7 ms·

For the last two years I worked on autonomous cars. The one thing everyone in our company agreed on, regardless of political persuasion, was that robo-cars were

by uuilly 15y ago

For the last two years I worked on autonomous cars. The one thing everyone in our company agreed on, regardless of political persuasion, was that robo-cars were going to thunder fuck the high speed rail. A 2033 deadline makes this all but certain.

cletus 15y ago
I tend to agree that autonomous vehicles will revolutionize not only transport but society. That's how big I think they'll be. Say goodbye to the vast majority of automobile deaths every year. But that still doesn't address the problem facing most large cities: gridlock. Whether the cars are automated or not won't drastically change that (although it may well reduce arterial traffic clogs due to accidents and rubbernecking) because there are still more cars than the roads can handle. I really don't know why California is pursuing this. Planes are entirely valid solution to the problem of travelling between LA and SF. Why spend billions on an alternative that's going to take twenty years? If anything, spend the money on public transport to reduce reliance on cars. The situation is decent in SF, poor in the Valley (Caltrain covers a limited area and runs quite infrequently) and woeful in LA. The 101 out of SF tends to be a car park at certain times (although not as bad as LA). The big problem is that LA isn't really space-constrained. It has the ocean on the west but has sprawled far north, south and east. People like their big homes and that's a recipe for disaster when it comes to public transport. The only places public transport seems to work at all are those areas densely population or that have existing infrastructure (eg the commuter belt around NYC). But Dallas? Atlanta? LA? Chicago? Very limited public transport.
- stretchwithme 15y ago
  Actually, the robotic car will make for very cheap cabs that can be much smaller. Most will only need to carry a passenger and can have a much smaller engine without the need for speed that human drivers have. So, smaller vehicles almost always moving and not parking will take up a lot less room per person-mile.
  - ars 15y ago
    Why would it need a smaller engine? The load and cargo of the car is identical. (i.e. one passenger, and one driver weigh exactly the same.)
    - surrealize 15y ago
      The assumption is that autonomous cars would decrease the cost of taxi-style usage to the point where it competes with ownership, since you wouldn't have to pay for a driver. When I buy a (non-autonomous) car, I size it for the maximum load I might want to carry. For the autonomous taxi, I can just rent the minimally-sized car for the trip that I'm currently on. If I'm by myself, the autonomous cab could even be a one-seater. Plus, I don't have to park it.
      - ars 15y ago
        I still don't get what the difference autonomous makes. You can rent a car today. If one seaters were practical they would be rentable. Autonomous isn't going to change that. Autonomous sounds great - but not because of car or engine size.
        easp 15y ago
        An autonomous single seater comes to you where you need it. A single seat, non-autonomous rental car doesn't come to you unless there is a driver, or a delivery vehicle with a driver, to bring it to you. The economics aren't going to be the same.
        stretchwithme 15y ago
        Its simply too costly to get the optimal size cab to a customer today. So cabs are usually much bigger than the average car. Flexibility is more important. And cabs make up a small percentage of the overall market. And most of the cost of a cab ride is labor. But if automated cabs become the norm, the cost of a cab ride will be governed by the size of the vehicle. And if a car costs 25 cents a mile to operate, a cab ride from my house to San Francisco will still cost me $11. If a 1-seater with barely an engine and no trunk can do it for 10 cents a mile or $4.50, there will be demand. That's the commuter, the guy making 40 trips a month, who'd save $260 a month for giving up empty space. Of course, we really don't know how this will all play out. But it will be fun to find out.
- Anechoic 15y ago
  >Planes are entirely valid solution to the problem of traveling between LA and SF The problem is that LA and SF-area airports are almost at capacity and increasing that capacity through adding runways or building new airports would be a significant undertaking (several 10s of $billions) that would face a number of hurdles. Air travel is also affected by weather issues that don't affect HSR.
  - oconnore 15y ago
    And air travel is less efficient, noisier, and dependent on fossil fuels than gliding over a maglev track.
    - cshesse 15y ago
      As far as I know, the High Speed Rail system is not maglev and modern trains have roughly them same energy efficiency as modern planes.
      - nkurz 15y ago
        That's interesting. I'd instinctively presumed that HSR would be much more energy efficient than flying, but the quick research I did indicates you are right. Electric HSR probably has the edge if you are willing to assume hydroelectric generation, but it mostly comes down to projected ridership. A full plane beats and empty train, and vice versa.
- rayiner 15y ago
  Chicago isn't land constrained, but has a dense urban core (roughly comparable in overall density to London) and has great public transportation, both within the city and within the larger metro area (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Metra-System.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Metra-Sys...). Proper urban planning can go a long way.
  - easp 15y ago
    "Proper" urban planning is helped tremendously when the city was planned and reached critical mass in the days before the automobile and freeway systems really took hold.
- dpres 15y ago
  > Whether the cars are automated or not won't drastically change that because there are still more cars than the roads can handle. Automated taxi cabs + existing public transit would solve gridlock... go outside to your auto-cab, take it to the rail, get off the rail into a different auto-cab, arrive at work.
- temphn 15y ago
  > But that still doesn't address the problem facing most large cities: gridlock. Whether the cars are automated or not won't drastically change that (although it may well reduce arterial traffic clogs due to accidents and rubbernecking) because there are still more cars than the roads can handle. Humans are going to be a lot less efficient than computers in driving cars. With proper networking, you could have cars doing 60mph while only a few car lengths from each other, vastly increasing the capacity of any segment of road. For example, the presence of an unexpected crash or obstruction down the road can be relayed back at the speed of light via networked cars, and the entire wave of cars behind the crash can slow down and reroute. There have been some simulation papers on this, comparing humans vs. automatic driving algorithms. It's similar to automatic control in other areas.
  - Anechoic 15y ago
    >With proper networking, you could have cars doing 60mph while only a few car lengths from each other, vastly increasing the capacity of any segment of road. That works if 100% of the cars are autonmous. I'm betting that even if automous cars were available tomorrow, it would take longer than 20 years for that to be true.
    - waterlesscloud 15y ago
      I think there's a threshold beyond which it becomes socially mandatory for all cars to be autonomous. The pressures will be enormous at a certain point. Endangering the lives of others when there's an option to not do so, etc etc. What that threshold percentage is and how the transition will be accomplished in practical terms, I don't know. But I do believe the pressures will manifest themselves mightily.
      - Anechoic 15y ago
        >I think there's a threshold beyond which it becomes socially mandatory for all cars to be autonomous. Economics are still going to be the driving factor (no pun intended) for the poor and working class. As long as beater non-automated cars are going to cost less than the (used but still newer) automated cars, and as long as cars are still going to be necessary in much of the USA, there are still going to be normal cars around. At some point (say in 40-50 years, and if "classic" driver cars are outlawed) I think we'll reach that point, but then that weakens the argument of autonomous cars (and its benefits) getting here before the CA HSR project.
necubi 15y ago
They seem to have little in common, aside from the fact that both get people from A to B with relatively little attention required on the part of the people. High speed rail is: (a) Vastly more efficient (b) Much faster (SF -> LA in < 3 hours, versus ~6.5 for a car) (c) Not subject to traffic (which can greatly increase the latter time) (d) Much more comfortable (compare Amtrak to a private automobile) How do autonomous cars overcome these deficiencies?
- gfodor 15y ago
  One can probably presume by the time autonomous cars are mainstream that all of these might all be the case. Fully automated highways will probably have vehicles that look and feel nothing like the cars of today.
- mkramlich 15y ago
  Trains and buses suffers from last mile problems on each end. And you sometimes/often have to share an air space with rude, dirty, sometimes crazy people. Not so with individual vehicles. Now make them electric (to reduce pollution and enabling the getting off of fossil fuels) and automated (to reduce frequency of accidents, and wear-and-tear caused by aggressive driving, etc, etc.) and the trade-offs can look attractive.
  - bsimpson 15y ago
    Admittedly, I'm no expert on electric cars, but they always make me feel like the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. Electricity is frequently generated by fossil fuels like coal. Electric cars don't reduce pollution, they just move it to wherever the coal is being burned. You have to get the electricity to the car from the far-away power plant, which means you're going to suffer from transmission loss (e.g. not every watt that is generated is going to make it to your drivetrain). Finally, we suck at making batteries. They're still big heavy lumps of highly toxic materials that wear out in relatively short amounts of time. What do you do with all the exhausted batteries? Like everyone, I'm all for making our infrastructure more environmentally-friendly. Sadly, I'm not convinced electric vehicles are anywhere close to where we'd need them to be. I feel like we have a lot of misplaced enthusiasm from people who want to clean up the industrial age a lot sooner than we realistically can.
twelvechairs 15y ago
Sure. if you don't care about the environment, are willing to pay more (for petrol) overall, have enough roads that everyone can have their own car, and can put up with the inevitable congestion.... Although I'm sure the present-day 'business case' agrees with you, I don't think this means it is necessarily the right thing to do.
Anechoic 15y ago
It doesn't have to be an either-or situation, they may be able to coexist together. For autonomous personal vehicles, you get an end-to-end solution that is infinitely flexible, but may be subject to congestion, parking and ownership problems. For HSR, you have higher speeds between metro areas without having to worry about parking, fuel or weather, at the cost of not having a door-to-door solution or the flexibility of a personal car. Depending on your trip, one method may be more desirable than another. In October, I made two trips from Western MA to NYC. The first time I drove - my schedule was unknown, I had a lot of baggage with me and I wasn't staying in Manhattan so it made sense to drive. The second trip was for a day meeting in mid-town, so taking the train made more sense. There is single perfect mode, diversity in transportation matters.
melling 15y ago
200-300 mph autonomous cars? Getting the right of ways only gets harder for trains. The only reason that it's going to take so long is because people are in the way, a lot of people. In 30 years, the trains can be swapped out for 400 mph Maglevs.
- Anechoic 15y ago
  You can't simply "swap" out trains for maglev, it's a completely different infrastructure with different requirements.
  - viscanti 15y ago
    The biggest hurdle is probably property rights. The second biggest would be clearing a path (building bridges, leveling the ground, etc). Those two would be solved now, and the rest could essentially be "swapped" out. It wouldn't be trivial, but you'd have the two toughest problems already solved.
    - potatolicious 15y ago
      The faster something goes, the less turning radius it has, and the tighter your manufacturing tolerances gets. It's more than likely that track designed for 200mph HSR will be completely incompatible with 400mph maglevs. Unless you want to cap the maglevs at 200mph. The maglev will easily fly off the rails trying to take a 200mph curve at 300mph.
      - Anechoic 15y ago
        >It's more than likely that track designed for 200mph HSR will be completely incompatible with 400mph maglevs. Again, it's completely different infrastructure, so yes, it's completely incompatible in the sense that a bicycle trail is incompatible with motor boats. If you have an HSR ROW that you want to change over to maglev, you have to rip up the tracks, rip up the catenary, rip up the power-substations, and build a completely new guideway.
bryanlarsen 15y ago
I'd be willing to bet good money that there will be high speed trains between LA & SF before there are widespread robo-cars. - it's a hard problem, in my mind comparable to general AI, which has been "10 years away" since the 1950's. It seems to me to be one of of those "hard 10%" problems where you get what you think is 90% there, but the last 10% takes a lot longer than the first 90%. - I believe that a generational change will be required to get over the strange attachment most Americans have to conventional cars - American litigiousness will put manufacturers out of business. They might be safer than normal cars, but at some point they're going to kill or seriously injure somebody, and then they're going to come in for huge damage awards.
- akavi 15y ago
  With regard to your first point, Google's autonomous cars have logged thousands of hours now without human intervention. You're spot on with the second and third, however; the challenge now is regulatory and psychological, not technological.
  - bryanlarsen 15y ago
    So they've done the first 90%. Bully for them. Come back to me when they've the navigated the full range of traffic, weather and stupid driver/bicyclist/pedestrian obstacles. Google has a long way to go yet.
nradov 15y ago
Yes exactly! I've been telling anyone who would listen that most of the high-speed rail projects going in now will be seen as gigantic white elephants in 30 years. They'll be unable to service their debt due to low ridership and will become another nail in the coffin of government solvency. It's not going to be just robo-cars, but efficient electrically powered robo-cars that make the difference. Even though they won't be quite as efficient as rail on a per-kilometer basis they will be able to take you point-to-point rather than having to transfer to a bus or rental car once you reach LA. The other factor — which many of you seem to ignore — is that train travel kind of sucks with small children. You have to drive to the train station, then drag kids, strollers, diaper bags, etc onto the train, then repeat the process at your destination. Obviously it's doable to take the train but I would still prefer to have my own personal vehicle even if it costs a little more and takes a little longer. The future of transportation is personalized and distributed. Not some huge, inflexible, government-controlled monolith that's incapable of adapting to changes in travel patterns.
surrealize 15y ago
Autonomous cars aren't (just) a competitor to high-speed rail, they can also complement it. Autonomous (=> cheaper) taxis help solve the last-mile issues at the ends of the trip. I'd be surprised if an autonomous car could compete with the high-speed rail speeds, though.

by uuilly 15y ago

cletus 15y ago

I tend to agree that autonomous vehicles will revolutionize not only transport but society. That's how big I think they'll be. Say goodbye to the vast majority of automobile deaths every year. But that still doesn't address the problem facing most large cities: gridlock. Whether the cars are automated or not won't drastically change that (although it may well reduce arterial traffic clogs due to accidents and rubbernecking) because there are still more cars than the roads can handle. I really don't know why California is pursuing this. Planes are entirely valid solution to the problem of travelling between LA and SF. Why spend billions on an alternative that's going to take twenty years? If anything, spend the money on public transport to reduce reliance on cars. The situation is decent in SF, poor in the Valley (Caltrain covers a limited area and runs quite infrequently) and woeful in LA. The 101 out of SF tends to be a car park at certain times (although not as bad as LA). The big problem is that LA isn't really space-constrained. It has the ocean on the west but has sprawled far north, south and east. People like their big homes and that's a recipe for disaster when it comes to public transport. The only places public transport seems to work at all are those areas densely population or that have existing infrastructure (eg the commuter belt around NYC). But Dallas? Atlanta? LA? Chicago? Very limited public transport.

stretchwithme 15y ago
Actually, the robotic car will make for very cheap cabs that can be much smaller. Most will only need to carry a passenger and can have a much smaller engine without the need for speed that human drivers have. So, smaller vehicles almost always moving and not parking will take up a lot less room per person-mile.
- ars 15y ago
  Why would it need a smaller engine? The load and cargo of the car is identical. (i.e. one passenger, and one driver weigh exactly the same.)
  - surrealize 15y ago
    The assumption is that autonomous cars would decrease the cost of taxi-style usage to the point where it competes with ownership, since you wouldn't have to pay for a driver. When I buy a (non-autonomous) car, I size it for the maximum load I might want to carry. For the autonomous taxi, I can just rent the minimally-sized car for the trip that I'm currently on. If I'm by myself, the autonomous cab could even be a one-seater. Plus, I don't have to park it.
    - ars 15y ago
      I still don't get what the difference autonomous makes. You can rent a car today. If one seaters were practical they would be rentable. Autonomous isn't going to change that. Autonomous sounds great - but not because of car or engine size.
      - easp 15y ago
        An autonomous single seater comes to you where you need it. A single seat, non-autonomous rental car doesn't come to you unless there is a driver, or a delivery vehicle with a driver, to bring it to you. The economics aren't going to be the same.
      - stretchwithme 15y ago
        Its simply too costly to get the optimal size cab to a customer today. So cabs are usually much bigger than the average car. Flexibility is more important. And cabs make up a small percentage of the overall market. And most of the cost of a cab ride is labor. But if automated cabs become the norm, the cost of a cab ride will be governed by the size of the vehicle. And if a car costs 25 cents a mile to operate, a cab ride from my house to San Francisco will still cost me $11. If a 1-seater with barely an engine and no trunk can do it for 10 cents a mile or $4.50, there will be demand. That's the commuter, the guy making 40 trips a month, who'd save $260 a month for giving up empty space. Of course, we really don't know how this will all play out. But it will be fun to find out.
Anechoic 15y ago
>Planes are entirely valid solution to the problem of traveling between LA and SF The problem is that LA and SF-area airports are almost at capacity and increasing that capacity through adding runways or building new airports would be a significant undertaking (several 10s of $billions) that would face a number of hurdles. Air travel is also affected by weather issues that don't affect HSR.
- oconnore 15y ago
  And air travel is less efficient, noisier, and dependent on fossil fuels than gliding over a maglev track.
  - cshesse 15y ago
    As far as I know, the High Speed Rail system is not maglev and modern trains have roughly them same energy efficiency as modern planes.
    - nkurz 15y ago
      That's interesting. I'd instinctively presumed that HSR would be much more energy efficient than flying, but the quick research I did indicates you are right. Electric HSR probably has the edge if you are willing to assume hydroelectric generation, but it mostly comes down to projected ridership. A full plane beats and empty train, and vice versa.
rayiner 15y ago
Chicago isn't land constrained, but has a dense urban core (roughly comparable in overall density to London) and has great public transportation, both within the city and within the larger metro area (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Metra-System.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Metra-Sys...). Proper urban planning can go a long way.
- easp 15y ago
  "Proper" urban planning is helped tremendously when the city was planned and reached critical mass in the days before the automobile and freeway systems really took hold.
dpres 15y ago
> Whether the cars are automated or not won't drastically change that because there are still more cars than the roads can handle. Automated taxi cabs + existing public transit would solve gridlock... go outside to your auto-cab, take it to the rail, get off the rail into a different auto-cab, arrive at work.
temphn 15y ago
> But that still doesn't address the problem facing most large cities: gridlock. Whether the cars are automated or not won't drastically change that (although it may well reduce arterial traffic clogs due to accidents and rubbernecking) because there are still more cars than the roads can handle. Humans are going to be a lot less efficient than computers in driving cars. With proper networking, you could have cars doing 60mph while only a few car lengths from each other, vastly increasing the capacity of any segment of road. For example, the presence of an unexpected crash or obstruction down the road can be relayed back at the speed of light via networked cars, and the entire wave of cars behind the crash can slow down and reroute. There have been some simulation papers on this, comparing humans vs. automatic driving algorithms. It's similar to automatic control in other areas.
- Anechoic 15y ago
  >With proper networking, you could have cars doing 60mph while only a few car lengths from each other, vastly increasing the capacity of any segment of road. That works if 100% of the cars are autonmous. I'm betting that even if automous cars were available tomorrow, it would take longer than 20 years for that to be true.
  - waterlesscloud 15y ago
    I think there's a threshold beyond which it becomes socially mandatory for all cars to be autonomous. The pressures will be enormous at a certain point. Endangering the lives of others when there's an option to not do so, etc etc. What that threshold percentage is and how the transition will be accomplished in practical terms, I don't know. But I do believe the pressures will manifest themselves mightily.
    - Anechoic 15y ago
      >I think there's a threshold beyond which it becomes socially mandatory for all cars to be autonomous. Economics are still going to be the driving factor (no pun intended) for the poor and working class. As long as beater non-automated cars are going to cost less than the (used but still newer) automated cars, and as long as cars are still going to be necessary in much of the USA, there are still going to be normal cars around. At some point (say in 40-50 years, and if "classic" driver cars are outlawed) I think we'll reach that point, but then that weakens the argument of autonomous cars (and its benefits) getting here before the CA HSR project.

necubi 15y ago

They seem to have little in common, aside from the fact that both get people from A to B with relatively little attention required on the part of the people. High speed rail is: (a) Vastly more efficient (b) Much faster (SF -> LA in < 3 hours, versus ~6.5 for a car) (c) Not subject to traffic (which can greatly increase the latter time) (d) Much more comfortable (compare Amtrak to a private automobile) How do autonomous cars overcome these deficiencies?

gfodor 15y ago
One can probably presume by the time autonomous cars are mainstream that all of these might all be the case. Fully automated highways will probably have vehicles that look and feel nothing like the cars of today.
mkramlich 15y ago
Trains and buses suffers from last mile problems on each end. And you sometimes/often have to share an air space with rude, dirty, sometimes crazy people. Not so with individual vehicles. Now make them electric (to reduce pollution and enabling the getting off of fossil fuels) and automated (to reduce frequency of accidents, and wear-and-tear caused by aggressive driving, etc, etc.) and the trade-offs can look attractive.
- bsimpson 15y ago
  Admittedly, I'm no expert on electric cars, but they always make me feel like the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. Electricity is frequently generated by fossil fuels like coal. Electric cars don't reduce pollution, they just move it to wherever the coal is being burned. You have to get the electricity to the car from the far-away power plant, which means you're going to suffer from transmission loss (e.g. not every watt that is generated is going to make it to your drivetrain). Finally, we suck at making batteries. They're still big heavy lumps of highly toxic materials that wear out in relatively short amounts of time. What do you do with all the exhausted batteries? Like everyone, I'm all for making our infrastructure more environmentally-friendly. Sadly, I'm not convinced electric vehicles are anywhere close to where we'd need them to be. I feel like we have a lot of misplaced enthusiasm from people who want to clean up the industrial age a lot sooner than we realistically can.

twelvechairs 15y ago

Sure. if you don't care about the environment, are willing to pay more (for petrol) overall, have enough roads that everyone can have their own car, and can put up with the inevitable congestion.... Although I'm sure the present-day 'business case' agrees with you, I don't think this means it is necessarily the right thing to do.

Anechoic 15y ago

It doesn't have to be an either-or situation, they may be able to coexist together. For autonomous personal vehicles, you get an end-to-end solution that is infinitely flexible, but may be subject to congestion, parking and ownership problems. For HSR, you have higher speeds between metro areas without having to worry about parking, fuel or weather, at the cost of not having a door-to-door solution or the flexibility of a personal car. Depending on your trip, one method may be more desirable than another. In October, I made two trips from Western MA to NYC. The first time I drove - my schedule was unknown, I had a lot of baggage with me and I wasn't staying in Manhattan so it made sense to drive. The second trip was for a day meeting in mid-town, so taking the train made more sense. There is single perfect mode, diversity in transportation matters.

melling 15y ago

200-300 mph autonomous cars? Getting the right of ways only gets harder for trains. The only reason that it's going to take so long is because people are in the way, a lot of people. In 30 years, the trains can be swapped out for 400 mph Maglevs.

Anechoic 15y ago
You can't simply "swap" out trains for maglev, it's a completely different infrastructure with different requirements.
- viscanti 15y ago
  The biggest hurdle is probably property rights. The second biggest would be clearing a path (building bridges, leveling the ground, etc). Those two would be solved now, and the rest could essentially be "swapped" out. It wouldn't be trivial, but you'd have the two toughest problems already solved.
  - potatolicious 15y ago
    The faster something goes, the less turning radius it has, and the tighter your manufacturing tolerances gets. It's more than likely that track designed for 200mph HSR will be completely incompatible with 400mph maglevs. Unless you want to cap the maglevs at 200mph. The maglev will easily fly off the rails trying to take a 200mph curve at 300mph.
    - Anechoic 15y ago
      >It's more than likely that track designed for 200mph HSR will be completely incompatible with 400mph maglevs. Again, it's completely different infrastructure, so yes, it's completely incompatible in the sense that a bicycle trail is incompatible with motor boats. If you have an HSR ROW that you want to change over to maglev, you have to rip up the tracks, rip up the catenary, rip up the power-substations, and build a completely new guideway.

bryanlarsen 15y ago

I'd be willing to bet good money that there will be high speed trains between LA & SF before there are widespread robo-cars. - it's a hard problem, in my mind comparable to general AI, which has been "10 years away" since the 1950's. It seems to me to be one of of those "hard 10%" problems where you get what you think is 90% there, but the last 10% takes a lot longer than the first 90%. - I believe that a generational change will be required to get over the strange attachment most Americans have to conventional cars - American litigiousness will put manufacturers out of business. They might be safer than normal cars, but at some point they're going to kill or seriously injure somebody, and then they're going to come in for huge damage awards.

akavi 15y ago
With regard to your first point, Google's autonomous cars have logged thousands of hours now without human intervention. You're spot on with the second and third, however; the challenge now is regulatory and psychological, not technological.
- bryanlarsen 15y ago
  So they've done the first 90%. Bully for them. Come back to me when they've the navigated the full range of traffic, weather and stupid driver/bicyclist/pedestrian obstacles. Google has a long way to go yet.

nradov 15y ago

Yes exactly! I've been telling anyone who would listen that most of the high-speed rail projects going in now will be seen as gigantic white elephants in 30 years. They'll be unable to service their debt due to low ridership and will become another nail in the coffin of government solvency. It's not going to be just robo-cars, but efficient electrically powered robo-cars that make the difference. Even though they won't be quite as efficient as rail on a per-kilometer basis they will be able to take you point-to-point rather than having to transfer to a bus or rental car once you reach LA. The other factor — which many of you seem to ignore — is that train travel kind of sucks with small children. You have to drive to the train station, then drag kids, strollers, diaper bags, etc onto the train, then repeat the process at your destination. Obviously it's doable to take the train but I would still prefer to have my own personal vehicle even if it costs a little more and takes a little longer. The future of transportation is personalized and distributed. Not some huge, inflexible, government-controlled monolith that's incapable of adapting to changes in travel patterns.

surrealize 15y ago

Autonomous cars aren't (just) a competitor to high-speed rail, they can also complement it. Autonomous (=> cheaper) taxis help solve the last-mile issues at the ends of the trip. I'd be surprised if an autonomous car could compete with the high-speed rail speeds, though.