Building railway tracks to achieve universal coverage for the entire US without be a massive undertaking that would require a huge effort over multiple decades. Compared to that, building self driving cars is downright trivial. Let’s not forget that they exist already, albeit in limited areas. People should not let their (justified) anger at Musk blind them to reality.
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
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.
Musk’s crap can’t even operate autonomously. Waymo and Zoox are on the lead now.
We had good nationwide rail, and instead of expanding it, we dug it up and replaced it with nationwide roads.
So let’s do it again, dig up the roads and replace it with rail.
Trains can be faster, safer, cleaner, and more comfortable. We can still have roads for the last mile, but trains for Intercity and interstate.
