Tag: transportation

Ultra Large Container Vessels

The Ultra Large Container Vessels (ULCV) will take over shipping routes between Asia and Europe, as smaller containerships are no longer seen as competitive when it comes to unit costs. The Triple-E container ship is 2x as long as the Titanic, 5x longer than an Airbus 380. Each contains as much steel as 8 Eiffel Towers and has a capacity of 18K TEU. Those containers would fill more than 30 trains, each 1.6 km long and stacked 2 containers high. Inside those containers, you could fit 36K cars or 863M tins of baked beans.

2021-06-17: The largest container Vessel is 400m long with a capacity of 24K TEU.

Uber fight is 100 years old

who knew “disruption” wasn’t invented in sv????

The mid-1910s saw an explosion of people driving unlicensed cabs. They were called jitneys (slang for a nickel, which was also what they typically cost) and cities across the US scrambled to regulate them.

Today, cities around the world are struggling to regulate modern-day jitney coordination companies—ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft. But unlike the ragtag cabs of a century ago, the modern day jitney company is well-financed, and plans on throwing plenty of money around to make sure it’s not regulated out of existence.

Maritime trade risks

an estimated 1000 sailors die per year (2 large ships / week) to bring us global trade.

It looked almost like a landfill in some areas. Containers had split like dropped melons, spewing cargo: remote-control boats, golf clubs, frozen lobster tails, bicycles, 1000s of plastic air fresheners. A few days into the salvage operation, the stink of rotting seafood got so foul that Austin swiped an air freshener, cracked it open, and rubbed the fragrance cartridge on his mustache.

Robot enforcers


In Kinshasa, traffic congestion is a serious problem. Few drivers bother to obey signs, lights, or even human traffic directors. It was a snarled free-for-all. Until the robots showed up. Isaie Therese designed and built 2 2.5m, classic Robbie the Robot-style automatons to take over traffic-directing duties, and the plan is working.

this will be interesting to watch as the novelty wears off and the robot overlord has to smash a few things for “encouragement”