4 ms·

I think high speed rail is a bad investment for most of America. Instead, we should focus on accelerating the development of self-driving car fast lanes. Autono

by namlem 10y ago

I think high speed rail is a bad investment for most of America. Instead, we should focus on accelerating the development of self-driving car fast lanes. Autonomous cars could easily form convoys that go 120 mph or more, drastically cutting down commute times while costing only a tiny fraction of what high speed rail costs. Yes, it would be significantly slower than high speed rail, but it would still be a lot faster than currently available transportation.

akshayn 10y ago
This would encourage sprawl-y and inefficient land use.
- baq 10y ago
  the problem is that's already the case and the reason why HSR won't work that well in the first place. imagine though that there's a fleet of self-driving cars ready to take you to HSR stops. best of both worlds?
  - akshayn 10y ago
    Fair enough. Ultimately, HSR has far higher bandwidth than self-driving cars - density could be achieved either by efficient land use or by a feeder network (local transit or self-driving cars). Presenting self-driving cars and HSR as mutually exclusive is a false dichotomy.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
LanceH 10y ago
I imagine light rail that with smart cars that can combine/merge/release so that they can run on a web rather than a mere lines.
astrange 10y ago
It would only be twice as fast as current transportation, and if it succeeds it'll still get stuck in traffic, because a 5 person car with 1 person in it is a total waste of space.
npunt 10y ago
Exactly. HSR was a great idea for the second half of the 20th century in relatively dense countries like Japan, France, and Germany that already had good local rail infrastructure. It fills a gap for travel between dense population areas 100-500km(?) away, where road travel is too slow and air has too much overhead with last mile. The benefit was that train stations could be built directly in population centers and connected to local rail, cutting down on last mile travel times of air. The US is more spread out, tilting in favor of air, and local rail is less abundant + our interstate highway system is more mature + gas is much cheaper, tilting in favor of cars. The value of rail is squeezed from both sides. Now comes along a great technology that can bootstrap off existing infrastructure (road), offers the same benefit of time not wasted focusing on the road, whose cost burden is shouldered by those that use it (purchasing cars), and can incrementally be improved over time (higher speeds, drafting, separate lanes, etc). That further puts the squeeze on travel between shorter distances, which can make the promised SF-LA trip in <6 hours (instead of 4* via air) that can be reduced to 4 over time with faster speeds. Driverless tech doesn't even need to work in places outside the controlled environment of a highway for these benefits to appear. Politicians could make it happen a few years sooner by making it more appealing (much as they did with hybrid carpool stickers) by creating a special driverless car lane on highways, separated by cement barriers. Although I think that's not as elegant as just bootstrapping on carpool lanes, it is possible now and would definitely spur car companies to upgrade their driverless systems to whatever requirements would be needed for that environment. Certain parts of the US (east coast corridor) seem to me to be the only places in the US that could actually benefit from the HSR equation, but they have big right-of-way issues and there's a lot of political coordination that needs to happen. Amtrak's been trying for decades. * Air calculation: 1.5h pre-flight, 1.5h flight, 1h post-flight
- Decade 10y ago
  > HSR was a great idea for the second half of the 20th century in relatively dense countries… The US is more spread out, tilting in favor of air… The US shouldn’t be so spread out. These rail projects are for the long term. In the long term, we should be looking at increasingly dense urbanization, some day decreasing ability to use debt financing to build and maintain infrastructure, and the end of large-scale use of petroleum fuel. We need to make less stuff work for more people. I don’t see why I would want to be in an isolated cocoon for hours with no room to stand and no bathroom when there is a viable alternative. However, it’s still possible that the California HSR project is a terrible plan. It’s not that fast for how much it costs, and everybody’s saying it’s going to be even more expensive than the leaders are letting on. We really should be making airports less difficult to use. The terrorists won 9/11. Driverless cars are a cool tech demo, with the possibility of decreasing the awful death toll of driving private automobiles and the tragic misuse of life in traffic, but it’s not a great long-distance option. The average car trip, with no carpoolers, takes too much space per capita. The normal commute should not involve lots of driving.
ocschwar 10y ago
Self driving car lanes still means rubber wheels on a blacktop car lane. Blacktop does not last. The maintenance costs for our road system far outstrip our commitment to maintain them even today. HSR, though expensive to install, has an advantage in longevity.
- namlem 10y ago
  We're paying for it anyway though. It's not like we would get rid of our highways just because we add HSR.
  - ocschwar 10y ago
    You're paying for SOME of it. Some highways area already being (in effect) written off by neglect. And the more load we take off the highways, for example, by diverting people onto tracks, the less you have to pay for highway upkeep

by namlem 10y ago

akshayn 10y ago

This would encourage sprawl-y and inefficient land use.

baq 10y ago
the problem is that's already the case and the reason why HSR won't work that well in the first place. imagine though that there's a fleet of self-driving cars ready to take you to HSR stops. best of both worlds?
- akshayn 10y ago
  Fair enough. Ultimately, HSR has far higher bandwidth than self-driving cars - density could be achieved either by efficient land use or by a feeder network (local transit or self-driving cars). Presenting self-driving cars and HSR as mutually exclusive is a false dichotomy.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

LanceH 10y ago

I imagine light rail that with smart cars that can combine/merge/release so that they can run on a web rather than a mere lines.

astrange 10y ago

It would only be twice as fast as current transportation, and if it succeeds it'll still get stuck in traffic, because a 5 person car with 1 person in it is a total waste of space.

npunt 10y ago

Exactly. HSR was a great idea for the second half of the 20th century in relatively dense countries like Japan, France, and Germany that already had good local rail infrastructure. It fills a gap for travel between dense population areas 100-500km(?) away, where road travel is too slow and air has too much overhead with last mile. The benefit was that train stations could be built directly in population centers and connected to local rail, cutting down on last mile travel times of air. The US is more spread out, tilting in favor of air, and local rail is less abundant + our interstate highway system is more mature + gas is much cheaper, tilting in favor of cars. The value of rail is squeezed from both sides. Now comes along a great technology that can bootstrap off existing infrastructure (road), offers the same benefit of time not wasted focusing on the road, whose cost burden is shouldered by those that use it (purchasing cars), and can incrementally be improved over time (higher speeds, drafting, separate lanes, etc). That further puts the squeeze on travel between shorter distances, which can make the promised SF-LA trip in <6 hours (instead of 4* via air) that can be reduced to 4 over time with faster speeds. Driverless tech doesn't even need to work in places outside the controlled environment of a highway for these benefits to appear. Politicians could make it happen a few years sooner by making it more appealing (much as they did with hybrid carpool stickers) by creating a special driverless car lane on highways, separated by cement barriers. Although I think that's not as elegant as just bootstrapping on carpool lanes, it is possible now and would definitely spur car companies to upgrade their driverless systems to whatever requirements would be needed for that environment. Certain parts of the US (east coast corridor) seem to me to be the only places in the US that could actually benefit from the HSR equation, but they have big right-of-way issues and there's a lot of political coordination that needs to happen. Amtrak's been trying for decades. * Air calculation: 1.5h pre-flight, 1.5h flight, 1h post-flight

Decade 10y ago
> HSR was a great idea for the second half of the 20th century in relatively dense countries… The US is more spread out, tilting in favor of air… The US shouldn’t be so spread out. These rail projects are for the long term. In the long term, we should be looking at increasingly dense urbanization, some day decreasing ability to use debt financing to build and maintain infrastructure, and the end of large-scale use of petroleum fuel. We need to make less stuff work for more people. I don’t see why I would want to be in an isolated cocoon for hours with no room to stand and no bathroom when there is a viable alternative. However, it’s still possible that the California HSR project is a terrible plan. It’s not that fast for how much it costs, and everybody’s saying it’s going to be even more expensive than the leaders are letting on. We really should be making airports less difficult to use. The terrorists won 9/11. Driverless cars are a cool tech demo, with the possibility of decreasing the awful death toll of driving private automobiles and the tragic misuse of life in traffic, but it’s not a great long-distance option. The average car trip, with no carpoolers, takes too much space per capita. The normal commute should not involve lots of driving.

ocschwar 10y ago

Self driving car lanes still means rubber wheels on a blacktop car lane. Blacktop does not last. The maintenance costs for our road system far outstrip our commitment to maintain them even today. HSR, though expensive to install, has an advantage in longevity.

namlem 10y ago
We're paying for it anyway though. It's not like we would get rid of our highways just because we add HSR.
- ocschwar 10y ago
  You're paying for SOME of it. Some highways area already being (in effect) written off by neglect. And the more load we take off the highways, for example, by diverting people onto tracks, the less you have to pay for highway upkeep