3 ms·

rail roads are obsolete as public transport. stuff like this is much superior: http://www.skytran.net/phpsite/home/Home%20Intro.php?bg=neg http://www.skytran.n

• eru 17y ago
  I would rather bet on rails than MagLev anytime soon.
• potatolicious 17y ago
  Yeahhhhh, no. We've been talking about personal pod-based mass transit for decades and it has yet to materialize, even without the sci-fi billion-dollar mag-lev thing. Rail will be the de facto standard for mass transit for years to come. Why? Because it goes really, really fast, we have had literally hundreds of years of experience running trains of all sorts, and experience, know-how, and resources are available cheaply. Honestly, I don't even think mag-lev will take over as the primary form of rail transport. It's still too expensive, and the gains not sufficient to justify the additional cost. We have high speed trains running impossibly fast on existing rail infrastructure - unless you can double that speed and break the sound barrier or something, there's no incentive to spend ludicrous cash on that sort of system. Even Shanghai, a city that seemingly has unlimited funds for infrastructure, has shied away from mag-lev after building the airport line.