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Going through the Central Valley and stopping in Fresno, Madera, Kings-Tulare, Bakersfield... (etc) to get to Los Angeles is not faster either. Buy a fully aut

Going through the Central Valley and stopping in Fresno, Madera, Kings-Tulare, Bakersfield... (etc) to get to Los Angeles is not faster either. Buy a fully autonomous car and go point-to-point faster/cheaper/better. The train will stop at SFO and BUR -- if the train's last-mile delivery is better then we should focus on that last-mile rather than the stretch in the middle that is already well-solved.

abritinthebay 9y ago
This is peak Hacker News: "Don't buy a $50 train ticket - buy a not-actually-invented yet probably $120,000 car instead". The high-speed rail project is a shit show, but more cars is not the answer either.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  More cars, or at least more car trips,—independent of whether they need drivers or what kind of powerplant they have—is, in fact, exactly the problem at which HSR is directed.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  Almost no one will buy autonomous cars. You will just hail one for less than the cost of gas. Only rich people and people in and out of a car all day (full time parents, car-based workers, etc) will buy them.
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    You will just hail one for less than the cost of gas. If the cost of the ride is less than the cost of gas, how is the operator making a profit? Especially since they have to cover more than just the cost of gas. (an Uber-style "use VC money to subsidize below-cost services" model is not sustainable in the long term, by the way)
    - closeparen 9y ago
      I think the point is that they’ll be electric.
    - sah2ed 9y ago
      In addition to closeparen's point that such autonomous cars will be electric, they will also have much lower mantenance costs due to the lower internal complexity of doing away with the ICE.
      - CPLX 9y ago
        This is self evidently true because incredibly complex software implementations that interact with the real world have no maintainance requirements.
        abritinthebay 9y ago
        ... hoping sarcasm. But you never know on here...
  - dx034 9y ago
    And every family and anyone who likes having a car. I'd expect not more than 10-20% to stop buying cars. Having your own car is about more than just access to transportation.
ebikelaw 9y ago
Some trains will run sf-sj-la without further stops. Those will be far faster than air if you are traveling between city centers.
- magila 9y ago
  Not really. The platform-to-platform time from LA to SF is going to be, at best, a little less than three hours. That's comparable to the time it takes to fly from LAX to SFO plus the ~30 minute BART ride to downtown SF. LA is so spread out that departing from LAX or Union Station doesn't make a big difference. Most people are going to have to fight traffic to get to either location.
- 7952 9y ago
  It is only two tracks. How can they run express services at the same time as stopping services?
  - dx034 9y ago
    Having an extra track at the station and timing so that they pass while the other train stops. You don't have services every 5 minutes so that works quite well usually. Worst case the express train has to go a bit slower before but they tend not to go at maximum speed so can catch up again later.
CPLX 9y ago
> Buy a fully autonomous car Make sure you put a winged pony on the shopping list too. They're a great fashionable match any time you're making fantasies of acquiring things that don't exist.
- jhall1468 9y ago
  At least one of those is far closer to reality than the other.
  - chipotle_coyote 9y ago
    While that's true, the less flippant question is whether fully autonomous cars -- where "fully autonomous" is defined as being able to climb in one, kick back and do your work with no concern the way you conceivably could on a train -- will (a) exist, (b) be road-legal, (c) be widely available, and (d) be generally affordable within a timeframe that makes a high-speed rail line moot. I don't think that's remotely a given.
    - Animats 9y ago
      We're going to have autonomous cars that can drive SF-LA long before we have high-speed rail. Self-driving cars from the big players are planned for the 2020-2021 model years.
      - CPLX 9y ago
        I have this weird feeling that before we have many of them in mass production, we'll have a single car that fits this description.

abritinthebay 9y ago

This is peak Hacker News: "Don't buy a $50 train ticket - buy a not-actually-invented yet probably $120,000 car instead". The high-speed rail project is a shit show, but more cars is not the answer either.

dragonwriter 9y ago
More cars, or at least more car trips,—independent of whether they need drivers or what kind of powerplant they have—is, in fact, exactly the problem at which HSR is directed.
erikpukinskis 9y ago
Almost no one will buy autonomous cars. You will just hail one for less than the cost of gas. Only rich people and people in and out of a car all day (full time parents, car-based workers, etc) will buy them.
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  You will just hail one for less than the cost of gas. If the cost of the ride is less than the cost of gas, how is the operator making a profit? Especially since they have to cover more than just the cost of gas. (an Uber-style "use VC money to subsidize below-cost services" model is not sustainable in the long term, by the way)
  - closeparen 9y ago
    I think the point is that they’ll be electric.
  - sah2ed 9y ago
    In addition to closeparen's point that such autonomous cars will be electric, they will also have much lower mantenance costs due to the lower internal complexity of doing away with the ICE.
    - CPLX 9y ago
      This is self evidently true because incredibly complex software implementations that interact with the real world have no maintainance requirements.
      - abritinthebay 9y ago
        ... hoping sarcasm. But you never know on here...
- dx034 9y ago
  And every family and anyone who likes having a car. I'd expect not more than 10-20% to stop buying cars. Having your own car is about more than just access to transportation.

ebikelaw 9y ago

Some trains will run sf-sj-la without further stops. Those will be far faster than air if you are traveling between city centers.

magila 9y ago
Not really. The platform-to-platform time from LA to SF is going to be, at best, a little less than three hours. That's comparable to the time it takes to fly from LAX to SFO plus the ~30 minute BART ride to downtown SF. LA is so spread out that departing from LAX or Union Station doesn't make a big difference. Most people are going to have to fight traffic to get to either location.
7952 9y ago
It is only two tracks. How can they run express services at the same time as stopping services?
- dx034 9y ago
  Having an extra track at the station and timing so that they pass while the other train stops. You don't have services every 5 minutes so that works quite well usually. Worst case the express train has to go a bit slower before but they tend not to go at maximum speed so can catch up again later.

CPLX 9y ago

> Buy a fully autonomous car Make sure you put a winged pony on the shopping list too. They're a great fashionable match any time you're making fantasies of acquiring things that don't exist.

jhall1468 9y ago
At least one of those is far closer to reality than the other.
- chipotle_coyote 9y ago
  While that's true, the less flippant question is whether fully autonomous cars -- where "fully autonomous" is defined as being able to climb in one, kick back and do your work with no concern the way you conceivably could on a train -- will (a) exist, (b) be road-legal, (c) be widely available, and (d) be generally affordable within a timeframe that makes a high-speed rail line moot. I don't think that's remotely a given.
  - Animats 9y ago
    We're going to have autonomous cars that can drive SF-LA long before we have high-speed rail. Self-driving cars from the big players are planned for the 2020-2021 model years.
    - CPLX 9y ago
      I have this weird feeling that before we have many of them in mass production, we'll have a single car that fits this description.