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After living in Japan for a while it’s so hard to go back to countries with no trains. It’s so incredibly convenient that I still have dreams of just hopping on a train with google maps in hand to just explore stuff — the best way to experience Japan!
Self driving trains tho. Not all trains do that
Why? The one driver per hundreds of passengers is drop in the bucket and it is better to have a human who can deal with various issues an AI can’t.
If trains are completely separated from pedestrians or any other form of transportation, then 100% automation was possible a century ago. As soon as they’re not, the problem becomes much, much harder, and is not fully solved yet.
Trains take so long to stop that having a human in charge isn’t going to do any good in terms of avoiding pedestrians or any other form of transportation.
However, since you only need one person driving a train that can carry hundreds of passengers it doesn’t really make sense to replace them with AI. The small savings of having one less salary to pay is offset by the fact that you no longer have someone to blame when things go wrong.
I should clarify. When I said “all other forms of transportation”, that includes other trains. You can easily do it on a straight shot running back and forth. Which is what a lot of large airport trams do, and the monorail in Seattle (which is more like a bus on a concrete rail), but not much else.
As soon as you enter the complication of signaling, automation becomes a lot harder.
But yes, it’s not worthwhile to automate away that one extra job.
If we’re going for realistic…
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Gotta get with the times. Outright denial is so 2005. Today, the line is supposed to be that it’s too late to do anything so might as well burn all the oil.
All I extracted from this is you are in Florida. Which means you’ll be among the first to fuck around and find out.
Doesn’t matter what route you go down; if you try to actually fix traffic, you will always end up inventing busses and trains.
I dunno. I want to invent blimps
You know the Blimps are the buses of the Air, they say.
Are trains and busses the crabs of automotives?
And biking, as that one is more efficient than buses in moving people.
biking is great until you need to cover a long distance and it’s winter and the weather sucks
50% of trips are less then 3 miles [1].
So biking should be able to take care of about 50% of all trips. Buses and trains can take care of most other trips. And cars can stay for trips that are time sensitive or on unusual routes.
Agreed. I bike most of the time and bus/train most of the other times. Shame the latter is so expensive though
Put your bike on the train for the last mile.
People really hate the idea of trains
Our rail system has been so terrible for so long that people are unable to even consider the possibility that it doesn’t have to be shit
Huh? Our rail system seems to be just fine. I’m not so hot about the new faster train to Turku though
Our rail system
Living in France and Belgium, I’d argue it’s not that bad. Is this the same “Our”?
I think theyre talking about the US.
Yeah people in the US tend to assume everything is about the US. Sometimes it’s good to remind them that other places exist and have internet.
At the current rate of acquisition the current US president is attempting there may no longer be other countries, just more states
Then everyone can think that way
I’d wager racism and classism don’t help. “Imagine riding a train with a poor person./s”
imagine being so self-absorbed you look down on poor people
And the random acts of violence, piss, shit, semen, crazy people, junkies, homeless, and the countless people masturbating. Every second week another innocent person is pushed onto the New York City subway tracks. It’s so bad that people are hugging the wall now while they wait.
nypost.com
Heh.
Seems like society could do something to change that. But that would require human people to come before corporate profits.
“Not hard. You use the poor as fuel, right?”
Nobody else got your joke but you make me laugh a little. Darrrrkkk lol
I love trains, but hate shitty trains. I’ll gladly take a 10 hour train ride instead of a 1 hour flight. But when tens are late, cancelled, delayed by priority cargo trains, etc, it makes me hate trains…
It doesn’t make me hate trains, it makes me hate the car and aviation industries for influencing governments and the general public.
In Canada trains suck in general because of all you mentioned, but I’m aware that it’s caused by putting all of our money into highways, airports and the aviation industry, rather than putting a single dollar into owning and building more tracks.
There was a time when it nearly went the other way, but people loved their cars too much to be able to see the future hellscape nearly 300 million cars on today’s roads would create
What about a 5 hour blimp ride instead
How about self driving buses?
Trains are really cool, but not ideal for low traffic conditions + areas requiring a lot of route flexibility. We definitely should build a lot more trains/trams than what were building right now, but self driving buses will still have a very large use case.
why do they have to be self driving tho?
Yeah self-driving at this point doesn’t really add much. Just improving driving conditions with bus lanes and better driver support is much more useful as you’d have to have a supervisor on the bus anyway.
No one wants a bus! That’s not cool.
However, I’ve invented a revolutionary “shared mega limo”. It’s like an Uber, but with 50 seats, and optionally you can ride standing if you’re sporty. It’s the size of a bus, but definitely not a bus.
Now put that on smaller tracks and give it the right of way everywhere! Now you got
tramsshared mega limo on rails!
The trick is you do both buses and trains. You use the buses to connect communities that don’t have large transit requirements between them and then for commuting you use buses to direct people to train stations where they can get the trains to work/ where they need to go en masse. Transportation is a multilevel solution that requires multiple modes to get people where they need to go but you can’t just rely on buses as quite frankly they lack the ability move all that many people even across quite short distances.
Also to address the self driving part: autonomous road vehicles that can operate safely and at scale are well in the fucking magic territory of technology. If you want a proven highly autonomous travel technique that works trains have been doing it for decades.
which train will take me to my house?
Probably the one running on the line closest to your house.
The North American mind can’t comprehend cities where there’s no split between residential/urban areas, and every mode of public transportation goes from your house to anywhere you want. Even the next town or country
Is it possible the European mind can’t comprehend how big North America is?
The fuck does that have to do with intracity travel?
Russia, which is even bigger, has loads of trains.
Maybe but a brief look at statistics e.g. https://www.statista.com/statistics/254155/inbound-travel-from-western-europe-to-the-us/ and https://www.statista.com/statistics/311580/outbound-travel-from-the-us-to-europe-by-destination/ seems to show that in 2019 14 millions from Western Europe went to the United States while 12 millions from the US visited Western Europe. I’m not sure what’s the overlap between Western Europe and Southern Europe visitors but I’d argue the order of magnitude appears similar. Consequently and keeping in mind the population size, if travelers to and from have any significance to the understanding of the size of a place, then comprehension would be about equivalent.
Depends where they go though. I’m guessing people on both sides mostly visit a select few cities in WE or US, and don’t really get a feel for the sprawl of the country in general.
The US is mindbogglingly large, whereas finding remote spots in WE is more of a challenge.
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Imagine a world without the need for a car. There’s probably a train station that’s in walking distance. Maybe 10-15 minutes. More than that, possibly a quick bus to the corner of your street.
In this world, the grocery store is also a 10-15 minute walk, possibly bear the station. Instead of loading up on $200 of groceries once a week, you buy a few pieces on your way to work and/or back home.
There’s a nice public park, a library, and even a promenade somewhere also a short walk away. Various retail shops and service centers of all kinds (electronics, home and goods, hardware, appliances) could literally be your downstairs neighbors.
Even if all of these aren’t exactly close to you or your train station, they can be a short bus or train ride away. You walk more, bike more. You have a backpack and side racks for the bike. Your health improves, and you interact more with the people of the area.
Welcome to many cities of the world, even in the US.
Sure, now imagine all those things in Germany:
- The train comes every 30 minutes, but oh whoops there’s a 30 minute delay that’s keeping the other trains behind delayed. So rather than getting home on time for dinner, you eat shit from a vending machine. Oh and we need to prioritize passengers going between the main cities, so the provincial trains will need to wait. Oh, and tomorrow there’s a strike. Oh and the fare costs 10€ if you travel more than 5km.
- The bus comes regularly but it meanders between small villages nowhere near your final destination, so takes 30 minutes longer than it should.
Just to be clear, I’m not against trains and I am definitely against cars. But I do think E-bikes are the way forward for any journey less than 100km
Sure our cities could be much better but you do realize there are communities in America that can’t even provide reliable safe drinking water let alone an entire new infrastructure for their small, low income population? Or already overburdened underfunded system so nothing is working efficiently and just adding more to the docket?
Probably gonna get shit for this but I find the fuck cars people to be as narrow sighted and obnoxious as vegans. I love your vision, I really do. But damn I have a hard time not being exasperated every time I read a post.
Approximately half of the entire US population lives in large urban areas. 115,000,000 people. Large urban areas can benefit from higher density housing, as well as what I previously mentioned, and so much more.
And the money is there.
Yet, somehow, every time improvements using transit are suggested, every single fucking time, someone mentions the complexities of rural areas.
Maybe let’s fucking start somewhere we know it could work, and then branch out.
But can we fucking START‽
not subsidizing petroleum would probably bring in a few tax dollars
T-R-A-M
Trams are smaller trains to get to trains (and elsewhere but mostly trains)
Probably the u-bahn since you clearly live under a bridge.
Mobile phone? ❌
Landline? ✅
Not an exact equivalence, but some similarities.
Edit for clarification:
Cars, and mobile phones, can go anywhere. Trains, and Landline phones have fixed locations only.
I don’t know about you, but I remember a time when everyone had a landline.
Let’s unbuild all the roads for a fair comparison then.
Aircraft are a better analogy I guess. No infrastructure needed other than the end points.
And the air traffic controllers, and the regulated airspace…
Mobile phones would be more like teleporting in this analogy
One makes very little noise, the other makes so much noise that dogs either shit themselves or attack their neighbors.
I’m not exactly a fan of any of it, whether it be EVs or trains, but it really is a pain to try to comfort a shivering dog that’s about ready to shit himself or kill the neighbor’s dog when a train passes.
Most passenger trains aren’t the Amtrak.
Oh, thanks for the reminder then, they’re about to start running Amtrak on our freight train rails.
Is Amtrak known to be louder or something?
Louder than local trams / light rail.
Ah, so the sound should blend in with the usual freight trains, yay!
This sounds more like a freight train. Many modern light commuter trains are quieter than an average SUV. The rail line could also have sound barriers installed if noise is still an issue.
Guess you missed the memo, trains legally have to have super loud horns for train/road intersections.
Have you heard a train horn lately? You’re probably used to it. Now imagine what a dumb (or even smart) dog thinks when hearing a train horn…
Our dog both damn near shit himself and almost attacked another dog barely am hour ago after he heard a train horn.
We don’t have this in Sweden because it’s not an actual necessity. It’s only a thing because your infrastructure is so damn bad.
You say that as if it’s reasonable to have level grade crossings at all to begin with.
In other words, what you’re complaining about isn’t a problem with trains, but rather a problem with dipshit planners trying to cheap out and failing to properly fund trains.
Of course it’s reasonable to have level train crossings, in a fucking flood zone!
Act like any of us wanna fucking die in a flooded tunnel, trying to evacuate from hurricane flood waters!
Shit, there’s a reason we don’t have basements here.
A) time to move if climate change has fucked your weather that bad.
B) you don’t have to tunnel. You can elevate the track.
C) You can’t elevate train tracks, at least not by much. Trains have to run almost completely level to the ground.
Get fucking real.
Uh, what? You absolutely can run trains on elevated tracks. Japan does it all the time. So do many other cities and countries. If you want to get real fancy, mag-lev runs almost exclusively on elevated tracks. Where did you get the impression that you can’t elevate train tracks?
Okay, okay, I get it: you’re a special snowflake and you’ll spring whatever previously unmentioned random BS on us in order to move the goalposts to pretend your position – which to be clear, is that some fucking dog is more important than proper public transit – is somehow anything short of ridiculous.
But sure, I’ll play along in good faith: FYI, getting rid of level grade crossings does not necessarily involve tunnels; bridges are a thing too. Therefore, your argument fails.
What histrionic excuse for your train hate are you going to come up with next?
You do realize that trains have to run along almost perfectly level ground right?
You do realize that the street can be the thing that changes elevation instead, right?
Some cities allow trains to refrain from horns within city limits and instead the barrier makes a more localized dinging. I live near a major rail interchange and they rarely every honk their horns, oftenly only using a short warning horn if needed.
When I lived rurally trains with horns were far more common. On a human note I’d rather hear a train horn occasionally than hear constant traffic noise. I get how thats harder to manage with a dog but perhaps consistent training could lessen their response to horns.
Yeah, our little adopted stray fella Brownie apparently came from out in the country somewhere away from trains.
He’s generally a really good dog, almost exceptional really, all things considered. But super loud noises still make him nervous…
Did your dog nearly shit themselves from a city tram?
Nope, from a city park. Maybe they should move the city park away from the train tracks, or move the train tracks away from the city park.
I dunno, but it seems to me that someone in city engineering fucked up. Like who the fuck wants a dog park literally 200 feet close to train tracks?
who the fuck wants a dog park literally 200 feet close to train tracks?
Maybe people who take the train to get to the park?
I’m not sure where you’re from, but our trains don’t carry passengers, they carry oil, fuel, chemicals, livestock, military and spacecraft equipment.
Freight trains don’t stop at city parks, and whoever designed the city to have an active freight train track so close to a city park can go to hell.
One solution is an underpass for the road.
You’ve clearly never been under an under/overpass have you?
That’s like a fucking echo chamber, like the absolute loudest place you could possibly be.
You just want to hate everything. Just don’t bring your dog near train tracks then ffs.
We don’t exactly have a choice yo, we gotta cross train tracks every single day, and he’s with us at all times.
You wanna adopt him instead?
Check the train time table
They don’t have a public time table, it’s more like whenever the oil companies, the military, or NASA orders stuff. And they don’t care if they just park their train right in your way sometimes.
No schedule yo, at least no public schedule. You hear the train horn, clear the tracks, that’s the schedule.
