In message , at 09:20:00 on
Sun, 19 Mar 2006, Stevie D remarked:
If that were true, most of my bus journeys would be free too...

The difference being that your bus has a driver who can collect fares
as you board - driverless pods won't.

But they may have a slot into which you have insert a token of some
kind, or a gate on the entry too the pod-station. I suspect they will
also have staff on site, because otherwise it will be too easy to cause
the whole system to grind to a halt if someone spends ages getting their
luggage and kids, or a wheelchair, on board (I assume these things will
be fully accessible?)

Most of your bus journeys aren't made by people clutching Euro or Dollar
bills, and nothing resembling 80p in sterling.

€1 = £0.7 ... $1 = £0.6 ... close enough!

What they might need is something the ticket machine will accept -
having said that I bought a 3 Swiss Franc train ticket from a machine
with Amex last month, which came in at £1.36
--
Roland Perry

On Thu, 16 Mar 2006, A Woodcraft wrote:

Tom Anderson writes:

More importantly, they're presumably cleared for higher levels of jerk
and deceleration than trains - after all, the limits on train
maneuvering are regulatory ones related to passenger comfort and
safety, rather than engineering ones, right? If they have
forward-facing all-seater accomodation, such a difference would make
sense.

If a vehicle is going to deccelerate sharply, I'd rather be in a backwards
facing seat than a forwards one!

A very good point! I was thinking about longitudinal vs transverse seats,
really - i find it easier to stay sat where i am if i'm facing parallel to
the direction of travel (in either direction) than perpendicular to it -
and expressed myself poorly.

In fact, don't the seats in the end carriages on a Pendolino face
backwards (when leading) for this reason?

Why only the end carriages? Is the deceleration harsher there? I would
have thought that a train was rigid enough that the deceleration was more
or less equal throughout, but given that this is a Pendo we're talking
about, nothing would surprise me ...

tom

--
Why do we do it? - Exactly!

Tom Anderson writes:

On Thu, 16 Mar 2006, A Woodcraft wrote:
In fact, don't the seats in the end carriages on a Pendolino face
backwards (when leading) for this reason?

Why only the end carriages? Is the deceleration harsher there? I would
have thought that a train was rigid enough that the deceleration was
more or less equal throughout, but given that this is a Pendo we're
talking about, nothing would surprise me ...

The only reason that would make sense would be crashworthiness, for
similar reasons as passengers not being allowed to travel (facing in any
direction) in the front 3rd of the coach.

On the other hand, it might just be the best way they found to cram
enough seats into a coach where 1/3rd (or more in the case of 1st
class because of the Kitchen) is out of bounds.

On Thu, 16 Mar 2006 23:37:04 +0000, Tony Polson
wrote:

I made two journeys in RAF troop carrying aircraft - to and from the
Falkland Islands. One was a converted BAC VC-10, the other a
converted Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. All the seats faced backwards.

There was a time when BCAL had some BAC 1-11 with all-backward facing
seats, which they mainly used for trooping contracts to Germany. They
occasionally got used on regular services as well, like
Gatwick-Manchester.

The Tridents used by BEA had about half the seats facing rearwards,
those at the front half of the aircraft, with the rear half facing
forwards.
--
Terry Harper
Website Coordinator, The Omnibus Society
http://www.omnibussoc.org

Terry Harper wrote:

On Thu, 16 Mar 2006 23:37:04 +0000, Tony Polson
wrote:

I made two journeys in RAF troop carrying aircraft - to and from the
Falkland Islands. One was a converted BAC VC-10, the other a
converted Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. All the seats faced backwards.

There was a time when BCAL had some BAC 1-11 with all-backward facing
seats, which they mainly used for trooping contracts to Germany. They
occasionally got used on regular services as well, like
Gatwick-Manchester.

The Tridents used by BEA had about half the seats facing rearwards,
those at the front half of the aircraft, with the rear half facing
forwards.


Interesting, Terry, thanks.

On Tue, 21 Mar 2006, Terry Harper wrote:

There was a time when BCAL had some BAC 1-11 with all-backward
facing seats, which they mainly used for trooping contracts to
Germany. They occasionally got used on regular services as well,
like Gatwick-Manchester.

I'm sure I caught one of those out of Glasgow, way back.

Can't remember where I was going to. If it wasn't Gatwick, then it
would have been Geneva, I guess.

But some of the BA Shuttles to LHR also had a row of rear-facing
seats, so I wasn't taken completely by surprise. Kind of odd feeling
at take-off.

DERWENT BAA to build ULTra PRT in Heathrow
Thu, 16 Mar 2006 15:19:10 +0000 (UTC), "Peter Masson"



"Andrew Robert Breen" wrote

And this is going to work /how/ for child-in-front?

I'm alweays slightly apprehensiver if I'm riding in the front of a DLR
train - what do I do if I see an obstruction ahead, and the Train Captain is
checking tickets a good way back?

Run.

PRAR
--
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