Topic: Transport (Page 2)
You are looking at all articles with the topic "Transport". We found 18 matches.
Hint:
To view all topics, click here. Too see the most popular topics, click here instead.
๐ The Broomway
The Broomway is a public right of way over the foreshore at Maplin Sands off the coast of Essex, England. Most of the route is classed as a Byway Open to All Traffic, with a shorter section of bridleway. When the tide is out, it provides access to Foulness Island, and indeed was the only access to Foulness on foot, and the only access at low tide, until a road bridge was built over Havengore Creek in 1922.
At over 600 years old, recorded as early as 1419, the Broomway runs for 6 miles (9.7ย km) along the Maplin Sands, some 440 yards (400ย m) from the present shoreline. It was named for the "brooms", bundles of twigs attached to short poles, with which the route was once marked. A number of headways or hards ran from the track to the shore, giving access to local farms. The track is extremely dangerous in misty weather, as the incoming tide floods across the sands at high speed, and the water forms whirlpools because of flows from the River Crouch and River Roach. Under such conditions, the direction of the shore cannot be determined. After the road bridge was opened in 1922, the Broomway ceased to be used, except by the military.
Discussed on
- "The Broomway" | 2019-08-04 | 60 Upvotes 9 Comments
๐ Light Characteristic
A light characteristic is all of the properties that make a particular navigational light identifiable. Graphical and textual descriptions of navigational light sequences and colours are displayed on nautical charts and in Light Lists with the chart symbol for a lighthouse, lightvessel, buoy or sea mark with a light on it. Different lights use different colours, frequencies and light patterns, so mariners can identify which light they are seeing.
Discussed on
- "Light Characteristic" | 2024-02-08 | 60 Upvotes 7 Comments
๐ Cosmopolitan Railway
The Cosmopolitan Railway was a proposed global railroad network advocated by William Gilpin, formerly the first territorial governor of Colorado (1861โ62), in his 1890 treatise Cosmopolitan Railway: Compacting and Fusing Together All the World's Continents. Gilpin named his capital city of Denver as the "railroad centre of the West".
Discussed on
- "Cosmopolitan Railway" | 2022-03-13 | 43 Upvotes 16 Comments
๐ DownsโThomson paradox
The DownsโThomson paradox (named after Anthony Downs and John Michael Thomson), also known as the PigouโKnightโDowns paradox (after Arthur Cecil Pigou and Frank Knight), states that the equilibrium speed of car traffic on a road network is determined by the average door-to-door speed of equivalent journeys taken by public transport.
It is a paradox in that improvements in the road network will not reduce traffic congestion. Improvements in the road network can make congestion worse if the improvements make public transport more inconvenient or if it shifts investment, causing disinvestment in the public transport system.
Discussed on
- "DownsโThomson paradox" | 2019-06-08 | 39 Upvotes 3 Comments
๐ Smeed's law
Smeed's Law, named after R. J. Smeed, who first proposed the relationship in 1949, is a purported empirical rule relating traffic fatalities to traffic congestion as measured by the proxy of motor vehicle registrations and country population. The law proposes that increasing traffic volume (an increase in motor vehicle registrations) leads to an increase in fatalities per capita, but a decrease in fatalities per vehicle.
Smeed also predicted that the average speed of traffic in central London would always be nine miles per hour, because that is the minimum speed that people tolerate. He predicted that any intervention intended to speed traffic would only lead to more people driving at this "tolerable" speed unless there were any other disincentives against doing so.
His hypothesis in relation to road traffic safety has been refuted by several authors, who point out that fatalities per person have decreased in many countries, when the "Law" requires that they should increase as long as the number of vehicles per person continues to rise.
Discussed on
- "Smeed's law" | 2009-05-08 | 33 Upvotes 5 Comments
๐ Manhole cover thought to be propelled into space
A manhole cover or maintenance hole cover is a removable plate forming the lid over the opening of a manhole, an opening large enough for a person to pass through that is used as an access point for an underground vault or pipe. It is designed to prevent anyone or anything from falling in, and to keep out unauthorized persons and material.
Manhole covers date back at least to the era of ancient Rome, which had sewer grates made from stone.
Discussed on
- "Manhole cover thought to be propelled into space" | 2013-11-01 | 21 Upvotes 9 Comments
๐ Hyperloop
A Hyperloop is a proposed mode of passenger and freight transportation, first used to describe an open-source vactrain design released by a joint team from Tesla and SpaceX. Hyperloop is a sealed tube or system of tubes through which a pod may travel free of air resistance or friction conveying people or objects at high speed while being very efficient, thereby drastically reducing travel times over medium-range distances.
Elon Musk's version of the concept, first publicly mentioned in 2012, incorporates reduced-pressure tubes in which pressurized capsules ride on air bearings driven by linear induction motors and axial compressors.
The Hyperloop Alpha concept was first published in August 2013, proposing and examining a route running from the Los Angeles region to the San Francisco Bay Area, roughly following the Interstate 5 corridor. The Hyperloop Genesis paper conceived of a hyperloop system that would propel passengers along the 350-mile (560ย km) route at a speed of 760ย mph (1,200ย km/h), allowing for a travel time of 35 minutes, which is considerably faster than current rail or air travel times. Preliminary cost estimates for this LAโSF suggested route were included in the white paperโUS$6 billion for a passenger-only version, and US$7.5 billion for a somewhat larger-diameter version transporting passengers and vehiclesโalthough transportation analysts had doubts that the system could be constructed on that budget; some analysts claimed that the Hyperloop would be several billion dollars overbudget, taking into consideration construction, development, and operation costs.
The Hyperloop concept has been explicitly "open-sourced" by Musk and SpaceX, and others have been encouraged to take the ideas and further develop them. To that end, a few companies have been formed, and several interdisciplinary student-led teams are working to advance the technology. SpaceX built an approximately 1-mile-long (1.6ย km) subscale track for its pod design competition at its headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
Discussed on
- "Hyperloop" | 2013-06-01 | 10 Upvotes 9 Comments
๐ List of Countries by Vehicles per Capita
This article is a list of countries by the number of road motor vehicles per 1,000 inhabitants. This includes cars, vans, buses, and freight and other trucks; but excludes motorcycles and other two-wheelers.
China has the largest fleet of motor vehicles in the world in 2021, with 292 million cars, and in 2009 became the world's largest new car market as well. In 2011, a total of 80 million cars and commercial vehicles were built, led by China, with 18.4 million motor vehicles manufactured.