atlas(t)

maglev train

Via Scott Westerfeld I came upon this video about a Japanese maglev train in testing phase. This is one of those emerging transportation technologies that gets my undies into a bunch. Nothing more to say here.

we paved paradise

i'm poking my head back in here for a moment (I'm still mostly over at atlas(t): The Galleon Trade Edition) to point out a terrific article in Salon by Katherine Mieskowski about the environmental effects of parking. It's called "We Paved Paradise."

In Tippecanoe County, Ind., there are 250,000 more parking spaces than registered cars and trucks. That means that if every driver left home at the same time and parked at the local mini-marts, grocery stores, churches and schools, there would still be a quarter of a million empty spaces.

... "Parking appears free because its cost is widely dispersed in slightly higher prices for everything else," explains Shoup. "Because we buy and use cars without thinking about the cost of parking, we congest traffic, waste fuel, and pollute the air more than we would if we each paid for our own parking. Everyone parks free at everyone else's expense, and we all enjoy our free parking, but our cars are choking our cities.

... The environmental impacts of all this parking go way beyond paving paradise. The impervious surfaces of parking lots accumulate pollutants ... from all kinds of diffuse sources, such as industry smokestacks, automobiles and even home gas water heaters.

"If they were naturally settling on a tree or grass, they would wash off those and into the soil, and the soil would hold them in place, so they wouldn't get into the local stream, lake or river," ... But when the same substances settle on parking lots, rain washes them into streams, lakes and rivers. Engel calculates that the Tippecanoe land used for parking creates 1,000 times the heavy-metal runoff that it would if used for agriculture. Because the surface of the lots doesn't absorb water, it also creates 25 times the water runoff that agricultural land would, which can increase erosion in local waterways.

Parking lots also contribute to the "urban heat island effect." The steel, concrete and blacktops of buildings, roads and parking lots absorb solar heat during the day, making urban areas typically 2 to 5 degrees hotter than the surrounding countryside. ... The urban heat island effect can be so dramatic that it changes the weather. One Indianapolis study found that thunderstorms that reach the city often split in two, going around it, and merging again into one storm after the urban area. "The urban heat island is not simply a temperature issue. It could affect our water availability," says Niyogi.

Check it out.

and

maps are a good way to learn about a civilization. Early maps were full of mythical beasts, representative of our awe of the unknown world. As science developed, these mysteries were solved, and maps, as well as life, became overly complicated and busy. This is the story of a civilization that knows no end to its consumption and is always seeking the final frontier.

Yeah, whatever. Despite the prose, this little video is quite lovely. Yay for DIY!

real time rome

a very cool project from MIT for the Venice Biennale, involving bus traffic, pedestrian traffic (as measured by the use of handheld devices) 'n' stuff like that mapped out.

Real Time Rome is:

the MIT SENSEable City Lab’s contribution to the 2006 Venice Biennale, directed by professor Richard Burdett. The project aggregated data from cell phones (obtained using Telecom Italia's innovative Lochness platform), buses and taxis in Rome to better understand urban dynamics in real time. By revealing the pulse of the city, the project aims to show how technology can help individuals make more informed decisions about their environment. In the long run, will it be possible to reduce the inefficiencies of present day urban systems and open the way to a more sustainable urban future?

when traffic lights make us stop and think

speaking of manhole covers, I heard this NPR story on the way home from Thanksgiving in the mountains: When Traffic Lights Make Us Stop and Think.

The story was a plug for Brian Hayes, whose new book, Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape, I must get my hands on. Hayes is a, as far as I can tell, nosy amateur, who, stumped by his young daughter's questions about the world around them, decided to investigate. Most of the questions seemed to center around industrial infrastructure, hence the book.

Although I was annoyed by the hokey-jokey tone of the interviewer, who seemed to find curiosity about things inappropriate (curiosity about what people do in the privacy of their cars was another matter), I got to hear a lot of nifty things about: the fact that there are ventilation vents everywhere for all the underground tunnels; the stoplight control boxes; the fact that the crosswalk buttons are connected to something, and you only need to push them once; really nifty lane markers made of plastic, with glass beads embedded into them, etc.

There was also a segment where they went into a traffic control room. There was a wall of 36 (or some number with "6" in it) monitors, watched by a guy I hope to God was actually named Terrain Wiggins, although I doubt it:

VOICE OVER: Each monitor shows a different intersection, but the scenery is the same: traffic.

INTERVIEWER: Is it kinda like watching the paint dry?

MONITOR GUY: No, actually it's not. It's pretty interesting. I can see incidents as they happen. It's like catching lightning in a bottle actually seeing a traffic accident as it occurs.

INTERVIEWER: You ever see anything that maybe you figure you shouldn't be seeing?

MONITOR GUY: Nothing like that, no, we're not allowed to zoom in or anything like that.

You see what I mean about the annoying interviewer. I guess even traffic lights didn't make him stop and think.

Anyhoo, go to the site and give it a listen. And maybe buy the book and give it a read and then send it to me! The site also has Hayes' photos of manhole covers around the country and the world (see the one above, from New Orleans), and a Flickr group with mostly Hayes' photos of the "industriosphere."

modern forms of omnibus

Transrapid at the Emsland test facility in Germany. Maglev (magnetic levitation) trains are a favorite of sci-fi writers.

from the wikipedia article on public transportation, a listing of modern forms of public transport. (Check out the list itself, which has a link to each form on it):

Road

1. Bush taxi


2. Share taxi including minibus and maxi-taxi


3. Auto rickshaw


4. Bus normally serving a regular fixed route but could include a variable route, divert-on-demand service.


5. Bush taxi of West and Central Africa


6. Trolleybus


7. Jitney or Songthaew


8. Limousine


9. Matatu, of East Africa


10. Motor coach


11. Paratransit


12. Rickshaw


13. Taxicab


14. Transit bus


15. Vanpool


16. Vehicle for hire


17. Velotaxi


18. Community bicycle programs

Rail

1. Automated guideway transit (AGT), also called Peoplemover


2. Cable car on rails, used in cities, a streetcar (tram} pulled by a cable


3. Cable car on rails, used in mountains.


4. Cable car suspended from a cable.


5. Rack railway (or rack and pinion railway)


6. Elevated railroad, such as the Chicago 'L'


7. Light rail a tram-like system with no significant sections of the route shared with cars or pedestrians, such as the San Diego Trolley or the St. Louis, MO Metrolink


8. Magnetic levitation train (Maglev)


9. Metro (also known as 'subway' or 'underground')


10. Rubber-tired metro


11. Advanced Rapid Transit


12. Monorail


13. Train, including commuter train and high-speed rail


14. Tram (or tramway, trolley, streetcar)

Water

1. Ferry, including hydrofoil, catamaran and hovercraft


2. Water taxi

Air

1. Airliner


2. Helicopter

(Only in some countries. For all intents and purposes, in deregulated countries air travel is private transportation. Governments do not control pricing, routes, aircraft or schedules.)

Sloped or vertical

1. Aerial tramway also called cable car or cableway, vehicle suspended from aerial cables


2. Chairlift


3. Conveyor transport (term includes escalators and horizontal or slightly inclined moving sidewalk - "Travolator")


4. Escalator


5. Elevator or lift


6. Funicular, used in mountains, tram-like vehicle on rails pulled by a cable up and down a very steep slope.


7. Gondola lift

Some of these types are often not for use by the general public, e.g. elevators in offices and apartment buildings, buses for personnel or school children, etc.

Emerging transportation technologies

1. Group rapid transit


2. Dual mode transit


3. Personal rapid transit


4. Automated highway systems


5. Bus rapid transit


6. Maglev rapid transit

beneath l.a.

no idea who's responsible for this groovy and atlas(t)ilicious site, but Beneath L.A. has a lot to offer (besides gratuitous typos---doesn't anyone proofread their homepage anymore?)

Anyway, the site offers "An anthology of little known Facts and Stories about Los Angeles, California," including the story of an Axis powers POW camp in Travel Town, Griffith Park that once housed around 450,000 prisoners of war (see map above), or the "Hump" in Taylor train yard, where they used to use gravity to let trains roll slowly down to their next berth (at right).

The site also tells about the "Integratron", a structure designed to rejuvenate cell tissues built by one of Howard Hughes' test pilots, who was visited by UFOs.

George Van Tassel began weekly meditation sessions in 1953 at Giant Rock with interested persons which, he claimed, led to UFO contacts and finally to an actual encounter with extra-terrestrials when, in August of that year, a saucer landed from the planet Venus, woke Van Tassel up and invited him onto the ship. There the aliens gave him the technique for rejuvenating living cell tissues. In 1954 he and his family began building a structure they called the Integratron to perform the rejuvenation. He spent the next 18 years constructing the Integratron but died in 1978 before completing it. During this time he hosted annual Spacecraft Conventions that were attended by thousands, featuring high profile UFO contactees and pioneers in the fields of antigravity, primary energy research and electromagnetics.

Yeah, that's pretty L.A. Don't expect a lot of deep discussion about the cultural impact of these sites, though. Beneath L.A. is like a tourist site built by critical geographers. That's pretty L.A., too.

the bus project

we think it should be called the bus(t) project. Why? Because this is atlas(t) and we just roll that way.

Be that as it may, The Bus Project in Oregon is a mass canvassing operation which, the org itself claims, is transforming politics in Oregon and nationally. They bought a bus (vintage, of course, and outfitted for biodiesel, 'cause that's how they roll) and periodically fill it with volunteers they take out to various places for canvassing events. They have themed canvasses (like a "Trick-or-vote" Halloween turn-out-the-vote effort--what a cool idea!) and just generally try to make the whole event as fun as possible.

As I know from my days canvassing for a PIRG (the people responsible for a great deal of political earnestness and organizational competency among our nation's white liberal young), canvassing is hard and unrewarding work, basically a door-to-door salesman job without, you know, the salary---or even the commission. But canvassing a get-out-the-vote effort is a different matter. You're not so much convincing as you are reminding people, like a person-sized PDA with bell-ringing-fingers. This is something people can do, something that they only need to be convinced that they can do.

This is the moveon.org generation at its best. One of my problems with moveon.org itself (until this election when they set up phonebanks) was the fact that they conducted business entirely online, so that my getting involved in the political process didn't actually involve my getting involved with other people, you know, at all. One of the few rewards of the hard work of political action (besides, you know, saving the world), is getting to meet, work with, and get to know other people who share your opinions and passions (and energy level). So, until they started setting up phone parties, with real people, moveon did not move me.

Ironically enough, once I got to working on Moveon's phone bank, I found that convincing folks to become phone volunteers wasn't that hard, provided they were older than I. I mean to say, it was baby boomers and older who were used to ponying up actual volunteer hours for a cause, and who were the easiest to convince. The GenXers and younger tended to be "busier," and more savvy about the ways in which strangers on the phone can take advantage of you---that is to say, warier. With thick defenses. Harder to get around.

It's young people who need to be trained in a culture of volunteerism, who need to develop a knee jerk reaction to requests for political help that include the responses "yes, of course," and "what can I do?" And this bus project, if I were 25 again, would move me. Especially since, as the language and images (see above) of the website prove, the whole effort is snarkily, self-consciously, geared toward overcoming that silly GenX and beyond hesitation to take things too seriously. Here's a snippet:

The Bus Project began like many great movements: with young people in a bar. After several cocktail-napkin-centered discussions at the end of 2001, the Bus launched with a goal to turn Oregon once again into a positive progressive model for the nation – an example of what to emulate rather than what to avoid. We lamented when comparing our proud history of revolutionary ideas such as a public beaches, the bottle bill and progressive land use legislation, to the current legislative fiasco. With school days being cut, rampant hunger and joblessness, cuts in public safety budgets (now leading to a rash of crime), and a State Legislature turning a blind eye we knew our state could not keep its reputation for livability much longer. And to that end the crew set out to show that a smart grassroots group could engage talented people (of all ages) and have an impact.

If they hired me or a better fiction writer to imitate the voice and language of a 28-year-old American organizer of the early 21st century---with (his/her) cocksure pop culture of an identity vying, word-by-word, with the fading pimples of (her/his) outrage at the world being less moral than (his/her) wealth and social standing would lead one to believe, and (probably his) ravaging desire to seem smart and on top of political history and catchphrases---they could not have come up with a more expressive, representative, or hilarious paragraph than the one above. "Impact," "grassroots," "smart," "liveability," "engage" (used without prepositions), "positive progressive model," etc. Wow.

This thing has legs---or more precisely, wheels.

Of course, on the "omnibus" tip, this is most definitely not "for everyone." I mean that this type of organizing, of necessity, cuts people out---or at least turns them off. There's way too much scope for high-school-style clique-forming within canvass groups, way too much opportunity for people to show off, and take advantage of, their cultural and economic advantages to make or break this experience---to have a "good experience" at the expense of other people. But I could say the same thing about pretty much any other "grassroots" movement that involves the use of new media, middle-class values, and mainstream (white) culture. Maybe I could say the same thing about any grassroots movement. Maybe the grass roots do grow in clumps, and the whole point is not to pull up and go organize elsewhere, but rather to organize exactly where you are.

Which is the foundation of my objection to, and praise for, this bus project. It's mobile grassroots. It's an attempt to combine grassroots mobilization (organizing where you are) with traditional, partisan, top-down organization (bringing the message to the masses). Instead of hiring and assigning full-time canvassers from a central office to go out day after day (like the PIRGs do), they recruit (or, at least, can recruit) one-time, often locally homogeneous groups to pull up and go somewhere else for a day. It is, in theory, bringing every mountain to each Mohammed.

In reality, though, the canvassers will be comprised more and more of repeat offenders, who will be the youngest, most fancy-free, and those with the least financial dependence---in other words, the people who would be staffing traditional canvasses anyway. And there's a distinct class and income line dividing those folks from the people they "serve" in their canvasses.

Okay, that's enough nay-saying for one day. It's an interesting project, it's an interesting slight twist on the model. And, although I'm pretty sure of what sort of outcome to expect, it'll be interesting to see where all these new, party-free, new media political projects take us.

This whole thing via a tip in comments from Rob.

flight patterns

oh the pretty!

24-year-old designer/artist Aaron Koblin makes a pretty (and, near the end, shows his age with the overkillkill!). He turned data of US domestic flight patterns into lights and added the requisite electronic music.

Check out his website for some other incredibly cool and technologically sophisticated projects, like this nifty mood threads visual, another project based on the mood tagging on livejournal.

In a few years, one hopes, he'll outgrow the gee whizickry and put these skills to use on projects with some actual bottom, by which term I mean "substance." (This is not a criticism. These projects are beautiful, witty, and neat. They just don't say much. Yet. Stay tuned.)

omnibus indeed

so, I had an interesting ... eggsperience ... with San Francisco's infamous MUNI bus system last week, and I'm here to tell you aaaaaaall about it.

So I get onto the 14 Mission at 9th Street (bus number 7049, approx 9:15 pm). The driver, in some kind of hurry, waves us aboard, not caring whether we show our cards or not. I'm still putting my wallet back into my purse, halfway down the aisle, when the driver peels out, way too fast, and then slams on the brakes to avoid hitting someone.

Now, I have MUNI-legs. I've been surfing these badly-driven buses for eight years now (look, Ma! No hands!) and I can do both ac- and decleration. I can also gauge when I'm about to fall and grab hold of a pole in time. In eight years of at least twice daily bus rides on about half of the lines in the city, including the infamous 14 and 22 lines, I've never once fallen, though I've seen accidents almost weekly.

I can't, however, keep my feet when the bus is jerked forward and then immediately back about two feet. I feel my body approaching that event horizon, you know, where balance is no longer an option and I have to grab onto the nearest pole ... and then I wave at that moment as it passes, and I shoot on toward the lip of a fall. My back is to the driver, my back is to the forward direction, and I feel my shoulders broaden as my inner chest tries to exit out the back of my spine. Then I'm full length on the floor, hard.

As soon as I'm able to sit up, I half-turn and yell "Asshole!" over my shoulder at the driver. Apparently, he takes exception to this, but I can't hear because I'm wearing headphones, and INXS' "Falling Down A Mountain" (no shit) is obscuring dialogue. I'm shaken and can't find my hands (or my feet). While I scramble up and find a seat, he parks the bus across two lanes and comes back, apparently to yell at me.

This is too much for a few of my fellow passengers. Two women immediately take up my cause. One in particular---tall and broad and just tired enough to need to dissipate the remains of the day's nervous energy in a public fight---stands up, the better to yell at the driver. I don't know if he's on drugs or overtired or what, but it takes a while for the fact to penetrate that he has made me fall. They pound on him verbally, my standing champion, and her handmaiden, like softening a steak before grilling. The meat finally gives.

He doesn't apologize, but the aggressive tone softens out of his voice and he asks me if I'm okay. I've turned off my iPod. I'm reluctant to answer, but have to confirm that, except for a sore ass, I'll probably be fine. He returns to his seat and starts the bus again, wisely dropping his threat to throw the more vocal of my champions off the bus. I, in turn, thank her and tell her not to get thrown off the bus for my sake.

It isn't about me, she says, which fact she affirms by keeping up a running, angry patter against the bus driver through the dregs of SOMA and all the way to Mission/16th St. BART station. At one point, another woman, seated in the front, joins the assault against the bus driver (a short, Latino-looking guy), by saying that it is racism. She doesn't specify what is racism ... something about a Latino bus driver knocking a hapa woman on her ass to the consternation of African American women is racist.

Whenever anything happens on the 14, race-as-an-issue is tried. The 14, however, is so omnibus that---in the welter of every combination of race, multirace, ethnicity, gender, age, class, exhaustion level, number of kids you have under your care, number of shopping bags you're carrying, and amount of change in your pocket that day, not to mention whether or not the coin-drop is working---it's hard to ride what's-my-oppression to any definitive standstill. My most vocal champion immediately corrects her: it isn't racism at all, it's just plain ignorance and she bets the driver hasn't even finished high school, if he's gone at all. Ignorant!

Some time is spent telling each other what the bus number is, and some more time soliciting paper and pens to write the bus number down from various members of the anti-bus-driver conclave, which now includes a Latino guy sitting next to my most vocal champion, whose uncle works for MUNI, and, shortly thereafter, an elderly African American man in a wheelchair, who gets on after the incident, has no idea what's going on but is ready to join any fight so long as there is one, and immediately begins to insist that "we have to stop this bus, now," although he can't seem to tell my most vocal champion why exactly. Then some more time is spent yelling at the bus driver that he is going to lose his job, at which he loses his temper again and begins trading blunt barbs with my most vocal champion.

When our driver finally steps over the line and calls my champion a "bitch", you can almost taste the triumph in the air. The word "bitch" is like a release, as if he has just anointed the argument; it lubricates everyone's tongues, lubricates the space between hands and gloves, so the latter are able to slip off. He realizes his mistake but, bantam cock that he is, won't back down. He slows the bus and threatens not to go on.

My champion, who's kept her physical place throughout, then moves to the front of the bus, the better to abuse him to his face. She allows herself to insult his mother. A young man sitting next to me, who wasn't truly following the dynamic, grumbles to himself, loud enough for me to hear, but not loud enough for my champions to hear, that there are other people on the bus. He has no point to make, really; he is not prepared to take on my now unstoppably angry champion. He is rightfully and roundly ignored.

When we arrive at the Mission/16th St. BART station, she seems almost sorry that she has to get off. If the quickly wising up bus driver had offered her any more flak, she probably would have stayed on until we hit the Mission/24th St. BART station. As it is, she stands at the door, preventing the crush of transfer riders from getting on until she has finished threatening his job and his manhood. After she leaves, dissent falls apart.

My second champion finally turns to me as if to deny that none of this is actually about me and recommends that I call MUNI that night. I assure her I will (I didn't, I emailed them the next day.) Then we spend some time telling each other and everyone who asks: 1) what had happened, 2) that if it had happened to my second champion, she would not have gotten up, her leg was that bad, and 3) if it had been an elder, they would have---must have---broken a hip and where would MUNI be then? Sued, that's where!

A young man standing above me explains that young people fall on the bus all the time because of their cell phones and also when it rains and is slippery. This is not really apropos of anything, it's simply all he has to contribute to the conversation. I agree with him, carefully. At Mission/24th St. wheelchair man and my second champion get off, relieving the bus of all of my backup, and smoothing over the ruffled surface of the water. I start up my iPod again and the rest of the ride is as usual: me in my bubble, right butt-cheek still smarting, everyone else in theirs.

Hmmm ...

And the moral is: all you need to bring people together is a common enemy.

Or: all you need is hate.

And my personal moral is: there are alphas out there who can top me, especially when I'm injured. --Uh, I mean ...