3 ms·

Or it has its own lane, and if you don’t use it, you sit in a traffic jam watching the people who do use it whizz past. Not everything has to be instant gratif

Or it has its own lane, and if you don’t use it, you sit in a traffic jam watching the people who do use it whizz past. Not everything has to be instant gratification catering to your every need or else you’re buying a helicopter :-)

bluGill 7y ago
Road trains don't really give you much savings from a traffic jam unless there is something else that prevents most people from using it. Single passenger cars take up a lot of space. Getting cars/people out of the train will slow the whole thing down where they need to leave the "fast?" lane for the traffic jam to get to their exit. Unless you are talking about all new freeways usable only by road trains. However at that point putting down steel rail is cheaper and can handle an order of magnitude more people for the investment.
- braythwayt 7y ago
  Road trains could give us greater efficiencies from aerodynamics, and if used in dedicated lanes, could also give us something almost as useful as autonomous driving with much less work. As for steel rail, gosh, I really wish there was a way to make the politics work in North America.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    While the theory of road trains is sound, in practice they cannot work as well because of other theory. Getting into/out of a road train is hard. If there is a traffic jam in the other lane, the entire lane is limited to the traffic jam. Road trains save some space, but they don't solve traffic jams (which already have cars bumper to bumper). There is no way around the fact that cars need a lot of lane space to work well, even in road train model. (steel rail solves that by packing humans tighter, while giving them more space)
    - ianai 7y ago
      There’s got to be something better than the current model. It’s terribly depressing to know how much energy and time is being wasted in traffic jams. When it’s literally stop and go at less than 10 mph just hooking cars together with ropes and going neutral could save energy and drama/stress.

bluGill 7y ago

Road trains don't really give you much savings from a traffic jam unless there is something else that prevents most people from using it. Single passenger cars take up a lot of space. Getting cars/people out of the train will slow the whole thing down where they need to leave the "fast?" lane for the traffic jam to get to their exit. Unless you are talking about all new freeways usable only by road trains. However at that point putting down steel rail is cheaper and can handle an order of magnitude more people for the investment.

braythwayt 7y ago
Road trains could give us greater efficiencies from aerodynamics, and if used in dedicated lanes, could also give us something almost as useful as autonomous driving with much less work. As for steel rail, gosh, I really wish there was a way to make the politics work in North America.
- bluGill 7y ago
  While the theory of road trains is sound, in practice they cannot work as well because of other theory. Getting into/out of a road train is hard. If there is a traffic jam in the other lane, the entire lane is limited to the traffic jam. Road trains save some space, but they don't solve traffic jams (which already have cars bumper to bumper). There is no way around the fact that cars need a lot of lane space to work well, even in road train model. (steel rail solves that by packing humans tighter, while giving them more space)
  - ianai 7y ago
    There’s got to be something better than the current model. It’s terribly depressing to know how much energy and time is being wasted in traffic jams. When it’s literally stop and go at less than 10 mph just hooking cars together with ropes and going neutral could save energy and drama/stress.