4 ms·

You're asking the wrong question. There are over a hundred million Americans who commute long distances in their car. Mostly because they live/work in areas tha

by whack 10y ago

You're asking the wrong question. There are over a hundred million Americans who commute long distances in their car. Mostly because they live/work in areas that aren't dense enough to have good last-mile public transit, and they don't want to deal with transfers. You can lecture them all you want, but ultimately, these people aren't going to downgrade their lifestyle just to fit your ideas of engineering efficiency. The real question is: is this new solution more efficient than the current alternative of driving on the highway?

melling 10y ago
if you'd create 124mph transportation from 20-60 miles outside and through the city into the city, you wouldn't need to drive into the city. Most commuter trains average less than 50 so it's worth trying to drive. The average speed of the NYC subway is less than 35 mph. Light Rail? Low-speed maglev: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8SqDVUdMtY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8SqDVUdMtY
- rpedela 10y ago
  What about waiting time between transfers? You need a certain population density to have almost continuous trains. In Bay Area, you have to wait an hour between Caltrains unless it is rush hour. Caltrains could go 500mph, I would still drive to avoid the wait between trains.
  - floatingatoll 10y ago
    Demand for Caltrain is standing room only during rush hour, with 33% of traffic living in Palo Alto and working in SF. Caltrain has two primary constraints, neither population-linked: diesel trains accelerate badly, and freight track scheduling. Diesel trains are theoretically being swapped for electric, which will permit the trains to stop and start more efficiently. They predict one additional train during peak rush hour per day for this improvement, iirc. Freight traffic consumes a fixed amount of rail time, focused primarily on the "one hour between" segments of the schedule. Increasing frequency can only occur within existing scheduled route times, and cannot disrupt that freight traffic.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
jaredklewis 10y ago
If places aren't dense enough to support mass transit, they are certainly not dense enough to financially support car-trains tunnels. The depicted tunnels have the same costs as building subways, and I imagine similar maintenance costs. On the other hand, they can only serve a fraction of the riders a traditional subway can, which means the cost per rider is huge. Not to mention it still requires owning a car, so the traditional capital and insurance savings from mass transit don't apply. But to answer your question: maybe, but it doesn't matter. American cities are already bankrupting themselves in road maintenance. Adding a series of super car tunnels for an efficiency benefit? Out of the question.
- dnautics 10y ago
  This solves the last Mile problem
  - closeparen 10y ago
    So do big parking garages at suburban train stations.
  - jaredklewis 10y ago
    So does having train stations every few corners. The reason we don't have that now is cost, which is the same reason we won't have car-train tunnels. Obviously having a network of underground express tunnels for cars would be amazing. It's just economic nonsense when municipal governments are racking up huge debts in normal, above ground road maintenance. If it's not publically subsidized, drivers will be exposed to the true cost, which will be enormous. That high cost cannot be supported will prevent mass adoption.
- XorNot 10y ago
  Why does everyone lack imagination on this topic? Problem: if you drive to the subway, then take the subway, then you have two problems: where do you park your car, and how do you get to your destination once you get off the subway if it's not walking distance? Currently - people just drive. And the surface streets get progressively more crowded. We could drill more regular roadways - but it's notable that one reason we don't is controlling emissions and safety is difficult with human drivers. So, taking that back to the video: replace the subway with general purpose transport stations that provide a mix of subway-like transport of passengers, or entire vehicles, powered electrically. No vehicle emissions (huge problem with tunnels) and no endpoint transport issues - the subway becomes an extension of the road network, and if it's cheap enough to do, hopefully a very scalable one.
mirimir 10y ago
> Mostly because they live/work in areas that aren't dense enough to have good last-mile public transit, and they don't want to deal with transfers. Well, suburbanization was a totally dumbass move. Maybe instead of building tunnels, we could be rebuilding cities. We could be designing them to be attractive enough that people would want to live there.
- clarkmoody 10y ago
  You'd have to get the government to stop building roads... which of course is seems crazy to most people. But the consequences are all around us.
  - mirimir 10y ago
    Yeah. Going from rail to roads was another dumbass move.
- nickjarboe 10y ago
  When a city in America is destroyed by a nuclear explosion, Americans will re-learn why suburbia was so popular. Hopefully this won't happen for a long time and we will have a good stretch of city living. I love cities, but having millions of people concentrated enough to be killed by a single device; this is very different world than the one humans evolved in.
  - mirimir 10y ago
    Sure, maybe that was part of it. Interstates were, for sure. But then, the Soviets were building huge warheads, which could take out metro regions.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - obmelvin 10y ago
pnathan 10y ago
> : is this new solution more efficient than the current alternative of driving on the highway? No. Because - the exurbs and beyond simply don't have the density numbers to make this kind of investment pencil out without something like a 1000x class drop in costs, which would be wildly optimistic for physical equipment cost savings. Some suburbs might be able to handle it; Bellevue in the Puget Sound comes to mind immediately, but it's only a suburb in the context of Seattle; it'd be a major city in its own right in most of the US. Further, you're not even getting to the fun part of driving a car - the wind, the sights, the open road. You've got a dang tunnel there. I'd get mildly claustrophobic and probably nauseous: subways already do that to me a little bit. It's probably much more effective public policy at the federal level to focus on densifying American cities and reversing sprawl: this generates a nice sequence of network effects related to funding and infrastructural improvements. Among those would, eventually, be the demand for nice buses and nice trains with a regular security presence.
- dippyskoodlez 10y ago
  >Further, you're not even getting to the fun part of driving a car - the wind, the sights, the open road. You've got a dang tunnel there. I'd get mildly claustrophobic and probably nauseous: subways already do that to me a little bit. I sure do love the wind, the sights, the open road of stop and go traffic every day.
ensiferum 10y ago
Avoiding driving for ours in congestion would sound like an upgrade to me...

by whack 10y ago

melling 10y ago

if you'd create 124mph transportation from 20-60 miles outside and through the city into the city, you wouldn't need to drive into the city. Most commuter trains average less than 50 so it's worth trying to drive. The average speed of the NYC subway is less than 35 mph. Light Rail? Low-speed maglev: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8SqDVUdMtY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8SqDVUdMtY

rpedela 10y ago
What about waiting time between transfers? You need a certain population density to have almost continuous trains. In Bay Area, you have to wait an hour between Caltrains unless it is rush hour. Caltrains could go 500mph, I would still drive to avoid the wait between trains.
- floatingatoll 10y ago
  Demand for Caltrain is standing room only during rush hour, with 33% of traffic living in Palo Alto and working in SF. Caltrain has two primary constraints, neither population-linked: diesel trains accelerate badly, and freight track scheduling. Diesel trains are theoretically being swapped for electric, which will permit the trains to stop and start more efficiently. They predict one additional train during peak rush hour per day for this improvement, iirc. Freight traffic consumes a fixed amount of rail time, focused primarily on the "one hour between" segments of the schedule. Increasing frequency can only occur within existing scheduled route times, and cannot disrupt that freight traffic.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

jaredklewis 10y ago

If places aren't dense enough to support mass transit, they are certainly not dense enough to financially support car-trains tunnels. The depicted tunnels have the same costs as building subways, and I imagine similar maintenance costs. On the other hand, they can only serve a fraction of the riders a traditional subway can, which means the cost per rider is huge. Not to mention it still requires owning a car, so the traditional capital and insurance savings from mass transit don't apply. But to answer your question: maybe, but it doesn't matter. American cities are already bankrupting themselves in road maintenance. Adding a series of super car tunnels for an efficiency benefit? Out of the question.

dnautics 10y ago
This solves the last Mile problem
- closeparen 10y ago
  So do big parking garages at suburban train stations.
- jaredklewis 10y ago
  So does having train stations every few corners. The reason we don't have that now is cost, which is the same reason we won't have car-train tunnels. Obviously having a network of underground express tunnels for cars would be amazing. It's just economic nonsense when municipal governments are racking up huge debts in normal, above ground road maintenance. If it's not publically subsidized, drivers will be exposed to the true cost, which will be enormous. That high cost cannot be supported will prevent mass adoption.
XorNot 10y ago
Why does everyone lack imagination on this topic? Problem: if you drive to the subway, then take the subway, then you have two problems: where do you park your car, and how do you get to your destination once you get off the subway if it's not walking distance? Currently - people just drive. And the surface streets get progressively more crowded. We could drill more regular roadways - but it's notable that one reason we don't is controlling emissions and safety is difficult with human drivers. So, taking that back to the video: replace the subway with general purpose transport stations that provide a mix of subway-like transport of passengers, or entire vehicles, powered electrically. No vehicle emissions (huge problem with tunnels) and no endpoint transport issues - the subway becomes an extension of the road network, and if it's cheap enough to do, hopefully a very scalable one.

mirimir 10y ago

> Mostly because they live/work in areas that aren't dense enough to have good last-mile public transit, and they don't want to deal with transfers. Well, suburbanization was a totally dumbass move. Maybe instead of building tunnels, we could be rebuilding cities. We could be designing them to be attractive enough that people would want to live there.

clarkmoody 10y ago
You'd have to get the government to stop building roads... which of course is seems crazy to most people. But the consequences are all around us.
- mirimir 10y ago
  Yeah. Going from rail to roads was another dumbass move.
nickjarboe 10y ago
When a city in America is destroyed by a nuclear explosion, Americans will re-learn why suburbia was so popular. Hopefully this won't happen for a long time and we will have a good stretch of city living. I love cities, but having millions of people concentrated enough to be killed by a single device; this is very different world than the one humans evolved in.
- mirimir 10y ago
  Sure, maybe that was part of it. Interstates were, for sure. But then, the Soviets were building huge warheads, which could take out metro regions.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- obmelvin 10y ago

pnathan 10y ago

> : is this new solution more efficient than the current alternative of driving on the highway? No. Because - the exurbs and beyond simply don't have the density numbers to make this kind of investment pencil out without something like a 1000x class drop in costs, which would be wildly optimistic for physical equipment cost savings. Some suburbs might be able to handle it; Bellevue in the Puget Sound comes to mind immediately, but it's only a suburb in the context of Seattle; it'd be a major city in its own right in most of the US. Further, you're not even getting to the fun part of driving a car - the wind, the sights, the open road. You've got a dang tunnel there. I'd get mildly claustrophobic and probably nauseous: subways already do that to me a little bit. It's probably much more effective public policy at the federal level to focus on densifying American cities and reversing sprawl: this generates a nice sequence of network effects related to funding and infrastructural improvements. Among those would, eventually, be the demand for nice buses and nice trains with a regular security presence.

dippyskoodlez 10y ago
>Further, you're not even getting to the fun part of driving a car - the wind, the sights, the open road. You've got a dang tunnel there. I'd get mildly claustrophobic and probably nauseous: subways already do that to me a little bit. I sure do love the wind, the sights, the open road of stop and go traffic every day.

ensiferum 10y ago

Avoiding driving for ours in congestion would sound like an upgrade to me...