5 ms·

We have this technology today. It's called trains.

Gustomaximus 4y ago
It doesn't as trains don't have the convenience of your own car where the stops are. If you had a train you could drive your car onto it would be more equivalent. Also train lines have far less coverage than highways.
- robflynn 4y ago
  Not to mention, with a car you get to decide your own schedule. If I want to take the train where I am, I have to be there at 4:30am or... well, that's it. That's the only time.
  - doctorwho42 4y ago
    Poor argument for underfunded and purposefully stymied train development in the early to mid 20th century. Just look to Europe for what a large swath of the US could have if it invested in train infrastructure. Train good, car bad.
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      > Poor argument for underfunded and purposefully stymied train development in the early to mid 20th century. If I had a working time machine, plus a magic want to make people do what I want, that might be a good argument. I don't have either, though. The world (or at least country) we live in didn't do that, and the mid-20th century was quite a while ago. Now what? Even if funding for rail magically cranked up today, we won't have ride-able lines for a decade, at best. Meanwhile, I've got places to go tomorrow, and rail isn't a realistic option. > Just look to Europe for what a large swath of the US could have if it invested in train infrastructure. Out in my part of the country, we don't have anything like Europe's population density. Your "could have had" would be very uneconomical out here. > Train good, car bad. Spare us the thought-terminating cliches, especially when they're wrong. Your post isn't convincing, but this parting shot doesn't make it any better. It just makes you sound like you're a propagandist.
    - dantheman 4y ago
      Europe has cars and highways.
      - ckolkey 4y ago
        Sure, we do, but taking the train into copenhagen for work is a far better option for most here. Thing is, when you invest in rails instead of parking, you change the math more than "europe has cars and highways" could describe.
    - TheChaplain 4y ago
      I live in Europe and commute by train. I need to order tickets 10 days ahead to get the cheapest price, and they're non-refundable as well as non-changeable. That means I have fixed times, there is no flexibility if I wish to leave earlier or need to stay longer. If I do, I lose the initial charge plus a new 3 times more expensive ticket. Ticket prices also varies depending on time, which means I have to leave really early and come back 13.5 hours later. And I'm exhausted. 1 out of 8 trains are cancelled or have severe delays, passengers are often rude or are being annoying in someway that makes it difficult to relax. Trains are not the blessing you think they are. Edit: Forgot to mention that I am lucky to live 10min away from the station. If I would live where I would like, it would mean 30-40min.
      - brewdad 4y ago
        You have options that would give you more flexibility on travel times you simply value the lower cost over the convenience. That’s not a train problem that’s a choice you have made.
      - Toutouxc 4y ago
        Sounds annoying, which country? Where I live the national railway carrier lets you refund or exchange your tickets and seat reservations freely up until 15 minutes before the departure time, most ticket types are valid for a day (so you don’t have to buy one for a specific connection) and the prices are, I believe, more or less fixed. The delays are inevitable I guess in most larger networks. I don’t take the train that often, but my experience is generally pretty good, especially as I’m starting to hate driving.
      - panick21_ 4y ago
        Trains in Europe are not magical and the best they could ever be. They could be a lot better in a lot of ways. In Europe there is still a huge investment in car infrastructure. And while land use wasnt as bad as in the US its still far from optimal. I do dislike the selling of these specific tickets. I much prefer a system where you can just take the train. When I used the ICE in Germany I would never get a reservation, just a general ticket. So if I missed one it didnt matter.
  - timeon 4y ago
    > with a car you get to decide your own schedule Not in heavy traffic.
vagrantJin 4y ago
Ha! Thanks for cutting through the meandering, pseudo-intellectual cruft with an answer than makes too much sense.
soraminazuki 4y ago
Reminds me of how I used to build railways everywhere instead of roads in Sim City. But surely that wouldn't work out in real life?
- sfmike 4y ago
  In Tokyo at least in the proper city it's easy to feel you're fine with just JR + subways.
  - soraminazuki 4y ago
    It is possible to move around Tokyo without cars to some extent, but there are still far more roads than there are railways. It’s nowhere near being a car-free zone, and many people who don’t drive would still need buses or taxis to get to the train station.
    - sfmike 4y ago
      Possible? Millions of people daily do this in Tokyo I'd say it's more then a possibility. Have always been able to get to Tokyo station or Shinagawa/Shinjukku via a JR rail or local subway, so definitely not needed either. Shaving 10 minutes via taxi yes that is a bonus.
      - soraminazuki 4y ago
        Not everyone in Tokyo lives so close to train stations. There are places inside the 23 wards where the nearest train station is more than 3 kilometers away. You could walk, but it would take around 50 minutes. I should also add that if you want to move around the west region of Tokyo, you're better off using a bus because there are no trains there that lets you move north or south. The Tobu Tojo Line, Seibu Ikebukuro Line, and the JR Chuo Line all move in the east/west direction.
- masklinn 4y ago
  It works in most of the world’s cities.
maerF0x0 4y ago
yes, but we already have a network of asphalt, not rails.
- antoineMoPa 4y ago
  Here is a map of the rail network in North America (just to confirm that it does not exist /s) https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=96ec03e4fc8546bd8a864e39a2c3fc41 https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=96ec...
  - maerF0x0 4y ago
    clearly rails exist. I highly doubt you, or anyone, believes that rails reach the number of destinations that roads do. Yes you could argue to move more by rail for most destinations, and last mile it by truck. But with that change I still think we're running into contention for that left lane ...
    - antoineMoPa 4y ago
      I agree that the rail network is really not sufficient in North America, but it's worth investing more in extending this network.
- TingPing 4y ago
  Maintenance cost of rail is significantly cheaper. Don't sink more into bad design.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    It costs Amtrak over $300k a year to maintain a single mile of track on the Northeast corridor. For comparison, it costs around $30k to maintain a single mile of US interstate, i.e. only 10% of the cost to maintain rail track. In what sense rail is cheaper to maintain, exactly?
CamperBob2 4y ago
Trains are great for moving lots of people efficiently and quickly from one place where they don't want to be to another place where they don't want to be.
- chinathrow 4y ago
  Said no one in Europe, ever.
  - CamperBob2 4y ago
    In the US, 200 years is a long time, and the train doesn't go where you're going. In Europe, 200 km is a long distance, and it might.
    - markdown 4y ago
      In Singapore, 50 years is a long time and the train goes where you're going. I'm not saying the US could pull off a Singapore, but there's no excuse for San Francisco, or LA, or any other large city to have done so.
    - doctorwho42 4y ago
      We have highways everywhere... We could definitely dedicate the left most lane and convert every left most lane into people moving train tracks. Just because we haven't doesn't mean it isn't economical or feasible.
- johannes1234321 4y ago
  With a good planning and a little time (unfortunately slightly in the decades) you can build infrastructure to be around the train network. Make sure you have a good connection from home location to a hub and infrastructure development around the hub for shops and offices as well as train lines to factories for factory workers as in Tokyo, combined with an integrated schedule as inspired by Switzerland and you get quite an attractive urban experience. But yes, that is a major shift from America's car focussed infrastructure.
Eisenstein 4y ago
All of Elon Musk's grand ideas for revolutionizing terrestrial transportation (that aren't laughably unworkable like miles long vacuum enclosures) are just 'trains but much smaller and with tires so that we lose all efficiencies and gain all of the drawbacks'. So this fits perfectly.
- a_bonobo 4y ago
  The difference to trains in Musk (and Silicon Valley's overall view) is that with automated cars, you don't have to share your personal space with other people (the poors!). It's easy to make fun of the overall project but there's elitism behind it - have your private space at the cost of the public.
  - doctorwho42 4y ago
    Well it's fun to make fun of Mr. Musk (and his fake physics credentials) for more or less copying a 100 year old idea and design, and making it flashy again. Yes the hyperloop is just a rebranded vacuum train/atmospheric railway... Patented in 1799 in London... Yup... Let that sink in.
    - Guthur 4y ago
      It's really quite amazing how similar things are today, to 200 years ago. I've been reading some philosophical literature from 19th century and if just change a few key words you'd imagine it was written today.
baby 4y ago
It’s obvious at this point that the US gov doesn’t want to invest there, and it’s too hard for the private sector to go and build train routes through land.
shepherdjerred 4y ago
Trains aren't really comparable to autonomous lanes. An autonomous car can travel on both normal roads, and in an autonomous lane. Roads are everywhere -- there's a road leading up to most people's place of residence. Trains rely on tracks which are not as common as roads. Trains are also not owned by individuals. Most people do not have a train station outside of their house.
- doctorwho42 4y ago
  Perhaps we could dedicate the right most lane on every highway to becoming a train line instead of an autonomous vehicle lane? A train can move more tonnage (see people) per unit of energy (kWhr/gallon of diesel/etc.) Than almost any other mode of transportation (gosh darn sailboats and barges being so efficient!) . So why have 100's of electric motors and separate batteries to move people, when you can skip the batteries and have an electrified third rail and just an engine or two running a train for those hundreds of people.
  - TylerE 4y ago
    The nearest thing that might be described as “highway” is 20 miles from my house. It’s the last (few dozen) mile problem passenger trains in the US have always faced for everyone who doesn’t live in the Northeast or SoCal. Guess where the two passenger lines that come even vaguely to profitability are? The population of the US is very coastal, which doesn’t map well to a hub and spoke system like rail. Contrast with Western Europe where A -> Paris/Berlin -> B is probably reasonably close to a straight line.
  - shepherdjerred 4y ago
    This is a great idea, but wouldn't paving more road be significantly cheaper and quicker than building rail infrastructure? I'm all for the US pouring money into rail, but the fact is that we're _very_ bad at big infrastructure projects right now. That's not to say that we can't get better though.
    - doctorwho42 4y ago
adwn 4y ago
Can a train pick me up directly at my home, and drop me off at pretty much any destination, with more luggage than I can carry at once, at any time of the day, at the exact moment I want to leave? No? Then trains are an alternative to self-driving cars, not a replacement. Public transport is great, but you aren't going to convince others to support it by pretending it doesn't have any drawbacks compared to private transport.

It doesn't as trains don't have the convenience of your own car where the stops are. If you had a train you could drive your car onto it would be more equivalent. Also train lines have far less coverage than highways.

robflynn 4y ago
Not to mention, with a car you get to decide your own schedule. If I want to take the train where I am, I have to be there at 4:30am or... well, that's it. That's the only time.
- doctorwho42 4y ago
  Poor argument for underfunded and purposefully stymied train development in the early to mid 20th century. Just look to Europe for what a large swath of the US could have if it invested in train infrastructure. Train good, car bad.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    > Poor argument for underfunded and purposefully stymied train development in the early to mid 20th century. If I had a working time machine, plus a magic want to make people do what I want, that might be a good argument. I don't have either, though. The world (or at least country) we live in didn't do that, and the mid-20th century was quite a while ago. Now what? Even if funding for rail magically cranked up today, we won't have ride-able lines for a decade, at best. Meanwhile, I've got places to go tomorrow, and rail isn't a realistic option. > Just look to Europe for what a large swath of the US could have if it invested in train infrastructure. Out in my part of the country, we don't have anything like Europe's population density. Your "could have had" would be very uneconomical out here. > Train good, car bad. Spare us the thought-terminating cliches, especially when they're wrong. Your post isn't convincing, but this parting shot doesn't make it any better. It just makes you sound like you're a propagandist.
  - dantheman 4y ago
    Europe has cars and highways.
    - ckolkey 4y ago
      Sure, we do, but taking the train into copenhagen for work is a far better option for most here. Thing is, when you invest in rails instead of parking, you change the math more than "europe has cars and highways" could describe.
  - TheChaplain 4y ago
    I live in Europe and commute by train. I need to order tickets 10 days ahead to get the cheapest price, and they're non-refundable as well as non-changeable. That means I have fixed times, there is no flexibility if I wish to leave earlier or need to stay longer. If I do, I lose the initial charge plus a new 3 times more expensive ticket. Ticket prices also varies depending on time, which means I have to leave really early and come back 13.5 hours later. And I'm exhausted. 1 out of 8 trains are cancelled or have severe delays, passengers are often rude or are being annoying in someway that makes it difficult to relax. Trains are not the blessing you think they are. Edit: Forgot to mention that I am lucky to live 10min away from the station. If I would live where I would like, it would mean 30-40min.
    - brewdad 4y ago
      You have options that would give you more flexibility on travel times you simply value the lower cost over the convenience. That’s not a train problem that’s a choice you have made.
    - Toutouxc 4y ago
      Sounds annoying, which country? Where I live the national railway carrier lets you refund or exchange your tickets and seat reservations freely up until 15 minutes before the departure time, most ticket types are valid for a day (so you don’t have to buy one for a specific connection) and the prices are, I believe, more or less fixed. The delays are inevitable I guess in most larger networks. I don’t take the train that often, but my experience is generally pretty good, especially as I’m starting to hate driving.
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      Trains in Europe are not magical and the best they could ever be. They could be a lot better in a lot of ways. In Europe there is still a huge investment in car infrastructure. And while land use wasnt as bad as in the US its still far from optimal. I do dislike the selling of these specific tickets. I much prefer a system where you can just take the train. When I used the ICE in Germany I would never get a reservation, just a general ticket. So if I missed one it didnt matter.
- timeon 4y ago
  > with a car you get to decide your own schedule Not in heavy traffic.

vagrantJin 4y ago

Ha! Thanks for cutting through the meandering, pseudo-intellectual cruft with an answer than makes too much sense.

soraminazuki 4y ago

Reminds me of how I used to build railways everywhere instead of roads in Sim City. But surely that wouldn't work out in real life?

sfmike 4y ago
In Tokyo at least in the proper city it's easy to feel you're fine with just JR + subways.
- soraminazuki 4y ago
  It is possible to move around Tokyo without cars to some extent, but there are still far more roads than there are railways. It’s nowhere near being a car-free zone, and many people who don’t drive would still need buses or taxis to get to the train station.
  - sfmike 4y ago
    Possible? Millions of people daily do this in Tokyo I'd say it's more then a possibility. Have always been able to get to Tokyo station or Shinagawa/Shinjukku via a JR rail or local subway, so definitely not needed either. Shaving 10 minutes via taxi yes that is a bonus.
    - soraminazuki 4y ago
      Not everyone in Tokyo lives so close to train stations. There are places inside the 23 wards where the nearest train station is more than 3 kilometers away. You could walk, but it would take around 50 minutes. I should also add that if you want to move around the west region of Tokyo, you're better off using a bus because there are no trains there that lets you move north or south. The Tobu Tojo Line, Seibu Ikebukuro Line, and the JR Chuo Line all move in the east/west direction.
masklinn 4y ago
It works in most of the world’s cities.

maerF0x0 4y ago

yes, but we already have a network of asphalt, not rails.

antoineMoPa 4y ago
Here is a map of the rail network in North America (just to confirm that it does not exist /s) https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=96ec03e4fc8546bd8a864e39a2c3fc41 https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=96ec...
- maerF0x0 4y ago
  clearly rails exist. I highly doubt you, or anyone, believes that rails reach the number of destinations that roads do. Yes you could argue to move more by rail for most destinations, and last mile it by truck. But with that change I still think we're running into contention for that left lane ...
  - antoineMoPa 4y ago
    I agree that the rail network is really not sufficient in North America, but it's worth investing more in extending this network.
TingPing 4y ago
Maintenance cost of rail is significantly cheaper. Don't sink more into bad design.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  It costs Amtrak over $300k a year to maintain a single mile of track on the Northeast corridor. For comparison, it costs around $30k to maintain a single mile of US interstate, i.e. only 10% of the cost to maintain rail track. In what sense rail is cheaper to maintain, exactly?

CamperBob2 4y ago

Trains are great for moving lots of people efficiently and quickly from one place where they don't want to be to another place where they don't want to be.

chinathrow 4y ago
Said no one in Europe, ever.
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  In the US, 200 years is a long time, and the train doesn't go where you're going. In Europe, 200 km is a long distance, and it might.
  - markdown 4y ago
    In Singapore, 50 years is a long time and the train goes where you're going. I'm not saying the US could pull off a Singapore, but there's no excuse for San Francisco, or LA, or any other large city to have done so.
  - doctorwho42 4y ago
    We have highways everywhere... We could definitely dedicate the left most lane and convert every left most lane into people moving train tracks. Just because we haven't doesn't mean it isn't economical or feasible.
johannes1234321 4y ago
With a good planning and a little time (unfortunately slightly in the decades) you can build infrastructure to be around the train network. Make sure you have a good connection from home location to a hub and infrastructure development around the hub for shops and offices as well as train lines to factories for factory workers as in Tokyo, combined with an integrated schedule as inspired by Switzerland and you get quite an attractive urban experience. But yes, that is a major shift from America's car focussed infrastructure.

Eisenstein 4y ago

All of Elon Musk's grand ideas for revolutionizing terrestrial transportation (that aren't laughably unworkable like miles long vacuum enclosures) are just 'trains but much smaller and with tires so that we lose all efficiencies and gain all of the drawbacks'. So this fits perfectly.

a_bonobo 4y ago
The difference to trains in Musk (and Silicon Valley's overall view) is that with automated cars, you don't have to share your personal space with other people (the poors!). It's easy to make fun of the overall project but there's elitism behind it - have your private space at the cost of the public.
- doctorwho42 4y ago
  Well it's fun to make fun of Mr. Musk (and his fake physics credentials) for more or less copying a 100 year old idea and design, and making it flashy again. Yes the hyperloop is just a rebranded vacuum train/atmospheric railway... Patented in 1799 in London... Yup... Let that sink in.
  - Guthur 4y ago
    It's really quite amazing how similar things are today, to 200 years ago. I've been reading some philosophical literature from 19th century and if just change a few key words you'd imagine it was written today.

baby 4y ago

It’s obvious at this point that the US gov doesn’t want to invest there, and it’s too hard for the private sector to go and build train routes through land.

shepherdjerred 4y ago

Trains aren't really comparable to autonomous lanes. An autonomous car can travel on both normal roads, and in an autonomous lane. Roads are everywhere -- there's a road leading up to most people's place of residence. Trains rely on tracks which are not as common as roads. Trains are also not owned by individuals. Most people do not have a train station outside of their house.

doctorwho42 4y ago
Perhaps we could dedicate the right most lane on every highway to becoming a train line instead of an autonomous vehicle lane? A train can move more tonnage (see people) per unit of energy (kWhr/gallon of diesel/etc.) Than almost any other mode of transportation (gosh darn sailboats and barges being so efficient!) . So why have 100's of electric motors and separate batteries to move people, when you can skip the batteries and have an electrified third rail and just an engine or two running a train for those hundreds of people.
- TylerE 4y ago
  The nearest thing that might be described as “highway” is 20 miles from my house. It’s the last (few dozen) mile problem passenger trains in the US have always faced for everyone who doesn’t live in the Northeast or SoCal. Guess where the two passenger lines that come even vaguely to profitability are? The population of the US is very coastal, which doesn’t map well to a hub and spoke system like rail. Contrast with Western Europe where A -> Paris/Berlin -> B is probably reasonably close to a straight line.
- shepherdjerred 4y ago
  This is a great idea, but wouldn't paving more road be significantly cheaper and quicker than building rail infrastructure? I'm all for the US pouring money into rail, but the fact is that we're _very_ bad at big infrastructure projects right now. That's not to say that we can't get better though.
  - doctorwho42 4y ago

adwn 4y ago

Can a train pick me up directly at my home, and drop me off at pretty much any destination, with more luggage than I can carry at once, at any time of the day, at the exact moment I want to leave? No? Then trains are an alternative to self-driving cars, not a replacement. Public transport is great, but you aren't going to convince others to support it by pretending it doesn't have any drawbacks compared to private transport.