"Antiquated technology, safety concerns, crumbling infrastructure, and nonexistence -- it’s not hard to argue that the US public transportation network is just not good. Vast swaths of the US have no option but to drive because the alternative just is not there. This has consequences on the environment, on economic mobility, on where people live, the consequences of America’s lack of solid public transportation almost defines American culture." Wendover Productions explores the reasons why the US is so far behind every other developed country.

It started with the advent of affordable cars and the Great Depression, which caused a decline in railed street cars, and then buses became cheaper than street cars and wiped them out almost entirely. One thing I didn't know before watching this video is that zoning laws in Europe are more relaxed than in the US, allowing for a mix of business and residential properties that encourages public transportation. New US cities like Denver are zoned in a way that forces people to drive. Read the rest

The engineering firm Dahir Insaat presents the future of transportation: the monorail gyro-bus. It zips along congested urban roadways because it zips over them. But it doesn't fly -- rather, it rides on wheeled stilts. It's got a flywheel inside to keep it from tipping over.

Inventor Dahir Insaat says:

My hope is that this will be the most important transport event of the next two decades. I can say without exaggeration that this mode of transportation is compatible with the human habitat, with the spaces in which city dwellers recreate. It can pass alongside parks, squares, and pedestrian paths, and in some cases it can even ride alongside people strolling down wide boulevards. After all, it is absolutely safe in both ecological and physical terms. It cannot cause serious injury. The most it would do if it hit a person who is standing on the monorail would be to push him out of its way. In a word, Anna Karenina would not have been able to commit suicide if she threw herself in front of a gyro monorail, no matter how much she wanted to.

(Sorry for the Tolstoy spoiler.) Read the rest

Alexis Madrigal got a chance to visit the fascinating town of Castle, a roads-only city constructed by Waymo for the sole purpose of developing self-driving cars. Read the rest

The winner of yesterday's SpaceX Hyperloop Pod design competition was the WARR Hyperloop. Built by students at the Technical University of Munich, it hit 324 Km/h (~201 mph). First-person video below. Read the rest

Location platform Here Technologies calculated how far one hour of driving can take drivers out of major American cities starting on Friday at 4, 7, and 10 pm. Read the rest

This gorgeous Avionics electric bike prototype mixes modern technology with the classic style of early gas-powered motorcycles. Read the rest

The City of Seattle voted to allow Uber drivers to form a union, and Uber says that if its court challenge to the rule is unsuccessful, it might leave Seattle. Read the rest

This Inception-like moment as all the doorways form a straight line is both satisfying and mesmerizing. Read the rest

Hyperloop One engineers demonstrate the power of maglev using spinning arrays atop a copper plate. Despite weighing over 100 pounds, the gadget floats and could hold considerably more weight. Read the rest

Tesla released a video of a commute from home to office, including parking as a demonstration of its fully self-driving hardware. "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons.

He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself." Read the rest

I'm glad the fellow found room for his accordion. Video titled "Bashkir team goes to work."

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Frequently seen in the pages of 1950s-era Popular Mechanics magazines, the Bensen B-8 was a small gyrocopter that was in production until 1987. Download the plans and build your own two-person gyrocpter fleet to compete with Uber and Lyft!

(via Weird Universe)

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China's Transit Elevated Bus (TEB), a trippy transport that straddles the traffic below it, had its first test run yesterday in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province. It was a very short trip, just 300 meters. According to Shanghaiist, an engineer on the project says that eventually the TEB "will be able to carry up to 1,200 passengers and travel at 60 kilometers per hour." It's expected to take one year to build out a practical version.

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And they said the Segway would change the way we moved through cities! Video of pallet skating in Bratislava, Slovakia by Tomáš Moravec.

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Businessweek reports on Larry Page's not-secret-anymore efforts to make the perpetually-futuristic vision of flying cars a reality. Turns out, Page is funding two flying car companies, Zee.Aero and Kitty Hawk. Apparently the latter's president is Sebastian Thrun, the pioneering roboticist who drove Google's autonomous vehicle efforts. From Ashley Vance and Brad Stone's Businessweek feature:

Zee.Aero now employs close to 150 people. Its operations have expanded to an airport hangar in Hollister, about a 70-minute drive south from Mountain View, where a pair of prototype aircraft takes regular test flights. The company also has a manufacturing facility on NASA’s Ames Research Center campus at the edge of Mountain View. Page has spent more than $100 million on Zee.Aero, say two of the people familiar with the company, and he’s not done yet...

The (Hollister) airport is open for business from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, but Zee.Aero employees frequently run test flights when no one else is around. Nonetheless, people working at the airport have caught glimpses of two Zee.Aero craft in recent months. Both have a narrow body, a bulbous cockpit with room for one person upfront, and a wing at the back. In industry lingo, the planes are pushers, with two propellers in the rear. One of the prototypes looks like a small conventional plane; the other has spots for small propellers along the main body, three per side.

When the aircraft take off, they sound like air raid sirens.

The people at the airport haven’t heard Page’s name ­mentioned, but they long ago concluded Zee.Aero’s owner is super rich.

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This wonderful illustrated ad appeared in the July 1971 issue of African-American culture magazine Ebony. (via Weird Universe) Read the rest

Steven Melia's Urban Transport Without the Hot Air joins Drugs Without the Hot Air, Sustainable Materials With Both Eyes Open and Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air as a highly readable, evidence-based look at a contentious and politicised area that offers a refreshing dose of facts in a debate dominated by ideology.