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by dchichkov 2443 days ago
It'd be nice to have emergency vehicles. But, don't build hanging parkways with good views, for the privileged, please.

We've been there before - https://www.accessmagazine.org/spring-2003/putting-pleasure-... - with Robert Moses parkways, "bridges instead of tunnels" and the likes. And we've now learned - it's a mistake to put mass transportation system into the air.

(Love flying, private pilot, airplanes, sailplanes, paragliders, had been flying half of my life. Yes, really cute bird. Yes, shiny. It's a mistake to put mass transportation system into the air. It is even worse to put a private road there.)

2 comments

Couldn't the parking be organized by just putting roboticized "air garages" to the top of sky scrapers? Carriers operate a fleet of aircraft in a very constrained space. With purely VTOL craft there is no need for that to be horizontal, it all could be put to vertical.

So you would have

1. Landing bay (helicopter pad or an enclosed bay).For enclosed bays those could be stacked on top of one another.

2. Robotic parking

3. Air control system to facilitate traffic and parking.

I'm not saying this is a necessarily a good idea. But I would love to know why it would not work.

I think you'll find building sufficient parking on top of skyscrapers will run into cost and weight issues.

Cost, because much parking is currently on street or in dedicated low cost parking structures.

Weight... For obvious reasons.

I don't think those are valid arguments. Just because current urban design is built around a specific transport mode does not mean it could not be rebuilt to facilitate another.

Not remodeling. Redesigning. It's very straightforward to move and redesign urban centers. Lot of countries do it all the time. The proble.s are not related to human nature or engineering, but to purely finances.

Parkway is not parking. Wiki: The term has also been applied to scenic highways and to limited-access roads more generally. Many parkways originally intended for scenic, recreational driving have evolved into major urban and commuter routes.

The mistake that would be great to avoid is "private parkways in the sky" in the urban areas.

Privileged? Would you call shuttle buses employed by tech companies as privileged too? What about using these planes instead of shuttles to mass transport people?