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Conference terri::cars_uk

Title:	Cars in the UK
Notice:	Please read new conference charter 1.70
Moderator:	COMICS::SHELLEYELD

Created:	Sun Mar 06 1994
Last Modified:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	2584
Total number of notes:	63384

1360.0. "Horizon: The car in LA" by SYSTEM::GOODWIN (VAX at work, Archimedes at home) Tue Feb 12 1991 13:27

    Anyone see Horizon on BBC2 last night?
    
    It was talking about problems with cars in Los Angeles - smog. The
    program looked at different solutions to the problem:
    
    Reduce pollutant level of existing cars
    
    Use electric cars - no battery exists than can power a car beyond 120
    miles.
    
    Use cars powered by methane gas - the pollutant level was found to be
    little different from petrol. LA has ONE methane pump...
    
    Use cars powered by hydrogen. Hydrogen is highly explosive, so the
    hydrogen is supplied in solid form (hydroxide sp?). Expensive!
    
    Use trams - trouble is trams have no right of way over the car.
    
    Persuade people to 'pool' cars - one employee bought a coach and took
    all his friends to work!
    
    In the end the final conclusion was to change people, to provide homes
    near to work, anything to avoid so many cars that are clogging up LA
    (and shortly any other major city/town... Reading?)
    
    Pete.

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
1360.1	There are lessons to be learnt	JANUS::BARKER	Jeremy Barker - T&N/CBN Diag. Eng. - Reading, UK	`Tue Feb 12 1991 14:05`	18
	Re: .0 A very interesting program. It in part shows that although Los Angeles (LA) is suffering terribly from the effects of too many cars, it is very difficult to put things right, largely because of the way the area was developed. There was a brief look at public transport (mainly trams) in Z�rich. The mistake in LA is that the new trams don't have absolute priority over road traffic, and they are spending many megabucks on building underground rail systems so that cars can still occupy the streets. In the LA basin 70% of land area is devoted to road traffic - roads, parking, garages, gas stations, driveways and so forth. In part it shows the way not to go in solving traffic problems. jb
1360.2	VW Leading Development ?	ESDC2::MUDAN	The Mother of All Personal Names	`Tue Feb 12 1991 14:20`	6
	Yeps. An exciting programme. I was quite entertained with the R & D that the Germans are investing in. The VW `Auto-Pilot' and `Self-Parking' features were clever !
1360.3	I don't trust computers for safety on the road	JANUS::BARKER	Jeremy Barker - T&N/CBN Diag. Eng. - Reading, UK	`Wed Feb 13 1991 23:54`	7
	Re: .2 I would want some kind of good fail-safe for the automatic convoy system. The self parking is a luxury. Parking is not difficult if you know how. jb
1360.4		MARVIN::RUSLING	Hastings Upper Layers Project Leader	`Thu Feb 14 1991 10:12`	6
	Convoys have already been invented and are widely used around the world to move large quantities of freight and people - they're called trains... Dave
1360.5	Move?	SUBURB::SAXBYM	We're the Young Generation, and we've got Saddam Hussein	`Thu Feb 14 1991 10:17`	7
	>> Convoys have already been invented and are widely used around the >> world to move large quantities of freight and people - they're called >> trains... Try telling that to commuters! :^) Mark