4 ms·

Trains aren't a panacea for transportation. They work well in some areas, less well in others, and not at all in many. You still have to get to and from the st

Trains aren't a panacea for transportation. They work well in some areas, less well in others, and not at all in many. You still have to get to and from the stations themselves, and the dependability of transportation arriving on time and proximity to your destination plays a big factor. The metro area I went to college in had a light rail train that ran from downtown to a popular tourist destination. To get there, though, you needed to catch a connecting bus ride. It is a 15 minute trip by car, but an hour by bus+train. If the bus ran late, it would actually be faster to ride a bicycle all 13 miles. The metro area cities want to add more trains because it is the progressive thing to do, but ridership on one of the lines is abysmal, and the other lines aren't utilized as much as they could be because people feel unsafe on them and are disgusting- smoking cigarettes, drinking hard alcohol, food all over the floor, loud music, the occasional gang posturing or aggressive pan handling were all cited by locals in a survey as to why they chose to drive instead.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Back during my first trip to China, a bunch of retired military guys would hang out at subway stations offering rides from the station to your house for 5 jiao or one Kuai in a gas powered tuktuk. I imagine electric ride share bikes could do the same thing today if they weren’t being abused all the time.
LeanderK 3y ago
I actually see autonomous cars complementing trains very well because they can be used for the last mile problem (getting people from the train station to the destination they actually want to arrive at). They are also available for areas poorly served by transit/inconvenient connections. But I don't see them making more impact on somebody who's already driving. Traffic will still be traffic and walkable cities will have to limit that. It's the same car after all, just driven by a computer. All those current issues for heavy car-dependence won't be solved by autonomous driving.
mrweasel 3y ago
> It is a 15 minute trip by car, but an hour by bus+train I have the same issue. Due to location and geography I'm looking at a 90 minut bus ride, with at least one change of bus. If I need to drop the kid of at daycare, you can add 30 minuts, because I have to get of and wait for the next bus. So I'd have to leave at 6:00 to be at work at around 8:00, I then need to leave no later than 15:30, pick up the kid at 17:00 and be home at 17:30, assuming that everything lines up perfectly. There's nothing left of the day and my child has spend 10 hours in daycare... and I haven't worked a full eight hours. It's a 15 minute drive to the office.
jokteur 3y ago
You are underestimating how much trains and public transportation can do. Public transportation is abyssimal in the US, so I get why you think that it may not solve many problems. If you take a look at Switzerland which did public transportation right, you will see that even in low densities areas, it is very much possible to get around by public transport. The canton of Graubünden (area: 7105.44 km2, density: 28/km2) has more train lines and bus lines than the city of Atlanta (area: 353.04 km2, density: 771.3/km2). Switzerland has a lot of tiny villages, evenly spread around. We don't have crazy dense cities, and certainly not large cities. While public transport does not solve every trip and every commute, it is a solution for a significant percentage of the population. You can get to remote areas for hiking, leisure, ... You can find bus lines that connect one village of 30 people to another village of 100 people. They may not be frequent (4x a day), but they allow for tourist to go hike to remote areas, visit nice places, ... Also, public transit is clean here and very safe. For some numbers: a decent amount of people commute by public transport (up to 50% in certain areas), and an even larger percentage of people use public transport for leisure activities (>70%). In an ideal world, you would have decent public transit inside cities and around, pedestrian friendly cities, bike sharing, and fery vew (robo)taxis in dense areas. This makes the cities confortable to live in (less noise and polution). Also, intercity transit is very important (by train, highspeed train or plane). Then, in rural areas you would have robotaxis that can get you anywhere you want. The remaining vehicles on the road should be work related vehicles.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

Back during my first trip to China, a bunch of retired military guys would hang out at subway stations offering rides from the station to your house for 5 jiao or one Kuai in a gas powered tuktuk. I imagine electric ride share bikes could do the same thing today if they weren’t being abused all the time.

LeanderK 3y ago

I actually see autonomous cars complementing trains very well because they can be used for the last mile problem (getting people from the train station to the destination they actually want to arrive at). They are also available for areas poorly served by transit/inconvenient connections. But I don't see them making more impact on somebody who's already driving. Traffic will still be traffic and walkable cities will have to limit that. It's the same car after all, just driven by a computer. All those current issues for heavy car-dependence won't be solved by autonomous driving.

mrweasel 3y ago

> It is a 15 minute trip by car, but an hour by bus+train I have the same issue. Due to location and geography I'm looking at a 90 minut bus ride, with at least one change of bus. If I need to drop the kid of at daycare, you can add 30 minuts, because I have to get of and wait for the next bus. So I'd have to leave at 6:00 to be at work at around 8:00, I then need to leave no later than 15:30, pick up the kid at 17:00 and be home at 17:30, assuming that everything lines up perfectly. There's nothing left of the day and my child has spend 10 hours in daycare... and I haven't worked a full eight hours. It's a 15 minute drive to the office.

jokteur 3y ago

You are underestimating how much trains and public transportation can do. Public transportation is abyssimal in the US, so I get why you think that it may not solve many problems. If you take a look at Switzerland which did public transportation right, you will see that even in low densities areas, it is very much possible to get around by public transport. The canton of Graubünden (area: 7105.44 km2, density: 28/km2) has more train lines and bus lines than the city of Atlanta (area: 353.04 km2, density: 771.3/km2). Switzerland has a lot of tiny villages, evenly spread around. We don't have crazy dense cities, and certainly not large cities. While public transport does not solve every trip and every commute, it is a solution for a significant percentage of the population. You can get to remote areas for hiking, leisure, ... You can find bus lines that connect one village of 30 people to another village of 100 people. They may not be frequent (4x a day), but they allow for tourist to go hike to remote areas, visit nice places, ... Also, public transit is clean here and very safe. For some numbers: a decent amount of people commute by public transport (up to 50% in certain areas), and an even larger percentage of people use public transport for leisure activities (>70%). In an ideal world, you would have decent public transit inside cities and around, pedestrian friendly cities, bike sharing, and fery vew (robo)taxis in dense areas. This makes the cities confortable to live in (less noise and polution). Also, intercity transit is very important (by train, highspeed train or plane). Then, in rural areas you would have robotaxis that can get you anywhere you want. The remaining vehicles on the road should be work related vehicles.