The use of floppies is hardly some previously unknown fact; for starters, Tumlin explicitly told KQED that his agency has to retain staff with skills honed to what amounts to the programming equivalent of Ancient Babylonian. But Twitter users on Thursday expressed surprise that a city known as a global tech capital would be so reliant on a storage format that lacks the capacity to store a single hi-resolution photograph.

Previously: https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/tech-in-the-tunnels-muni-train-control-system-gets-biggest-upgrade-since-the-90s/article_9e96254c-f8b3-5ee8-b21a-227b3cd6eb2c.html

Relay racks extend down a cramped hallway nearly 15 feet deep, where dozens of 4-inch copper filaments clatter up and down like teeth. The speedy “click, clack” sound signifies a smooth running Muni light rail automatic control system, which commands the J-Church, K-Ingleside, L-Taraval, M-Ocean View, N-Judah and T-Third Street trains through the tunnels. The clapping beat signifies the proper alignment of the railway’s 83 axle (controls) and numerous other track switches.

source: jwz

The NYC subway system—a mishmash of new and old technology—still struggles to build payment systems that work for everyone. And often, the tech often separates the haves and have-nots.

Washington is a city of great bridges and terrible bridges. These are their stories.

The Cincinnati subway stations are still there. But if you’re still waiting for a train to come, you’ve been waiting for almost a century. To this day Cincinnati remains home to the largest unused subway system in the world, with over two miles of empty tunnels. Engineers who inspected the tunnels recently deemed them in “very good condition.”

source: HN

Way back in 1673, the French Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet noticed that the land around present-day Chicago had “a very great and important advantage, which perhaps will hardly be believed.” The area, he foresaw, could become the great node of a huge continent, with the Great Lakes on one side and, just a few miles to the southwest, the Illinois River and the entire Mississippi Basin. Jolliet envisioned, rather hopefully, that connecting the two — and creating a water route from Lake Erie all the way to the Gulf of Mexico – would be as simple as building a canal through just “half a league of prairie.”

A cash-strapped rancher, a virus-stricken meatpacker, an underpaid chef, a hungry engineer: The journey of a single burger during a pandemic

A bit dramatic, but a good look at the food supply chain.

Almost everything at this American shipyard exists at enormous scale. Vessels are constructed over years. Experience is developed over decades. The work is so spread out across the yard and over time that, to the untrained eye, it can be difficult to tell what is being hammered, wired or welded — and whether it’s right-side up or upside down.

When finished, more than a hundred pieces are fused into a hulking mass of metal that will be set afloat to connect an ever-shrinking world.

What if we put a jet engine on a train engine? In Russian.

The phrase “Urban Air Mobility” (UAM) seems like it’s been with us for quite a while, but really it’s only been in widespread use for two or three years. NASA officially recognized UAM in 2017, calling for a market study of remotely piloted or unmanned air passenger and cargo transportation around an urban area. Most people would probably call this the “air taxi” idea—a vision of hundreds of small, unmanned electric multi-copters shuttling two or three passengers from nearby suburbs or city spaces to vertiports at about 100 mph (roughly 161 km/h).

But if things had worked out differently in the late 1950s and early 1960s, we might have a very different understanding of UAM—something more like mass-transit. We might have had a city-center to city-center 55-passenger vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) airliner shuttling between urban heliports at 180 mph (289 km/h).

Actually, we did have that, it’s just few people remember. It was called the Fairey Rotodyne.

source: ars

Last summer, for the first time ever, Uzbekistan began allowing photography in its opulent metro, which has been described as one of the most ornate in the world.

Also: https://www.rferl.org/a/uzbekistan-s-secret-underground-a-ban-on-photography-is-lifted-on-tashkent-metro-/29437456.html

source: MR

Despite the lawsuits and predictions of gridlock, restricting a single Manhattan street to buses has been a success. Why stop there?

And in SF: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Plan-to-remake-SF-s-Market-Street-without-car-14535887.php

Also: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191011-what-happens-when-a-city-bans-car-from-its-streets

source: HN

The two main forms of mass transit are the tube and buses. Passes are good for both systems, except where noted. There aren’t many options, which is good, because it makes decision-making easier. I’ll start by focusing on tickets for zones 1 and 2, which is where the major tourist attractions are. Prices are as of summer 2019.

There is a commonly held belief that Helvetica is the signage typeface of the New York City subway system, a belief reinforced by Helvetica, Gary Hustwit’s popular 2007 documentary about the typeface. But it is not true—or rather, it is only somewhat true. Helvetica is the official typeface of the MTA today, but it was not the typeface specified by Unimark International when it created a new signage system at the end of the 1960s. Why was Helvetica not chosen originally? What was chosen in its place? Why is Helvetica used now, and when did the changeover occur? To answer those questions this essay explores several important histories: of the New York City subway system, transportation signage in the 1960s, Unimark International and, of course, Helvetica. These four strands are woven together, over nine pages, to tell a story that ultimately transcends the simple issue of Helvetica and the subway.

source: E

When a drilling platform is scheduled for destruction, it must go on a thousand-mile final journey to the breaker’s yard. As one rig proved when it crashed on to the rocks of a remote Scottish island, this is always a risky business

source: jwz

In 1994, Cesare Marchetti, an Italian physicist, described an idea that has come to be known as the Marchetti Constant. In general, he declared, people have always been willing to commute for about a half-hour, one way, from their homes each day. This principle has profound implications for urban life. The value of land is governed by its accessibility—which is to say, by the reasonable speed of transport to reach it.

But the endurance of the Marchetti Constant has profound implications for urban life. It means that the average speed of our transportation technologies does more than anything to shape the physical structure of our cities. To see how, let’s travel back in time by more than 2,000 years, and move towards the present.

source: K

One example is the “D” cars, which have a cab where the operator sits. The agency expects them to run 6,000 hours before hitting any kind of equipment failure that causes a delay of five minutes or more. They’re hovering at 1,000 hours.

source: HN

Vintage technology has powered the innards of the NYC subway system for decades—and sometimes, it surfaces in interesting ways. This one’s for you, OS/2 fans.

Motorbikes in Taiwan. 3:27.

source: K

This site explains how to travel comfortably & affordably by train or ferry where you might think air was now the only option.

source: HN

For Elon Musk’s very difficult year, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

Specifically, it’s a 1.14-mile tunnel the inventor and beleaguered CEO of Tesla Motors says is a first step in solving “soul-destroying” urban traffic. In 2016, Musk — already busy running two high-profile companies — founded a construction firm called the Boring Company to tackle gridlock by drilling underground. Some thought it was a joke. Two years of big promises and $40 million later, his just-in-time innovation machine delivered a functioning test tunnel late Tuesday.

What’s it like to ride through Elon’s tunnel? Bumpy, but that’s all part of the ride on a Musk enterprise.