Well There's Your Problem | Episode 156: The Ultimate Urban Circulator 

Lowered the noise by 5db in this one. Let me know if its still affecting people with misophonia- and if so, any suggestions for a different noise

"If this was done by organized crime they would have actually delivered a better product, and it would be cheaper too." Oh for the Huey Long timeline

Please god we need the "state of train simulators" Rocz griping bonus episode

You have 15 minutes to move your bus Your bus has been impounded Your bus has been crushed into a cube You have 15 minutes to move your cube

Vehicle Agnostic: when you don't claim to know whether such a thing as vehicles exist or not. As distinct from Pheroism/Apheroism which are whether or not you *believe* at least one vehicle exists, and Vehicle Gnosticism which is the belief that vehicles contain a spark of the divine within themselves, which has fallen from the immaterial world into their chassis (which were not made directly by the divine, but by a subordinate creator, humans. [This is the predominant religious tradition in the Cars Cinematic Universe])

Oh god. I considered writing in with to pitch myself as a guest on an episode about these “glass toasters.” I worked on a project with these a couple years ago, and Jesus fuck do they suck. I wrote a report (pending publication) about them, and shouted out your podcast in my acknowledgments. Without getting into specifics, I wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for WTYP. You three got me through that project. Ultimately, I decided I rather like working with the org I do, so I didn’t reach out to talk. But I look forward to hearing a guest who knows less than I do butcher specifics that would get me fired if I talked about them.

Sounds like the whole point of autonomous vehicles is to move small amounts of people around, and to move large amounts of money around

I cackled at Devon's "It's a Technical" comment when they were discussing the moon rover.

The Ultimate Urban Circulator was what they called my Aunt in the 80s.

Guys what if we ran a bunch of larger electric busses on a sort of electrified rail to save on battery cost that would be crazy i think

In todays episode of "just build a damn train" we have...

I googled "who's the guy who ties women to traintracks" and it is Snidely Whiplash. Also his wikipedia page reads "Whiplash is obsessed with tying young women to railroad tracks; he has no reason to do so and realizes no gain, profit or advantage, but is simply compelled to do it."

I like that we have Devon's commentary static sound back! I like having the reminder to look up from time to time

Americans reinvented Eastern European minibuses that privately supplemented underfunded municipal transport. From 20+ years ago. But this time with obscene amount of public funding. And failing at it. Bravo.

In case nobody else has answered regarding the Chained To A Railway trope, from TV Tropes: "This familiar scenario first appeared in the 1867 short story "Captain Tom's Fright," although a more rudimentary form of it was seen on stage in 1863 in the play The Engineer. However, it really entered the meme pool as a result of its inclusion in the 1867 play Under the Gaslight, by Augustin Daly. (Interestingly, in Gaslight the victim is a male, not a fair maiden - and is in fact rescued by the fair maiden.) By 1868, it reportedly could be found in five different London plays all running at the same time, and remained a theatre staple for decades. Variations of this trope was used in the films The Train Wreckers (1905) and Buster in Nodland (1912) before appearing in its most iconic form in the 1913 Keystone Komedy film Barney Oldfield's Race For A Life, where it was already Played for Laughs" "As bizarre (and horrible) as it may seem, this trope is Truth in Television. At least six people in the United States were killed between 1874 and 1910 as a result of being tied to railroad tracks. Of course, it was never as common in real life as in fiction, no doubt because there are more efficient ways of murdering people." For more information: www.straightdope.com/21343402/did-anyone-really-ever-get-tied-to-railroad-tracks

The best part of hypothetical technologies is that you can say they'll do anything. They aren't burdened by things like "reality" and "experience".

Congratulations on episode 1156🎉

4:45 Petitioning Devon to publish their Joker Laugh Rozmix

Can we all just take a moment to appreciate how easy it is to type WTYP on a QWERTY keyboard?

"Agent Orange but orange-er" Call that Agent Morange

WOW i missed 1000 episodes happy episode 1156 i need to catch up now

My father moved to canada from the ussr in 1984. He said that the oj simpson case was the moment he learned if you're rich you can do what ever you want.

I somehow found myself in a conversation at work yesterday with a chud about Palestine. He said so confidently "well I remember 9-11" to justify what was happening and while I was unpacking that the supervisor came in to ask what we were talking about. I said Palestine, to which he responded "oh, that's like the Taliban right?"

I hadn't realized I was in a coma for 10 years. Glad to see the world is still here

"And now, Perry the Platypus, behold! The Ultimate Urban Circulator! Or 'Yute-ussy' as I hear the youth are calling it for short."

Yo dev please keep the Devon hit marker it's how I know I need to stop and rewind to see what you said. A true generational talent in looking good in any outfit like you deserves to be heard

1:57:50 easily the best part of the ep so far is finding out, after all the desperate shifting to get this stupid plan to even work, that the vans still only go 10 miles per hour. Hearing November cackling over it is like the cherry on top omg

Love the guest. He is much like a train. He is singularly focused on one path, no tangents, in an efficient manner. If not for the delays of our hosts, this could have been a 90-minute episode.

In Toronto the transit union has been fighting against single operator subways for years. Recently there was a fire on a train and it showed why two people are necessary in emergencies. Only one person means that part of the train can be cut off from the operator in an emergency. A problem when evacuating passengers.

As a computer scientist I find the current trend of trying to make software do more and more safety critical tasks incredibly concerning. While to a computer scientist not all software is a black box, to a layman all software is a black box. Since computer scientist are not typically the ones operating these systems it means more and more very important tasks are being handled by something that the average operator has very little to no ability to properly monitor.

This thing looks adorable, like a vending machine tipped over and tried to make a break for it.

The earliest I've been and I still missed the title typo. In another universe, there truly were 1156 episodes.

I appreciate that Devon's sound has been reduced to conserve sonic energy for the ultimate takeover.

So I'm looking at this box-thingy and thinking it might be ok for urban centers? ...But trolleys, run off an overhead catenary, have been doing the same thing. This for over 100 years, with no batteries.

Reminds me of Seattle's recent new street car from nowhere to nowhere in particular. The South Lake Union Transit has not been popular. Apparently no one wanted to be seen riding the SLUT...

I was in college during the OJ trial. We brought a TV into the lobby of the engineering building to watch the verdict. It was a very surreal moment, especially since I went to an HBCU.

I've ridden those automated rubber tired trains in Taipei. They were my favorite as a child, as you can sit at the very front and pretend to be the driver. The view of the city you get and the silence and ride quality are great! They are above-ground only and don't connect with the rest of the metro system, and are much slower (although luckily the stations are extremely close together).

"Faith-based transportation system" with all the other shit happening, we're really speedrunning to the 40k timeline.

The first JDAM bus looks like the spiritual successor to the Fiat Multipla

There's a 20+ year-old website under University of Washington's edu domain that compiles all PRT tech and has tables comparing their aspects

1:51:45 Is this an 'autonomous' marshrutka now? Also, the thing with wheelchair lifts (as a rural transit driver who uses them daily) is that they break. Regularly. They are Rube Goldberg machines made up of hydraulic parts and too many microswitches

this is gonna put Jacksonville on the map with Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook

Love that cities will bend over backwards to not build trains but sink (probably) way more money on this nonsense. Like they acknowledge that they need public transportation but refuse to actually fix the problem (with trains lol)

It can't be a trainwreck. It's not a train, it's a pod.

The OJ case set an influential precedent. The court established its not possible for murderers to own ill fitting items of clothing

JTA is a shitshow. They “accidentally” demoed the building that had all of the historical photos, blueprints, books, and plans showing how efficient a street car system would’ve been. That’s a whole other story. They had a full dump truck full of maps, charts, financial records, uniforms, coin changers etc… They hauled it all to the north side landfill in 1980 because “it became a threat to the skyway.” Here’s a bit of history about our former streetcar system They left the rails in much of town as Motor Transit Co (GM, Standard Oil, Phillips 66, Firestone, Greyhound) had zero interest in them. Some were dug out during WWII scrap drives. I remember a maze of switch work @ Dellwood and Rosselle (under the freeway today) Aberdeen’s rails were pulled leaving the telling brick patches. From Willow Branch south to Ortega and the Army Base it was mostly private right of way except in Fairfax and Grand Av. Track in the street had little value as it was all streetcar girder rail and the market for that was dead by 1937 until the 1990’s. Private RofW mostly used light weight 60-80 pound common T rail. The system closed in mid December 1936.

It's literally an electric battery bus that went was reverse stretch limousined😂

As someone who happens to be blind, I’m always grateful for Justin‘s consideration of access issues and not just the economics or productivity/efficiency of these things. At the end of the day, they need to be made for a wide range of human activities. Plenty of disabled people can get around, they just don’t live in a built environment that allows it to happen easily. Same as people who want to be able to walk or cycle, and they don’t live in a built environment that allows them access.

Only 2 minutes in, and I can't stop seeing the face on that "circulator" 🤣

the *"I ALREADY DO IT THROUGH AN APP"* moment was the angriest I've ever heard Justin before

156 episodes and the Activate Windows watermark is still the backbone of this podcast. ✊🏻

Using bus pods as "Urban Circulators" is just silly. Anyone thinking stuff like these can be used where normal subway, tram or bus lines are used, don't know a thing about cities. I do think they can be used in certain suburban/rural settings. Mainly as a feeder on side roads to normal bus stops etc. But the automation technology isn't here yet for even that use. I live in Trondheim, Norway and vehicles like this has been used in both Trondheim and Oslo. ("self-driving" but with a driver who can take over in emergencies. At a speed faster than walking but slower than my bicycle.) I never did ride it, but I did overtake it with my bicycle. The trials ended in 2019/2020. In Trondheim they were used from a car park and minor train station to the main hospital, a distance of 1-2km, crossing a bus only bridge (well bus/taxi/bicycles/pedestrians). Technically in traffic but pretty close to a controlled environment. Most adults will easily just walk (it's a very nice walk), but there some patients etc can be mobile enough to take the train (or drive?), but for who this walk is a little long. This route is now instead served as part of a much longer, major bus route. (Plus a lot of regional bus routes now has some departures extended to the hospital.) In Oslo it was similarly used to cover a couple of peninsulas with low density suburban housing, to bring people the nearest high frequency bus stop. There they had major problems with parked cars etc in this setting. And also because because there's a very popular beaches on the tip of the peninsulas, the tiny vehicles would be overfilled on nice days in the summer. As not quite a coincidence the exact same summer weekends near the beach is also peak illegal parking. The pods don't cope well with uneven demand, and the experiment was discontinued. I believe in both cities the trials concluded that new trials should be attempted when the technology is more mature. (At the positive side, the trials were budgeted as short term trials with leased vehicles and didn't use/(waste?) more money than they were supposed to.)

8:52 the glove was leather and caked with dried blood, and he was wearing a latex glove during the courtroom demonstration. A new pair in the same size fit him fine. But yeah, those pigs were racist AF. The system didn't fail, the cops did.

@1:57:50 The way November straight-up bursted out laughing is the episode's highlight.

I'm convinced that at some point, someone is gonna come up with "autonomous" vehicles that are just remote controlled by some poor schmucks overseas like that "checkout-less" whole foods thing or whatever, and that's the closest we're ever gonna get to functional driverless vehicles

1156?? damn i gotta catch up

This podcast teaches socially responsible belligerence and that is invaluable

Wow! Can't wait to go back and listen to the 1,000 episodes that I somehow missed in the last two weeks. :3

The incredible irony that Jacksonville got Simpsons Monorail episoded, to get rid of their monorail. This will never not be hilarious.

The rant about agile vs waterfall felt great. Yay Liam

A way to only have 4 minutes for Saw between trains could be to drop a suspended structure on to the tracks. That would give all the setup time needed. A passing train at zero seconds pops a release and dumps it, essentially "start the clock", setting the stage and waking them up from being roofied, all in one.

I watched The Naked Gun 2 1/2 yesterday and when OJ appeared on the screen I stood up and clapped.

Devon, please release the Jokermode RBG laugh RU-vid Poop as a separate video. Pleeeease.

An autonomous pod describing autonomous pods. The future is Chrome and you need more RAM.

I had the opportunity to move to Jacksonville a few years ago. I am so glad I avoided that fate, I probably would have died immediately.

WTYP is my favorite autonomous podcast.

thank you for lowering the sound by 5db its a perfect sound now. nobody else will ever complain. if they do they'll have to get through me first

My favorite part about OJ's role in the Naked Gun movies was that it consisted almost entirely of him getting his ass kicked years before anyone knew the nation wanted to see that happen on the big screen.

They were testing at the University of Rennes when I was there circa 2018, on a 800m or so back and forth route. There was a gay payed to stay in it all day and take control with an XBox controller, which happened about once every round trip. It'd stop everytime a car got to close or was parked wrong. You could also distance them by walking. Edit: just saw the typo, I'm leaving it

I'm really grateful that for as dumb as Portland, Oregon is in a lot of ways it was smart enough not to get sucked into autonomous light rail. We've got surface level trains (except that one station under the West Hills that's our only subway station and also the deepest subway station in the US lol) so each one has an engineer. It's a lot cheaper to put down rail on a street than build those raised tracks so more miles could be built for the same amount of money. And if AI ever gets to the point where a street-level train can run on autopilot then the trains can be retrofitted, and not a moment before hand (probably won't happen but whatever). We've had almost 40 years of development of the MAX, 60 miles of track, 97 stations, 1.26 million weekly riders (down from 1.83M in early 2020 😬) and that's just the trains. The bus system is even more extensive. Anyway, invest in public transit, use technologies that are proven, ignore dummies who try to lure you into unproven tech.

"Ultimate News" needs additional explosions in the music drop!

1:13:54 I remember one time when one of the suits asked me to make one of those damn evaluation matrices, and I flipped my shit. Those business school graduate failsons just LOVE their made-up numbers.

To demystify autonomous vs automated - autonomous involves learning and feedback loops, automated means programmed for finite scenarios.

The car with the weird wrap-around window is/was the Nissan Cube

“Wouldn’t it be much better if our transit solution got stuck in traffic”

When I was a wee one, and on a trip through the CA central valley, I got to see a FART bus. No joke. FART.

i was just barely sentient enough to actually be watching the white bronco chase on tv. it was also the first time i heard a newscaster censor the N-word when reading that one memo from the cop. such wonderful childhood memories

1:11:23 Yay, November said the thing ("Make it more rigid.") and SHE WAS RIGHT.

Snidely Whiplash from Dudly Doright. That's where the meme of the woman tied to the tracks comes from.

*chicago house music voice* Its time for the Circulator Its time for the Circulator Its time for the Circulator Its time for the Circulator

Damn I missed a THOUSAND episodes?!

No news about funny angular Tesla imminent acceleration doom? This truly is 1000 episodes ahead!

my dream is to one day be the put-upon guest struggling to speak around the trio doing bits 😆

What if bus, but stupider and worse?

I look forward to the other 1000 episodes

I know I'm not alone, these episodes about impending structural issues are good. The best WTYP episodes have Rocz reading off a date after the dryest explanation of a machine/vehicle/structure's history.

Also, San Jose wants to try this for their airport connection to Diridon Station. The fact that the Government falls for scams is just ridiculous.

Celebrating 50 years of WTYP!

In the realm of things that absolutely do not need to be connected to the Internet, "Road" is pretty much at the top I think.

“He, a-him.” The Italian New Yorker came out of Justin there. 😂

"Devon will just edit out the first part of the podcast" UHHHH NO THEY WON'T LOL (thanks Devon >v0!!!) 💛

I love how the ULTIMATE HUMAN MOVER is still just uncle Joey Rigatoni and his van.

23:30 😂😂That photo of Nixon next to the BART train!! 😂😂 He looks completely hammered! I mean like the guy behind him is holding him up while he tries to stand on the obvious 'X' on the floor; as everyone else is getting on the train!! 🍸🥴🍸⚠🚆🤮

I think Roz is forgetting that a car was launched into space from Spain in 1973

Snidely Whiplash tied girls to tracks but I'm pretty sure it was a longstanding trope by then, but he's the one that looks nearly the same as Dick Dastardly

Oh I've stepped in quicksand a number of times because I like to hike but it's hot so I tend to end up hiking down the creek instead of down the trail. There usually isn't any quicksand at all but if the water is moving fast enough through the right types of soil, you get quicksand. Around here, it seems to be the most prevalent at the edges where there's an interface between seemingly dry land and the water, especially for a few days after it has rained. Usually, when I step in quicksand, it doesn't go that deep, but there were a couple of times when it went pretty damn deep. The first time I stepped in some pretty deep quicksand, I was just trying to step over a tree that had fallen across the stream due to the rain a couple of days before and I ended up sinking to my mid-thighs but I pulled myself out by grabbing plants on the bank of the creek. The worst time I stepped in quicksand was when I was on my way out of the creek area down the same way I had gone in earlier in the day. Well, while I had been up the creek during the day, the city had come in and done a bunch of flood control shit right under this small waterfall where you can easily come in and out of the creek area to the regular trail so I was intending to go out that way. Since I'm a big, fat, slow, stoner, I was walking out at like 9 pm. I saw that they had moved the dirt but it looked for all the world like solid ground on the other side of the waterfall to me so I just stepped out onto it only to find myself instantly up to my waist in quicksand! To make matters worse, I hike with all my backpacking gear on because I'm trying to build up endurance for actual backpacking so I had at least a solid 50 lbs (~22 kg) on my back. I still did basically the same thing and hauled myself out but this time using the rocks they had cemented together to make the waterfall as part of their flood control system. The thing is that it was starting to get a little cold now that my entire pants were wet and I didn't want to get into my mom's car with wet pants and knew they wouldn't dry before I could hike out so I went in the trees on the side of the creek, dug a Dakota fire pit, lit a fire, took my pants off, and dried them over the fire for a solid half hour and then I bushwacked my way to the trail, which was harder, but at least there was no quicksand. In any case, the Safety Third segment made me think of my experiences with quicksand because you tend to find it at the edges of creeks like that and sometimes ground that just looks damp will instantly sink you into the mud if you go there. I had that happen to me earlier today on my hike down the creek but I only sunk a small amount so it really only deserved a simple four letter word before moving on.

Can't wait for the 1000 lost episodes on Patreon.

If I ever submit a Safety Third, I'm going to be like "hold to run with train topic" and then name Gareth specifically.

OJ also didn't take his meds so his hand swelled

In suburban Toronto we had one of those Olli things running a 6km circular. One month into service it attempted suicide by driving into a tree at 20km/h, critically injuring the attendant. It never went back into service.