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A Fantasy of a Sane Transit System, Part III.

June 29, 2016 by Exangel

by Rustin Wright.

Daviesville begins to build.

As they begin to experiment they realize that some of how mass transit is built is artifacts of decades old problems which have long had solutions or presumptions of conditions which don’t always apply.

For example, mass transit vehichles have massive, heavy, complicated roof designs. After all, back in the nineteen-fifties when this last got any real attention, those were, for heavy duty fleet vehicles used in all seasons, a pretty smart choice. But we have modern plastics now. UPS trucks, for example, have long since switched over to tops made of translucent plastic. Like enormous Rubbermaid totes, when something drops on them, it bounces right off. They let through natural light. And they cut weight and fuel costs. So some of the trolleys built for the small, experimental systems in the towns around Daviesville experiment with this in various forms. The rooftop design that they settle on is thick, translucent tubes about as big around as a baseball bat, which are laid in rows, left to right, the length of the vehicle and then covered with a sheet of rigid clear plastic to improve aerodynamics. Look up when riding in one of these and you see the sky above you through what looks to be an arched sheet of ribbed cloudy glass.

Mass transit vehicles are also designed on the premise that durability, at ANY cost, is always cheaper/more desirable than the alternative. So handrails on cenventional buses and light rail vehicles have massive nodes where they join of welded, machined stainless steel. Each costing as much as lunch for a dozen people. And heavy. Windows are framed so that five teens can attack one with an axe and there will still be a working window after five minutes. Which is great and all but multiplies costs to a terrifying degree and reduces the number of potential suppliers to those same, vast, obscenely expensive, slow to fill orders megacorporations.

For the first, small, scratchbuilt systems for the surrounding small towns windows are quite literally low cost aluminum picture frames bought at the local art supply store and held in with quick releases bought in bulk for them by the local bike shop. Should one or more windows be damaged while the vehicle is in service somebody will drive over on a scooter from the maintenance barn with more windows and meet the vehicle at the closest stop. Since the entire town is less than three kilometers across, this will never take more than a couple of minutes. Two or three minutes to swap out each damaged window with an intact one, and the vehicle is back in service. Just eight or ten dollar picture frames like the mall uses to frame a cheap oister. But with two sheets of acrylic, one at the front, one at the back, and a rubber gasket between them to keep them from rattling from vibration.

When Cuba was forced to implement mass transit very quickly on a tiny budget they built what become known as “camels”. Eighteen wheelers with the massive cargo trailer in the back reconfigured as a sort of bus passenger compartment. As implemented in Cuba under a desperately poor totalitarian regime, these were something of a fiasco. But they can be made from converted conventional freight trucks in as little as a few weeks for very little money. So Daviesville builds a few dozen of these and uses them, along with leased passenger buses, to start developing routes. Key to how these routes are developed is strict adherence to two principles, one following from the other. Firstly, that citizens take from three to seven years to change basic behaviors like switching from car to bus. Or even sometimes, to a lesser degree, to switching from one transit route to another. And secondly, that changes in service which are not clearly understood and/or do not result in clearly understood changes in available service, can do enormous damage to the credibility of a given route, of a transit agency, and even of the idea of using mass transit at all.

So, first of all, route changes are minimized. Any plan which requires changing a route had better be pretty damn solidly justified. But when a route IS to be changed, it is publicized well ahead. Not just on the agency’s site, but with 15 inch by 20 inch signs at each stop. In, of course, day glo colors and done by a local printer.

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Summer 2016: I Want the World.

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In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
  • Those Evil Spirits.
  • The Screaming Baboon.
  • Her.
  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
  • Dream Shapes.
  • Cannon Beach.
  • The Muse.
  • Spring.
  • The Greatness that was Greece.
  • 1966, NYC; nothing like it.
  • Sun Shower.
  • The Withering Weight of Being Perceived.
  • Broken Clock.
  • Confession.
  • Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse.
  • Sometimes you die, I mean that people do.
  • True (from “My Life with Dogs”).
  • Fragmentary musings on birds and bees.
  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
  • Broad Street.
  • A Death in Alexandria.
  • My Forked Tongue.
  • Swan Lake.
  • Long Division.
  • Singing against the muses.
  • Aphorisms from “What Remains to Be Said”.

In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

supergirls-take-1

In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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