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I think the long-term solution to transit problems is intermodal passenger pods that can shuffle between self-driving cars, trains, aircraft, watercraft, and el

I think the long-term solution to transit problems is intermodal passenger pods that can shuffle between self-driving cars, trains, aircraft, watercraft, and elevators. Containerization for people, basically. You'd hop in your pod which is basically another room in your apartment when not in use, and then the building would shuffle you down the elevator to the subway. Once you're outside of city limits, it'd transfer you to a self-driving car to take you to a hike in the mountains. Or it could send you to the airport, security scan you on the way, and your pod would fit straight onto the aircraft without any need to get out, go through security, wait at the terminal, or interact with other passengers. Or it might transfer you to commute rail to get to the general vicinity of your workplace, and then a self-driving scooter for the last mile to work. EVs are a useful step in that direction though. Something like the Rivian skateboard platform lends itself very well to containerized passenger transport, since the passenger body can just be loaded straight onto the chassis. Plus this model generally has shorter, fewer, and more predictable vehicle miles, which makes EV charging easier.

hammyhavoc 4y ago
What is this actually solving other than adding tons of mechanical failure points? Why not just use a door? People already don't move around enough.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  Transit time, particularly in the transfer points between types of transportation. Imagine leaving for the airport 30 minutes before take-off time rather than 2 hours, and not needing to spend half an hour de-planing and collecting your baggage. Many short-haul commuter flights (eg. ~1H from SFO to Reno or LAX to Vegas) become viable, and HSR is much more practical if you don't need to worry about connections or last-mile transportation. You could commute Merced -> Google in about 50 minutes with this system, less than the shuttle to SF currently takes. It'd be 2 stops on CA HSR (Merced -> Gilroy -> SJC, 30 minutes), then 1 stop on a Caltrain baby bullet (SJC -> MTV, 15 minutes), then a self-driving car for the 2 miles from MTV Caltrain to Google (5 minutes). Best of all, you wouldn't need to interrupt what you're doing - you could take a nap, or code, or read a book, or watch a TV show and not need to put it away every time you switch transportation modes. Think of what that'd do to housing prices, if the commutable distance from the Bay Area extended out to the Central Valley. Also, computer-controlling all the individual vehicles allows the possibility of moving transfers. Imagine if HSR didn't need to come to a stop for passengers to embark and disembark. The self-driving car could instead accelerate up to ~100mph and the train would decelerate to that, and then pods would move over as their chassis lined up. One of the biggest issues with rail transportation is that you lose much of the travel time to stops, acceleration, and deceleration; get rid of that your trains can go much faster. There's a lot of benefit to using self-driving cars/scooters only for the last-mile and using bulk transport like trains or planes for the majority of the trip, too. It's fewer vehicle miles overall and a shorter trip radius for the EV, which cuts down on overall energy use and makes recharging simpler.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    ... but what's the actual value here? OK, create an incredibly complex transportation system that adds a ton of mechanical failure points—so buddy can read his book uninterrupted, take a nap, or watch a TV show? And what's the net gain for humanity here? If they feel they need to nap in public then maybe their work-life balance is problematic. Who's going to pay for this system? If they pass the costs onto the consumer, the average schmoe isn't going to be able to afford to travel with what maintaining a system of this complexity would cost. What about fail states? What happens when a pod transfer issue means the whole train is brought to a halt? What happens if there's an unexpected obstacle in front of the car running alongside the train? Quite honestly, most people probably don't even need to be in the office, let alone all the time. The solutions are travelling less, not increasing the complexity of the transport infrastructure and consuming more juice just because someone doesn't want to stop what they're doing for a minute or two. People say WFH is apparently bad for productivity—so what's coding from a train? Productivity is measured in value generated and quality of that output, not time invested. As for cars and trains matching speeds to facilitate transfer of a pod, what's that going to do to the price of real estate so transport can do that all over the place? The office is dead. Long live the office.
    - nostrademons 4y ago
      > OK, create an incredibly complex transportation system that adds a ton of mechanical failure points—so buddy can read his book uninterrupted, take a nap, or watch a TV show? And what's the net gain for humanity here? Yes, that's precisely the point - to get back the hours spent commuting so you don't have to think about them and can do other more productive or enjoyable things with that time. If you spend 8 hours working at $50/hour and then 2 hours commuting, that's $100/day or roughly $2000/month in saved time. Most people would consider that worthwhile. > If they feel they need to nap in public then maybe their work-life balance is problematic. No shit, but cutting time wasted in commuting is generally an easier sell than cutting time spend actually working or engaged in leisure activities. > What about fail states? What happens when a pod transfer issue means the whole train is brought to a halt? What happens if there's an unexpected obstacle in front of the car running alongside the train? The same way we've made air travel so safe that you don't need to think about it, despite the tens of thousands of parts in a modern jetliner. Engineer the hell out of it, and build in multiple redundancies and failsafes. > Quite honestly, most people probably don't even need to be in the office, let alone all the time. If remote work actually worked, we should do that instead. Not everyone is a software engineer or knowledge worker, and it's likely that the fraction of people who are is going to go down in the future.

hammyhavoc 4y ago

What is this actually solving other than adding tons of mechanical failure points? Why not just use a door? People already don't move around enough.

nostrademons 4y ago
Transit time, particularly in the transfer points between types of transportation. Imagine leaving for the airport 30 minutes before take-off time rather than 2 hours, and not needing to spend half an hour de-planing and collecting your baggage. Many short-haul commuter flights (eg. ~1H from SFO to Reno or LAX to Vegas) become viable, and HSR is much more practical if you don't need to worry about connections or last-mile transportation. You could commute Merced -> Google in about 50 minutes with this system, less than the shuttle to SF currently takes. It'd be 2 stops on CA HSR (Merced -> Gilroy -> SJC, 30 minutes), then 1 stop on a Caltrain baby bullet (SJC -> MTV, 15 minutes), then a self-driving car for the 2 miles from MTV Caltrain to Google (5 minutes). Best of all, you wouldn't need to interrupt what you're doing - you could take a nap, or code, or read a book, or watch a TV show and not need to put it away every time you switch transportation modes. Think of what that'd do to housing prices, if the commutable distance from the Bay Area extended out to the Central Valley. Also, computer-controlling all the individual vehicles allows the possibility of moving transfers. Imagine if HSR didn't need to come to a stop for passengers to embark and disembark. The self-driving car could instead accelerate up to ~100mph and the train would decelerate to that, and then pods would move over as their chassis lined up. One of the biggest issues with rail transportation is that you lose much of the travel time to stops, acceleration, and deceleration; get rid of that your trains can go much faster. There's a lot of benefit to using self-driving cars/scooters only for the last-mile and using bulk transport like trains or planes for the majority of the trip, too. It's fewer vehicle miles overall and a shorter trip radius for the EV, which cuts down on overall energy use and makes recharging simpler.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  ... but what's the actual value here? OK, create an incredibly complex transportation system that adds a ton of mechanical failure points—so buddy can read his book uninterrupted, take a nap, or watch a TV show? And what's the net gain for humanity here? If they feel they need to nap in public then maybe their work-life balance is problematic. Who's going to pay for this system? If they pass the costs onto the consumer, the average schmoe isn't going to be able to afford to travel with what maintaining a system of this complexity would cost. What about fail states? What happens when a pod transfer issue means the whole train is brought to a halt? What happens if there's an unexpected obstacle in front of the car running alongside the train? Quite honestly, most people probably don't even need to be in the office, let alone all the time. The solutions are travelling less, not increasing the complexity of the transport infrastructure and consuming more juice just because someone doesn't want to stop what they're doing for a minute or two. People say WFH is apparently bad for productivity—so what's coding from a train? Productivity is measured in value generated and quality of that output, not time invested. As for cars and trains matching speeds to facilitate transfer of a pod, what's that going to do to the price of real estate so transport can do that all over the place? The office is dead. Long live the office.
  - nostrademons 4y ago
    > OK, create an incredibly complex transportation system that adds a ton of mechanical failure points—so buddy can read his book uninterrupted, take a nap, or watch a TV show? And what's the net gain for humanity here? Yes, that's precisely the point - to get back the hours spent commuting so you don't have to think about them and can do other more productive or enjoyable things with that time. If you spend 8 hours working at $50/hour and then 2 hours commuting, that's $100/day or roughly $2000/month in saved time. Most people would consider that worthwhile. > If they feel they need to nap in public then maybe their work-life balance is problematic. No shit, but cutting time wasted in commuting is generally an easier sell than cutting time spend actually working or engaged in leisure activities. > What about fail states? What happens when a pod transfer issue means the whole train is brought to a halt? What happens if there's an unexpected obstacle in front of the car running alongside the train? The same way we've made air travel so safe that you don't need to think about it, despite the tens of thousands of parts in a modern jetliner. Engineer the hell out of it, and build in multiple redundancies and failsafes. > Quite honestly, most people probably don't even need to be in the office, let alone all the time. If remote work actually worked, we should do that instead. Not everyone is a software engineer or knowledge worker, and it's likely that the fraction of people who are is going to go down in the future.