Thinky

The High Line

During my December vacation, I spent some time with an old friend in Chelsea. Walking to a bar in the Meat Packing District, we passed a weird set of chicago-style [pic] elevated train tracks. In New York? Sure enough, it's the High Line. In the 1930s, the tracks were built to move freight in the city -- now they're dormant, with trees and flowers growing over the tracks.

The Friends of the High Line held a contest [winners] this year to generate proposals for what to do with the tracks. Many proposals are for alternative transport ideas -- walking paths, a swimming "path," shopping areas, plus lots of park ideas, urban farming, and even a wind power generating station (or two). Sorry the images are so illegible -- they're shrunken images from the very nice posters that were in Grand Central Station and that were part of a cool tabloid size book with the winners. I was looking for a PDF of the book, but I can't seem to find it online.

Super Efficient "Wheel" Drive

There's a dutch company that has a working prototype of a city bus that uses an electric motor that get's better than 90% energy efficiency. This is compared with approximately 20% for a two stroke engine [cite], though the total efficiency of the bus is actually about 50% efficient since it has to burn the diesel fuel to create electricity first.

How'd they do it? They switched the stator and the rotor parts of the engine. [More] This means that the usual stator (the big coil of wire) goes around and the usual rotor now stands still -- it's the axle. An added benefit, obvious to those that know about electric motors, is that a motor can be run backwards to create energy. In this case, it's a free way to get regenerative braking, like that found on normal electric cars.

Sometimes it's the simple ideas that are the most revolutionary. One need not change any of the exisitng technologies or social conventions to take advantage of this -- the roads are the same, the driver does the same things he or she always did, the passengers might not even notice. [via Metafilter]

Reconfiguring Lower Manhattan Traffic

In the wake of the destruction of the WTC towers in 2001, the city planners for New York are able to right some poor decisions made when the towers went up in the 1960s. An article from the New York Times today at least broaches some of the issues for the planners -- the PATH terminal, non-WTC traffic flow improvements, pedestrian traffic (to the new commerical centers inside the new towers), emergency vehicle access, and taxi and limousines. Of particular concern are Dey and Courtland Streets, on the east side of the towers (and the reopening of Grennwich and Washington Streets). A map showing some of the changes.

Cheaper Segways

Option 1: Third wheel. Nice.

Option 2: Build one ya own self. You thought a real segway was dorky, look at this svelte marvel of modern enginnering.

Extreme (dude!) Segway

Photoshopping the segway into X-Games-type stunts. Jealous much?