Japan's Melody Roads Play Music as You Drive

Krishna Dagli writes "The road works by using grooves, which are cut at very specific intervals in the surface. Just as traveling over small speed bumps or road markings can emit a rumbling tone throughout a vehicle, the melody road uses the spaces between to create different notes."

As in

An oversized viynal? But what if you dont like the song?

Re:As in

Should be an interesting way to gauge your own speed. Besides using an odometer.

A lot of people find the speedometer easier to use than the odometer for determining their speed...

Gravel road highway

Boy: Daddy, why are we driving on gravel road?
Dad: I don't know, Watusabi. It was tar sealed road yesterday.

(500 metres later)

Boy: What's that sign say, Daddy?
Dad (slowing down and reading sign): "This melody road contains copyrighted music. Under the DMCA, and Japan's copyright treaty obligations, this road has been dug up to remove the infringing notes"

Re:As in

Personally, I like to use an outside observer and general relativity to monitor my speed. I simply have someone watch me drive, and if it seems as if time in my car has slowed down, and the car and I have increased in mass, they tell me and I slow down.

Re:As in

Oh, the road to my woman's house
only plays the blues.

Re:As in

Watch out if you switch to a diesel. "I was only doing 4500rpm officer" might not cut it.

If you're anywhere near 4500 rpm in top gear for any length of time and you're not on the Autobahn or a racetrack, you deserve to be arrested. A car whose engine does 2000 rpm in top gear at 70 mph would be hauling along at 158 mph at 4500 rpm.

Re:As in

But what if you dont like the song?

Change lanes.

"No officer, I wasn't driving dangerously, I was in shuffle mode".

Re:As in

But what if you dont like the song?

Fast forward?

Not songs

What is the motive for playing songs? Maybe the Japanese, with their radically different sense of aesthetics, will play songs. But Americans will have advertising:

rummmble...rumbble..Today's...screee...special...rummble...at..Wal-Mart...rummble...voice...suppression...rummble...tires!

insults

I've thought of using the grooves along the road to make a menacing voice for years. 'Get your ass back on the road stupid!' or some such thing. I think it's more American than playing music.

Re:As in

Sir, do you realize you were traveling at over 300 bpm? I'm going to have to ticket you for driving at prestissimo speeds.

Whimsy

I have to say that after just getting back from Japan that they do have a certain affection for the whimsy even on large scale publicly funded projects that is just awesome. One of the things I saw was a huge platform with a glass top and water on top that served nothing more than a spaceship like cover for a courtyard down below and an attraction. Pics here [utah.edu].

I would have loved to have traveled on these roads while I was there...

You mean like...

you mean like:

Space Station [howstuffworks.com]
Space Shuttle [answers.com]

or

Las Vegas [photo.net]

or

Lincoln Financial Field [seatdata.com]

and... yeah, it is cool that the good old USA can muster up a few of these bad boys:

F-22 [defenseindustrydaily.com]

So I guess we're just totally broke?

Re:You mean like...

Not yet. But your kids will be trying to sneak to Canada, I can guarantee you that

More people have snuck into the United States in the last thirty years than live in Canada, I can guarantee you that!

Re:You mean like...

In the end, population wins

Oh yes? Then I hope you have already sent your regards to your new Chinese and Indian overlords.

Mod parent DOWN

Dunno how this got modded to insightful but the idea that there will ever be even 400,000 Americans is ludicrous. The population growth rate of the US is not growing, it is SHRINKING. Same with the rest of the world. The parent seems to be living back in the 70's with his "dire predictions" of overpopulation.

Numbers are still growing; but recently--it is impossible to know exactly when--an inflection point seems to have been reached. The rate of population increase began to slow. In more and more countries, women started having fewer children than the number required to keep populations stable. Four out of nine people already live in countries in which the fertility rate has dipped below the replacement rate. Last year the United Nations said it thought the world's average fertility would fall below replacement by 2025. Demographers expect the global population to peak at around 10 billion (it is now 6.5 billion) by mid-century.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9545933 [economist.com]

Re:Whimsy

Yes, it's amazing the things you can afford when you're not paying for another war every few years.

Not to support the war (I don't), but Japan can't afford it - it has by far the largest public debt in the World [bloomberg.com] at $6.8 trillion. That's 25% more than the US's, but with less than half the population, and the population shrinking and rapidly aging. Personal debt is only a couple percent less than the US's, on average.

Japan is just addicted to public spending, they build stupid shit everywhere, especially in the countryside. The seashore of Japan is almost entirely surrounded by huge concrete jumping jacks (waves are dangerous y'know), every po-dunk village has a huge cultural performance building, every ravine or river has a modern bridge built across it, right next to the old bridge that was perfectly serviceable. Perhaps it's the political system on croney-ism, perhaps it's that votes in the country-side are worth 2 or 3 times that of a vote in Tokyo, and the only jobs in the countryside are public works and heavily-subsidized farming.

Re:Whimsy

That platform is in Nagoya. It's called the "Area 21". The glass "pool" on the top collects rain water to nourish the grass areas around the area.

The area beneath is used for a lot of purposes, from concerts to street soccer championships.

Nagoya (and Japan) has a huge number of projects with the sole purpose of making the city life more fun and less stressful. Like the lamp posts playing smooth jazz in the evenings, or the carousel attached to a building close to Area 21.

There are virtually no street vandalism, so they can put a lot of statues and art on the streets, and it stays untouched and unharmed.

Of course it's not heaven on earth, there are problems, but in the lat 2 years it became my most favorite city.

I lived in many places, Midwest, west coast, east coast, europe, singapore, new zealand, but so far, the city life in Japan is the best I have ever experienced.

Re:Tire wear? And more importantly, road wear?

Forget tire wear. What about the uneven coefficient of friction? That can get you killed. Predictability of your vehicle's reaction in all situations -- especial in emergencies -- is important.

Re:Tire wear? And more importantly, road wear?

I'd love to know the secret that makes them think that they'll be able to keep these strips around for more than a year or so.

Maybe they're not built by the lowest bidder?

I remember an interview with the chief engineer of a road construction company. He claimed that if the state was willing to pay about twice as much, he could build them a road which could last 100 years. But if he did that he'd be underbid for every contract and would go out of business. So the state ends up with roads which need to be resurfaced after 5 years and rebuilt after 15-25. Essentially the longevity is enough to span one politician's career in that office. After that it'll be someone else's problem, so why spend extra money on it?

Re:Tire wear? And more importantly, road wear?

Out in California you get a chance to see and feel the various levels of road quality that very nicely prove your point. Up in the Sierras, I-80 is concrete due to the winter conditions and chains. Wonderful to drive on any time of year. Down in Sacramento, and around the Bay Area, the freeways are often asphalt (asphalt concrete, not mastic asphalt) over dirt, baby. Great if a little slippery when it's brand new, just adequate when it's mature and really bad when it's still five years out from being replaced. At the local street level all the money from the boom years has been spent so it s gravel-over-tar every five years. Cars go through windshields at an alarming rate, but hey it was the cheapest bid. Interestingly, the decreasing level of quality is also mirrored in the reduced level of traction, so not only are better roads nicer to drive on, they're safer, too.

I'm afraid this is what happens when there just isn't enough cash to go around. The amount the States get from the Federal taxes in various forms is reduced and so local infrastructure expenditures drop. However, it's not like the Federal government is spending more than it takes in on something that benefits only a select few and has quietly hidden the true costs here and there. There is a war going on; how can we complain about the state of our roads when on the other side of the world there are roads actually getting blown up daily? We have to rebuild those first, along with the electrical distribution, water supplies, schools and hospitals...the list goes on and we haven't even started. Once we have rebuilt Iraq in our image, then and only then can we talk about fixing things here with a clean conscience.

Tires?

It's my understanding that the rougher the road surface you drive on, the faster it wears out your tires. Not just a small amount either, I seem to recall reading that it could shorten the life span of your tires by 50%.

I don't know about anyone else, but I think tires are expensive and hate spending money on them. I would not enjoy having them wear out quickly so that I can listen to the same damned song every day on my way to work... The radio already does that for me, and it doesn't ruin my tires.

-hps

Deterrence

While it looks like these were done just for fun, one idea I have heard is to place them only in the passing lane, at regular intervals. This would discorage people from staying in that lane any longer than they need to, else be forced to listen to "It's a Small World" at increasingly annoying pitch the faster they drive :)

Reverse

If you drive up that road in reverse it says, "Paul is dead."

-Peter

Re:Reverse

If you drive in reverse, someone's going to be dead pretty quicky.

Re:RIAA

Troll Road?

InnerWeb

Old Japanese Dup?

From over 2 years ago on slashdot.jp: http://slashdot.jp/article.pl?sid=05/02/02/0340256 [slashdot.jp] (pseudo-english translation [altavista.com])

Speech synthesis?

That is awesome. I wonder if you could manipulate the harmonic quality of the hum, and take it as far as synthesized speech. "welcome" or "yokoso" as you enter town. That would be jaw-droppingly awesome.

Top Gear

Saw this on Top Gear (on Discovery Channel) a couple of years back. Not sure if it was Japan, I think it was a European country. I think they used bumps though instead, so that at certain sustained speeds it would play a nice melody but if you went too fast it would sound horrible and scarring.

Youtube link

See & hear it in action: Video here [youtube.com]

Disney tested this out years ago...

Years ago the Walt Disney World was looking for additional magical things to add to the roads for their upcoming Millennium Celebration. On a desolate piece of road on property speed warning indicators were tested (the kind you encounter on the side of the road or before a toll road) that played a song. That song was "Zip A Dee Do Dah", and for years it stayed there. There were problems with it. First, was the fact in order for it to work, you would have to be driving a VERY specific speed, not faster, not slower, or it would seem like a random assortment of rumbles. And when someone would go the wrong speed, they'd think there was something wrong (veering of the road, toll soon, etc), and would try to break, get the car back on the road, etc, that it became dangerous. Since it was dangerous, no one would drive the correct speed, and the fact they'd need to tear up the roads just to install it, Disney mothballed the idea.

Sounds & smells on Montreal Metro

In Montreal a generation of Metro subway cars electric motors [wikipedia.org] were tuned to perfect fifths, coincidentally the first three notes of Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man". The tones were even part of a TV ad campaign [youtube.com] when the line was opened.

Technical Explanation PDF [stcum.qc.ca] (in French.)

However the Montreal Metro offers another treat to the senses: Smell.

The train brakes are two part, electromagnetic over ~10km/h and birch wood injected with peanut oil slower. Thus when a train comes to a hard stop the station smells faintly of burnt popcorn. If you have to smell your public transit this is about as good as it gets!