Welcome to the latest issue of The Transportist, especially to our new readers. As always you can follow along on Substack at our new domain: transportist.net or on Mastodon. Note: Substack Notes is a new space on Substack for us to share links, short posts, quotes, photos, and more. I plan to use it for things that don’t fit in the newsletter, like work-in-progress or quick questions, it is discussed more at the bottom of this newsletter.
In this issue
Posts
Maintenance
Public transport frequencies in Hertz
Comments on Apple Vision Pro
Links
Refer a Friend
Posts
This got covered in Australia Transport News: Expert calls for NSW Road Pricing Debate
Prompted by this: Creation of ‘motorway zones’ for the worlds most tolled city, #Sydney, as part of toll roads shake-up
Maintenance
Buses replace trains: is Sydney doomed to endure the curse of weekend trackwork forever?. I got a nice interview in The Guardian on the subject, since the new government aims to reduce the maintenance backlog. I also got an interview on ABC Radio Sydney with James Valentine.
…
Prof David Levinson, a transport analyst at the University of Sydney’s civil engineering school, says he was struck by just how prominent train closures were after moving to Sydney.
“Other cities manage to make it work, do maintenance and keep trains running on weekends. It’s not like people don’t ride trains on weekends; in fact, weekend ridership is increasing lately.”
Levinson acknowledged the problem of night-time noise generating complaints, but pointed out that freight trains already run through Sydney at night. He says there should be a higher threshold for noise surrounding stations at night in the interests of keeping the city functioning.
“This is the price of living in a city, and being within walking distance of a train station. This is for the public good.”
“Train replacement buses in Sydney are so awful, and can get so loaded with people, it turns people off trains entirely,” he says. During peak times, train services in Sydney typically carry between 1,200 and 1,600 people, compared with about 80 to 110 on a bus.
…
Levinson says in China a “swarming” approach is used that floods tracks with workers and can achieve in a night what would take months in Sydney.
…
Public transport frequencies in Hertz
Frequency is a measure of occurrences per unit time. Hertz is the official SI unit of frequency and is defined as cycles per second. While it is most commonly applied to radio waves, it can be applied to anything that is cyclic, such as Public transport.
Public transport typically operate from 0.1 to 33 mHz, i.e. millihertz, i.e. thousandths of a hertz.
To give a sense of this, FM radio operates from 88-108 MHz, i.e. Megahertz, i.e. million Hertz. AM radio operates from 550 - 1610 kHZ, i.e. kilohertz, i.e. thousand hertz.
Just imagine we could reasonably measure public transport in integer units of kHz instead of mHz.
per Hour per Second
0.5 0.000139
1 0.000278
2 0.000556
3 0.000833
4 0.001111
5 0.001389
6 0.001667
7.5 0.002083
10 0.002778
12 0.003333
15 0.004167
30 0.008333
60 0.016667
120 0.033333Comments on Apple Vision Pro
I haven’t tried Apple Vision Pro yet, though I have seen lots of demos and read lots of reviews.
None of the Apple Vision Pro headset scenes were outdoors. I assume this is due to some technical limitations or due to safety concerns.
It uses lenses for people with glasses. Can’t software due this, and project things at an appropriate level of focus, or is resolution not good enough yet?
Moving as much of the weight as possible off the face and into the pocket seems the right strategy. Fortunately …
The current instantiation of the device is wonky. I have to think the Visor (a light version of Vision Pro, maybe Vision Air) becomes phone-level mainstream only when the visor is thin, clear and two-way see through (or mode shifting so it becomes see through in AR mode and is obscured and dark in VR mode) . Otherwise it is a niche in home or at work device. I assume Apple is working on that. The pure glass slab, with minimal electronics in the frame, is the direction for this. Ideally what is left is a clear piece of (shatter resistant) glass that can be seen through (real eyes, not a display of eyes), that can go dark when needed, and that otherwise projects information augmenting the world in a heads up. I’d expect that by 2028 clear visors will be standard and widespread.
With a lighter, see-through device I suspect many UI issues associated with eye strain, neck strain, gesture issues, and so on will resolve themselves.
I wrote this 12 years ago on Dematerializing Architecture. Might be real in a few years. (If they get this working outdoors)
The moral panic / hype / anti-hype will migrate from AI to AR/VR now. People (on computers, hah) complain about its antisocial adverse effects.
Other comments on Apple WWDC23
There is still no workable radio alarm-clock for iPhone. I cannot wake up to, say, NPR news in the morning if it was not the last app I used the previous night.
There is still no ability to have multiple user accounts on iPhone or iPad for normal people.
Links
Infrastructure
YouTube video: Sydney Metro is Great, but (I have to say, the technological incompatibility between the brand new lines is infuriating)
Kurnell - La Perouse ferry wharves to proceed despite massive cost blowout
WalkSydney Newsletter:
Traffic Control
Mapping pedestrian traffic light timing in Sydney [Since SCATS won’t make their data open and public]
Repair
AVs and pseudo-AVs
17 fatalities, 736 crashes: The shocking toll of Tesla’s Autopilot
San Francisco Transit Chief Blasts Cruise, Waymo Robotaxis as Unsafe: ‘Race to the Bottom’ [I mean, of course he does, even if they were perfect, he is paid to oppose them].
Bureaucracy
Busman’s Holiday
14 Places to See a Transportation Transformation. (From Atlas Obscura, Not just Carhenge)
Health
Refer a Friend
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