4 ms·

It's insane the length we go as humans (in the US at least) to not invest in the easiest, most cost-effective and environmentally friendly mode of transportatio

It's insane the length we go as humans (in the US at least) to not invest in the easiest, most cost-effective and environmentally friendly mode of transportation: trains. Hyperloops, wider and wider highways, now personal airplanes. Anything but goddamn trains. It's mental to me. Wish the best to the startup, after all they are filling a void someone else would, but still, not happy with the direction transport is going, which seems backwards sometimes.

philwelch 2y ago
Trains are for freight, and they are exceedingly good at it.
- adamnemecek 2y ago
  The rest of the world would like to disagree.
  - philwelch 2y ago
    Yes, it’s frankly absurd and wasteful how much freight Europe moves by truck instead.
    - riedel 2y ago
      Germany (and probably some other European countries) have the problem of using the train network for freight at night and passengers by day. Together with underinvestment this has generated great problems but because infrastructure has been failing. It has been more politically opportune to invest in shared road infrastructure. Creating a healthy 'market' for infrastructure is extremely difficult.
    - Ringz 2y ago
      Do you have a source for that claim? Preferably a study that shows that the USA uses fewer trucks and more trains for the transport of goods than Europe.
      - dagw 2y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_freight_transport#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_freight_transport#Statist... "Within the U.S. railroads carry 39.9% of freight by ton-mile, followed by trucks (33.4%)...Railways carried 17.1% of EU freight in terms of tonne-km, compared to road transport (76.4%)"
- b-side 2y ago
  Indeed, trains for passengers can only work for tiny low-population countries like China and Japan.
  - DandyDev 2y ago
    Trains work very well in densely populated areas, even if its logistically challenging. I live in the Netherlands and despite what detractors would tell you, it’s impressive how on time the Dutch railways can keep such a complex schedule.
    - wazdra 2y ago
      Indeed a great system, but oh so expensive...
  - dagw 2y ago
    Trains can work great for either passengers or freight. The problems arise when you try to do both at the same time (on the same line). If the US was to dramatically improve its passenger service it would have to either build an entirely new set of parallel tracks (which would be very expensive) or dramatically worsen its rail freight offering, which would greatly increase the number of trucks of the road.
    - Tade0 2y ago
      There's a train line close to me which runs on tracks parallel to a freight line. The company maintaining the latter was asked several times if their infrastructure could be used, but they refused each time, so the passenger line, which was always there, just in a state of disrepair, had to be refurbished at great expense. I'm happy with the result though because like in every track having just one line, the trains are amazingly punctual.
    - philwelch 2y ago
      And if you’re going to pick one, there are plenty of reasons to pick freight. A single freight train might have 70-200 cars, each of which can carry 1-2 full-size intermodal containers (if not a comparably massive tanker car or something). Trains are more efficient than road vehicles in terms of energy consumption, wear and tear on the road (or railroad), and labor cost, but these efficiencies scale up considerably based on vehicle weight, and the weight of a few hundred loaded intermodal containers is a very high number indeed. Not to mention that intermodal containers are a lot less fussy about hospitality than passengers!
dartharva 2y ago
You can't take a train to anywhere you want. Tracks will always be less accessible than roads or the sky.
- robin_reala 2y ago
  You can’t land wherever you want in a plane? I’m two minutes walk to my local station, and a 15 minute drive to the nearest airfield.
  - hoosieree 2y ago
    You can land a plane anywhere you want. Once.
- yard2010 2y ago
  Only in the beginning and it's not linear. One track can be used by an infinite amount of people with very little to no congestion, unlike roads.
  - dartharva 2y ago
    You also can't travel anytime you want. What happens when a doctor has to reach his hospital for a critical emergency but the next train is scheduled in half an hour?
    - witx 2y ago
      Have you ever heard about helicopters? There are hospitals that have them. Why do we need _personal_ airplanes for this to happen? Why you think doctors will have money or space for their own airplane when they have no helicopters yet? In this scenario of yours where would this doctor have their "airplane" at home? In a airfield?
      - dartharva 2y ago
        No, he would have a car of his own. That he can drive himself to the hospital. I'm not sure why you jumped to helicopters.
bluerooibos 2y ago
Absolutely agree. Really quite tired of living in a country which focuses on individualised transport and car centric infrastructure. It's an absolute delight to get around in a country like Japan where I don't have to rely on a car at all.
- rangestransform 2y ago
  At least for me, getting around by train in Japan is preferable because of how convenient and fast it is, not because of any inherent advantage of public transport, and definitely not because I want to bear a cross for the greater good of society. Japanese society also contributes to how pleasant public transit is there, in comparison to the dregs of society that use NYC public transit. If I could have a 300kph autonomous pod that keeps me air-conditioned from my door to my destination's door, that would be preferable to even the proposed Chuo maglev train. Similarly, if individual transport can close the convenience gap with public transport, I would prefer individual transport instead. I will say that I vastly prefer urban environments that deprioritize cars; I often find that even private cars work better in those environments than in car-dependent cities. Of course, it's always better to be one of the first exploiters in a tragedy of the commons situation.
  - dyauspitr 2y ago
    How is the pod going to get you to your door. You would need a rail line leading to every home which is ridiculous.
    - rangestransform 2y ago
      The point is that most people would rather take private than public transport, all else equal (besides externalized costs, I don’t care how much co2 my pod emits). I would even pay a small premium for private transport compared to equally quick public transport. To convince people to take public transport, you have to make it at least a side-grade, and making private transport worse without improving public transport will just lose you an election.
- 2y ago
Tade0 2y ago
It's not actually cost-efficient if you take into account one factor: demographics, or specifically: staffing. A crew member of a train has a very demanding job. The shifts are highly irregular and you may have to spend the night far from home. In this regard it's even worse than flying. Someone has to maintain the infrastructure, which by its very nature can also be in remote places. Particularly busy railroad crossings also require staffing, even if they're ostensibly in the middle of nowhere. Very few people in our ageing societies want this sort of life and you have to incentivise them to do it, which adds costs.
- nmc 2y ago
  You cannot make the cost-efficiency argument without acknowledging all the costs which aviation and automotive travel externalize: air and water pollution, damage to wildlife, global warming, lack of walking/cycling infrastructure, rising sea levels... a disproportionate part of which are born by poor or faraway people who have no choice in all this. Edit: forgot about noise pollution and about flooding risks (due to impervious surfaces like runways and parking lots). I also doubt airfields and planes require significantly less maintenance than trains and tracks, but I have not researched that.
- wiether 2y ago
  > It's not actually cost-efficient if you take into account one factor: demographics, or specifically: staffing. Cars and planes are cost-efficient if you *don't* take into account their environmental and human cost. Otherwise bikes and trains are crazy cheap.
  - Tade0 2y ago
    Doesn't change the fact that you're increasingly hard-pressed to find anyone willing to do it. Same goes for any type of public transport. The problem is exacerbated in regions of the world which can't rely on immigrants, like mine. I live in a city of 650k inhabitants. The local public transport authority says that they would need an additional 100 drivers to cover all the routes. No takers for these roles and it has been like that for two years at least, despite incentives. It's crazy because inadequate public transport causes people to choose cars instead, which in turn produce traffic that further hampers mass transit. Railways have been winding down for decades now and it got to a point where flying between cities in more accessible, punctual and cheap.
lutorm 2y ago
The downfall of trains is that they require track, which require rights of way. Trains are cost-effective if a lot of people make the same trip, and that's after a massive investment cost. No one in their right mind would fly their small airplane between two cities that were connected by high-speed rail. But if you're going from somewhere small to somewhere else small, trains will never be a cost-effective (or efficient) mode of transportation.
- eddyzh 2y ago
  Many European countries disagree. In the Netherlands (40k km2) there are about 400 trainstations and all of them cost a fraction of any reasonable airstrip and can go to the heart of the town.
krab 2y ago
Since the railroads are heavily regulated, it's not easy to innovate there.
qsdf38100 2y ago
Note that one of Elon's goal with the whole hyperloop nonsense was precisely to divert investment from high-speed rail so that it wouldn't compete with "full self driving" cars.
concordDance 2y ago
The problem with trains is they're much more expensive than planes while being much slower. An EasyJet from Gatwick to Edinburgh at the convenient time of 3pm will cost you £35. The train is £94. There are many reasons for this, but the biggest one is the need to purchase all the land along the route and the resulting natural monopoly that results. I'm almost certain they would be more expensive even if all the externalities of the two (such as CO2 emissions) were accounted for. Back of the envelope has that trip being around 40kg of CO2 (double that of national rail, apparently EasyJet have amazing CO2/passenger mile figures), even the $1000/ton CO2 removal tax doesn't make it more expensive than the train.

philwelch 2y ago

Trains are for freight, and they are exceedingly good at it.

adamnemecek 2y ago
The rest of the world would like to disagree.
- philwelch 2y ago
  Yes, it’s frankly absurd and wasteful how much freight Europe moves by truck instead.
  - riedel 2y ago
    Germany (and probably some other European countries) have the problem of using the train network for freight at night and passengers by day. Together with underinvestment this has generated great problems but because infrastructure has been failing. It has been more politically opportune to invest in shared road infrastructure. Creating a healthy 'market' for infrastructure is extremely difficult.
  - Ringz 2y ago
    Do you have a source for that claim? Preferably a study that shows that the USA uses fewer trucks and more trains for the transport of goods than Europe.
    - dagw 2y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_freight_transport#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_freight_transport#Statist... "Within the U.S. railroads carry 39.9% of freight by ton-mile, followed by trucks (33.4%)...Railways carried 17.1% of EU freight in terms of tonne-km, compared to road transport (76.4%)"
b-side 2y ago
Indeed, trains for passengers can only work for tiny low-population countries like China and Japan.
- DandyDev 2y ago
  Trains work very well in densely populated areas, even if its logistically challenging. I live in the Netherlands and despite what detractors would tell you, it’s impressive how on time the Dutch railways can keep such a complex schedule.
  - wazdra 2y ago
    Indeed a great system, but oh so expensive...
- dagw 2y ago
  Trains can work great for either passengers or freight. The problems arise when you try to do both at the same time (on the same line). If the US was to dramatically improve its passenger service it would have to either build an entirely new set of parallel tracks (which would be very expensive) or dramatically worsen its rail freight offering, which would greatly increase the number of trucks of the road.
  - Tade0 2y ago
    There's a train line close to me which runs on tracks parallel to a freight line. The company maintaining the latter was asked several times if their infrastructure could be used, but they refused each time, so the passenger line, which was always there, just in a state of disrepair, had to be refurbished at great expense. I'm happy with the result though because like in every track having just one line, the trains are amazingly punctual.
  - philwelch 2y ago
    And if you’re going to pick one, there are plenty of reasons to pick freight. A single freight train might have 70-200 cars, each of which can carry 1-2 full-size intermodal containers (if not a comparably massive tanker car or something). Trains are more efficient than road vehicles in terms of energy consumption, wear and tear on the road (or railroad), and labor cost, but these efficiencies scale up considerably based on vehicle weight, and the weight of a few hundred loaded intermodal containers is a very high number indeed. Not to mention that intermodal containers are a lot less fussy about hospitality than passengers!

dartharva 2y ago

You can't take a train to anywhere you want. Tracks will always be less accessible than roads or the sky.

robin_reala 2y ago
You can’t land wherever you want in a plane? I’m two minutes walk to my local station, and a 15 minute drive to the nearest airfield.
- hoosieree 2y ago
  You can land a plane anywhere you want. Once.
yard2010 2y ago
Only in the beginning and it's not linear. One track can be used by an infinite amount of people with very little to no congestion, unlike roads.
- dartharva 2y ago
  You also can't travel anytime you want. What happens when a doctor has to reach his hospital for a critical emergency but the next train is scheduled in half an hour?
  - witx 2y ago
    Have you ever heard about helicopters? There are hospitals that have them. Why do we need _personal_ airplanes for this to happen? Why you think doctors will have money or space for their own airplane when they have no helicopters yet? In this scenario of yours where would this doctor have their "airplane" at home? In a airfield?
    - dartharva 2y ago
      No, he would have a car of his own. That he can drive himself to the hospital. I'm not sure why you jumped to helicopters.

bluerooibos 2y ago

Absolutely agree. Really quite tired of living in a country which focuses on individualised transport and car centric infrastructure. It's an absolute delight to get around in a country like Japan where I don't have to rely on a car at all.

rangestransform 2y ago
At least for me, getting around by train in Japan is preferable because of how convenient and fast it is, not because of any inherent advantage of public transport, and definitely not because I want to bear a cross for the greater good of society. Japanese society also contributes to how pleasant public transit is there, in comparison to the dregs of society that use NYC public transit. If I could have a 300kph autonomous pod that keeps me air-conditioned from my door to my destination's door, that would be preferable to even the proposed Chuo maglev train. Similarly, if individual transport can close the convenience gap with public transport, I would prefer individual transport instead. I will say that I vastly prefer urban environments that deprioritize cars; I often find that even private cars work better in those environments than in car-dependent cities. Of course, it's always better to be one of the first exploiters in a tragedy of the commons situation.
- dyauspitr 2y ago
  How is the pod going to get you to your door. You would need a rail line leading to every home which is ridiculous.
  - rangestransform 2y ago
    The point is that most people would rather take private than public transport, all else equal (besides externalized costs, I don’t care how much co2 my pod emits). I would even pay a small premium for private transport compared to equally quick public transport. To convince people to take public transport, you have to make it at least a side-grade, and making private transport worse without improving public transport will just lose you an election.
2y ago

Tade0 2y ago

It's not actually cost-efficient if you take into account one factor: demographics, or specifically: staffing. A crew member of a train has a very demanding job. The shifts are highly irregular and you may have to spend the night far from home. In this regard it's even worse than flying. Someone has to maintain the infrastructure, which by its very nature can also be in remote places. Particularly busy railroad crossings also require staffing, even if they're ostensibly in the middle of nowhere. Very few people in our ageing societies want this sort of life and you have to incentivise them to do it, which adds costs.

nmc 2y ago
You cannot make the cost-efficiency argument without acknowledging all the costs which aviation and automotive travel externalize: air and water pollution, damage to wildlife, global warming, lack of walking/cycling infrastructure, rising sea levels... a disproportionate part of which are born by poor or faraway people who have no choice in all this. Edit: forgot about noise pollution and about flooding risks (due to impervious surfaces like runways and parking lots). I also doubt airfields and planes require significantly less maintenance than trains and tracks, but I have not researched that.
wiether 2y ago
> It's not actually cost-efficient if you take into account one factor: demographics, or specifically: staffing. Cars and planes are cost-efficient if you *don't* take into account their environmental and human cost. Otherwise bikes and trains are crazy cheap.
- Tade0 2y ago
  Doesn't change the fact that you're increasingly hard-pressed to find anyone willing to do it. Same goes for any type of public transport. The problem is exacerbated in regions of the world which can't rely on immigrants, like mine. I live in a city of 650k inhabitants. The local public transport authority says that they would need an additional 100 drivers to cover all the routes. No takers for these roles and it has been like that for two years at least, despite incentives. It's crazy because inadequate public transport causes people to choose cars instead, which in turn produce traffic that further hampers mass transit. Railways have been winding down for decades now and it got to a point where flying between cities in more accessible, punctual and cheap.

lutorm 2y ago

The downfall of trains is that they require track, which require rights of way. Trains are cost-effective if a lot of people make the same trip, and that's after a massive investment cost. No one in their right mind would fly their small airplane between two cities that were connected by high-speed rail. But if you're going from somewhere small to somewhere else small, trains will never be a cost-effective (or efficient) mode of transportation.

eddyzh 2y ago
Many European countries disagree. In the Netherlands (40k km2) there are about 400 trainstations and all of them cost a fraction of any reasonable airstrip and can go to the heart of the town.

krab 2y ago

Since the railroads are heavily regulated, it's not easy to innovate there.

qsdf38100 2y ago

Note that one of Elon's goal with the whole hyperloop nonsense was precisely to divert investment from high-speed rail so that it wouldn't compete with "full self driving" cars.

concordDance 2y ago

The problem with trains is they're much more expensive than planes while being much slower. An EasyJet from Gatwick to Edinburgh at the convenient time of 3pm will cost you £35. The train is £94. There are many reasons for this, but the biggest one is the need to purchase all the land along the route and the resulting natural monopoly that results. I'm almost certain they would be more expensive even if all the externalities of the two (such as CO2 emissions) were accounted for. Back of the envelope has that trip being around 40kg of CO2 (double that of national rail, apparently EasyJet have amazing CO2/passenger mile figures), even the $1000/ton CO2 removal tax doesn't make it more expensive than the train.