this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
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Building roadways to achieve the current coverage for the entire US was a massive undertaking that required a huge effort over multiple decades. Compared to that, building railways is downright trivial. Let's not forget that self driving trains already exist, but self driving cars don't. People should not let their status quo bias blind them to reality.
Yeah, but the roadways are here now. And this discussion is moot anyway. Trains aren't happening. Self driving cars are maybe happening.
You wouldn't need to maintain as many roads if you converted some percentage to rail (which is much cheaper to maintain) so it could be an investment
Why would people have fewer destinations that they are trying to reach? Or is this just "you don't have to maintain them as roads, now you have to maintain them as railroads lol" sophistry
As he said, rail is cheaper to maintain than roads. So the roads you replace with rail result in a net reduction of maintenance costs
That's what I mean by status quo bias. Just because there are roads now doesn't mean that those are the only option. We have spent a fuckton of money and a fuckton of effort over the last century building these roads. But the problem is that cars don't scale. Self driving or not. So as we continue to spend fucktons of money and effort on transportation, we should allow ourselves to consider all options. Rebuilding all roads to accommodate self driving cars (as the original tweet implies) is probably the worst option. There are options that are better for the economy, better for the environment, and better for people.
Also, I don't think any serious person is suggesting replacing ALL roads with rail. Obviously, roads are an important part of any transit network. It's just that we should not ONLY build roads, and not build ALL roads ONLY for cars.
OK, I'm with you there. High speed trains are great for long distance transport and subways, light trails etc. are great for cities but they'll never replace cars. Self driving cars (or buses) are great in theory if they ever work. There is no one solution that fits all use cases. The reasonable thing to do is to work out what works best in which situation and then do that. Oh and cycle paths. We need a whole lot more of those.
Self-driving cars are happening. Tesla is an industry joke.