3 ms·

Oh my god Musk is the one pitching the "faster horse" solution here. He wants to travel faster and doesn't want to deal with congestion, and so he comes up wit

Oh my god Musk is the one pitching the "faster horse" solution here. He wants to travel faster and doesn't want to deal with congestion, and so he comes up with this zany idea for cars on sleds in tunnels. Maybe the real problem here is the car. Car oriented infrastructure simply doesn't scale well as demand increases. His solution is going to run into all the same issues of induced demand just the same as highway expansion has.

fittingin 9y ago
So it the car is the problem, what if you could build out new train rails everywhere and get people to use them? What if people refuse to use the train because it's scary, dirty, stinky, etc.? What if you could re-imagine trains where everyone can bring their own private mini-car and add it to the train? Then the car can be private, clean, luxurious, cheap, or whatever the owner wants. Would people adopt it then? Yeah. that's pretty zany. As long as I'm not forced to pay for it, why criticize? I'm curious to see which zany idea out there proves itself.
- Tiktaalik 9y ago
  The reason criticism is warranted is because unfeasible, far out ideas like Musk's distract the conversation from proven and viable solutions and undermine their implementation. Musk is providing ammo for persons that oppose public transit spending for political and idiological reasons that can be used in the political arena to argue to decrease public transit spending and slow down or stop implementation of public transit expansion.
- so33 9y ago
  >What if people refuse to use the train because it's scary, dirty, stinky, etc.? What if you could re-imagine trains where everyone can bring their own private mini-car and add it to the train? Then the car can be private, clean, luxurious, cheap, or whatever the owner wants. Would people adopt it then? Because the "private mini-car" isn't as space efficient as just having one person. Space efficiency is a major point of public transportation, and the "scary, dirty, stinky" aspects can and have been solved in other parts of the world like Europe and Asia. What public transport advocates are worried about, I think, is that just like freeways, we are potentially going to create an enormous strain on the surface road system... the cars are going to have to come out of the tunnels some time, after all, right?
hinkley 9y ago
Well, to be fair, he proposed pneumatic tubes first and people poo-poo-ed that idea.
EthanHeilman 9y ago
Running a bus to pick up a single person is far less efficient than having that person own a car since the most effective part of a bus is the driver. Cars scale in smaller increments than most public transit and that is important areas that are not densely populated or during off-peak periods. You can build a nation/culture around public transit, but the path dependencies with the US are pretty deep at this point. >Car oriented infrastructure simply doesn't scale well as demand increases. Self-driving cars scale in very different ways than piloted cars. The biggest problems with piloted cars is accidents, congestion and parking. All of these problems fundamentally change with self-driving cars. What Musk is building is self-driving car infrastructure.
- manigandham 9y ago
  > Running a bus to pick up a single person is far less efficient What buses pick up a single person? They are far more efficient than cars precisely because they can move many people on optimal routes.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    Lots of rural counties have demand response buses that do indeed pick up one person at a time. I imagine if you measured by passenger mile they don't account for a lot of public transport, but they are the transport of last resort for quite a lot of people.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

fittingin 9y ago

So it the car is the problem, what if you could build out new train rails everywhere and get people to use them? What if people refuse to use the train because it's scary, dirty, stinky, etc.? What if you could re-imagine trains where everyone can bring their own private mini-car and add it to the train? Then the car can be private, clean, luxurious, cheap, or whatever the owner wants. Would people adopt it then? Yeah. that's pretty zany. As long as I'm not forced to pay for it, why criticize? I'm curious to see which zany idea out there proves itself.

Tiktaalik 9y ago
The reason criticism is warranted is because unfeasible, far out ideas like Musk's distract the conversation from proven and viable solutions and undermine their implementation. Musk is providing ammo for persons that oppose public transit spending for political and idiological reasons that can be used in the political arena to argue to decrease public transit spending and slow down or stop implementation of public transit expansion.
so33 9y ago
>What if people refuse to use the train because it's scary, dirty, stinky, etc.? What if you could re-imagine trains where everyone can bring their own private mini-car and add it to the train? Then the car can be private, clean, luxurious, cheap, or whatever the owner wants. Would people adopt it then? Because the "private mini-car" isn't as space efficient as just having one person. Space efficiency is a major point of public transportation, and the "scary, dirty, stinky" aspects can and have been solved in other parts of the world like Europe and Asia. What public transport advocates are worried about, I think, is that just like freeways, we are potentially going to create an enormous strain on the surface road system... the cars are going to have to come out of the tunnels some time, after all, right?

hinkley 9y ago

Well, to be fair, he proposed pneumatic tubes first and people poo-poo-ed that idea.

EthanHeilman 9y ago

Running a bus to pick up a single person is far less efficient than having that person own a car since the most effective part of a bus is the driver. Cars scale in smaller increments than most public transit and that is important areas that are not densely populated or during off-peak periods. You can build a nation/culture around public transit, but the path dependencies with the US are pretty deep at this point. >Car oriented infrastructure simply doesn't scale well as demand increases. Self-driving cars scale in very different ways than piloted cars. The biggest problems with piloted cars is accidents, congestion and parking. All of these problems fundamentally change with self-driving cars. What Musk is building is self-driving car infrastructure.

manigandham 9y ago
> Running a bus to pick up a single person is far less efficient What buses pick up a single person? They are far more efficient than cars precisely because they can move many people on optimal routes.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Lots of rural counties have demand response buses that do indeed pick up one person at a time. I imagine if you measured by passenger mile they don't account for a lot of public transport, but they are the transport of last resort for quite a lot of people.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]