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Can you imagine driving from Scotland to Alaska? It s a 12,000 mile trip and the Russians want to make it possible by building a super highway and railway across Asia. The idea is to link Asia and Europe, but America is just s short hop across the Bering Strait. And, heck, once you are in Alaska, you can jaunt down to the southern tip of Argentine just across the sea from Antarctica. It's a wild idea, but it's being talked about seriously.

http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-t ... -us-2015-3

Hi Yogi
Doesn't mean it will go anywhere. Which is often the case of new ideas.
Heck, way back in the late '60s to '70s when I was working in Highways & Planning, there were some awesome ideas floating about the board rooms.

One of the reasons the Interstate Highway System was designed with such a wide median had more to do with an intended purpose not including driving lane expansion.

They were preparing for a technology to transport goods from place to place using something like a monorail system carrying large cargo boxes. The original intent was for it to be totally automated, so no drivers would be required. But they also expected a transitional period where truck drivers would become monorail drivers, still doing their same job per se. It would alleviate most large OTR trucks from the Interstate Highways, since they would be in the unused area of the Interstates.
Cost of building and maintaining a monorail track was a minor consideration. The creation of terminals is what would eat up the funds, plus the worry of attacks on the system.

All I'm saying is, it was on the original plans, but never came to fruition.
And now, because many of those areas are in use, and a monorail system not considered in the expansion projects, it would be next to impossible to include a monorail on the current Interstate System.

A few cities have added Rapid Transit Rail Systems, in some cases using Interstate Median areas, but doing so is not to prevalent.
There were a lot of things talked about, on how driving would be in our future. Many of those concepts were possible in the '70s so we expected them by the '90s, but things have actually gone backwards instead of forward.
I doubt if I will live long enough to see the type of transportation systems we thought would be here by the late '80s.

TTUL
Gary

Well, you have the Oresund bridge connecting Sweden with Norway, and next year, the longest tunnel in the world's being opened in the Swiss Alps - but that's just a mere 35 miles long (approx). To think of a 12,000 mile trip from Scotland to Alaska seems incredible, but yes, I think it's possible. I'm not saying it'd be sensible, for several reasons, but feasible. It'd certainly create work for thousands of people though, and for a good length of time.

The future is now as far as driving automobiles is concerned. Ford Motor Company and Google (who else?) are currently developing driverless cars. The big issue there is not the technology but legal questions that need to be resolved regarding liability. I might be more interested in a 12,000 mile cross continent jaunt if I didn't have to do all the driving.

The Barris Driving System was functional way back in the late 1960's but dropped for some reason.

At the time it was tauted as accident free driving is now possible. Until one of their test cars got hit in the side.
It didn't anticipate other drivers fast enough. But today's computerized systems are a billion times faster.

Driverless cars've already been tested over here in London, Milton Keynes and Coventry. They're definitely going to happen here, to allow the passengers (once the drivers) to "make phone calls and use the internet as they're being driven around". I can't see the fun in that. I'd be more on edge in case the technology packed in!

The way computer systems do go bad in cars so easily. I sure hope they have at least four redundant backup systems.
I also wonder if they will have EMF protection?

I can imagine one good size solar flare causing millions of accidents, and/or an EMF attack doing the same thing.

Have to run now!

TTUL
Gary

What's an EMF attack Gary?

Just a pulse of electrical energy which fries everything electronic.

Oh - thank you, but apart from a solar flare, how else might an EMF be created? Lightning?

They can be created easily enough electronically.
I'm actually surprised the police don't use them to stop a fleeing vehicle.
It doesn't take much of an electrical field to destroy a computer chip.

Probably be easier and faster just to access their on-board computer via radio and shut down their engine, hi hi...

I don't know for certain, but I don't doubt we have satellites in space which could create a pinpoint EMF anywhere on the planet if need be. Probably be able to turn off your camera if you tried to take a picture of something they didn't want you to take a picture of too. Almost everything is computer controlled these days, from your wristwatch and coffee pot, to your appliances and cars. And of course TVs, Radios, and Computers are obvious.

I prefer the old-fashioned appliances and gadgets, and I certainly wouldn't want to be in a driverless car. I'd be constantly on the look out for prospective accidents, so I'd find journeys tense. I know you have to be on the look out when you're driving yourself anyway, but there's just something about a car with no human driver which I don't like the sound of.

I've been in a few driverless transportation devices. But where they were and how they worked were in a controlled environment, so no threat of being crashed into, hi hi... Most were at amusement parks or tours of places of interest on their grounds. Like the little trains which run from station to station, or the boat ride through the tunnel of love, hi hi...
At EPCOT, the seats in the Land Exhibit take you on a tour of the facility after the movie without you getting up from your seat. Sorta cool, the seats follow hidden tracks underneath the surface.

I often wonder if these driverless cars can steer themselves out of a skid?
Do they know if they are hydroplaning?
Can they avoid pot holes or broken bottles in the street?
Do they know if they top the hill and see a backup a mile ahead to take the next exit so they don't end up sitting for hours?

Even with a brand new map, my GPS may be giving directions 500 feet in error at certain times at locations which have been there for 50 years or longer, and locations it got right in the past. In places where we may have three or four parallel roads, such as the highway with an outer road following the highway, and an old road just beyond it, my GPS seems to assume I'm on the highway, not the outer road after it makes a Recalculating adjustment.
I do realize the GPS is by latitude and longitude and the computer matches this to the built-in map it is intended to follow. This happens most often when I take a brand new exit it does not know exists over to an outer road. It thinks I'm still on the highway, unless the outer road moves a bit further from the highway with a slight bend or something.

I have to get one dig in or I won't be happy. My son bought me the GPS in 2006 with a 2006 map. Many intersections added before 2004 or exits changed before 2004 were not shown on the 2006 map. So in 2009 I bought a brand new map for the GPS. It still did not show any road changes made after 2004.
So I basically paid 150 bucks for a new 2009 map which was not updated since my existing 2006 map was created.
After a few e-mail exchanges with the company, they said the map providers would not be upgrading my area until the 2012 map is released. They did NOT offer me a free 2012 upgrade either. I opted for new map in 2014 and they do not make the version my GPS requires. This is to force you to buy a new GPS I guess. Bought my wife a new one, but I don't like how the new ones work, so still use my old one. I did find out there is a Hack to make the new maps work in the older GPS's, but you need a larger memory card, and mine won't accept an SD card over 1 gig, which it already has.
I guess it is Obsolete Now, but I still like how it works compared to the new ones.

We've bought our son a sat nav that has all maps for the UK and Ireland pre-installed. He won't be using it abroad, but it does everything expected of it. You just plonk in a post code or address and the directions come up, audibly and visibly. It was a medium-priced thing, costing just under $300 in your money. It warns of speed traps, road hold-ups due to heavy traffic or accidents, and re-routes you round such obstacles. You can also find where to park your vehicle easily in towns. It covers everything that a first-time driver might want. I don't know whether it's expandable to cover any new addresses, but a post code'd take you very close to where you need to go.

Mine is supposed to have the same features. However, there is no station in our area which transmits the information required by the GPS to give the traffic conditions, warnings, etc.

Knoxville is bigger than St. Louis because of all the Annexations, land wise.
But services wise, it has none to speak of. As I said, East Podunk, TN, hi hi...
I live WITHIN the City Limits and we have No Storm Sewers, No Natural Gas, and not much of anything else.
I could understand not having these things if I were in a Rural County, but NOT within the biggest city in our county.
The biggest city in East Tennessee is a hundred years behind the times!
And at double the taxation of where we had every service and amenity.

The Dukes of Hazard, a TV show, was not fiction, it really is like that down here in East Podunk, hi hi...

TTUL
Gary

That'd be interesting to see Gary, but then, I suppose we're a bit behind times where I am as well. Just up the road, you can't use your mobile for love nor money - no signal, or the rocky hills get in the way or something. No natural gas piped in either, although that's now being looked at, but the difference is, we ARE out in the countryside.

East Podunk .... is that a joking euphemism, or IS that the name of the place??

east Podunk...

GPS... despite having one, I made it from Bordeaux to my cottage in finland.... but the GPS almost didn't. what a PITA!

just north of paris I thought it prudent to start looking for a motel, so I look it up. a B&B 31 mins away. perfect!

...or not. at one point i'm told to keep driving straight and might have considered it, had it not been the several cows and a big fence I was looking at in front of me.

2½ hrs later I found a wee guesthouse in the middle of absolutely nowhere and was thoroughly and utterly lost. I had to buy a map to find my way out there.

LOL!! Funnily enough, I was reading about GPS/sat navs recently, and although most of them profess to get you from A to B or as near as damn it, they suggested that folk should always carry a map as a back up! LOL! Says a lot, doesn't it?

Actually, I like looking at maps. I've got a lovely leather-bound road atlas, which also maps the major towns and cities in greater detail. I used to sit for hours looking at it, finding obscure places ... which I promtly forgot after I'd found them! : )

I live inside the City Limits of Knoxville, Tennessee.

From Wikipedia
In American English, Podunk, podunk, or Podunk Hollow denotes or describes an insignificant, out-of-the-way, or fictitious town,[1] and is often used in the upper case as a placeholder name in a context of dismissing significance or importance.

In the context I meant it, it is more like Hicksville, far LOWER or Worse than being Rural. Like a Shanty Town.

In Fact: Knoxville is known as "That Scruffy Little City North of the Smoky Mountains!" Despite the city itself being quite large, it is so far behind the times in public services, it has become the butt end for millions of jokes.
Travelers usually don't mention stopping in Knoxville when writing about their travels. If they do, it is only after they listed every place else, then add, oh we visited Knoxville too, but say nothing else, hi hi...

The 1904 Worlds Fair in St. Louis is known and talked about worldwide, to this day.
About the only people who KNOW the 1982 Worlds Fair was held in Knoxville, are those who live here, hi hi...
Although they claim it was one of the most popular Worlds Fairs with 11 million visitors, when gauged against population density it was only a drop in the bucket. 232 million people lived in the US in 1982, so we are talking about less than 5% of the country's population visiting the 1982 Worlds Fair.

The 1904 fair in St. Louis was the largest World's Fair in history with 12 major exhibition buildings sprawling over 1,272 acres, or 2 square miles and with nearly 20 million people — or about a quarter of the country's population — in attendance between April 30 to Dec. 1, 1904. Only 82 million people lived in the US in 1904, and did not have the convenient high speed transportation available in 1982. Yet 24.3% of the population visited the St. Louis World's Fair. Yes it was that amazing and worth seeing! Had to be to draw such massive crowds.

Most of the buildings from the 1904 Fair still stand and are in daily use. Only one from the 1982 Fair still stands.
Gotta brag about back home a little don't I, hi hi...

TTUL
Gary

LOL - thanks for the explanation.

Well, it doesn't sound as insignificant as some might believe. It has its own piece of history, with some of it still standing, so I think that's something to be quite proud of!