the sharing the roads one is pretty gay idea with the train over the top of the cars :/

The problem with the ETT is that at 6,500kph, you'd want to keep acceleration and deceleration to <1g. >1g for a long period of time for most people is going to make them feel horrible.
So it's going to take at the very minimum 3 minutes (and then some) to either accelerate or decelerate to that speed.

Tubular rail is cheap to build, but stupidly expensive to maintain and comes with high risk.
Imagine disengaging and reengaging a set of wheels every 30 meters and having that engagement to be so precise as to provide enough friction to further push the train, but not enough that you get a heavy thump at every one.
The wear caused by that engagement is significant, and over time, one or the other component will fail, or send it off-course to the next one. And while the first one may only be off by 5mm, the next one might be off by 10cm as a result of that. And a 10cm impact of a train at 240km/h isn't going to be a small bump.

Tubular rail is cheap to build, but stupidly expensive to maintain and comes with high risk.
Imagine disengaging and reengaging a set of wheels every 30 meters and having that engagement to be so precise as to provide enough friction to further push the train, but not enough that you get a heavy thump at every one.
The wear caused by that engagement is significant, and over time, one or the other component will fail, or send it off-course to the next one. And while the first one may only be off by 5mm, the next one might be off by 10cm as a result of that. And a 10cm impact of a train at 240km/h isn't going to be a small bump.

Way to talk about a concept like it's a mature and commonly understood technology.

It seems like the rings are going to have to be precise enough that the train rides smoothly or not at all. From the look of it, the train itself is a completely rigid structure with a length spanning 3 or 4 of the rings, it's not going to be able to ever get 5 or 10cm off course.

Just like with today's rail the rings would obviously need to be regularly maintained. I'm sure there are very cost effective sensors out there that you could install into each tower to detect movement or misalignment. Hell, depending how much you want to spend on fail safes, you could even have lasers shone along the tracks to ensure perfectly straight wheels through minor on-the-fly mechanical adjustments.

I likve the "Ditching the driver" idea. Basically anything where I'm in my car, but can have a nap is a winner for me.

Damn straight. If I can wake up and *be* at work - not have to commute to work - that's a massive win. That's 90 minutes of very valuable time out of my day.

That is, without living at Foxconn.

As an engineer most of those look pretty ridiculous.

Driverless probably has the most potential and significant amount of current research weight behind it.

to create a two lane choke point in bound on Gympie Rd at Kedron

got to say i am pretty disappointed with that outcome, i used to drive gympie every day and it was fine through there when it was 3 lanes.

i now drive down webster and come out onto gympie at that stafford road intersection missing the 2 lane bit.

it was far worse when the 2 lanes extended all the way back to service station during construction it used to back up back down to the cemetery or back to toyota, but it is still fucked that it goes to 2 lanes and i won't be going in bound there now. even when i want to use the tunnel i can still get on from stafford road at that intersection.

You're in a Johnny Cab!!

I went to an Engineers Australia breakfast this morning on the topic of 'smart cities'.

It was quite interesting. It was a very general discussion but a lot of points were raised about sustainability in particular and what it is that makes a city 'smart'. One of the clear conclusions was that there is something social that is very necessary - everyone has to be on the same page, basically.

One of the panelists was the director of the company behind Future Melbourne which is an editable wiki (might be closed now) which attempts to crowd source urban planning for the city of Melbourne in the future.

The question our table raised after discussion was, "What single change will the city of Melbourne make to be recognised globally as a smart city?"

Unfortunately they skipped over ours because there wasn't enough time :(

what it is that makes a city 'smart'

It's the choice of vehicle license plate tag-lines.