Q & A Directory

Q,1
How does it actually work?

A,1
First of all, the main point of our plan is the concept; "One train, one time".

But of course we have some ideas and also spotted some technological trends as to how our trains will work. Let us show you.
-"System" presentation by Mikihisa could be acquired upon request. It is about a system that transports people individually by making use of gravity as the main force.
-See a clip about Maglev trains by clicking here. Basically what we are saying is that the appropriate speed will be applied for the appropriate distance so distances will not deeply affect people's relationships as they do now.
-The maximum speed we are envisioning is only half of a speed shuttle's. This is to give you an idea about the feasability of such a system.
-A "New World Map" Miki has prepared could be acquired upon request.

Q.2
How do you relate this idea to trends?

A.2
We have carried out a deep investigation into many aspects related to train travel. We have talked to experts on the subject, like Mark Smith. As a result of all these we have come up with some key concepts.
(A pdf could be acquired about this)

-Train advocates can say this is a socially, environmentally, economically advantageous means of transport. However, people do not really care about this.
-With the technologies we have right now, virtual reality can be used to transform people's environments in a way that they can do whatever they want during the course of their travel. -Another side to technology use is to make travel much more integrated. The important thing is "to get from point A to point B with the least of worries, questions, problems. No one cares about the fact that the blue line is on fire" as Mark Smith puts it. There should be a system that lays down all the possibilities of getting from A to B for a passenger and lets him/her to choose. This is where real convenience for individual choice comes into play. All these are possible with today's technology, it's just a matter of applying them.
-Time is probably the most important value in our world. Successful people are the ones who can manage their time well. Distances are another issue in our era. Our concepts connects all these dots together.
-Energy and environmental issues are hot topics of our time. We have aimed to address them by not necessarily focusing on them individually, but looking at the whole picture. In other words, from our perspective, a train that is very environmentally-friendly but really slow does not qualify as a good one.
-We have also looked into cities and urban planning. The trend is that cities are going to get clustered since they are commercially, culturally, socially, etc. the crucial centers and everyone wants to be close to them. We were seeking a solution to connect all these hubs together in a seamless and integrated way. Imagine a 'subway-map'like visual, and a "journey planner" for the whole world.

Travel Without Travel

An interesting conversation was had today with Rolf Hughes on the subject time and travel, more specifically the ability to travel to another space, without actually having to be in that space.

Those clever people at KTH organised a concert entitled point 25 that was held at the KTH Learning Lab in Stockholm. 4 performers and an audience. Not unusual. Except that half the people present were performing / sitting in the Wallenberg Hall at Stanford, USA. Same Space. Different Place.

The real-time link up uses one of the fastest high-speed fiber optic broadband cables, and currently sports a meagre 0 point 25, delay (hence the name of the concert). It is a project that the Swedish governement is very interested in developing and implementing, as it has great probabilities for those who live in remote rural areas, and thus keep these areas thriving and reduce the strain on major cities.

Perhaps we are talking in the future more a form of virtual travel… but there are many social implications, such as the shake of a hand, a hug, direct eye contact, that are currently missing from the picture.

Incorporating Virtual Reality In Time-Oriented Train Travel

Despite the fact that we're so close to our presentation on the 16th, we keep the no holds-barred passion for our great interest on the subject of "the future of trains". In this regard, I would like to point to a couple of ideas I have stumbled upon recently.

The first one is from a documentary called "Zeitgeist: Addendum". A very big part of this documentary was dedicated to ideas about building a better future. Of course, transportation had its place in this part, and below is a short videoclip from that documentary, which talks about future possibilities in train transport.



What we see in this video is amazingly similar to the ideas we have been discussing in our group. It provides information about the technological infrastructure that is available even today, but just not in common use. Things like these require a paradigm shift, in the sense of re-evaluating the systems that we have been sticking with up to now, abandoning the ones that do not work well enough to meet our expectations, and finally replacing them with the ones that will enable a much more positive future. Simple as that.

Rolf Hughes, our professor in the department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Konstfack, told us today about the recent research projects carried out at KTH. He was talking about a simultaneous online music-making experience. This was accomplished using fiber optic cables, linking musicians in Sweden to their counterparts in the United States. This idea reminded me of what Mark Smith had told us a few days ago, saying in the future, virtual reality will enable people to choose their own personal experiences during the course of their physical travel. Given the sophistication of virtual reality even today, all these ideas get even easier to conceive of. To link all these again to transportation, it will not be an issue to figure out how one gets from 'point A' to 'point B' and what environmental effects they will be exposed to. "One thing that might still be of concern will be time", Mark Smith said as he agreed with us.

After this inspirational last-minute input, I am looking even more forward to Thursday's presentation!

Mark Smith on "Human Logistics"

Today, two other members of my project group (Adrian and Mikihisa) and I were in the KTH Wireless Lab in Kista. We had a meeting with Mark Smith, a professor in the Department of Communication Systems at the Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan. We were there to generally talk about our project "The Future of Trains", but the chat was so good that we did not realize how the two hours went by.

Mark has been working with SL to provide them with a new approach to urban transport, for which he coins the term "Human Logistics". To explain his approach better, he said that companies like SL should focus on getting its passengers from 'point A' to 'point B' without them having to figure out anything. He pointed to the mistake made by most companies today to be very vehicle-oriented (e.g. our subway trains are very durable) or specifically-service-oriented (e.g. our buses run on time). Contrary to this approach, he noted that most passengers do not actually care too much about all these details, they rather want to get where they want to get, during which, for some, the priority is price, and, maybe, duration for others. Thus it is important to have a very well-integrated system that is also informative to a great extent.

Another very interesting point brought up in our conversation was about the issue of privacy and trust. CCTVs, phone-tapping, RIFDs and internet privacy are all hot topics of our day. There is very little doubt that information about almost everyone in this world is being gathered at certain points to certain extents. Mark looked at this from a unique angle saying if corporates, states, companies, etc. used at least parts of this information they gather for the convenience of their services and thus for the comfort of their target audience, then the situation will become more of a "win-win" nature for both sides of the debate. Thus the dystopia of the "Big-Brother" state could maybe be reversed in this way. In the context of travel, this perspective might inspire many innovations yet to be realized.

As we left the room to head to our 'disintegrated' transport systems which would take us home, our minds were thrilled by the bits of inspiration from the fantastic talk we had with Mark. It was hard to realize how the two hours just went by; maybe every traveler needs a Mark Smith to forget about time concerns!

Time, Berlin and Albert

I was having a conversation about the future of travel today, and one underlying theme kept recurring which was the necessity of networking; more specifically, the ability to change quickly between networks. This is something that seems to be a necessary factor for future transport, that perhaps we will still have various forms of transport, but that we will need to change between these forms seemlessly.

Coming back to this idea of time ruling travel instead of distance, I’ve been getting deeper into the mathematics of networks (phew) which I’m cunningly trying to skirt around while still trying to absorb the interesting bits. The work of Fabio Lamanna an his time=net.work is particularily interesting and relevant in his study of the berlin transportation network. Lamanna’s work is extremely inspired by the Hungarian scientist Albert-László Barabási and his book Linked: The New Science of Networks, which is interesting in that it formulates a mathematical formula for the growth and development of networks.

“Barabási has found that the websites that form the network (of the WWW) have certain mathematical properties. The conditions for these properties to occur are threefold. The first is that the network has to be expanding, growing. This precondition of growth is very important as the idea of emergence comes with it. It is constantly evolving and adapting. That condition exists markedly with the world wide web. The second is the condition of preferential attachment, that is, nodes (websites) will wish to link themselves to hubs (websites) with the most connections. The third condition is what is termed competitive fitness which in network terms means its rate of attraction.”

It is interesting to think of the future of the network of trains in a similar way to the current internet network. The ease at which I link to a new website now, may be how easy it will be in the future to link to a new travel destination. Incredibly conceptual I know, but something to discuss and think about surely.

Bad Feeding the Good

Finally something that makes sense in regards to transport in Britain. A year ago, I was shocked to hear the percentage of taxes spent on improving the roads in Britain in comparison to the railway network. I am especially for the expansion of the amazing eurostar to link to further parts of Britain. And what poetic justice, to use the money gained from toll and congestion charges over road transport and put it towards the railways!

One Time to Rule All Distance

New York Tube map redesigned to show travel times via New York Times

image courtesy of eurorail

It seems that as we become more connected; more globalised, the time it takes to get somewhere by train is taking longer. Take Stockholm to Amsterdam for instance. A decade or two ago, it was possible to go directly from Stockholm to Amsterdam with just one change, in either Copenhagen or Hamburg. Now, if I wanted to travel by train to Amsterdam, I would have to change 3 times and the trip would last longer than 17 hours. (Sounds like one of those high school maths problems is coming up doesn’t it.)

So as we create faster and faster trains, the distances we travel can be further, yet we still need to stop on the way to make the trip economic to say the least. Therefore, could an idea be proposed whereby the future of travel will reach a terminal time similar to terminal velocity? For example, the time it took the slow local train to reach the city center would also be the time it took the fast train to reach the other side of the world. Distance would no longer be measured in time. It would take the same, or similar, time to get anywhere you wanted.

How would this change the notion of the place where you lived? What would the world look like if this was the case?

More on "Past Futures"

I’m coming across some lovely past illustrations of future ideas of transport.

This is taken from The Electrical Experimenter, a magazine from the early 1900’s.

via David Zondy

Suck Transportation

The green eco-friendly aura that surrounds Sweden is glowing all the more brighter as I live here and experience it on a day to day occurance. I am living in a house that burns our poo and turns it into fertiliser for the garden. The school where I study has a photocopier that emails you the photocopies.

And just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, I read about Hammerby Sjöstad. Sweden is once again creating a model for other countries to follow.

The goal for water use is to halve the consumption compared to the Swedish average of 180 liters a day. One of the ways to obtain that is via filters that have been installed in all taps, mixing air into the water to reduce the volumes used.

As for waste treatment, all garbage is separated and much of it re-used or used to produce energy.
The high-tech waste management company Envac has developed a system of underground pipes that use vacuum suction to transport the garbage. A local wastewater treatment plant has also been built, which uses new cleaning technology.

I read about the system Envac has developed a while ago, when there were suggestions that UPS would be buying up the idea to develop a high-speed underground network through which to transport parcels. Wow!! Supposedly, a drill has been developed that will drill deep into the ground with little disturbance to the surface. They are planning to develop a network of tunnels to major cities to transport vip parcels.

Easy to install. Fast and uncongesting.

Imagine that you get up in the morning, grab a strong coffee from the kitchen pot, then hop into your suction capsule that sucks you off to work. You’re there in 5 minutes. Door to door.

Train(trend)spotting

As members of Group 5, we have decided to focus on areas that are of particular interest on an individual level. Having traveled around Europe twice with the Interrail ticket, I chose the "Social Dimension" related to railway transport. Since then, I've been trying to do some trendspotting and synthesis around this subject, skimming through travel websites and blogs.

A mid-aged traveler named Joanne O'Connor reflects on the differences between today's interrail and that of yesterday. In her article she quotes a friends comments: "And there was no internet! No lastminute.com. No mobile phones! You had to use a phone box if you wanted to call home. No euros! Remember all those different currencies?"


The "Healthy Active Living" website Realbuzz.com gives us 10 bits of essential Interrail advice, three of which I especially found inspiring: Keep a blog. Take different routes. Talk to others.

I'm not sure if we're supposed to suggest new ideas as the outcome of our project, but I think integrating travel planning into the actual trip itself might not be a bad idea. It is a pity that there isn't even some sort of navigation that passengers can observe, where it is really needed in a means of travel with such inclination towards improvisation. You can not get off a plane and change your route, but even in there you are able to see your whereabouts in the world.

While researching on the net, I've come accross a complaint saying how not all surroundings are beautiful around railways, so the trip might get boring. However, the thing is the passenger coould be missing what's hot and interesting just a mile away from the railroad. Therefore, the incorporation of planning and navigation ideas might be worth considering.

Mandy Sheets talks evaluates the pluses and minuses of trains where she mentions the dining car, which is a facilitator if not an obligator for single passengers to sit together, as a major social plus on the train side. She also briefly touches the advantages of being able to walk around in trains and mingle into other groups of passengers.

The Darjeeling Limited, is a movie which has used Indian trains as the setting in several scenes. You can watch a collage of scenes from the movie here. It is amazing how trains can so effectively reflect on culture, much like mobile museums.

If that is so, here is something that's even better: A museum-train. Midhants Railway-Watercress Line is explained in their website as:

Formerly part of Britain's national rail network between the towns of Alton and Alresford in Hampshire, this preserved heritage steam railway line is now operated by dedicated volunteers for the enjoyment of all. Big steam engines haul our trains on long, steep gradients through the beautiful Hampshire countryside.

This is all, for now, about the social and cultural dimension of trains. More chunks of train(trend)spotting will follow soon...

Trains

Our topic for trendspotting is trains, more specifically the future of trains. I’ve come across alot of interesting stuff in my research, and have found some particularly interesting sketches in the book Transportation in the World of the Future written in 1968. What is most interesting is that these sketches are visions from the past about the future.

The train on palette system / Transportation in the World of the Future / 1968

This sketch is perhaps my favourite, and very much what we started to discuss in our group brainstorming session on thursday. The point was raised that how could a train ever replace the car, as it would never, in it’s current form, offer convenient transport from door to door. Well I believe “Fuller’s Travelling Capsule” visualises some of our ideas and addresses this issue well.

Trains: The Socially Advantageous Means of Transport

Railways are famous with their economical and environmental advantages compared to other means of collective transport. These are what lobbies that strive to advocate wide use of trains often refer to. However, unfortunately, another positive dimension to trains is usually neglected: The social one.

Trains have museums set up for them and named after them. They have been the setting for many movies and artworks. Besides these well-known aspects, they connotate playfulness, adventure and surprise. On how many vehicles are you free to walk around at all times and run into many different personalities? On what principle do rollercoasters—one of the oldest and most adventurous means of collective entertainment—rely on? We could continue asking more rhetorical questions similar to those above.



To finish off, I'd like to point to a video I've stumbled upon today on the internet. It is a fascinating TV commercial, which will hopefully illustrate what I've tried to discuss in brief.

'The Future of Trains': Just the right topic for me

One of the highlights of our first week with the 'Trendspotting and Future Thinking' course was the formation of groups and the distribution of research topics for each group. Being a member of Group 5, I am now fully concentrated on spotting the trends for 'The Future of Trains'.

I have to say that this is an excellent match! I am a huge 'train person', and having travelled around Europe twice with the Interrail ticket, have quite a bit of experience with them. The Interrail concept and the facilitator role it plays towards multicultural and international mingling will for sure be at the top of my list while researching for this project.Another current affair about trains that has been tackling my mind is not as pleasant as the latter. In my native Istanbul, the municipality has installed a system known by the name Metrobus, which is exactly the same thing with a tram—or an above-ground metro—system but the means of transportation is the conventional bus. Now what does that mean if not the consumption of more oil? A quick research I've done on the internet shows that this system is used as a mainstream means of transportation only in the 2nd world—developing—countries. (Brazil, Turkey, Colombia)

I personally have a very big issue over this Metrobus business. It is a wasteful approach that solely aims for the very short-term. You designate the lanes, build the stops and stations, why don't you just put a pair of rails too so that you have a long lasting concrete solution to the problem of urban transportation. I'm hoping to look into this much more thoroughly throughout our research.