I haven't been to the Netherlands yet, it's on my list, but I was just in Japan a few weeks ago. The thing that surprised me most about Tokyo was actually how

I haven't been to the Netherlands yet, it's on my list, but I was just in Japan a few weeks ago. The thing that surprised me most about Tokyo was actually how generally crowded the trains were. It seems obvious that they should be running near twice as many trains in general and especially during rush hour. The tracks were still mostly empty compared to streets. While everyone was super considerate, it was still relatively low comfort traveling with a kid because of the uncertainty around getting a seat. Why couldn't we build barriers along AV roadways and code them to drive an exact path? It's actually much easier to code an AV to act like a train than this freeform driving that they are doing. They could go into train/convoy mode to utilize the train infrastructure then back into car mode to take a side street. You can easily put bathrooms and running water on AVs if it makes sense. I do agree about having the nice walkable areas near stations, but was somewhat surprised that car right-of-way was still super dominant in Japan. Like the Shibuya Crossing, you have thousands of people all scrambling across then cramming onto the sidewalks while vehicles get 70% of the right-of-way timeslice. I'd actually flip that so that peds are the primary street users and AVs must yield.