Talk:Public Transport in Turkestan

Judging from the bus picture, I guess they drive on the left? Or do busses discharge in the median? Elemtilas 16:09, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Oops! I forgot about that.

According to the "Driving Direction" map in Roads in Ill Bethisad, they drive on the right. And with both Russia and China driving on the right, it seems probable that they would, too. Of course, they might have decided to switch sides of the road when they first got independence in 1922, and been just bloodyminded enough to keep on with that throughout the Snorist period. It would give the Russians another way to divide the Russian Qazaqs from the Turkestani Qazaqs. Let me think about that... - Geoff 22:27, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I looked at that map some more. With all of their immediate neighbours driving on the right, it just seems too improbable that they'd pick the left as the side to drive on, and then choose to keep it that way. - Geoff 21:56, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

some of those driving directions are arbitrary based on *here*, so it's more QAA than QSS and I'm not averse to adjusting the map to fit *there* more closely to the "reality" we discover. BoArthur 22:59, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Noted. It would be a little on the bizarre side, though. Akin to Louisianne's insistence on metric and the French Republican calendar: not necessarily impossible, just bizarre. I may change my mind again and revert the buses to keep the left-driving orientation; I can't make up my mind. Part of me wants to go with "drives on the left" simply because it's the opposite of *here*. - Geoff 04:06, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Ready for some whimsy? If the buses drive down a specialized road section, you could have that left-hand drive, a holdover from prior periods, and the rest of Turkestani drivers go RHD? Just a thought... BoArthur 14:10, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Ha!  :) Now that would be odd. - Geoff 15:46, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

The MTA in Baltimore has some trackage that runs along the street. While the trains and road traffic each have their own distinct halves of the right-of-way to travel on, it does mean that passengers getting off of one direction of trolley step off into what is effectively the middle of the street. Though I think the area is wide enough and has a defensive barrier to prevent all but the most determined motorist from running anyone down.

The notion of Turkestan having a kind of legacy bus orientation that is different from all the other road traffic is quite neat -- but why did all the other road traffic change and not the busses? Elemtilas 22:42, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Chinese influence in the pre-Snorist period? Seems unlikely. Turkestan was never fully subservient to China the way it was to Russia in the 1948-1990 period.

The Snorist government changing things to bring it in line with Russia? This seems a more likely scenario. But they'd probably have changed everything, even the buses. - Geoff 04:08, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, trams seem a much more likely candidate for running counterflow. That I can see: they are often segregated from the other road traffic anyway; the counterflow orientation might grow up as a way to keep passengers from disembarking into a stream of traffic. - Geoff 04:08, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Just to chime in: it is possible to drive on a certain side of the street, but have the drivers placed on the "wrong" sides of the vehicles. In the Bahamas, one drives on the left b/c of the British colonial legacy, but all the cars are bought from the US, or are Japanese cars designed for the US, so drivers sit on the "curb" side instead of the "median" side of their cars. It's a unique situation (a colonial holdover just next to an enormous neighbor, with most laws coming from the one and most imports coming from the other), but it happens *here*. I don't think that really applies in Turkestan... but they could potentially drive on the left based on their own early laws, but have cars suited for right-hand driving because of all the Russian and Chinese imports. Just my 2 qapçıq. Benkarnell 22:18, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

And the situation would be further complicated by the fact that buses and trolleybuses need to disgorge their passengers onto the pedestrian walkways. So buses and trolleys, and probably marshrutas too, would have opposite-handed steering to all other vehicles. Who would have thought a simple question of road handedness would raise such a plethora of possibilities! - Geoff 02:18, 22 September 2009 (UTC)