4 ms·

> Small Train is Good Train In a few years I think we'll recognize that self-driving vans (in a few different sizes) are the best trains: cheaper than trains (

by xnx 1y ago

> Small Train is Good Train In a few years I think we'll recognize that self-driving vans (in a few different sizes) are the best trains: cheaper than trains (and therefore lower environmental impact), completely flexible routing, and you can even let them use dedicated right of way if you want to increase capacity.

sofixa 1y ago
> cheaper than trains (and therefore lower environmental impact) How does that work? For the same amount of capacity, vans are not and probably never will be cheaper. Steel wheels on rails, with massive capacity, is just drastically more efficient, even with 0 driver costs. You'll still have much more maintenance (the tires, breaks, road) to do with a much higher number of vehicles.
- skybrian 1y ago
  This will depend on density and what's already built. An extreme case: it wouldn't make sense to replace a large, rural school district's bus fleet with trains.
- xnx 1y ago
  All trains, tracks, and stations are specially designed and built, which makes them very expensive. There is no mass-produced off-the-shelf solution like with cars and roads. Trains are unbeatable for inland freight between limited destinations, but don't make much sense for current day commuting or traffic patterns.
  - theluketaylor 1y ago
    There are off the shelf trains, tracks, and stations already. It's one of the key ways many european and asian operators deliver tons of transit for the dollar.
  - exasperaited 1y ago
    This is not really true. There are absolutely things in the rail system that are as “mass produced” as roads are. Railway platforms for example are a highly standardised form that has many other applications (loading and inspection bays, walkways etc.), trains are actually not only mass produced (e.g. by Bombardier) but are actually leased by their operators in Europe; there are five or six, I think, main ROSCOs —- rolling stock companies —- in the UK for example. There is a notable exception that might distort techie perception on this issue: BART. It implements many of its own standards, even down to track gauge. But it is absolutely an outlier (standardised track gauge, ironically, being the USA’s main contribution to the development of the railways, which it was otherwise late to). Almost everywhere else has rather interchangeable infrastructure and a lot of trans-national businesses.
    - Symbiote 1y ago
      Wasn't standard gauge first standardized in the UK? Wikipedia says 1846. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard-gauge_railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard-gauge_railway
      - exasperaited 1y ago
        The thing I am referring to is actually mentioned in there -- the true defining event for rail standardisation as a business decision is mentioned here in more detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge_in_the_United_States#Unification_to_standard_gauge_on_May_31–June_1,_1886 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge_in_the_United_Stat... It was a pretty staggering achievement to switch over with so little disruption, and had such rapid, obvious benefits that it kind of ended the notion that keeping entrenched separate gauges could have any merits that outweighed their disadvantages -- it's really the event that made standard gauge the de facto standard. Things would have taken a generation longer without it, because this was just a plainly capitalistic decision that proved itself essentially instantly. (Nearest modern equivalent: iMac having no floppy drive and USB)
    - sofixa 1y ago
      > but are actually leased by their operators in Europe; there are five or six, I think, main ROSCOs —- rolling stock companies —- in the UK for example. Nah, this is a UK absurdity because they UK decided to privatise their railways in the worst possible way - every single part (rail infrastructure, operations, rolling stock) was privatised in a local monopoly manner. The rolling stock owners could lease to multiple different operators, so there was some limited competition on that front (probably eviscerated by the need for the ROSCOs to have a profit margin, on top of the fact that there were 10 of them, which meant reduced economies of scale both at acquiring but also maintaining those trains). They're currently trying to nationalise some parts, after already nationalising the infrastructure (because people died due to bad maintenance due to misaligned incentives - maintenance doesn't bring profits). But other than that, rolling stock leasing mostly exists in freight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_stock_company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_stock_company > trains are actually not only mass produced (e.g. by Bombardier) But yes, trains of all types are mass produced by companies such as Alstom (which were already massive and also bought Bomboardier's train arm), Siemens, Stadler, etc. They can be customised (size, features, etc.), but e.g. the Alstom Metropolis line of metro trains can be found all over the world.
- bombcar 1y ago
  I've yet to see a convincing argument that trains are cheaper than busses (especially when you consider that most of a bus's route (in the USA) would be on "free" roads). Trains can certainly HOLD more people than a bus, and I hate buses with a passion normally reserved for religious arguments, and trains are Choo-choo, but they are expensive as all hell. If they weren't why would BRT exist at all? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q-UHd9tFNk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q-UHd9tFNk
  - kccqzy 1y ago
    The key benefit of BRT is that they have a dedicated right-of-way without conflicts with other traffic just like train tracks with full grade separation. So to do that, BRT suddenly no longer has free roads. You now need dedicated BRT-only roads.
  - appreciatorBus 1y ago
    If the bus is using "free" roads, then it's forced to compete for space with general traffic and likely to perform far worse than BRT or trains that don't have to do this. Worse performance/speed/frequency => lower ridership => worse profitability => calls to cancel the "wasteful" bus etc. The only way out IMO is that we have to stop ripping off the public by giving away unlimited road space for free.
  - theluketaylor 1y ago
    Bus lifespan is 15-20 years max and needs tons of maintenance during that time. Trains last 40 years and go 100,000 miles+ between failures. Trains are a bigger upfront investment, but are cheaper in the long run, especially once capacity is factored in. You need a lot of busses to equal moderate sized trains. Busses have their place, but not as the backbone for rapid transit in even moderate sized urban areas. BRT trades CAPX for OPEX. In Latin America where BRT is hugely successful capital is expensive and labour is cheap, so hiring a ton of drivers is easy. In high labour costs markets like the US, Canada, and Europe BRT falls apart. It's often all transit agencies think they can get funding and support for so it's pushed, but it's way too easy to cut back BRT attributes like signal priority, dedicated lanes, and all door boarding to end up with just a bus with a fancy livery.
troupo 1y ago
> self-driving vans (in a few different sizes) are the best trains Until you actually do the basic middle-school math of calculating capacity. Both of vans, and of the roads
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit seems to be the worst of all worlds but never quite dies
bluGill 1y ago
We can call them a bus... Most suburbs are dense enough to have demand for full sized buses if service is good. The cost of a bus means that cities don't give them good service, but automated bus drivers would reduce the costs enough that they could run good service and this in turn will get so many people to use the bus instead of driving that the van could not work. For rural areas a van might make sense, though you quickly get to a frequent van is less efficient than just owning your own van.
- xnx 1y ago
  Yep, but I think automated bus drivers change the math. A standard-ish city bus is $1M and seats 50 (though they're rarely full). You could definitely get 5 vans that would seat 6 for $1M. Absolute seating capacity is lower, but total throughput could be greater because of the extra flexibility.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    That doesn't work. If you run frequent service more people will use it and so you still need the big bus.
  - rsynnott 1y ago
    > A standard-ish city bus is $1M and seats 50 (though they're rarely full). This sounds wrong, or at least your local transport company is being ripped off. Dublin Bus bought 600 plug-in hybrid double-deckers a few years back at a unit cost of 450,000 eur; they take about 90 people. More recently it bought a couple hundred electric buses of the same size for 500k apiece (though of course these are cheaper to run). Also, define 'rarely full'. At rush hour, most buses will be full for at least part of their route. Taken as an example, Dublin Bus has 1,100 buses, almost all ~90 person double deckers (homeopathic numbers of smaller single-deckers and giant three-axle double-deckers can be ignored). Let's say 90% are operating at peak time. That's a capacity of 89,000 people on the road; implementing your plan with 6 person vans would require about 15,000 vans. This is obviously completely absurd. (The original claim that they were good _train_ substitutes is even more absurd; replacing a 1,000 person rapid transit train would require 166 vans. Which is multiple kilometres of vans. On a decent metro line such as train might arrive every 3 minutes. There is just no way you can do that with vans.

by xnx 1y ago

sofixa 1y ago

> cheaper than trains (and therefore lower environmental impact) How does that work? For the same amount of capacity, vans are not and probably never will be cheaper. Steel wheels on rails, with massive capacity, is just drastically more efficient, even with 0 driver costs. You'll still have much more maintenance (the tires, breaks, road) to do with a much higher number of vehicles.

skybrian 1y ago
This will depend on density and what's already built. An extreme case: it wouldn't make sense to replace a large, rural school district's bus fleet with trains.
xnx 1y ago
All trains, tracks, and stations are specially designed and built, which makes them very expensive. There is no mass-produced off-the-shelf solution like with cars and roads. Trains are unbeatable for inland freight between limited destinations, but don't make much sense for current day commuting or traffic patterns.
- theluketaylor 1y ago
  There are off the shelf trains, tracks, and stations already. It's one of the key ways many european and asian operators deliver tons of transit for the dollar.
- exasperaited 1y ago
  This is not really true. There are absolutely things in the rail system that are as “mass produced” as roads are. Railway platforms for example are a highly standardised form that has many other applications (loading and inspection bays, walkways etc.), trains are actually not only mass produced (e.g. by Bombardier) but are actually leased by their operators in Europe; there are five or six, I think, main ROSCOs —- rolling stock companies —- in the UK for example. There is a notable exception that might distort techie perception on this issue: BART. It implements many of its own standards, even down to track gauge. But it is absolutely an outlier (standardised track gauge, ironically, being the USA’s main contribution to the development of the railways, which it was otherwise late to). Almost everywhere else has rather interchangeable infrastructure and a lot of trans-national businesses.
  - Symbiote 1y ago
    Wasn't standard gauge first standardized in the UK? Wikipedia says 1846. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard-gauge_railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard-gauge_railway
    - exasperaited 1y ago
      The thing I am referring to is actually mentioned in there -- the true defining event for rail standardisation as a business decision is mentioned here in more detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge_in_the_United_States#Unification_to_standard_gauge_on_May_31–June_1,_1886 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge_in_the_United_Stat... It was a pretty staggering achievement to switch over with so little disruption, and had such rapid, obvious benefits that it kind of ended the notion that keeping entrenched separate gauges could have any merits that outweighed their disadvantages -- it's really the event that made standard gauge the de facto standard. Things would have taken a generation longer without it, because this was just a plainly capitalistic decision that proved itself essentially instantly. (Nearest modern equivalent: iMac having no floppy drive and USB)
  - sofixa 1y ago
    > but are actually leased by their operators in Europe; there are five or six, I think, main ROSCOs —- rolling stock companies —- in the UK for example. Nah, this is a UK absurdity because they UK decided to privatise their railways in the worst possible way - every single part (rail infrastructure, operations, rolling stock) was privatised in a local monopoly manner. The rolling stock owners could lease to multiple different operators, so there was some limited competition on that front (probably eviscerated by the need for the ROSCOs to have a profit margin, on top of the fact that there were 10 of them, which meant reduced economies of scale both at acquiring but also maintaining those trains). They're currently trying to nationalise some parts, after already nationalising the infrastructure (because people died due to bad maintenance due to misaligned incentives - maintenance doesn't bring profits). But other than that, rolling stock leasing mostly exists in freight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_stock_company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_stock_company > trains are actually not only mass produced (e.g. by Bombardier) But yes, trains of all types are mass produced by companies such as Alstom (which were already massive and also bought Bomboardier's train arm), Siemens, Stadler, etc. They can be customised (size, features, etc.), but e.g. the Alstom Metropolis line of metro trains can be found all over the world.
bombcar 1y ago
I've yet to see a convincing argument that trains are cheaper than busses (especially when you consider that most of a bus's route (in the USA) would be on "free" roads). Trains can certainly HOLD more people than a bus, and I hate buses with a passion normally reserved for religious arguments, and trains are Choo-choo, but they are expensive as all hell. If they weren't why would BRT exist at all? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q-UHd9tFNk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q-UHd9tFNk
- kccqzy 1y ago
  The key benefit of BRT is that they have a dedicated right-of-way without conflicts with other traffic just like train tracks with full grade separation. So to do that, BRT suddenly no longer has free roads. You now need dedicated BRT-only roads.
- appreciatorBus 1y ago
  If the bus is using "free" roads, then it's forced to compete for space with general traffic and likely to perform far worse than BRT or trains that don't have to do this. Worse performance/speed/frequency => lower ridership => worse profitability => calls to cancel the "wasteful" bus etc. The only way out IMO is that we have to stop ripping off the public by giving away unlimited road space for free.
- theluketaylor 1y ago
  Bus lifespan is 15-20 years max and needs tons of maintenance during that time. Trains last 40 years and go 100,000 miles+ between failures. Trains are a bigger upfront investment, but are cheaper in the long run, especially once capacity is factored in. You need a lot of busses to equal moderate sized trains. Busses have their place, but not as the backbone for rapid transit in even moderate sized urban areas. BRT trades CAPX for OPEX. In Latin America where BRT is hugely successful capital is expensive and labour is cheap, so hiring a ton of drivers is easy. In high labour costs markets like the US, Canada, and Europe BRT falls apart. It's often all transit agencies think they can get funding and support for so it's pushed, but it's way too easy to cut back BRT attributes like signal priority, dedicated lanes, and all door boarding to end up with just a bus with a fancy livery.

troupo 1y ago

> self-driving vans (in a few different sizes) are the best trains Until you actually do the basic middle-school math of calculating capacity. Both of vans, and of the roads

PaulHoule 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit seems to be the worst of all worlds but never quite dies

bluGill 1y ago

We can call them a bus... Most suburbs are dense enough to have demand for full sized buses if service is good. The cost of a bus means that cities don't give them good service, but automated bus drivers would reduce the costs enough that they could run good service and this in turn will get so many people to use the bus instead of driving that the van could not work. For rural areas a van might make sense, though you quickly get to a frequent van is less efficient than just owning your own van.

xnx 1y ago
Yep, but I think automated bus drivers change the math. A standard-ish city bus is $1M and seats 50 (though they're rarely full). You could definitely get 5 vans that would seat 6 for $1M. Absolute seating capacity is lower, but total throughput could be greater because of the extra flexibility.
- bluGill 1y ago
  That doesn't work. If you run frequent service more people will use it and so you still need the big bus.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  > A standard-ish city bus is $1M and seats 50 (though they're rarely full). This sounds wrong, or at least your local transport company is being ripped off. Dublin Bus bought 600 plug-in hybrid double-deckers a few years back at a unit cost of 450,000 eur; they take about 90 people. More recently it bought a couple hundred electric buses of the same size for 500k apiece (though of course these are cheaper to run). Also, define 'rarely full'. At rush hour, most buses will be full for at least part of their route. Taken as an example, Dublin Bus has 1,100 buses, almost all ~90 person double deckers (homeopathic numbers of smaller single-deckers and giant three-axle double-deckers can be ignored). Let's say 90% are operating at peak time. That's a capacity of 89,000 people on the road; implementing your plan with 6 person vans would require about 15,000 vans. This is obviously completely absurd. (The original claim that they were good _train_ substitutes is even more absurd; replacing a 1,000 person rapid transit train would require 166 vans. Which is multiple kilometres of vans. On a decent metro line such as train might arrive every 3 minutes. There is just no way you can do that with vans.