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So, I’ve dealt with the eyestrain thing quite a bit, since most of what I do is on the computer. Some people swear by something called the 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes, look at least 20 feet away for 20 seconds. I myself like to take long, 10min+ breaks where I simply enjoy the scenery, though this is harder during work hours. Also, try not to hold the screen to close, and see about different color schemes that will help you relax your eyes.

The problem is that none of this is really tested. It’s all just a hope that some of it will work.

I was thinking of teleportation more as a form of mental ability (or possibly an implant? Yay for cyborgs), not as much like the startreky idea of teleporters, so that would be a no to 2. But that implies an inherent autonomy with the ability which could lead to problems without proper regulation. Such as two people trying to teleport to the same spot at once. Also, how to make sure it is only used for personal use, and not for business use (since that might be a competition barrier)

And as for 1, ideally it would require no more energy than is suppliable from the human body. Having to have an attached battery pack would be weird. I guess making sure you’re well-fed before you teleport would be a good idea.

What would happen to the mainlines after they’re obsolete?

When it comes down to it, though, really I just wish I could teleport, and it probably would be too much of a hassle if anyone else could as well…

1) what are the power input levels required?

2) does teleportation require a paired set of teleporters, one at each end?

My usual assumptions are that power inputs are very large and scale slower-than-linear to distance, and that you need an entrance-exit pairing relationship. This works well for long-distance travel, (imagine the equivalent of airports or major railroad stations with dedicated booths for major city-pair destinations, like choose two of NY/LA/Chicago/SF/London/Paris/Frankfurt/Tokyo/Hong Kong) but not so much for regular everyday travel, which would be much cheaper to take conventional transportation.

Another option is, if the technology is based on stable wormholes, revolutionise the freight-railroad industry by building tracks through permanent wormholes, allowing through-freight to roll directly from yards on the Pacific Coast to yards in the Midwest and East. That would obsolete the billions being invested in double- or triple-tracking long sections of transcontinental mainline…

Aperture Science / We do what we must because we can…

@ UltraNurd – Aye, there’s the rub, isn’t it? But it has to be done eventually – the system will break down eventually – in DC, it wouldn’t even make much difference – shared tracks, half hour delays, are pretty common. Why does it have to be huge sections? I would think most logically you would start with the tracks and work it station-by-station, so the trains would have to bottleneck at one point, but not for terribly long. And as long as you’re not changing track width, it should still run. Cars, if they need to be updated, can be done off track.

Also, if the T was updated first, it might ease congestion on the roadways, making work easier. There are other ways to get people off the road as well, such as charging them for congestion. (Singapore, Stockholm, and London do this already, if I am correct).

It’s a little bit easier in Midwest cities, where there is more space, more of a grid, and therefore more redundancy (even the biggest projects in Minneapolis are generally done by shutting down half the freeway, redoing one side, then switching and shutting down the other half). This is not really an option in a place like Boston, where most of the major routes are spokes (no built-in redundancy), side streets are too narrow/indirect/oneway to take most of the capacity, and the roads are already overloaded.

Assuming the money problem gets taken care of, how do you handle the detour stage?

A great example is permeable asphalt. On paper, it’s a great idea. Asphalt that lets water pass through it. In practice, it’s very difficult to use. It requires very regular maintenance to clear debris from the surface and the pores. And it’s more expensive – which means that when it comes time for repairs, the grant that (probably) covered installation is no longer providing funding, and so the cheapest solution, regular asphalt, is used. Now you have spots that aren’t permeable. And as the years go by, there are more and more of them, and soon the surface isn’t very permeable at all. And the drainage system was not designed to carry all of the water, so it overflows, or breaks, which leads to even more costly repairs and erosion and things like that. Oh, and the permeable asphalt really isn’t heavy-duty enough for roads, only for parking lots. Which is why they’ll only be installed with grants, because they’re going on private property.

But I think the infrastructure problem is slowly gaining awareness. It’s more dire than many people realize, but we aren’t completely doomed. Yet. I can only hope that we figure it out and start moving in the right direction before there are several significant catastrophes that serve as wake-up calls.