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Sure, and my mistake, if any, was assuming the topic had changed (as happens in the course of comment threads). Regarding the individual with a taxi in a town

Sure, and my mistake, if any, was assuming the topic had changed (as happens in the course of comment threads). Regarding the individual with a taxi in a town 6 miles away, I didn't mean to imply he would definitely be serviced. Instead, its more likely he would be able to walk/find some transportation to a local rail line, if we had a rail line network. This would still be better than the current state of affairs, by the sound of it - maybe be able to hire a taxi vs being able to walk with their son to a nearby station. If this individual is truly in a remote region, nothing will solve that. Last mile can and should still be solved by alternative low-cost low-frequency transportation such as cars, bicycles, low-cost trams, buses, airplanes, drones, etc.

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
> If this individual is truly in a remote region, nothing will solve that. That seems a little fatalistic! I would hope the comment would be "I can't think of anything that would solve that". Because I and a few others can: Self-driving vehicles. Cars or busses. That's what we were discussing before someone mentioned that no, self-driving cars are bad for this specific use case, trains would be better.
- smaudet 3y ago
  > That's what we were discussing before someone mentioned that no, self-driving cars are bad for this specific use case, trains would be better. That's a gross mischaracterization of what I actually said, which was that we have an unfortunate network of roads and barely any rail. And, furthermore, if you have the infrastructure to support refueling stations, then you aren't so remote, are you? If you have such infrastructure, then you probably have a population density to support other infrastructure, like rail. And yes, that is always preferable (as your main means of long distance land based travel).

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago

> If this individual is truly in a remote region, nothing will solve that. That seems a little fatalistic! I would hope the comment would be "I can't think of anything that would solve that". Because I and a few others can: Self-driving vehicles. Cars or busses. That's what we were discussing before someone mentioned that no, self-driving cars are bad for this specific use case, trains would be better.

smaudet 3y ago
> That's what we were discussing before someone mentioned that no, self-driving cars are bad for this specific use case, trains would be better. That's a gross mischaracterization of what I actually said, which was that we have an unfortunate network of roads and barely any rail. And, furthermore, if you have the infrastructure to support refueling stations, then you aren't so remote, are you? If you have such infrastructure, then you probably have a population density to support other infrastructure, like rail. And yes, that is always preferable (as your main means of long distance land based travel).