I’m glad you pointed out what a gadgetbahn is, but you seem to have done a couple videos supporting some of them, like the one with the self driving cars, which are a major gadgetbahn
I've been here before. I did the skydive experience and those screams from the swing were audible over the fans! I hope you got to experience some of the other things here too!
That's probably the most interesting part of this to me. For fixed PoI destinations like an amusement park/zoo/airport/etc. this seems like a novel way to get around them at a somewhat quick speed. The problematic part to me is merging onto the main line, or when you have a traffic backup on a terminal for disembarkation. You end up with an entire cluster of pods longer than the siding can accommodate then another pod comes and slams into it at 25mph/40kmh. It's problematic, but interesting.
@@thetactician2787 Who cares how much money it got from a multi-billion dollar megacorporation? Is it your money? It's exactly 0% your business what they decide to invest in.
So it's a bike that's really expensive to operate, has a set route it can operate on, is not easy to exit in an emergency, can't overtake and can't go up prolonged inclines. Perfect.
Hear me out: Riverside shweebway. If you have a bout of spontaneous human combustion, just open the pod and fall in the river. If it's a heart attack, just accept your fate and let the river consume you. You simply cannot lose!
just like how the hyperloop is a train thats highly vulnerable to terrorist attack, requires huge amounts of power to vacuum down, and only moves a small amount at a time.
I was Born and raised here (20M) and I've never heard about it! I even went to Rotorua multiple times and I still haven't heard/seen it whilst I was there!
Google or our cities or both dropped the ball bigtime on these. That track is far cheaper than a lane costs whether a freeway lane or a city lane. They need to be electric and auto-piloted. The cars can link up and use less power overall. People can rent one for the night, buy their own, and rent them by the month depending on what they want. People can travel solo even if they're legally "intoxicated", wrecks would be VERY VERY rare. The cost of the electricity would be cheap vs gas or battery electric vehicles, and the emissions would be FAR FAR LESS than a Tesla. I literally have thought this should be the future for over 20 years since I was 18.. so why isn't it?
No! walking is one of your main competitors, Shweeb! and it's got you hard beat with overtaking alone! Why draw attention to the possibility of just walking to wherever the Shweeb station is?
It's like the physics department at one university that have a 4 storey high slide out of the building. Only for practical demonstrations of physical principles, of course.
It's a great idea for a limited sized campus like Google has, in reality if you had a sprawling city sized network of these things, it would be absolutely impossible to control or police. Plus all it takes is one unit to breakdown to snarl up all of that particular loop.
@@Chiphunk Exactly! I imagine that this would be a fun way for getting around medium-sized areas like the Google campus or an alternative to the big monorails at theme parks. So what if the original idea was for mass transit and they didn't quite achieve that? It still looks like a really cool way of getting around.
I think he "apologized" about the noise, not about his smirk. He represents the amusement park. (Not sure where the idea to apologize for a smirk comes from tbh... Smiling looks good on video. Smiling is a natural reaction to people screaming in joy.)
Kind of like how Elon's Las Vegas Loop combined the bad parts of cars and the bad parts of subways. Clearly the main mistake the Schweeb's inventor made was not being born insanely rich.
@@tjenadonn6158 I still can’t get over the fact that the Teslas in the Vegas loop still aren’t self-driving, you’d think a fully controlled and enclosed tunnel system would be the easiest place to run self-driving cars on as a demo
@@Padgriffin what's even scarier is that the self-driving apparently isn't good enough for tunnels with no turns or oncoming traffic, yet they feel it perfectly fine to run it on public roads!
@@tjenadonn6158 You assume Elon Musk cares about building car subways, instead of practicing his drilling equipment while building a space mining operation.
I feel like this thing is a liability nightmare. To make it really profitable, you'd have to have it open to a dozen people or so at a time at LEAST. There is a reason theme park rides at Disney and Universal run so many people at once. Otherwise, you'd have to charge way more for individual tickets. And if you have a dozen people on this thing, you already know what is going to happen. There will be a bottleneck with one person going slower than everyone else, everybody else starts crashing into the back of the person in front of them. Whiplash, property damage, all kinds of problems. Aint no way. Also, what if someone has an issue while riding it? People have heart attacks, strokes, seizures, and all kinds of problems while riding theme park rides, but everything that is not a rollercoaster has a way to stop the ride and get them off immediately. If this thing is hanging suspended in air too far off the ground to reach, all you could do is have the people behind push the person to the end of the track. I think all of this would fall under gross negligence because the problems with it are OBVIOUS to anyone that actually thinks about it for more than 30 seconds. The park would be responsible for any harm coming to people riding the thing because all these issues are entirely foreseeable.
it isn't even public transport if its a one seater car that does not need a transportation job to drive. its just a normal transportation vehicle but instead of on wheels, its on a monorail system
@@TheDrexxusthe shweeb is a one pod per track system so there’s no way of hitting or bumping into another pod, the shweeb tracks are designed at a distance that the two pods cannot touch eachother. the highest point of the track is when you go over the bottom shweeb, and even if something were to happen heath wise, the pod would either roll forwards down the hill, or back down where it came from, from there the staff can assess the situation and be able to reach the person inside the pod
This looks incredibly fun. Being an amusement park ride feels like the proper niche for this. Especially if you had it over some place that has a nice view.
I mean, it does address the biggest problems with biking in cities: not enough space to add bike line (this can be above traffic), exposure to elements (this is enclosed), theft (you get out of the pod and don't worry about it) Honestly I would love to ride this to work
Some google guy just thought it looked fun and wanted to get an operational version to play with. As a cyclist, this looks like a blast, so I totally get where that dude was coming from.
I'm not sure if they have kept this since the addition of electric pedal assist, but they kept a weekly and all time leaderboard of lap times here. Being based in Rotorua, a mecca for mountain bikers, you'd often see big names in the sport fighting for top spot after visiting the town for races/events
At its completion at a cost of $83 million in January 1943, the Pentagon was the world's largest office building, covering 29 acres (12 hectares)-including a 5-acre (2-hectare) central court-and Chief of staff "God dam it where's the president gone again" Aid- "he doing another lab of the 7 floor"
Loving the calming screams of the damned when the Shweeb Generation 3 was being discussed following up from 1:22 to 1:31. Really provides and gives a comforting feeling of safety and the idea that ones well-being is of most importance!
If anything, that makes it stand out for me as a brilliant and cheap carnival ride. No one would stop the clock for an actual transit system like this, but it literally screams amusement park to me.
idk why but the parts where Tom is zooming around as the camera follows him and he's speaking is so funny to me, he's just nonchalantly telling us information as he zooms round in a floating bicycle
They arent really futuristic, monorails have already been tried and taking electricity off of it isnt anything futuristic. Monorails are on their way out, if they ever even got in 🤣
@@CHIIIEEEEEEEEFFFFSSS With good reason, as in the majority of cases anything from a bicycle lanes to proper Railways are more effective and efficient.
2:47 recently I went to Sweden and I noticed that every single road we drove on had a dedicated bike lane off to the side. as a brit, it made me jealous. over here we share the road with them, which makes it quite unsafe for them, and to try increasing bike usage, bike lanes just get painted onto roads which eats up road space, and then add to that that cars park on top of those lanes and it makes no difference if there is a bike lane or not.
Bike lanes in this part of England are often painted over footpaths rather than roads. This makes it dangerous for cyclists when an aggressive pedestrian holds out a fist as the cyclist goes past. It seems to be a popular pastime recently.
New Zealand just wants to be the home of the worlds most unusual commute - You start by a Bunjy Jump to the Scweeb station, then change into your Martin Jetpack and finally get to work on the Manta5 Water Bike.
@@donnamarie3617 I always thought Bill Hamilton's greatest invention was perfecting the nutcracker ski tow, but I'm a skier rather than a boater or a push bicyclist.
The funniest thing here to me is that it doesn't seem to take any design cues from recumbent bicycles. It looks like it could be so much more comfortable and with less swinging (due to how much the knees seem to be moving) if they'd just copied a bunch of the ergonomics from one of those. Or just had the rider sit up like they're on a normal bike!
@@laurencefraser Position of center of mass vs Point of Pendulation. Also having the head closest to the Pivotation point would improve the experience, reducing nausea.
i have a great idea: perhaps you could invert the rail so there are less points of failure, and enlargen the pod so many people can fit in at once, and then of course to address the whole issue of moving it, a powered pod at the front could pull the others behind it! oh.. wait.
or maybe we could take it off the rails and put some wheels on it, to make it more independant and then remove the pod frame to make it lighter, so its easier to ride and more compact and... oh wait... XD
It's so cool seeing him go somewhere and doing something I have done before. Its actually a lot of fun. Its like a roller-coaster and its not hard to pedal at all. Much easier than a bike.
These definitely have alot of potential for tourism activities. Out in colorado and in alot of mountainous states, they have alpine coasters and slides at the resorts. Could imagine something like this being alot of fun, and could definitely allow for cooler views and thrills.
Could have long tracks and waystations/break areas with platforms and a track operator to switch people off the main line into the "station" for a break and enjoy the scenery. Would be very cool
I think they would be great for holiday complexes (like centre parcs) great views, protected from weather and other traffic, plus not having to worry about taking your own bikes finding parking and locking them securely.
Such a great idea for mass transit...because what everyone wants on their commute is to climb into a tiny box that other people have been doing strenuous exercise in. I bet they smell great.
You bet nobody's taking the time to wipe down their Schweeb once they get to their destination. If everything else about this thing hadn't killed it COVID would've.
To be fair, unique "novelty rides for tourists" can still rake in a ton of money even if they don't revolutionize transit. If they had a tandem version that could seat 2-4 people, I'd certainly throw a few bucks at it for an amusing ride.
A tandem version - with the people sitting side by side - with the pedals 180 degrees out of phase with one another could help with the swinging. The weight movements would cancel each other out. It would still tilt, but the swaying would dampened.
Indeed, there is a reason why amusement parks will drop tens of millions on a single roller coaster. It's a billion dollar industry and you got to attract those dollars to your location with something unique and different somehow.
I can't see any situation where there are multiple ShweebPods on the same ShweebLine being practical. Ramming into the person in front of you is not a feature. There's got to be *somewhere* it would work but that's a huge limitation.
Tom Scott's videos are always interesting but have a certain down to earth quality about them. Then to top it off, he comes across as genuinely thoughtful, considering others and being aware that his own actions have the ability to cause others to act without his say-so. As usual, he's a likeable person making likeable videos. Well done on another great one, Tom.
I've been on this as a kid. It's really fun! I remember thinking it probably wouldn't work as a transit system, even though it would be a really fun way to get around!
This heavily reminds me of the Peoplemover at Disneyworld. What was originally designed as the transport system of the future hits major technical limitations, so it now operates as a Amusement ride
They also have a monorail system and I believe have brought back the cable car. As well, I almost for got they have a train, tram, and ferry! They might as well add one of these!
That's the only thing that caught my eye here. Sheeb has demonstrated us (not that we really need such demonstration) how much hubris and incompetence those supposedly savvy businessmen have. A single transportation expert would've saved them a million dollars, but who needs excepts anymore?
It'd be extremely on-brand for an oil company like BP. It's a very "innovative looking" but completely impractical mobility solution. It lets them feign interest in sustainable transit without actually financing something that has the risk of displacing anything that needs their fuel to work.
clearly the decisions are being made by people who want the appearance of the future- and the conversations that come with it- without actually achieving any notable transport goal
@@majorgnu Bang on. BP would want it to fail for sure. Of fing course they wouldn't be into a transport system that doesn't uses almost no power. How this whole thing wasn't a massive transparent joke before it got 1 cent of funding is beyond me.
I actually went here in 2007 on a holiday to New Zealand. Was called the Agrodome at the time. I remember looking at the Schweeb, but no one had been using it all day. The giant swing and jet boat were the more popular attractions. Cool to see it get some more momentum after so many years.
I went on what was probably the original version of the Shweeb back in 2008. It was heaps of fun as a ride, but with all the good will in the world, it was never going to work as a mass transit system.
GoPro (other brands probably as well) has crazy stabilization, helmet cam while skiing almost looks like on a gimbal, I had the helm in shot a few times and it swung around bay an estimated 10 -15 deg left and right.
@@noisycarlos You can see the camera mount for the external shots, I think it's a GoPro. And probably a second one as well inside the pod. And a drone of course. And a main camera for the interview. High production values for a 5-minute video.
I could see it being an option for transiting to/from a parking area as well. A major Florida theme park does this with their own well-known monorail system. It's definitely a "fun" idea even if it doesn't quite re-invent the bicycle in a practical manner.
This reminds me of a thing in an amusement park in Finland. It's like a pedal roller coaster that goes around the whole park, but there are no uphills or downhills, and you can get on and off at multiple spots. Not really a transit system, more for taking in the view.
Problem is, modern cities are too dense to just randomly insert more bike lanes without disrupting other traffic. I think this idea attracted Google's investment because they saw it was cheap, flexible and could be implemented at higher altitudes for more vertical density to personal transportation. It's a niche that bikes or trains can't touch, and the implementation and coverage would be much more broad and cheaper than developing train/subway tracks in the middle of big cities. Problem is, the thing that would make this shine (high altitude) also makes this kind of design much more dangerous when things go wrong (and human operated vehicles go wrong often enough), so the cost to actually ensure these things are safe would probably offset it's only advantage.
They could work well for public transport if they: * were fully motorised instead of pedal powered. * had a more traditional seating position. * held 3 or 4 people per pod. * were fully automated so you could just request one to your location and tell it where you wanted to go to. * they built small stopping loops into the track layout at popular areas (schools, shopping centres, etc) so pods passing by could continue while passengers are getting in or out.
As silly as this concept is, it does at least look really fun to use. Taking fast turns on bikes can be scary if you aren't used to leaning down, but for this you can just bike as fast as you want and the rail will handle the turning for you. A bit like a stationary bike but with more interesting visuals.
In London, bike lanes are usually built alongside busy roads, cyclists often ignore road traffic laws leading to incidents. A couple of weeks ago for example, my blind cousin was hit by a cyclist who ran a red light. The road network simply isn't designed to accomodate cyclists and especially not impatient ones. This would also reduce the need for people to buy their own bikes (I know people who have to replace bikes multiple times a year because bike thefts are so high). It would never happen because nobody wants to see a historic city covered in metal pipes but going above or (more realistically) below ground is a good way to add new transit routes to a system that already exists. The wuppertal floating tram comes to mind when I think about the whole transport on floating rails thing. Might be worth looking into for a future video.
@@Dmitrii-q6p not really but it's a good example of a European city with traffic problems Although with timezones and longitude then it is kind of the default city because of the prime meridian
I can understand the creator not being contactable. I'd be annoyed too if people on the internet kept bothering me about my very embarrassing mistake from years ago.
To be fair, it's one of the few incarnations where you realistically can say "well, who knows, it might just work?" You have seen how fast they are. While you technically can go 60 with an electric bike, it's way too dangerous. A single pebble could kill you. Not with this system. As a mid-distance car replacement, well, it might juuuust work, maybe? I mean it would be faster than a tram and you would not passivly sit around. Active transportation, fast speed...
@@steemlenn8797 I think given the choice most people would choose "passively sitting around" over intense exercise, especially of they're expected to be somewhat presentable when they get to the destination.
@@tjenadonn6158 I choose intense exercise over the cost of owning and operating a car tbf. The presentable part is a fair concern tho. I probably wouldn't bike to work if my place of work didn't have locker rooms
It's actually not a bad idea, perhaps not as a serious mode of transportation but it think it'd be a great thing for sightseeing, going over area's at your own speed and leisure whilst getting a nice view. It'd be great in a Zoo, Museum or something like an immersive theme park ride.
You only be going "at your own speed" if noone slower is in front of you, and noone faster behind you. Aka, you only go at your own speed if hardly anyone else is using it. Which will make it way to expensive for any Zoo or Museum. You need your own private ranch if want such a system to ride around at your own speed.
@@AbiGail-ok7fc big brain idea: three lanes probably over top of each other so you can see from both sides. 1 speed demon lane 2 causal and kids 3 gawker/health issue/elderly
I had the opportunity to go on the shweeb once, but didn't know about this history! I'm glad they turned it into an amusement ride though, it was quite a lot of fun to control the speed of your own coaster
I could see this working well at nature tourism destinations. It could allow visitors to transition through sections of a nature area quickly and easily without disturbing local wildlife while feeling fun and exciting. Add in some stops for guided tours of sections of the park and it all starts to come together quite nicely.
We already have systems doing that (monorails, gondolas, elevated tram ways), which don't have the hassle of dealing with people going around with at different speeds, and which have a much higher throughput due to more efficient boarding/disembarking.
@@AbiGail-ok7fc monorails, gondolas and elevated tram ways all have higher construction costs and running costs, for a cheap local wildlife exploring solution these could fill that gap
Fun fact: both the train and the bicycle, the two things techbros hate, are the result of decades of incremental progress, not "one radical idea." Fixing our transit problems comes by building what works and incrementing upon it, not looking for the magic bullet that will save everyone.
I both love trains and bicycles, and acknowledge that self driving electric vehicles have a lot of potential. Both bicycles and trains were -- at one point -- new tech.
Here is a bit of a crazy thing, the idea to put locomotives on rails was an idea they came up with because there were already rail systems in place for running things like coal, and some other bulk products/ ores from up near the mines, down to the shore, and they were there centuries before the steam engine. So, arguably, the train could be said to be the result of centuries of incremental changes.
@@zynel413 cars are the most inefficient form of ground transport, both in terms of cost per km/mile, and in term of externalities (pollution, noise, danger to other road users, co2 emissions, use of public space). Buses, Metro systems, trams, bicycles, e-bikes, trains and walking are all much more efficient.
i mean it may fail as a public transport system, but it could be a big thing for an amusement park ride, and theres nothing wrong with having those. Getting families out of the house doing things together is a great idea especially in this day and age where staying home playing games or streaming seems to be the "in thing". Need more amusement parks, and more innovative ideas like this that also have a minimal amount of actual exercise and effort
Family ones need multiple race tracks, like the kids RC cars. Like four parallels to race each other. Except I'm not sure how corners would work, as the shoulders will be wildly different in length.
It could be a simple way of getting from A to B between points in a massive wooded area or something. Rather than wandering through nature, why not get there 12 times faster and glide through the trees, slalom style
@@misterdayne2792 Oh my gosh that gave me an idea! Remember the Tom Scott video of the aerial bucket way? When they decommission it, they should put a modified Schweeb where the people going down assist the people going up. It's brilliant!
I could see this as a fun point-to-point ride, like between two buildings in Las Vegas. There’s need to be some sort of motor assist if the person inside passed out drunk. But I’d ride it!
Another Monorail video. Hurray! Also the inventor of the Shweep shouldn't feel too bad, most of these "revolutionary new transport systems" don't even make it out of the funding phase, at least this one got built.
Bring this to the UK - there's a flooded quarry in Wales that already has an adventure park that would be perfect for this. - also, imagine a setup like this in a previously abandoned underground mine all lit up, would be amazing
Yea, get it coming out from underground to do a quick loop over the quarry then back underground, similar to the rope slide where you’re 6 feet above the ground then 200feet in a split second
I love the response to wearing skirts, one of the most common and popular types of clothing, is a simple "don't". Something about that is hilarious and shows the amount of thought was put in for day to day use.
Can't wear a skirt, nowhere to put your kids, nowhere to put bags of shopping/school backpacks, nowhere to put a dog or crutches or anything like that ... how many people really need to get somewhere without any luggage, and without it mattering if they're sweating all over the place? Even if it was implemented somehow, I couldn't see uptake being that high when at least on the bus you have somewhere to put your stuff
@@Inkinhart say what you like but it works for a very niche market - likely men, young and able-bodied, no family or kids, financially fairly well-off so carrying their shopping home isn't such an issue... wait a minute, remind me who came up with this system again..?
I went to Rotarua a long time ago and can still remember the smell of volcanic sulphur. I'm not surprised people in this town wants to travel around in sealed pods.
@jetison333 not every startup, but startups in general. There will always be someone creating a company around the world's dumbest idea and then somehow raise millions before inevitably going under.
This would actually be very good for a hybrid ride/transport system for amusement parks. It would serve as a decent enough means of getting from one section of the park to another while being fun and providing decent views of the park. And parks are already in the business of managing and maintaining similar equipment. It would be awful for cities, but amusement parks could actually benefit from this oddball implementation.
It wouldn’t even work for that, imagine some granny gets in this thing and cycles at 3mph, no one can overtake and the whole system stops. Trains and monorails need to be at set speeds otherwise it doesn’t work
@@CheeseyMilkshakes my guy, amusement parks don't need trains to get people the 3000ft to a different park section. This would be just fine even with grannies slowing it down, because essentially it's just about providing a means of getting between the park sections while providing elevated views, it's not about moving people fast or efficiently, it's about being a ride that provides an alternative method of moving between park sections. Just think about it for 2 seconds and you'll see why the things that make trains and monorails good means of large scale public transit wouldn't be ideal for short hops between park sections.
@@CheeseyMilkshakes On this note, I'm curious how hard the proposed physical impact on slower pods would be when faster pods ram into them. Would Granny be okay if someone ran into her pod?
Yes, but it takes longer and is limited to certain design requirements of foot paths, whereas this would be more for riding over sections of the park that would work well for footpaths, or driving around park features to show them off in a more integrated and interesting way. This would be more of a hybrid ride/single person transit, like gondolas between park sections, but able to move much faster with more curves more like a pedal powered roller coaster.
the reason dumb transport ideas like this or monorails or sky bicycle high ways get founding and attention is because they dont interfere with cars, and im sure that the fact that such ideas are usually too impractical to actually be implemented as a full transport system is always a nice bonus.
They also are "quiet" and don't necessitate tunneling, forgetting that NYC's metro system was built a century ago and that there gave been a 100 years in transit and rail technology since then specifically to mitigate that issue. (tunneling is still very expensive but it's also the best way to not hear stuff on rails, so...)
mostly just fools and billionaires, the billionaires at least have a solid reason as to why, they are invested in car companies and self driving tech, gadgetbahn crap is a good way to weaken public opinion of trains and bikes.
So I'm learning that the general agreement is just "If you're willing to still do it, at least make it a nice view - or a terrible one to spite people who looked"
I feel like this would work at places like a ski-resort or some kind of large park, I feel like that would be a really cool ride atop the trees, like zip-lining but with more control I suppose and maybe a little more comfortable.
People too big, too small, elderly, disabled, limited mobility, children, adults (with children), and perhaps those inclined towards nausia. This thing has a lot of work cut out to be more accessible.
@@gogzhp88 meanwhile a flat surface allows all kinds of vehicles perfectly suited for a lot more people. As long as the vehicle can support the person it'll work
"cycle safari safe from animals". A cape buffalo would merc that thing. Hippos, lions, elephants, moose, tons of animals could make you regret getting on board. Nothing over about 30lbs should be near that thing.
biggest issue with pod transport gadgetbahns is that it only moves one person at a time. No two abreast, or groups. Just one at a time in a row. That will never have the need throughput. Not to mention that this is not all ages and abilities.
I remember riding this on one of our days off as an Aussie on a music tour back in 2018, never would have thought I'd see the Shweeb on a Tom Scott video.
Thats so cool to see you in NZ I hope you have had an awesome trip here! plenty for you to see and enjoy I'm sure! I hope we Kiwis treated you well! Ive been to that park but didnt try the sweeb but did do the Jetboat and the sky dive both good fun! All the best for 2023!!
Appreciate how Tom mentions that this is actually a terrible idea for public transit. As an amusement part ride, it does look fun though. I do have doubts about anyone being able to ride one considering you need to both use feet to petal and be able to fit in the pod itself.
