
What’s a Gadgetbahn? (2017) - dsego
http://www.cat-bus.com/2017/12/gadgetbahn/
======
Animats
Yeah, hyperloops. Going to be insanely cheap. Right. The one route that might
have made sense, Dubai to Abu Dhabi, seems to not be happening. That was over
empty flat desert, and had government support, so it might have been built.

Monorails are a working technology, but still niche. China has 140Km or so.
Japan has about 80Km. They're useful when you have to cram a transit system
into a built-up city. The switch problem has been solved. But there's still
little standardization; each is a one-off.

BART started as a gadgetbahn. Active suspension. Solid state motor control.
Computerized train control. Very fancy. All three of those systems had major
problems in the early years. Forty years later, everybody has those features.

Japan is building a maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya and on to Osaka. It makes
sense there. Those are Japan's three biggest urban areas, and they're in a
line. There's a mountain range in the way, and so much tunneling is required
(about 250Km) that the tunneling cost is more than the maglev cost. 45Km of
the route is already running in test, so most of the debugging is already
done. Started in 2007, planned opening 2027, coming along nicely.

The Morgantown (WV) personal rapid transit system, built in the 1960s, is
still running. Last year it got a refresh - new electronics and propulsion.
Works OK, but was never cost-effective.

~~~
_pmf_
The problem with billionaires guessing what lowly commuters want is that they
focus on speed and comfort instead of the more mundane issues as "bum with
distinct urine smell", "person who ate several garlic cloves the evening
before" and "menacing group of youths".

~~~
C1sc0cat
From a UK perspective (commuting to London 60+ miles each way) speed and
comfort are an issue.

See the "new" trains by Siemens on the Bedford - Brighton line which have
worse comfort and reliability that the older electro stars.

~~~
lmm
Do the trains actually have comfort or reliability problems, or do people just
assume they must? The seats look incredibly thin, but are actually much more
comfortable than the ones they replaced IME. Early days saw a lot of train
cancellations but that was due to not having enough trained drivers rather
than any technical issues.

~~~
C1sc0cat
Not from my experience the elctrostars where much more comfortable for longer
> 20 min commutes and there are no power points and no tables at all in
standard.

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darkpuma
A key aspect of Gadgetbahns is they are always _Not Trains_ ™ and the reason
for that is because trains are old tech that is hard to hype, but moreso
because hard data already exists for how expensive trains are to build and
Gadgetbahn advocates would rather have the luxury of pulling numbers out of
their ass.

~~~
throwaway2048
Another thing they share is they have almost all the same requirements as
trains, and thus, inevitably, similar costs.

~~~
bobthepanda
Yeah.

A lot of times, you will see things like “this new technology can be built
elevated/underground really cheaply so you don’t have to buy the land
underneath!” Except that’s not how property rights work in Western countries
at all, and at a practical level things like emergency walkways or fire
ventilation or maintenance passageways end up eating whatever the miniscule
difference in right-of-way width is.

~~~
darkpuma
You also have the matter of the Gadgetbahn advocate convienently neglecting to
mention that most of the cost of a typical subway system goes into the
cavernous stations. They pretend the costs of a modern subway station is
purely the cost per mile of tunnel, and that's the number they compare their
pure cost per mile number to.

So the subway cost per mile includes stations, while the Gadgetbahn cost per
mile doesn't include anything other than tunnel boring. Certainly not the
costs of each ludicrous car elevator.

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antoineMoPa
I don't care what gets built, but the province really needs more trains. "The
market is too small", people tell me. But then I see all the cars on the
highway between Montreal and Sherbrooke and I'm pretty sure there is enough
people there to fill a train every 1-2 hour. What the current prime minister
really wants is just more room for cars (see "3e lien") . The "much more
modern things" (than trains) are probably just a way to keep us thinking &
talking while not building train lines for another 3 years.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Next to a train line you'll need a lot of more fine-grained transport though -
like buses - to get people from train stations to their final destination. In
addition it needs to be as expensive (or cheap) as driving, and not take any
more time.

I used to live somewhere / have a commute where the time difference between
public transit and driving was negligible. Nowadays I live somewhere much
nicer, but I drive to work; the drive is 15-20 minutes, public transit would
take me an hour. There is some traffic issues from time to time, but even with
traffic it's faster than public transit.

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Theodores
AM/FM is an engineer's term distinguishing the inevitable clunky real-world
faultiness of "Actual Machines" from the power-fantasy techno-dreams of
"Fscking Magic."

This applies with the gadgetbahn. It is best when a gadgetbahn doesn't
actually work properly, is slightly dilapidated and from a future that never
happened. There used to be a monorail at Birmingham Airport (UK) that took
people to the trains or maybe to the exhibition centre. This eventually was
scrapped but for a while it provided visitors with something to talk about.
Rather than discuss the food on the flight (yawn) you could discuss the
monorail. I thought the monorail added great value and was well worth the
trouble of its existence just because it provided people with a little
conversation starter. Heck, I am talking about it now, decades on. Therefore
it is well worth any city getting a gadgetbahn rather than some giant Ferris
Wheel to put them on the map. A gadgetbahn can give the illusion of being
'business travel' and serious in a way that something like the London Eye
cannot.

~~~
bobthepanda
Gadgetbahns are nice pluses assuming unlimited resources, but in reality they
end up taking limited resources away from other projects or bread-and-butter
services. Conversation starters don't really pay the bills.

Detroit's PeopleMover is a useless toy gadgetbahn that was expensive and
served not a lot while the citywide bus system literally fell to pieces.

The arguments around monorail vs light rail in Seattle during the '90s and
'00s probably set back transit back a good decade.

Hyperloop/AVs are currently being used as talking points across the United
States as an argument to put off public transportation investments for decades
more.

In some cases they even get in the way of things; Sydney tore its city center
monorail down to build a useful light-rail link for commuters instead.

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hirundo
Swarms of single occupancy drones, summoned by phone apps, drop out of the sky
and embrace people with tentacles, flit off at their preferred maximum g-force
and gently deposit them at their destinations, squirting away for the next
fare.

Make it so.

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agurk
> The word is a portemanteau of the English “Gadget” and the German word
> “bahn”, which means rail or train.

To nitpick bahn[0] can refer to these concepts, but actually has a wider
meaning. The most well known of these is of course the Autobahn.

I've always taken it to be closer to the British English word 'way' as used in
railway, motorway and right-of-way.

Perhaps Gadgetway would be a more consistent term, or even Gerätbahn if we're
going for a full loanword.

[0] [https://www.dict.cc/?s=bahn](https://www.dict.cc/?s=bahn)

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snazz
One comment on the article is particularly apt: “And remember: monorails,
maglevs, and now hypeloops and robot cars are the transportation of the
future! Always have been, always will be!”

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JonathonW
To be a little contrarian: what would New York City look like today if they
had dismissed the Subway as a "gadgetbahn" back in 1894?

~~~
Cthulhu_
It isn't though; it's a conventional rail system, nothing too fancy there. And
it solved an actual problem, unlike e.g. the monorail vs conventional high
speed rails.

~~~
tempestn
It's conventional now, but initially the idea of putting trains underground
beneath a city must have sounded a lot like a Hyperloop or whatever does
today. (Which isn't to say that I think these current gadgetbahns are good
ideas.)

~~~
darkpuma
You're mistaken. Decades before the New York Subway (opened 1904), you had the
Cobble Hill Tunnel running three quarters of a kilometer under the streets of
Brooklyn (1844). And the New York Subway was preceded in an much more
substantial way by the Metropolitan Railway in London (proposed in the 1830s,
began construction in the 1850s), that would eventually become the London
Underground. The Metropolitian Railway took a conservative incremental
approach to existing technology. The locomotives were steam and the tunnels
were cut and cover. Subway systems as we know them to day are the product of
nearly two centuries of incrementing on already proven technology.

If you want a real example of a 19th century Gadgetbahn in New York, the
obvious example is the Beach Pneumatic Transit (which was a total flop and was
remarkably similar to Elon's "hyperloop" in numerous other ways as well.)

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pjc50
Some other examples include the Bruno Latour classic report on the French
"Aramis" system
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramis,_or_the_Love_of_Technol...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramis,_or_the_Love_of_Technology)

"Guided buses" seem to be in the same category. Edinburgh had some which were
replaced by conventional trams at great cost. Cambridge has some which has
endemic problems: [https://www.smartertransport.uk/guided-busway-
defects/](https://www.smartertransport.uk/guided-busway-defects/)

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sideshowb
The Simpsons covered this topic back in 93 :)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marge_vs._the_Monorail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marge_vs._the_Monorail)

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Quequau
The town I live in is too small for an U-Bahn. Nevertheless it's obvious to
anyone paying attention that on-street parking, commuting, and delivery are
creating impediments to our happiness and well being.

I have often wondered what a delivery U-Bahn might look like... something that
was devoted entirely on deliveries of materials and packages.

Anything to get more of the cars and trucks off the streets and devote more
space in the city to people.

~~~
kalleboo
London used to have a subway dedicated to mail
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Post_Office_Railway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Post_Office_Railway)

Chicago too
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company)

Many cities including New York had pneumatic tube mail systems
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_Yor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_York_City)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube#In_postal_servi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube#In_postal_service)

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sigi45
We need proper Biohazard filters in our trains. Thats way more important and
actually relevant than those Gadgetbahns and no one is talking about it :(.

I'm more sick than collegues using there cars and bikes. That is really
expensive.

And there might be a moment in time where it is not a cold virus.

~~~
adrianN
No one is talking about it because you can't prevent infections from spreading
in crowded environments.

~~~
sigi45
So there is no advantage at all having some filter on top of the train,
pushing the air from top or bottom to the other direction?

I would assume that those droplet infections should become less.

~~~
adrianN
Sick people touch surfaces, you touch surfaces. Then you touch your face.

~~~
sigi45
Thats were you wrong. Not touching nothing in the sbahn if i have to!

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mrhappyunhappy
Isn’t that a name of the zone in WoW? Or am I thinking Gadgetzan?

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someguydave
nearly all passenger trains are gadgetbahns, automobiles are much easier to
scale and likely more environmentally friendly when occupancies on the train
are low

~~~
mulmen
Is there a source on that? I would expect an electrically propelled train to
be extremely efficient from an emissions standpoint and to have far far lower
emissions when occupied, enough to offset running a few empty ones.

~~~
wjjdjw
If you look at the operational emissions, this is true. Infrastructure does
however play a role. Planes have high operational emissions but require little
infrastructure. Trains have little emissions but require enormous
infrastructure.

It's however completely unclear to me which CO2-calculators account the
infrastructure, and which do not.

~~~
mulmen
Where does the CO2 cost of the infrastructure come in? Is that just in
construction or do rails somehow emit CO2? Or are you just saying that rails
take up space and that's an environmental impact too?

I feel like I'm missing something.

~~~
wjjdjw
The German newspaper article names construction and operation of railway
stations, and the construction of the infrastructure itself.

My main point is: there seems to be a non-neligible impact, and CO2
calculators don't help me grasp that.

~~~
darkpuma
Is the German newspaper also considering the infrastructural costs of road
construction, expansion and maintenance (particularly maintenance costs
incurred by shipping freight on those roads instead of rails)?

~~~
petre
Forget newspapers. Here's an IRU study about combined rail/road freight
transport accounting for costs and emissions.

"There is no such thing as a truly environment friendly means of transport.
Combined transport is not inherently superior to pure road transport in terms
of environmental impact, as measured by energy consumptionand CO2 emissions."

[https://www.iru.org/apps/cms-filesystem-
action?file=PPP/en_C...](https://www.iru.org/apps/cms-filesystem-
action?file=PPP/en_Comparative-study-CO2.pdf)

~~~
vertex-four
This “study” is literally from an organisation dedicated to keeping freight
transport on roads, it’s hardly unbiased, and is actually of very poor quality
- I’d expect to see, for example, an explanation of how the routes involved
were chosen for the study. Additionally, if the study said anything other than
“road freight is good”, it just wouldn’t have been published by this
organisation!

