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No I don’t, I live in a small village. A taxi service would be brilliant, my son could get to scouts and back under his own steam. Automated or manual doesn’t m

No I don’t, I live in a small village. A taxi service would be brilliant, my son could get to scouts and back under his own steam. Automated or manual doesn’t matter, but we can’t sustain a taxi service.l - there’s one in a town about 6 miles away. One taxi.

smaudet 3y ago
This is why rail systems were/are great. Sure, you had to have a station, but you could service far more small towns, no need to economically support them. If the train didn't have anyone to pick up it simply wouldn't stop, and unlike the bus it could take on many more cars, amortizing the extra costs of emptier stops. Instead we have networks of roads that are largely unsafe, inefficient, and more costly to replace, and a dated rail system that hardly services major cities any more.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  Building a multi-million pound/dollar/etc line extension to a train line, including stations, for 2,000 perso -trips per year? Each ride would need to cost thousands, just to recoup the loss from building - even if the train never stopped. But it would have to stop, just for 4 people at a time. That public transportation money might be better allocated in denser areas where it's needed by more people. Instead, your use case seems like the perfect case to use all those roads: A self-driving car would cost tens of thousands. A good bus, maybe up to 10x more. Compare that to a train and tracks and geoengineering for the tracks and building stations, etc. Otherwise, is there a minimum number of trips per year to justify such an enormous, enormous, enormous build as a rail line extension? 200? 20? 1?
  - smaudet 3y ago
    I think your math is wildly off... We did this before, so it's not that it can't be done efficiently. A lot of the cost savings comes from the millions of people taking the trains in the cities, and the fact that you were going to build the rail anyways. So the costs are not as exaggerated as you seem to think...which is the point. They effectively amortize costs in a way no other transportation can even dream of.
    - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
      I don't think my math is wildly off, but if you think it is, I invite you to show your work and what the non-off math should be. Claiming the numbers I mentioned are "exaggerated" is a bit misleading and insulting without this. The cost savings you mention aren't savings: If the extensions to the villages aren't build, the folks in the cities would still use the train just as much as they do now. The question, then, is the marginal cost of bringing an existing rail line, from a city where it already exists, to a village of 4 person-rides per hour. The millions of dollars it costs are just for the parts that go to the village. Or, simplified further: - having a train in the city which millions take, and then spending millions more dollars extending that train line to a village where 4 people/hour take it versus - having a a train in the city which millions of people take, and not spending millions more dollars extending that train line to a village where 4 people/hour take it The second one is economically feasible, the first one not so much. As for doing things efficiently, that is only 1 requirement. We also have laws, regulations, safety, the environment, and many more considerations to factor in. Once you do, the cost gets to the orders of magnitude I mentioned.
      - smaudet 3y ago
        No. Your error is in assuming that all extensions to villages are built as just to villages. There are trains between cities, which presumably have non-zero traffic, or some mix of commercial/pedestrian traffic. That's where you garner the savings - you were already spending millions on intercity traffic. If you have your blinders on with this false-choice of city or city + villages, then you'd have a point, but this is not the case for rail between two cities. In Europe/US there are more than enough cities to make this feasible. A rail system doesn't solve the problem of truly remote regions where there are no nearby cities, but it does allow for intercity transport with stops at minor villages along the way. As for "providing the numbers", I'd encourage you to inspect the numbers for city rail systems, they operate on the same principle, albeit at a lower scale - trains operate on loops or lines through many neighborhoods, instead of a hub and spoke system that would require an exorbitantly expensive central hub and N lines, they can operate at a fraction of that cost with usually ~10 lines per city, servicing usually hundreds of stops (an order of magnitude savings). Compare that with the cost of vehicles with the same city (parking, fuel, licensing, insurance, road upkeep), its fairly obvious that the one system (line with many stops) is far superior to the other (individualized transport).
GaggiX 3y ago
Well I was talking about cities. With small villages is a very different story of course.

smaudet 3y ago

This is why rail systems were/are great. Sure, you had to have a station, but you could service far more small towns, no need to economically support them. If the train didn't have anyone to pick up it simply wouldn't stop, and unlike the bus it could take on many more cars, amortizing the extra costs of emptier stops. Instead we have networks of roads that are largely unsafe, inefficient, and more costly to replace, and a dated rail system that hardly services major cities any more.

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
Building a multi-million pound/dollar/etc line extension to a train line, including stations, for 2,000 perso -trips per year? Each ride would need to cost thousands, just to recoup the loss from building - even if the train never stopped. But it would have to stop, just for 4 people at a time. That public transportation money might be better allocated in denser areas where it's needed by more people. Instead, your use case seems like the perfect case to use all those roads: A self-driving car would cost tens of thousands. A good bus, maybe up to 10x more. Compare that to a train and tracks and geoengineering for the tracks and building stations, etc. Otherwise, is there a minimum number of trips per year to justify such an enormous, enormous, enormous build as a rail line extension? 200? 20? 1?
- smaudet 3y ago
  I think your math is wildly off... We did this before, so it's not that it can't be done efficiently. A lot of the cost savings comes from the millions of people taking the trains in the cities, and the fact that you were going to build the rail anyways. So the costs are not as exaggerated as you seem to think...which is the point. They effectively amortize costs in a way no other transportation can even dream of.
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    I don't think my math is wildly off, but if you think it is, I invite you to show your work and what the non-off math should be. Claiming the numbers I mentioned are "exaggerated" is a bit misleading and insulting without this. The cost savings you mention aren't savings: If the extensions to the villages aren't build, the folks in the cities would still use the train just as much as they do now. The question, then, is the marginal cost of bringing an existing rail line, from a city where it already exists, to a village of 4 person-rides per hour. The millions of dollars it costs are just for the parts that go to the village. Or, simplified further: - having a train in the city which millions take, and then spending millions more dollars extending that train line to a village where 4 people/hour take it versus - having a a train in the city which millions of people take, and not spending millions more dollars extending that train line to a village where 4 people/hour take it The second one is economically feasible, the first one not so much. As for doing things efficiently, that is only 1 requirement. We also have laws, regulations, safety, the environment, and many more considerations to factor in. Once you do, the cost gets to the orders of magnitude I mentioned.
    - smaudet 3y ago
      No. Your error is in assuming that all extensions to villages are built as just to villages. There are trains between cities, which presumably have non-zero traffic, or some mix of commercial/pedestrian traffic. That's where you garner the savings - you were already spending millions on intercity traffic. If you have your blinders on with this false-choice of city or city + villages, then you'd have a point, but this is not the case for rail between two cities. In Europe/US there are more than enough cities to make this feasible. A rail system doesn't solve the problem of truly remote regions where there are no nearby cities, but it does allow for intercity transport with stops at minor villages along the way. As for "providing the numbers", I'd encourage you to inspect the numbers for city rail systems, they operate on the same principle, albeit at a lower scale - trains operate on loops or lines through many neighborhoods, instead of a hub and spoke system that would require an exorbitantly expensive central hub and N lines, they can operate at a fraction of that cost with usually ~10 lines per city, servicing usually hundreds of stops (an order of magnitude savings). Compare that with the cost of vehicles with the same city (parking, fuel, licensing, insurance, road upkeep), its fairly obvious that the one system (line with many stops) is far superior to the other (individualized transport).

GaggiX 3y ago

Well I was talking about cities. With small villages is a very different story of course.