On Apr 23, 12:23 pm, Tom Anderson wrote:
This has been semi-seriously proposed in relation to cycle lanes - since
the main limit on bike speed is air drag, if you move the air at 10 mph in
the direction of travel (involving putting the cycle lane in a tube), you
give everyone a 10 mph speed boost.

Bear in mind though , if you cycle at the same speed as the moving air
you'll have no wind to cool you. And if you're in an enclosed tunnel
you'd probably get pretty hot & sweaty pretty quickly! Besides which ,
having a forced air tunnel rather defeats the purpose of zero
emissions cycling since something will have to power the fan.

B2003

On Wed, 23 Apr 2008, Boltar wrote:

On Apr 23, 12:23 pm, Tom Anderson wrote:

This has been semi-seriously proposed in relation to cycle lanes -
since the main limit on bike speed is air drag, if you move the air at
10 mph in the direction of travel (involving putting the cycle lane in
a tube), you give everyone a 10 mph speed boost.

Bear in mind though , if you cycle at the same speed as the moving air
you'll have no wind to cool you.

The idea is that you go faster than the air - you pedal at 10 mph, but
because there's 10 mph of wind, you do 20 mph.

And if you're in an enclosed tunnel you'd probably get pretty hot &
sweaty pretty quickly!

Yes, this idea does rather depend on fresh air being blown into the
tunnel every so often, rather than having one stream from end to end!

Besides which , having a forced air tunnel rather defeats the purpose of
zero emissions cycling since something will have to power the fan.

Yes. It might still be more energy-efficient than a car, but it starts to
sound unlikely to beat mass transit.

Still fun, though!

tom

--
YOU CANT TAKE AWAY HATGUYS HAT. THEN HE IS JUST GUY -- The_Toad

On Wed, 23 Apr 2008, Mizter T wrote:


On 23 Apr, 12:23, Tom Anderson wrote:

On Wed, 23 Apr 2008, Mizter T wrote:

On 23 Apr, 09:02, Boltar wrote:

(snip)

I'm not surprised. Could you imagine the piston effect that would have?
People waiting on platforms would be blown down the tunnel

How about we just ditch the trains and install massive fans to create
public wind tunnel transportation - people could just jump in and out
of the airflow.

This has been semi-seriously proposed in relation to cycle lanes - since
the main limit on bike speed is air drag, if you move the air at 10 mph in
the direction of travel (involving putting the cycle lane in a tube), you
give everyone a 10 mph speed boost.

Ha, I haven't come across that idea before! It has to be said that
when the air is moving at 10mph against the direction of travel, or
indeed perpendicular to the direction of travel, cycling can be damn
hard work. Still, it's all good for you - a friend used that very same
philosophy when he came by a large number of knobbly off-road tyres
and used them for his on-road cycle commute - "it's just going to make
me harder"!

Incidentally, whilst we're on the topic of cycle innovations, have you
come across this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/te...00/7340963.stm

Yes, and i've seen a video of it, although this seems to have vanished
from the web. It's quite nifty, although i think the choice of light
colours is poor - it should follow cars, and be dim red when moving
forward, and bright red when braking, with amber turn signals on the arms.

The alternative would be to turn the tunnels into massive water flumes,
so we'd have something akin to a water park under central London. Now
that does sound like a good idea!

Ahem.

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk....owse_thread/th...

And that wasn't even the first time i suggested it, ISTR.

Even as I was typing I was thinking 'this is a very Tom Anderson thing
to say, I bet he's said it already'!

Though your suggestion above is for canals - I was thinking more along
the lines of passengers being issued with rubber rings and the water in
the tunnel being propelled along to give a rapids-like effect, perhaps
with a pool at each station so one could get out.

Fair enough, you were indeed suggesting a different system. It'll be
interesting to see how you deal with changes in altitude, but i imagine
it'll be extremely exciting.

Man it's a shame there aren't any water parks in London or the surrounds
these days!

There's a flume at Archway pool!

tom

--
YOU CANT TAKE AWAY HATGUYS HAT. THEN HE IS JUST GUY -- The_Toad