Recent content by Technologist

Because it did, just not the bit near them, see phase 2. It’s a national chilling effect.

Sorry you think that all else being equal something that runs on steel wheels will have better ride quality than something that runs on rubber wheels? There is no technical reason why a bus couldn’t have fully independent suspension with Multimatic TASV dampers. Which run on a smooth road would...

If HS2 could have been delivered for 1/3 the cost I'm pretty sure we'd all be ok with 260kph trains. The official reasons to limit to 260kph also includes controlling infrastructure costs.

Doesn't work for multiple reasons: 1: Fragmentary UK construction Industry 2: Gap between HS1 and HS2 3: Different organisations in charge HS1 wasn't particularly cheap either. I should point out that in the context of my UK Highspeed Metro plan the easiest route would probably be something...

From that NAO report: "The current technical requirements and specifications for HS2 Phase Two differ in a number of areas from those of international schemes, and in some cases have resulted in larger, more costly assets. The drivers of these differences include the lack of a stable set of...

Above 1000m current eVTOLs are below background noise in most places, and you can converse about 50-100m away from one taking off vertically which makes using one in a CBD perfectly plausible, ironically a station is probably an ideal location given their soundscape. It's actually possible to...

Most government and public endeavours in general are stuck in what I might term a "stasis fallacy" which comes from using BCR. This fallacy is that we go out and try to capture reality and then base policy on this. In practice the reality captured is a conservative and uncreative reality. If...

The only people who find lack of charging the countryside is visitors, anyone who actually lives in an area invariably has a fully charged car in the morning due to off road parking and generally doesn't have 200-300 miles of driving to do in that day without heading on to the strategic road...

That's because it's a 60 year old prop aircraft. There are plenty of small regional aircraft in usage around the globe which come down to 40 seat sizes and still deliver good economics ($250-350k per seat). One of the reasons why we scale up jet aircraft is that the engines get more efficient...

Current regulations allow 19 seat planes to be flown with one pilot and no cabin crew, this is only going to get easier as the pilot essentially becomes as safety precaution on future passenger aircraft (Boeings next MoM jet was slated to operate in this manner). Planes also fly much faster than...

It's not particularly difficult to work out the negative externality of lorries on the road and to put that in a subsidy for rail freight (removing any climate based elements as, lorries can be EVs and the cost of fuel duties exceeds the calculated social cost of CO2 even with the most generous...

Well in that case the argument is why isn't the freight user paying a proportionate cost for the infrastructure?

Airlines are moving steadily away from hub and spoke, ultimately going point to point results in higher plane utilisation and better services for passengers. In the next few decades electric aircraft going point to point will be a massive competitor for rail. Their lower noise, lower operating...

Batteries are edging down to similar cost per kg to bulk materials and battery lifetimes are still heading steadily upwards. The charger would likely have a battery in it so it just places a constant demand on the grid.

Plenty of other countries run double articulated lorries and run them on infrastructure no newer and better built than UK infrastructure. It should be noted that you might not let a double unit go all the way up to 80 tonnes, there have been some studies on longer heavier vehicles but they...