Segway: Moving traffic from streets to sidewalks

Other Dean Kamen's Inventions
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Sure, it may be a lot more convenient but Segway is almost 2 times as wide as the person riding it, with today’s sidewalks, just barely 2 people can pass by each other on 1 sidewalk without rubbing shoulders. But now I think Segway will only make traveling in the city more troublesome. Think about gettin stuck in traffic in the middle of downtown…you move about a foot every 5 min, but atleast in car you can sit back and relax, turn on the radio, talk to friends riding with you, etc… commuting could take up to an hour just to get out of the city, now think that you would have to stand for that entire time you’re stuck in “traffic.” It would be hell!! When saying “cities will be built around Segway” I think that is just ridiculous, to rebuild entire cities to suit lazy people, or so that walking will be made easier? How hard is it to walk, we’ve been doing it all our lives, why stop now?

Also, its a couple feet tall and weighs about 60-80 lbs. When you get to the place you’re going to, where are you gunna store it? Snow conditions, rain, rocky terrain (4X4?), etc…? I’m not bashing Segway or anything, I think its pretty cool but I just think its not as great as everyone makes it out to be, maybe I’m the only one who see’s it as creating more problems than solving them. But hey! How can I make that big of a difference, I’m just one person. (haha)

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I got the impression that moving traffic to the sidewalks wasn’t the point…

I think the point was that you take an urban center… a downtown street that is jammed packed with car traffic and people traffic… no places to park and pedesrtians having to wait to cross streets etc… and you take out all the cars… i.e. make the streets big giant sidewalks…

It’s trying to do what subway and trolley systems but for shortened distances… (you wouldn’t travel all across boston in it…)

We don’t necessarily see it here (maybe LA or other really large cities), but there are major pollution problems from tons of traffic in the stop-and-go cities…

It would be like saying you can’t drive in Newbury street, Copley, down by the Prudential, or Downtown Boston… but you can use your no-emissions vechiles to travel…

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Hymnson - think of it this way.

If Dean Kamen got on Good Morning America yesterday morning, and rather than revealing the Segway, revealed grand plans and sketches of a Utopian city - everyone would have thought him nuts.

Nothing has ever really come from master plans for perfect cities. Ever.

But, instead, Dean offers us the Segway HT, an emissionless, small, efficient transport device. It has the benefit of being faster than a walking pedestrian, but safer than a moving vehicle. As such, no special, expensive, complicated infrastructure is necessary (The big dig, anyone?)

So, what happens is people begin to use the Segway HT on their own - and then, as time passes, there’s a much greater demand for urban planners to work the technology into their plans. As time progresses, when downtown, urban areas are reworked, we’ll see them move entirely away from the automobile as a viable method of transportation.

So, like Colleen said, those streets are made into parks and plazas, with widened areas for pedestrian, and Segway use.

It’s a grass roots campaign to change the world. Dean realized that nobody would take him seriously if he set out to design the automobile out of cities. But, by developing the technology that can allow that to happen, he’s setting into motion the events that’ll make the general public demand the automobile out of cities.

We can ignore one man and call him crazy, but we can’t ignore an entire culture :slight_smile:

Clever, if you really think about it.