Rail is fundamentally superior to roads + cars at an engineering level.
All at the same time:
Rail has a smaller footprint
Rail moves multiple times more people or cargo per hour
Rail has multiple times more fuel efficiency
The fact that USA’s policy has been designed to favor cars only makes them more ‘practical’ than rail if you consider political constraints more binding than physics constraints.
I’ll grant that trucks have tighter turning radii and maximum operating grade. If we truly only used them when those characteristics are needed THAT would be ‘practical’
You dont need to have a line to every street and a stop in front of every house. Works pretty decently when paired with the willingness to walk a couple of minutes or cycle to a stop.
Yes, I am European. And glad I moved from the countryside to a city with loads of public transport options. I use the car way less now.
What about buses for those scenarios? I can’t imagine a situation outside some huge outlier or the middle of nowhere where rail and bus were both not practical to get to a destination but cars are.
The people who want these rail lines everywhere aren’t being reasonable. There are other reasons besides schedule and routes that people don’t use trains anymore.
Roads are going to need modifications to be made truly safe for self driving. I don’t think it’ll be particularly expensive, either. Some things that would likely help would be reflectors that only reflect a certain spectrum of light, ferrous materials, passive radio equipment, etc. These are all things a machine can slap onto/into asphalt and shoulders without much trouble. It can be done rapidly. It only has to be decided upon and done. On top of these, it’s not like roads are all that dynamic. Sure, there’s always construction, but for the most part, they don’t change rapidly. Any self driving car should have a very up to date model loaded of the roads in the contiguous land it can traverse.
If society really wanted self driving cars to be a safe reality, it would just require a little more focus. Trying to do it with computer vision without road augmentation is clearly problematic. My car has a travel assist feature similar to Tesla’s Autopilot. It is great on well marked roadways without tight curves, but can be dangerous if the driver isn’t paying attention as it will lose the road lines at times and go off on its own.
Try doing tight curves on a railroad. Try steep grades on a railroad. Try running a line to every neighborhood, with using eniment domain.
Somethings are just not practical
Rail is fundamentally superior to roads + cars at an engineering level.
All at the same time:
Rail has a smaller footprint
Rail moves multiple times more people or cargo per hour
Rail has multiple times more fuel efficiency
The fact that USA’s policy has been designed to favor cars only makes them more ‘practical’ than rail if you consider political constraints more binding than physics constraints.
I’ll grant that trucks have tighter turning radii and maximum operating grade. If we truly only used them when those characteristics are needed THAT would be ‘practical’
… Rail is quite adaptive.
Here are two methods for steep inclines.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolderbahn
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybahn
Aren’t you just describing how roads were built to every home in every community?
Nobody wants a train infront of every home. Thats what busses are for.
Id do trams
You dont need to have a line to every street and a stop in front of every house. Works pretty decently when paired with the willingness to walk a couple of minutes or cycle to a stop.
Yes, I am European. And glad I moved from the countryside to a city with loads of public transport options. I use the car way less now.
Or try putting your hands on the fuckin wheel.
Have you heard of the tramway?
What about buses for those scenarios? I can’t imagine a situation outside some huge outlier or the middle of nowhere where rail and bus were both not practical to get to a destination but cars are.
But muh edge cases!
The people who want these rail lines everywhere aren’t being reasonable. There are other reasons besides schedule and routes that people don’t use trains anymore.
Roads are going to need modifications to be made truly safe for self driving. I don’t think it’ll be particularly expensive, either. Some things that would likely help would be reflectors that only reflect a certain spectrum of light, ferrous materials, passive radio equipment, etc. These are all things a machine can slap onto/into asphalt and shoulders without much trouble. It can be done rapidly. It only has to be decided upon and done. On top of these, it’s not like roads are all that dynamic. Sure, there’s always construction, but for the most part, they don’t change rapidly. Any self driving car should have a very up to date model loaded of the roads in the contiguous land it can traverse.
If society really wanted self driving cars to be a safe reality, it would just require a little more focus. Trying to do it with computer vision without road augmentation is clearly problematic. My car has a travel assist feature similar to Tesla’s Autopilot. It is great on well marked roadways without tight curves, but can be dangerous if the driver isn’t paying attention as it will lose the road lines at times and go off on its own.
Who upvotes this shit?