I am tired of people waving a test run at my office as though a vehicle can sign a national operating certificate.
At Palo Alto I can book a pod any time, but departures are at :00, :20 and :40. My mother's carer leaves at nine. One late handover and I sit inside a ready pod for almost twenty minutes. I have gone back to paying for a car on that visit.
I live near the entrance. The operator asked for a station that could send people into a regional network under our homes. Residents asked where passengers would arrive on the street, how access would be managed, and whether we could revise the arrangement. That hearing was a reasonable thing to hold. If you boarded without checking whether the entrance was approved, your surprise is your own incompetence. I would keep departures at twenty-minute intervals until every affected block votes again.
rightofway · #6That hearing was a reasonable thing to hold.
You already had a hearing. Did anybody there ask for exactly twenty minutes, or did the delay become sacred only after commuters complained? The entrance is already built. Letting my pod leave when the route is clear won't put a new doorway on your street. The neighborhood is renting out its ability to delay me.
Operator here. On this morning's service the route and receiving berth were reserved before boarding. We held loaded pods at the entrance for the release minute. We have applied to change the timetable; while the amendment is pending, dispatch follows the one we have.
No faster service until the operator shows us what it does to the entrance upstairs. We agreed to a small lift on a traffic estimate made for the slow service. More people will want to use it when the pods stop crawling. I will not accept 'faster underground' as an excuse for turning my street into the system's doorway. If the operator wants more riders, let it buy every house whose threshold it devalues.
Municipal permits desk here, speaking for myself. We can change the entrance timetable through its own amendment. The federal interconnection case won't do it for us, even if it raises the speed limit. Federal speed papers do not cure a missing municipal queue study. Send the study with the amendment or let the loaded pods wait; I am not doing the operator's homework for it.
For the speed question: identical vehicles carry passengers at 600 km/h abroad. The test here used the same straight guideway section and passenger-motion limits. That settles the hardware question. The connection needs its own safety case, and using that separate filing to defend a 40 km/h straight-section limit is professional cowardice. Anyone still chanting 'more hardware evidence' after that test is protecting a desk, not a passenger. File the connection safety case separately and stop making my machines carry their ignorance.
I agree it is evidence. The forty-kilometre cap might be too low. I'd read a proposal for a higher local speed before the full interconnection is approved. Has anyone filed one that separates those questions?
There is a speed amendment in the same docket as the connection. The agency keeps renewing the interim order while it reviews the combined filing. A narrower filing is available if the operator actually bothers to request one. The operator could request a split, but evidently prefers blaming the agency to doing the filing. Another complaint about the cap without a narrower application deserves an automatic denial.
I'm hearing two applications to change two delays. Which one gets me home in time to take over from the carer? I can write a letter, but “the pod already knows where it's going” feels like the whole letter.
I came here to complain about a twenty-minute wait. Now I have a municipal timetable docket and a federal speed case. Tomorrow morning I still board at 08:01 and watch the departure clock reach 08:20 while two offices blame each other. If both can regulate my commute, both can refund the hours; I will send each the same invoice until one admits this schedule is deliberate stupidity.
This thread is archived. New replies are closed.