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I want cities with large track infrastructure, like NYC, to figure out about having autonomous point to point mini trains share the infrastructure with the larg
by jonahbenton 3y ago
I want cities with large track infrastructure, like NYC, to figure out about having autonomous point to point mini trains share the infrastructure with the large scale scheduled service. The tech for operating on maintained dedicated surfaces without vehicles or people, even with weather, should be much much simpler. From utilization perspective, even at peak the vast majority of track surface sits unused. At the edges and off peak the scheduled service is unreliable. Autonomous point to point would be complementary.
- midasuni 3y agoTracked infrastructure headways are long for safety and operational purposes. Throwing in extra services for private vehicle would remove a train with 200 people on. Of course SV reinventing bus is a meme in itself.
- jonahbenton 3y agoThanks for commenting. Sorry, it would be foolish to allow individual private vehicles on the tracks. It would need to be a fleet, of course, probably operated by a single entity but supervised by MTA (in case of NYC). It would need to be able to operate without any changes to the scheduling and signaling of the long trains, because that infrastructure is just not changing quickly. But precisely because the headways are long, and because there are so many interchanges, there is space even during rush hour for a good number of, say, 5 foot long vehicles to schedule themselves in between.
- midasuni 3y agoIf there’s space for an individual vehicle there’s space to put another 200 person vehicle.
- gWPVhyxPHqvk 3y agoI don’t know how you’d squeeze extra private cars on something like the Lexington ave line which runs a train every 2 minutes during rush hour.
- jonahbenton 3y agoThanks for commenting. There's still at minimum 2000 feet between each train, and track interchanges between most stations even above 59th. Plenty of room for some number of 5 foot long auto cars to be scheduled between the long trains. And congestion pricing and limited scheduling slots during rush hour is kind of a solved problem. But the goal would not be to augment the already efficient routes. Instead to complement for the inefficient routes, in, like, the entirety of Brooklyn and Queens, where most of the time most people have to wait close to 10 minutes for something to come.