h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So, Gosho? You've mentioned using your new smart phone to track you buses to see if they'll be at your stop on time or late. How does that work (in basic function)? I'm listening to the local NPR station and they're talking about new bus system. They mentioned that Houston's Metro uses a TXT based system to check arrival times at each stop.

http://www.wmata.com/rider_tools/NextBus_info.cfm

That seems outdated before they even roll it out.

the guy is annoying, but I guess you can't do much about that.

The woman - I'd have tapped her on the shoulder, or pulled her hair, and told her to stop it.

I would have stood up and moved to another seat, if available.

Of course, I'm a guy, not a gal.

It wouldn't make a difference to me - but then I'm a grey haired elderly woman. Basically I an do what I like on public transport. We're the equivalent of the ladies knitting at the base of the guillottine

An older white bloke yanking on the hair of a younger black woman would not go down at all well.

BG, the Cap Metro real time info is something you can get either from the website or the cap metro app. On the front page of the website http://www.capmetro.org/ there's a form you can use (about halfway down the left hand side). If you know the ID of the stop (say, 1356) you can type it in on the Next Departure tab. A list of suggestions will drop down as you type and if you click on 'Stop ID 1356' it'll go straight to the next departures for that stop.

I guess it makes sense for Metro to use SMS texting. This makes it available to folks with "dumb" phones and I did notice that they also have a mobile web page. It just seemed odd to hear them promote a system that sounds a bit dated and complicated.

Do you ever get days when, despite your confirmed and unswerving atheism, you can't help feeling that there is a god, and that god really, really hates you, because that many things couldn't happen all at once and still be coincidence?

I won't regale you with the details of my bus trip home from Dallas because it'd take as long to describe what happened as for what actually happened, er, to happen. Let's just say that, firstly...

Time I should have got home, had everything gone to plan: about 5.10pm
Time I actually got home: 7.46pm

Secondly...

Drivers around here, who are already radio rental, go off-the-scale, industrial strength, weapons grade radio rental whenever there's a hint of rain.

And thirdly...

Next time I'm getting the damn train.

What train?

http://www.houstonpress.com/news/on-the-line-will-the-houston-dallas-bullet-train-revolutionize-texas-or-divide-it-forever-7679365

N.B. I hadn't read that article before linking to it, but now I have and it's about what I expected. There still are a few passenger rail lines across Texas, but they're slow and spotty. High speed rail is desperately needed in Texas, and the nation at large. But it's so strongly opposed that I doubt we'll see more than one or two isolated lines in our lifetimes.

Oh... and this article's reference to the proposed corridor between Houston and Dallas as passing through "Central Texas" is a very loose description to say the least. The I45 highway corridor, which this line will parallel, is unarguably East Texas. It is at best the West side of East Texas. Central Texas is still at least an hour's drive from Grimes and Montgomery Counties as mentioned in the article. This leads me to believe Texas Central definitely has plans to complete the "triangle" between Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio.

why is there so much resistance to railways in Texas?

The train that leaves Austin at around 9.30 each morning and arrives back around 6.00 (from memory) each evening; the train that is far more comfortable than a bus; the train that only shares its road with a handful of freight trains; the train that only costs about $20 more (round trip) than the bus.

I really miss travelling on trains.

Of course, the thing about the train is that it takes five and a half hours from Austin to Dallas, and six and a half hours for the return journey. A journey of only 182 miles (as the crow flies) which the bus (when it's not held up by idiots) does in three and a half hours.

We don't need a high speed train in Texas, we just need a normal speed one.

The main resistance in the case of the Houston/Dallas high speed train is coming from property owners between the two cities. They'll lose property and have their property split with a barrier, and hear the noise of the trains without benefitting from it as there will not be any stops in the rural areas. Later, they may add traditional train tracks and stops alnog the same corridor, but that is long away and uncertain.

I just don't understand why they can't build the tracks along exiating rights of way, either along I45, US75 and other train routes. There must be a good reason, I just don't know what it is.

I think what we often forget is that the railways we take for granted in the UK (and no doubt in other European countries too) had to be built somewhere, but things were very different at the time. Ordinary people (and their homes) could be far more easily swept out of the way in the name of progress than can happen nowadays (or in the US).

The same goes for the east end docks we so wistfully look back on (and which were, ironically, also swept out of the way in the name of progress, as were the communities that existed because of them).

And possibly canals.

How to take up four seats on a bus.

Sit in the aisle seat; put your bag on the window seat; lean forward and drape one arm over each of the two seats in front.

Seriously

The kids went back to school yesterday. Fifteen of them getting on at one stop, all buying kids' one-day passes with crumpled dollar bills. More than five minutes for them all to get on. I missed my connection, and expect to never make it again until they break up for Christmas.

Well, that was sooner than expected. They've picked a "corridor" for the Houston/Dallas HSR. But the devil is in the details, or in this case, the "precise alignment".

http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/blog/2015/08/exclusive-feds-finalize-bullet-train-s-corridor.html

I suppose it was inevitable they wouldn't make a detour via Austin, given how far out of the way that would be. I guess we'll have to wait for the San Antonio to Dallas line before I can take a train to Dallas that does the journey at an average speed of more than 40mph.

Maybe you'll be able to catch a flying pig to do that stretch before a train comes along.