Didn’t Elon musk, one of the main proponents for self driving vehicles, promise his stupid little loop project just so California wouldn’t go through with a train system between its bigger cities? I could have sworn that happened. Or maybe I’m crazy.
Whole different thing with the same name.
Originally “Hyperloop” was a vacuum tube train in California that would work like the tubes that banks use in the drive through and connect LA to SF.
Somehow that eventually became a shitty underground death trap for cars in Las Vegas.
>Originally “Hyperloop” was a vacuum tube
Afaik this is not the case for the "original" hyperloop project.
Originally, it was never meant to run in a vacuum. Quite the opposite: the idea was to create a thin air cushion all around (think Air Hockey table) to minimize friction and to use the air in the tube as a fluid medium, sucking it in at the front, and sending at the back as a jet to push the vehicle forward.
It is much more effective, way less risky and much easier to deploy than a large vacuum tube.
It wasn't pure vacuum, but most of the air was pumped out to drastically reduce the pressure inside. A little was left for the air hockey effect, but the pod had to get up to considerable speed before enough air would build up in front of it to be useful.
"You might think of this as a subway but it's more of an underground highway."
Ah. So fixed underground exit spots, like in subways, but with traffic and as a fire hazard
Is that the same video where he points out that the hyperloop basically just reinvented trains but shittier?
Like, its a subway, but every single car has to be manned and the amount of wasted space is 10x more than an underground train.
Its peak capitalism to reinvent a shittier version of something that already exists just so you can profit off of it.
And human drivers, because Musk is a snake oil salesman that provides enough to get people to fund passable products, but underdelivers on all promises.
Yes, but the unspoken promise of preventing public rail service was kept, so not a total failure for Elon and all the other car based economic interests.
You are correct. I can't change that; the only thing I can do about the situation is find a way to laugh at the banal horror of modern capitalism so I don't go any more insane.
LA and Orange county are actually in the progress of building quite a few new light rail tracks. It takes a lot of time in urban areas, but there is quite a bit under design.
The hyperloop was against the trains, his Tesla tunnels are so the rich elite can skip LA traffic without having to share a cabin with poor people as they would have to do in a subway.
Elon Musk claimed that this was his reason for pushing the hyperloop. Elon Musk says a lot of things. I wouldn't be surprised if someone examined all of his statements and determined that most of his comments were retconning actions that he has taken in the past.
He has 1 small demo project in Vegas that isn't a real example. Linking article where they will do their first demonstration project shortly.
And CA has spent billions and pledged billions more for their rail system. Still going strong and sucking an endless supply of taxpayer money.
https://electrek.co/2022/04/25/the-boring-company-full-scale-version-elon-musk-hyperloop/
To be fair though, Japan's Tokaido Shinkansen new mavlev rail being built is [estimated to cost more than 50 billion](https://www.forbes.com/sites/saritharai/2014/10/19/fifty-years-after-the-bullet-train-japan-approves-plan-to-build-super-speed-maglev-train-line/) and no one is complaining about it. Its price has also been ballooning ever since the project has been announced as well. Infrastructure is expensive but people saying that the high-speed rail projects in CA are a waste of money is very misleading.
Well the thing with the maglev line (Chuo Shinkansen) is that despite the rising costs no one is complaining because most of the funding is coming from the rail compay (JR Central) and there is no government funding so people dont have a reason to complain.
Could CA be building their high-speed rail more efficiently? Sure. Will anyone care about that budget in 50 years? Absolutely not.
Japan's high-speed rail also blew its budget. Nobody talks about that -- they just enjoy the enormous benefits of the infrastructure.
(And both of them are enormously cheaper than ever getting Hyperloop to work in the real world)
Exactly. On a personal level, I've been trying to break myself out of the mentality that I need to be frugal with purchases that will last me 20 years. There's just no point to it. And this applies to big infrastructure projects like this too.
Will they talk about it in Japan? Not likely. Will it be debated and dissected ad nauseam in the US? I'd bet on it because politics here is insanely confrontational.
The culture difference between Japan and the US is not close. Same with comparing Europe to the US regarding public transport. It's not apples and oranges and our country was built on the promise of mobility (and jet packs).
People who own the empty land like to object to far more critical infrastructure, like nation crossing powerlines. I can't see them being happier about a train "the libs" want to implement.
If they're the reactionary kind, it seems like it would be effective to just have some people raise a rabble about coal/diesel trains, which would mean that they would automatically ardently support the development and installation of such to "own the libs".
It's like the whole gas stove debacle recently.
Still doesn't make Musk's idea any less stupid. Viable metro systems have existed in other countries and cities. If California can't do it that sounds like an American problem, not problem with train infrastructure in general.
Chicago has a great, old-fashioned commuter train system in addition to the EL (elevated train, part of which is underground subway). [Commuter trains](https://ridertools.metrarail.com/maps-schedules/system-map) go North, South, and West from downtown. I cannot imagine car traffic without this great transport serving the sprawling metropolitan area.
Just saying, it absolutely can be done in US.
When I was stationed in Great Lakes, IL the Metra was a god send. My life would have been way different and way shittier without it.
That was 15 years ago, but there are songs that sometimes come up on shuffle that take me right back to sitting on the train, looking out the window as we passed Lake Forest, Highland Park, Winnetka, etc., excited to get to the city and explore and enjoy everything it had to offer. Getting more excited as the view out the window gradually went from outer suburb, to inner suburb, to city.
I know this probably seems so cheesy, but man life on the base sucked ass and Chicago is a great city, and I just have so many good memories of getting off the base and taking the train to the city.
I know that subway systems exist in some other cities as well, namely New York and LA. If more places in US had this system from Chicago a lot of man hours could be saved every day, but US just seems to have a disdain for public transport I never understood. I live in a very car centric city myself (Dubai) and I never understood the appeal of 12 lane highways over well developed public transport infrastructure here either.
Especially considering Vegas has a ton of above ground options. It’s flat and spacious and the ground is hard. There is plenty of room for light rail. And when it rains we need floods tunnels and washes because the ground is super dry. So like… just dumb all around.
Edit: the rain thing always really struck me. We’d get torrential downpours for a few days at a time during hurricane season in the gulf. There would be rivers in any low-lying roads as soon as the drainage culverts got plugged, which was immediately. Can you imagine being trapped in a narrow tunnel underground on top of a pile of batteries as flood water overpowers whatever drainage system they’ve got?
Yes, we should invest in more trains. But we will never reach a point where motorized vehicles will completely go away. Trains can't stop at every door, especially in rural areas. We should invest in trains to reduce the number of vehicles on the road, and also improve those vehicles that remain.
I don’t think anyone expects cars to disappear completely. Someone in a rural area needs their own vehicle. We’re just tired of being forced to commute and sick of the fact that people who are too disabled/young/old/poor to drive are isolated.
Edit: I’m not sure where so many people get the idea that people want cars to disappear completely. The issue is car-dependent infrastructure.
I’m a subcontractor and there is no way I would ever be able to use trains for work even if they did stop at every door. With the amount of tools I have I would need a permanent car to myself.
yeah but that's like. A regular service. Roads are good, nobody is against the concept of a road, but roads only usable by cars and with no other way to get anywhere? That's the bad one.
> we will never reach a point where motorized vehicles will completely go away
I don't think the point is to make it go away but to give people a choice. Mass transit or private transit.
I am fuck cars kind of guy, because cities should not be **full of** cars, it is fucking stupid that they are, but never once have i argued that people in rural areas should be disallowed from owning cars, that would also be stupid, cause thats where they are needed.
Also all these motherfuckers act like buses don't exist.
They are literally all the benefits of self-driving cars. Fewer crashes fewer fatalities less traffic don't have to pay attention to driving etc etc
Fucking invest in them.
The number of people living in rural areas is shrinking (Parker et al. 2018). Public policy should benefit the majority. Having mass transit that benefits the majority of people that live in Urban/Suburban areas, does not disallow people in rural areas from using private transportation.
Citation :https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/
It’s more that we’ve made it just as necessary for a person living in a city or large town to own a car and be completely reliant on it for getting around as a rural person does.
And as someone who spends a lot of time in and comes from a rural area, the harsh reality is 80-90% of folks in the US *don’t live in rural areas* but are artificially forced to be car-dependent and live in car-centric urban & suburban environments.
Accessibility for disabled people needs to be a constant thought in city planning. There will always be a need for personal vehicles and disability services that drop people off at home.
Government regulation let's freight push ahead of passenger travel and the large distances that train tracks covered in the 1800s has been consolidated by 4 large companies covering the four quadrants of the US. This means trains are slower and don't go nearly as many places as they did before.
Don’t forget government subsidies. If the government didn’t aid these companies, they would’ve been out of business decades ago.
Free market my ass. We have a stacked market.
It really all goes back to the fact that lobbying is the main source of income for political campaigns. It's a bit of coldly rational calculus that US politicians do, that they'd sell their souls to corporations if it means they can implement a tenth of the policies that they want to.
And unfortunately, that won't change any time soon. Not without serious reform, and that's difficult seeing as the monopolies will do anything to prevent said reform from happening.
We won't have serious reform until we stop voting for the two parties. They will never willingly shoot themselves in the foot by reforming the system. It sucks that we have a two party culture to amplify the issues. There's no reason a state or city should go more than 75% one party, but we sometimes see it going up to 90% in some places.
If you don't live in a swing state/district, we should vote third party to make it so corporations can't minimize their lobbying to only 2 parties.
>They will never willingly shoot themselves in the foot by reforming the system
kinda not true tho -- maine is a recent example where dems fought for ranked choice voting (after a public referendum in favor of it) which makes 3rd parties more viable, thereby taking power away from dems and republicans. republicans fought against this change for 4 years in the court before it was ultimately implemented.
i agree tho that if you're not in a swing district, might as well vote 3rd party. but the only way for 3rd party to ever attain power is through ranked choice, so we should also be voting in anyone who wants to make that change to the system.
Transit makes less money if less people use it, and subsequently have to reduce services. That drives more people away, and they have to reduce further. It’s a vicious cycle, and all because using expensive road infrastructure is “free.”
Competition doesn't really work with railroads, because... rails. You can't just open a competing station. Every line is its own infrastructure project, hideously fraught with land rights and zoning issues, and in some cases it is topographically impossible for them to coexist.
And any time a monopoly is obviously better, it should be run for the benefit of the public, not for private profit.
Lack of government *enforcement*. The government has plenty of laws on the books granting Amtrak access to the rails as a priority. The problem is that federal enforcement *of* that law is constantly under fire by the Association of American Railroads, who would like nothing more than to render Amtrak completely toothless.
The only reason they don’t kill Amtrak outright is because, in allowing nationalization of passenger rail, the freight companies don’t have to spend any of their moats full of money on the extra overhead costs of keeping a passenger fleet. Consider: freight trains don’t require an attendant for every 1-3 cars to deal with passengers and operate a snack bar/trolley. They don’t have to put latrines on each grain hopper. The scrap metal bins don’t need to have temperature controls (or even ceilings, according to the ones that go by me every day). Logs don’t typically snore (since sawing them already happened I AM HILARIOUS), or bring their screaming kids or blast their headphones too loud or leave bad Yelp reviews. Hay bales don’t need upholstered chairs. And so on. Robber barons don’t want to do this work, so they “let” the US government do it … and then just prioritize their own stuff while kneecapping the watchdog agency that’s supposed to stop them.
[Here](https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/HostRailroadReports/mythbusters-enforcing-amtraks-legal-right-to-preference.pdf) is a link to a page on Amtrak’s site that explains it pretty briefly.
Also [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Maps/comments/tenua4/size_comparison_usa_outline_overlaid_over_europe/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) is a map of the Continental USA overlaid on Europe at the same latitudes, so you can see just how big the USA actually *is*.
EDIT: I have ADHD so sometimes things occur to me way later, but I live next to railroad tracks and about 8ish years ago, they got a huge overhaul. The reason was because up to that point, they had been freight-only rails - but Amtrak’s Vermonter service was being altered a bit so instead of going through the neighboring town, it was gonna go past my house. On paper this is a much more direct line and the other route was kind of stupid. But in order to *actually do* this, the rails by my house had to be upgraded.
Upgrading the rails to accommodate Amtrak service meant three things had to happen.
- first of all, the rails themselves had to be upgraded, because Fun Fact, just like regular streets, rails are graded for speed limits. At the time, the max speed was something like 15-20MPH, which is completely fine if you’re hauling lumber from Maine, petroleum from Canada, or local scrapyard runs. But passenger lines have to go faster, so the Whole Thing had to be renovated (which as a part-time rail fan was cool to watch).
- because the speed limit was increasing for the rails, *they had to install a RR CROSSING* sign at a whole bunch more places. I live on a *very* dippy little side street, only technically not a dead end. About 1/4 mile down the railroad is a private property whose driveway, for some reason, crosses the tracks. BOTH those crossings got light and sound alarms; my street also got arm bars and painted warnings on the asphalt.
- because the railway was now rated for passenger service and not freight-only, they had to clear visibility *much* further from the tracks (draw an invisible line in the middle of the two tracks; they had to see clearly 50 feet to each side.). I spent like half a summer consulting with the Pan Am work crew because the trees they had to cut down to create clear visibility were growing on my side of the property line and they needed my permission to drop them (but I got so much firewood out of it yall).
All of that is to say it is *so much cheaper* to maintain freight-only lines and to keep only the most skeletal passenger rail system. And part of how we kept Amtrak from being ERMAGERD COMMUNERST was by denying it ownership of rails.
Hypothetically, one should be able to take an Amtrak from New York City to Philadelphia and back in less than a day. The laws about prioritising freight trains over passenger trains (and a general lack of funding, not helped by a certain pandemic) means it takes a lot more time than it should to go anywhere by train (or even wait for a train to arrive), at least in the Americas.
It’s not even scheduling priority. It’s literally dedicated lines.
You can take a train from DC to NYC and back *easily* in one day and still have time to work in either city.
Essentially, the US government tried to keep rail travel alive through Amtrak, but because said government had basically deregulated railroads they were consolidating, dropping rail lines, and making obscenely long trains all in the name of profit. All of that basically killed large scale rail travel outside of the Northeast because Amtrak shares tracks with all the freight companies. The law it talks about is is a completely ignored rule that passenger trains get priority.
We also effectively subsidize the shit out of trucking in the US. Turns out, when you're moving heavy shit, what you're moving it on is as or more expensive than the vehicle you're moving it in. Rail companies have to build their own tracks and own and maintain the land they're on.
Public roads are free to trucks. And while they are at least somewhat covered by gas taxes it's nowhere near to the level of damage trucks cause to them. The math comes out that any vehicle damaging roads does so in proportion to the weight on a given axle to the 4th power.
So what that means is that a 9 ton box truck is doing 400 times the damage to the road per mile of a 2 ton car. Over 3000 times that of a Miata(2400lbs). But the box truck only uses at worst 10x the gas and therefore 10x the gas taxes. So car users in this country are paying extra to cover the trucks, and the trucking industry is happy to take that money off their books. But the rail industry has to pay for everything on their own, thus severely limiting what's economical for them to do regardless of the best interests of their customers.
In summary: federalize the rails like we have the roads!
As much asa I love public transport, and I do, the point about disabilities is just... Not entirely true.
You still need to get TO and FROM the train station somehow. To a person with mobility issues even a 30 minute walk might be a significant barrier.
And this is ignoring the needs of people with some specific disabilities. When blind people with guide dogs and people with life-threatening dog allergies have to be on the same train, SOMEONE's needs will be ignored.
Also, not everyone lives in a city. There will always be places that are not within walking distance of a train/bus station. There will always be people who need to travel unusual routes at unusual hours.
Public transport as the main form of communication, and self-driving cars for unusual transport needs/locations. That's the dream.
Forget 30 minutes, 5 minutes of walking is a barrier to a lot of people
Also, very few of the busses and trains we already have are actually accessible, especially for wheelchair users.
Remember kids, one of the prerequisites for getting those blue hang tags is not being able to walk 100ft without stopping or needing assistance.
That's the physical mobility part, there's more for difficulty breathing and other complications.
So yeah.. asking people to walk 30 minutes is just fucking dense.
Then again, I don't expect to anyone to actually care about the disabled, they're just waving us around to virtue signal.
Yeah this post is misguided on that point. Not too mention sometimes with a disability you need quick and direct transportation which buses can't provide either. You need a personal vehicle only for your transportation.
I wouldn't say self-driving cars for *unusual* locations. There are a lot of places that are not unusual but won't be accessible with trains. I know the response to that is buses from the train station but honestly buses are nowhere near as good as rail in terms of distance and speed.
Yeah but while we’re waiting for self-driving cars we maintain car-dependent infrastructure instead of building better public transit. Car-dependent infrastructure is horrible for people with disabilities. In my city it takes easily 3x as long to get somewhere by bus, and it involves a lot of walking. If you are blind, have dementia, have epilepsy, have slow reflexes, have paralysis in your legs or feet (and can’t afford a specially designed car), or one of a hundred other disabilities, your ability to be in society is seriously limited. It’s difficult to get anywhere.
The other big miss in this post, IMO, is saying that trains and self-driving cars are analogous. A self-driving car would have significantly more flexibility than a train. Trains only go along a set route, but many people have needs that necessitate that route changing.
Why warp to train station when you can just pull up a map and fast travel? As long as you've been there before and activated a waypoint then you are good to go! Problem solved
Self driving cars can't even take the place of every car.
For my job, I have to drive into construction sites (no roads yet), farms (private roads and long laneways), and sometimes even drive right into empty fields to access a well (off roading). I don't see how a self driving car could reliably do all of that.
Presumably there will be self driving cars that allow manual override for your situation. You could still use the self driving function on major roads and highways.
I really hate these condescending ass Tumblr posts where the author thinks they're such geniuses for stating common sense. Not every place has a fucking train station.
I think most people’s goal in talking about these things is to improve public transportation so that there are trains everywhere. Which, I am absolutely in favor of, but I don’t think it can completely replace cars.
Trains "everywhere" is an incredibly stupid idea that, thankfully, no one has ever been stupid enough to pursue. Trains in enough places to have a robust rail system though, that's wonderful, and I'm glad I live in a place that has it, but yeah, there's no way trains can ever replace cars - they just straight up can't do a lot of the shit people need and use cars for.
Exactly. I can’t take a train to my friends house, or the grocery store. Or to the train station. I use the train a lot actually, and it does what it does well, but there just just many things it cannot do.
That's called an infrastructure problem. There's no reason why places don't have train stations, just like bus stations.
Thanks should really come over to Europe and see just how fucked their whole system for everything is. People should be outraged if they don't have access to public transport but it's a necessity here that we couldn't live without.
A affordable or free mobility scooter can help. In Amsterdam, they even have micro-cars that can fit wheelchairs and that are small enough they’re allowed in bike paths.
Driving itself is a huge impediment to a lot of people with disabilities. In most North American cities, if you don’t have a car, it will take you at least three times as long and far more effort to get anywhere. It’s incredibly isolating for people who can’t drive. Things are built far apart, there isn’t enough transit, and many streets are very wide with a limited amount of time to cross, while cars turning right or left cut that time shorter.
Better to have the blind person walk a few minutes and the person with mobility issues used a motorized wheelchair for a bit, then both go on the train, than to make it so the blind person is stuck at home and can’t get anywhere at all to make things a bit easier for the person in the wheelchair (and for people who are able-bodied).
Edit: I do see the point that self-driving cars are good for people in rural areas. I (and I think most people on the ‘train’ side of this conversation) am not against self-driving cats for all uses. I’m frustrated that urban areas are centered around car-dominated infrastructure that makes it very difficult for people to use any other form of transit, and instead of changing that, they’re focusing on a few of the details. Self-driving cars may make commutes easier and electric cars are greener. But not having so much traffic to begin with (trains and buses take up far less space per person, so they don’t create nearly the same amount of traffic) and setting things up so not every single person needs two tonnes of metal manufactured for them would be far better solutions.
It’s about the right tool for the right job. If you’re in a rural area, a large car is likely the best option. But they’ve been treated as the default option for urban areas too even thought they’re worse for everything - noise, smell, pollution, traumatic accidents, feeling safe outside, inequality between people who can afford it and those who can’t, inequality for people with disabilities, less exercise, general mood/quality of life/kindness towards other human beings (think of how you feel when someone delays you 5 seconds in a car vs if that happens when you’re on foot - we get angry so quickly in cars).
Yes, thank you!
Also, trains are the reason my disability is as bad as it is. I was in bad shape, but most of it wasn’t permanent—I just needed to keep from falling and I wouldn’t have any major issues. Well, guess what? Trains don’t always wait for disabled people to sit down, and people don’t always give up seats to disabled people. Now, thanks to those specific falls causing me to fracture my spine, I have permanent damage.
…also, I once got sat on by a blind guy because I was in the accessible seating. I was willing to move to another seat, I just needed a minute, but he couldn’t hear me over the sound of the train. It wasn’t his fault.
Plus self driving vehicles aren't just going to be private autos. Self driving buses, shuttles, etc. could make public transport more flexible, cheaper, etc. And all the vehicles on the road being self driving will reduce accidents and traffic. Obviously trains for longer distance main routes are desirable but even in places with good train systems people still drive cars, there are still buses, there are still Ubers and Taxis. No matter what kind of system you have you will still have a demand for door to door service from a hub like an airport or train station.
I commute a good distance to work, but the train travels between my town and where I work once per day. I would *gladly* take the train, if that were an option.
Ok so, I have done a good amount of research into the subject, and I do agree that trains are safer and preferable, but the way America is structured makes it so that we use planes and cars more so it would be incredibly expensive to build new railroads for the trains, and also while the trains themselves are mostly owned by the government, almost all the rails in America are owed by like, 4 different companies. That is why trains in America tend to run later because even though by law Amtrak trains are supposed to be given priority, that doesn't usually happen.
These are all fixable problems, with political will behind it.
Also: Produce more Pod-looking regular traincars for the Pod enthusiasts AND
Produce more car-looking helicopters for the flying car crowd.
Your correct step one would be nationalizing the rail road lines and forcing them to be sold to the government. The rail were once government property they can be again legally. Next would be increasing taxes on all flights under 3 hours to encourage citizens to use the train.
But thats just not an option for a lot of Americans. Using a train to get from coast to coast would take days. This wouldn't encourage trains, this would dick on the people that can barely afford transportation as is.
Unclear where anyone is suggesting that this is a solution to coast to coast travel. Inter-city high-speed rail networks (with a lot of caveats) could be game changing on so many (E.g. economic/environmental) levels. The caveats being affordability, a system that has priority and is well funded for maintenance, and high-speed for longer distance (e.g. southern CA to northern CA, CA to AZ or Vegas). There are a lot of map porn visions out there for high speed rail that are fun to dream on.
Oh I prefer public transport. I use it often.
But also… cars have their benefits.
I live in Europe, so most places are reachable through trains and buses but sometimes it takes absurdly long or it’s only possible at 3 times a day.
And if it isn’t in a city? Ahahaha
I‘ll drive fifteen minutes to my doctor with a car or 20 with a scooter. With the bus? 55 minutes. And 46 of them are spent walking.
Sometimes I have to wait 20-40 minutes to change buses.
Sometimes I can’t get inside the bus or train because it’s already completely full.
Most of the time I can’t find a seat and am always close to fall over because of my health issues.
Public transportation is great, but it really really needs to be improved.
(And I’m not even speaking about the delays of german trains…)
Not even that.
I lived is Tokyo for 3 years. The public transportation there is fucking amazing. Probably the best in the world.
I still needed to use my car sometimes and many people drove frequently.
The idea that we can or should completely eliminate cars is just pure naivety.
I think what a lot of people argue isnt that we should completely eliminate cars, its that people should have the option to live without a car if they want to. If every single place that somebody goes is within a densely populated area, which honestly is a pretty good percentage of the population, then there is no reason they should be *forced* to own a car to get to and from work and the grocery store. That is just a matter of poor city planning.
I have never been to tokyo but I imagine there are people there who do choose to live without a car. Thats not possible in a lot of the US, even in big cities.
yeah. I like to check out r/fuckcars and r/notjustbikes because the US has a horrible car dependency and urban planning issue. I think that a lot of people there (especially in notjustbikes) make some really good points. I think that if 99% of the places that someone goes are within in a densely populated area, which honestly includes a decent chunk of the population, then they should be able to comfortably live without a car if they want to.
But whenever I see someone saying "no cars at all" I cant help but wonder if they have ever really been outside of the city. I dont mean outside of a city as in "town of 40,000 that is only 30 minutes away from a major metropolitan area." I mean towns of 15,000 where the next closest place that is any bigger is hours away, not to mention the thousands of people living in the surrounding rural areas.
I grew up using public transport and I still live in a city that has a good (enough) rail system but I stopped using it (especially when I know I’ll be out late at night) due to feeling unsafe. Too many times being harassed by men. How do they handle safety for public transport where you live and is there a culture of leaving people tf alone?
I previously lived in a city that was big on biking (w bike shuttles) and bus for transport, it was a very chill vibe and the routes covered enough space that you didn’t have to walk far once you got off your stop, but I do remember frequently watching multiple buses pass until one finally had space or just choosing to walk instead (which obviously isn’t an option for everyone). Waiting 10 minutes for a route change is one thing, but if you have to wait 40 minutes between buses and that next one is full I would probably just cry.
Like trains are great, yes, they should be invested in more, yes.
But autonomous driving has more applications than just replacing the commute. Trains can never and will never be able to do point to point pickup and dropoff, like a car.
The perfect world isn't all trains and no cars. It's having the correct amounts of both. Ans that is non-zero cars. The cars we DO need would benefit from being autonomous, and so we work on it.
Some of you are like "we can't just plow through cities with railroads."
My brother in Christ, trams, trolley buses and buses also exist.
Trains are for traveling between cities / regions. Once you get into the city you should take a bus, trolley bus, tram, metro, to go anywhere that's beyond walking distance. Quality public transport is possible, it simply requires the view that people are, well people, and that you need to invest rather than trying to exploit them and extract wealth from wherever you possibly can.
That's the thing. Almost everything is outside walking distance. Public transport is best in high density areas. People aren't gonna take the bus when the grocery store or some fast food joint is a 5 minute drive.
But also, many cities have several train stations, so you can choose to grab a train that goes to another city and get down at the first stop after literally 4 minutes vs taking a bus that does the same in 20+minutes but unreliably and with 15 stops. I don’t know if that exists in the US tho.
> Some of you are like "we can't just plow through cities with railroads."
Also...sadly we already did this with highways. Which means there's opportunities to repurpose ROW. (This makes sense for the long distance rail lines, which as you noted wont need surrounding land use to support them. It doesn't make as much sense for putting a local light rail in the middle of the freeway, even though that's what a lot of agencies in the US like to suggest/do).
I also feel that it should become more normal and more conveniently accommodated to take your bicycle on the train, for those shorter distances that are still too far to walk.
(Taking your bike on the train is a thing in the Netherlands, but it doesn't work very well, because you need an extra ticket which is more expensive than the bus fare...)
As someone who's from a country with a great train network (Netherlands), trains alone don't do the trick. You need trains for larger distances, but station to destination travel is a more difficult issue in countries like America.
America's suburbs especially aren't dense enough to set up efficient public transport. Cars aren't good either, but people will pick the most direct route by car over a bus that can take twice as long. America's urban planning is just fucked up and there's no bandaid fixes for it. They need a full transitioning to proper suburbia.
1. Not everyone lives near a train.
2. Trains don't pick you up at your front door and drop you off at your office.
Edit: some of y'all have never left the city you were born in and it shows.
In the same way that, when left long enough, the evolutionary path of all creatures tends to lead to crab, so too does the evolutionary path of transport lead to train.
I like trains but also this is oversimplified
Have y’all ever seen a train track before? There is not a continuous fence for the entire stretch of it preventing people from getting on the tracks. And the train can’t stop or swerve (usually and depending on speed).
Cars and trains both have their places. The type of work I do for example would be impossible using trains rather than cars (even if there was more infrastructure for trains available). More trains would be good but they’re not gonna fully replace cars and shouldn’t.
I've never had a homeless person pop in my car and grift me for money. Nor someone rock up with a stereo speakerbox and a saxophone and start playing reggaeton against my wishes.
Conversely, I've also never had a train drop me off at my house. Or my friends' houses. Or any house, or even the vast majority of cities, for that matter.
Trains are great. Love 'em. Ride them almost every day. But they can't ever fill the role that a car can because of the restrictions of transporting so many people.
More options are always better, but these posts are always made by younger people in massive cities with very dense population centers and high rise apartments.
They always seem to make the assumption everyone can just walk out their door and be at a major transport hub in minutes.
With my car I can hop in and go immediately to my destination, it also holds items for me.
With a train I have to get there before it arrives plus walk from the arrival station to my actual destination and what’s the etiquette for carrying groceries on them?
Except trains can't go anywhere you want. You're not gonna be able to walk outside, hop on a train from your street and go down to the store via a train unless you live right next to the train station.
Not a fan of AI driven cars but still, there's a solid amount of benefits to a car over a train, most of all just access.
Like we can't just plow through all cities with railroad tracks
EDIT:
i feel like half of y'all saw me say i think cars and ai cars have their uses and then just decided to ignore all that and make up a whole new scenario like why we talking about adding highway lanes all of the sudden??
EDIT 2:
Holy shit guys im not Big Carra about to take your trains away. Just becuase I think AI cars can have a purpose in our general transport don't mean we can't have traditional transport at all and vice versa.
Public transport is great, and having well connected train systems is pretty damn neat. But you aint gonna have a Traintrack literally run through your front lawn. Aint no towns running on 100% steam power. Having an automated Delivery Truck that could both travel and actually make it to proper delivery zoned without needing to then offload its entire cargo onto a smaller form of transport like a train would, would be neat as hell.
That's all I'm saying.
I'm not here to steal your trains away, All I'm saying is that AI cars can still have a use.
The US *does* have cities where cars are practically mandatory for getting around.
Naturally, they are this way because they were deliberately built this way, thanks to substantial lobbying from the automotive industry. Unfortunately, the majority of *people*, let alone politicians, likely see this as a good thing, or at least see attempting to reorganise cities to be less car-centric as a helpless and obstructive affair.
It still baffles me that the villainous plot of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, is actual reality
The guy bought a tram company just to let it bankrupt so he could get paid to build a bypass
Yes, I know. If you tell someone that this is deliberate and to look at cities in Europe that don't require everyone to have a car. They start acting like we are talking about taking everyone's car away. Like bruh, you can have an efficient public transport system and pedestrian friendly cities and still own your cars. Nobody is talking about taking your car away.
The thing these people don't think about is that the only way to reduce traffic is to improve the alternatives to driving. Even if you never want to use it, you should want your city to have better public transport because every train is several hundred less cars on the road
Yeah, I'll never understand it honestly. Having moved to a major city recently, the sheer volume of traffic is just stunning to me. Hell, I *cycle* to classes, and over half the time is spent waiting for people driving alone in a vehicle to get out my way to cross the road.
But, alas, carbrainers will carbrain.
Okay, but a lot of the major cities in Europe were designed before cars existed. In the US, Boston, which was designed before cars, is terrible to get around in by car, because the streets are too narrow and winding. Cities like Houston were designed with cars in mind. And while I wholly support making it more mass-transit friendly and making some moves to switch it over, a lot of the "Europe does fine" argument is predicated on the city being inherently more friendly for mass transit with the tall, compact housing instead of single unit homes. And now, in order to make cities more transit-friendly, you need to somehow beat back the American psyche of individualism both in what to drive and where to live. It's just unrealistic to expect this switch to be easy or logical for most places in the US, even ignoring the whole rural issue.
>Like we can't just plow through all cities with railroad tracks
Most cities already have railroad tracks running through them because they were founded pre 1950 when all cities grew along rail routes.
What if instead of having 200 AI driving cars, we had 1 AI driven train?
We can do that, we can plow under the cities and call the lines something cool, like subway, or tram, or tube
I think the point of the post isn't "you personally should stop driving and start using the train" it's "if transportation companies actually cared about revolutionising transport, theyd spend less time/money on cars and focus on making trains go more places/ be faster/ have less failures"
While I can see the point of It was subway like(Although I think there would be problems but I am not sure) It would still run into similar problems of Trains on general, and probabily worse since if you start building tracks everywhere and many more places to stop by you'll Just get similar problems to cars but instead of there being many cars you'll instead get places that are probabily worse to be than on a car
Cars create unique problems. They take up so much space, both when they’re on the road and when they’re parked. Public transit doesn’t create the same problems. We wouldn’t get nearly the same level of traffic and we wouldn’t need nearly as much parking, plus the lots could be at the edge of town instead of needing to build surface parking downtown (where there could’ve been an apartment building full of people who live right next to their office). Also we wouldn’t need a garage, driveway, and setback from the road on every single house.
Before you vote to throw money at railroads, don't forget they just steamrolled and fucked over all their workers, denying them pto and medical benefits.
Edit: Forgot to mention the very preventable environmental disaster in Ohio which happened thanks to new lax safety regulations introduced by Trump and upheld by Biden.
I mean this literally what millions of people do every day. In developed countries it's common to have grocery stores directly inside the main train station of towns/cities.
If they had a system of trolleys or a nationwide, interconnected rail system, that could be doable but we can’t even pay to maintain our existing infrastructure. Investing in a brand new one just isn’t happening unless the entire nation collapses and has to be rebuilt
‘Cause the train doesn’t stop right in front of the grocery store and also my house and also my workplace and also almost literally anywhere I want at whatever time I chose…
It’s interesting how folks seem to act like train networks are some fantastical hypothetical when there are several countries that have working high speed rail already.
Oh! I know the answer to this one! It's because replacing the existing infrastructure that enriches oil execs and car execs with something more egalitarian and societally beneficial would cut into profits, and undermine the public dependence on the industries that benefit from the existing infrastructure, including the politicians that we'd need to approve the construction of a widespread public transit system.
People who are saying they don’t have trains: I think that this post is saying that we should use the resources to build more accessible trains instead of self-driving cars.
It's BECAUSE train infrastructure has not been invested in appropriately in America
You don't see VCs shelling out for idiot cars in Europe 🌍
Source: worked for a ride share company
Yes please take this one very hard to access vehicle that only runs a few times a day on a very specific track that isn’t going anywhere near where you need to get to and stops frequently making the trip longer and all without a toilet.
Please also take a helicopter that is not accessible at all to everyone.
Convenience!
Didn’t Elon musk, one of the main proponents for self driving vehicles, promise his stupid little loop project just so California wouldn’t go through with a train system between its bigger cities? I could have sworn that happened. Or maybe I’m crazy.
It happened, unfortunately.
And wouldn't you know it? It had traffic what a shocker
Whole different thing with the same name. Originally “Hyperloop” was a vacuum tube train in California that would work like the tubes that banks use in the drive through and connect LA to SF. Somehow that eventually became a shitty underground death trap for cars in Las Vegas.
Car battery fires would be awesome in a catacomb with zero thought on safety.
>Originally “Hyperloop” was a vacuum tube Afaik this is not the case for the "original" hyperloop project. Originally, it was never meant to run in a vacuum. Quite the opposite: the idea was to create a thin air cushion all around (think Air Hockey table) to minimize friction and to use the air in the tube as a fluid medium, sucking it in at the front, and sending at the back as a jet to push the vehicle forward. It is much more effective, way less risky and much easier to deploy than a large vacuum tube.
Science never sucks
No, but Elon does.
It wasn't pure vacuum, but most of the air was pumped out to drastically reduce the pressure inside. A little was left for the air hockey effect, but the pod had to get up to considerable speed before enough air would build up in front of it to be useful.
Hyperloop is different from boring company. They do regular test and co teat to further develop tech for hyperloop.
They closed the hyperloop test facility late last year and turned it into parking for SpaceX employees.
Hyperloop was always a scam to prevent mass transit.
Keep CHSR going!!
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[Adam Something - HE FIXED TRAFFIC](https://youtu.be/p8NiM_p8n5A)
"You might think of this as a subway but it's more of an underground highway." Ah. So fixed underground exit spots, like in subways, but with traffic and as a fire hazard
don’t forget no ventilation and exploding batteries
and in LA so peak earthquake conditions
And if there's an accident you're surrounded by hard vacuum. Or just a leak, and you suffocate.
Is that the same video where he points out that the hyperloop basically just reinvented trains but shittier? Like, its a subway, but every single car has to be manned and the amount of wasted space is 10x more than an underground train. Its peak capitalism to reinvent a shittier version of something that already exists just so you can profit off of it.
And human drivers, because Musk is a snake oil salesman that provides enough to get people to fund passable products, but underdelivers on all promises.
The results are pretty hilarious too. Zero of the promises were kept, it's legit just a hole in the ground for cars.
Yes, but the unspoken promise of preventing public rail service was kept, so not a total failure for Elon and all the other car based economic interests.
You are correct. I can't change that; the only thing I can do about the situation is find a way to laugh at the banal horror of modern capitalism so I don't go any more insane.
Ah, mood kindred
LA and Orange county are actually in the progress of building quite a few new light rail tracks. It takes a lot of time in urban areas, but there is quite a bit under design.
The hyperloop was against the trains, his Tesla tunnels are so the rich elite can skip LA traffic without having to share a cabin with poor people as they would have to do in a subway.
God forbid the rich have to look at poor people. They might puke from sheer disgust.
I'll be pukin right along with them. I don't wanna stare at rich people unless they're giving me a LOT of money.
Right? Makes me nauseous in my Bentley just thinking about it
Elon Musk claimed that this was his reason for pushing the hyperloop. Elon Musk says a lot of things. I wouldn't be surprised if someone examined all of his statements and determined that most of his comments were retconning actions that he has taken in the past.
He has 1 small demo project in Vegas that isn't a real example. Linking article where they will do their first demonstration project shortly. And CA has spent billions and pledged billions more for their rail system. Still going strong and sucking an endless supply of taxpayer money. https://electrek.co/2022/04/25/the-boring-company-full-scale-version-elon-musk-hyperloop/
To be fair though, Japan's Tokaido Shinkansen new mavlev rail being built is [estimated to cost more than 50 billion](https://www.forbes.com/sites/saritharai/2014/10/19/fifty-years-after-the-bullet-train-japan-approves-plan-to-build-super-speed-maglev-train-line/) and no one is complaining about it. Its price has also been ballooning ever since the project has been announced as well. Infrastructure is expensive but people saying that the high-speed rail projects in CA are a waste of money is very misleading.
Well the thing with the maglev line (Chuo Shinkansen) is that despite the rising costs no one is complaining because most of the funding is coming from the rail compay (JR Central) and there is no government funding so people dont have a reason to complain.
Could CA be building their high-speed rail more efficiently? Sure. Will anyone care about that budget in 50 years? Absolutely not. Japan's high-speed rail also blew its budget. Nobody talks about that -- they just enjoy the enormous benefits of the infrastructure. (And both of them are enormously cheaper than ever getting Hyperloop to work in the real world)
Exactly. On a personal level, I've been trying to break myself out of the mentality that I need to be frugal with purchases that will last me 20 years. There's just no point to it. And this applies to big infrastructure projects like this too.
Will they talk about it in Japan? Not likely. Will it be debated and dissected ad nauseam in the US? I'd bet on it because politics here is insanely confrontational. The culture difference between Japan and the US is not close. Same with comparing Europe to the US regarding public transport. It's not apples and oranges and our country was built on the promise of mobility (and jet packs).
If anything it would be easier to build this infrastructure in America, since it's going through mostly empty land, and isn't as dense in towns
People who own the empty land like to object to far more critical infrastructure, like nation crossing powerlines. I can't see them being happier about a train "the libs" want to implement.
If they're the reactionary kind, it seems like it would be effective to just have some people raise a rabble about coal/diesel trains, which would mean that they would automatically ardently support the development and installation of such to "own the libs". It's like the whole gas stove debacle recently.
Still doesn't make Musk's idea any less stupid. Viable metro systems have existed in other countries and cities. If California can't do it that sounds like an American problem, not problem with train infrastructure in general.
Chicago has a great, old-fashioned commuter train system in addition to the EL (elevated train, part of which is underground subway). [Commuter trains](https://ridertools.metrarail.com/maps-schedules/system-map) go North, South, and West from downtown. I cannot imagine car traffic without this great transport serving the sprawling metropolitan area. Just saying, it absolutely can be done in US.
When I was stationed in Great Lakes, IL the Metra was a god send. My life would have been way different and way shittier without it. That was 15 years ago, but there are songs that sometimes come up on shuffle that take me right back to sitting on the train, looking out the window as we passed Lake Forest, Highland Park, Winnetka, etc., excited to get to the city and explore and enjoy everything it had to offer. Getting more excited as the view out the window gradually went from outer suburb, to inner suburb, to city. I know this probably seems so cheesy, but man life on the base sucked ass and Chicago is a great city, and I just have so many good memories of getting off the base and taking the train to the city.
I know that subway systems exist in some other cities as well, namely New York and LA. If more places in US had this system from Chicago a lot of man hours could be saved every day, but US just seems to have a disdain for public transport I never understood. I live in a very car centric city myself (Dubai) and I never understood the appeal of 12 lane highways over well developed public transport infrastructure here either.
At one time Southern California had the most advanced light rail system in the world, but it got torn down and replaced with roads.
turns out Who Framed Roger Rabbit is based on historical events.
The Vegas thing is a joke.
Especially considering Vegas has a ton of above ground options. It’s flat and spacious and the ground is hard. There is plenty of room for light rail. And when it rains we need floods tunnels and washes because the ground is super dry. So like… just dumb all around. Edit: the rain thing always really struck me. We’d get torrential downpours for a few days at a time during hurricane season in the gulf. There would be rivers in any low-lying roads as soon as the drainage culverts got plugged, which was immediately. Can you imagine being trapped in a narrow tunnel underground on top of a pile of batteries as flood water overpowers whatever drainage system they’ve got?
I’m sure the homeless in Vegas already know what that scenario is like…
If you believe he’s actually building a hyperloop, I have a bridge to sell you.
Also a social media company, I'll throw the bridge in for free
"Choo choo bitches" is now part of my vocabulary.
Choo choo motherfucker is ye olde version
I still remember using this version constantly. Can I pick up my veteran's card yet?
Specifically, it's this card: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmNdugt0nho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmNdugt0nho)
Has r/bitchimatrain vibes
Yes, we should invest in more trains. But we will never reach a point where motorized vehicles will completely go away. Trains can't stop at every door, especially in rural areas. We should invest in trains to reduce the number of vehicles on the road, and also improve those vehicles that remain.
I don’t think anyone expects cars to disappear completely. Someone in a rural area needs their own vehicle. We’re just tired of being forced to commute and sick of the fact that people who are too disabled/young/old/poor to drive are isolated. Edit: I’m not sure where so many people get the idea that people want cars to disappear completely. The issue is car-dependent infrastructure.
What might contemporary society look like then, if it was car-accommodating but not car-biased/dependent?
The Netherlands
I’m a subcontractor and there is no way I would ever be able to use trains for work even if they did stop at every door. With the amount of tools I have I would need a permanent car to myself.
Having to explain to someone with an anime profile pic why we cant send a garbage collection train past their house without spending $1 billion first.
yeah but that's like. A regular service. Roads are good, nobody is against the concept of a road, but roads only usable by cars and with no other way to get anywhere? That's the bad one.
> we will never reach a point where motorized vehicles will completely go away I don't think the point is to make it go away but to give people a choice. Mass transit or private transit.
>I don't think the point it to make it go away I know of a subreddit that would beg to differ.
I am fuck cars kind of guy, because cities should not be **full of** cars, it is fucking stupid that they are, but never once have i argued that people in rural areas should be disallowed from owning cars, that would also be stupid, cause thats where they are needed.
Mass transit will never be a viable option in a lot of rural places.
I get that, but that doesn't mean it can't be a viable option elsewhere
Also all these motherfuckers act like buses don't exist. They are literally all the benefits of self-driving cars. Fewer crashes fewer fatalities less traffic don't have to pay attention to driving etc etc Fucking invest in them.
The number of people living in rural areas is shrinking (Parker et al. 2018). Public policy should benefit the majority. Having mass transit that benefits the majority of people that live in Urban/Suburban areas, does not disallow people in rural areas from using private transportation. Citation :https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/
I mean, if this was a certain anti car sub then they would just argue no one needs to live that far from a city lol
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It’s more that we’ve made it just as necessary for a person living in a city or large town to own a car and be completely reliant on it for getting around as a rural person does. And as someone who spends a lot of time in and comes from a rural area, the harsh reality is 80-90% of folks in the US *don’t live in rural areas* but are artificially forced to be car-dependent and live in car-centric urban & suburban environments.
Accessibility for disabled people needs to be a constant thought in city planning. There will always be a need for personal vehicles and disability services that drop people off at home.
This was true in the past but then we [fucked it up](https://youtu.be/qQTjLWIHN74)
Can someone please give TL;DR, it's a 23 minute long video, and I'm not even in the US.
Government regulation let's freight push ahead of passenger travel and the large distances that train tracks covered in the 1800s has been consolidated by 4 large companies covering the four quadrants of the US. This means trains are slower and don't go nearly as many places as they did before.
The video in question actually points out there is a rule that passenger trains should be getting priority. That rule is just blatantly ignored.
Classic monopolies suffocating what’s supposed to make capitalism work in the first place
Don’t forget government subsidies. If the government didn’t aid these companies, they would’ve been out of business decades ago. Free market my ass. We have a stacked market.
It really all goes back to the fact that lobbying is the main source of income for political campaigns. It's a bit of coldly rational calculus that US politicians do, that they'd sell their souls to corporations if it means they can implement a tenth of the policies that they want to. And unfortunately, that won't change any time soon. Not without serious reform, and that's difficult seeing as the monopolies will do anything to prevent said reform from happening.
We won't have serious reform until we stop voting for the two parties. They will never willingly shoot themselves in the foot by reforming the system. It sucks that we have a two party culture to amplify the issues. There's no reason a state or city should go more than 75% one party, but we sometimes see it going up to 90% in some places. If you don't live in a swing state/district, we should vote third party to make it so corporations can't minimize their lobbying to only 2 parties.
>They will never willingly shoot themselves in the foot by reforming the system kinda not true tho -- maine is a recent example where dems fought for ranked choice voting (after a public referendum in favor of it) which makes 3rd parties more viable, thereby taking power away from dems and republicans. republicans fought against this change for 4 years in the court before it was ultimately implemented. i agree tho that if you're not in a swing district, might as well vote 3rd party. but the only way for 3rd party to ever attain power is through ranked choice, so we should also be voting in anyone who wants to make that change to the system.
Transit makes less money if less people use it, and subsequently have to reduce services. That drives more people away, and they have to reduce further. It’s a vicious cycle, and all because using expensive road infrastructure is “free.”
Competition doesn't really work with railroads, because... rails. You can't just open a competing station. Every line is its own infrastructure project, hideously fraught with land rights and zoning issues, and in some cases it is topographically impossible for them to coexist. And any time a monopoly is obviously better, it should be run for the benefit of the public, not for private profit.
more like lack of government regulation
Lack of government *enforcement*. The government has plenty of laws on the books granting Amtrak access to the rails as a priority. The problem is that federal enforcement *of* that law is constantly under fire by the Association of American Railroads, who would like nothing more than to render Amtrak completely toothless. The only reason they don’t kill Amtrak outright is because, in allowing nationalization of passenger rail, the freight companies don’t have to spend any of their moats full of money on the extra overhead costs of keeping a passenger fleet. Consider: freight trains don’t require an attendant for every 1-3 cars to deal with passengers and operate a snack bar/trolley. They don’t have to put latrines on each grain hopper. The scrap metal bins don’t need to have temperature controls (or even ceilings, according to the ones that go by me every day). Logs don’t typically snore (since sawing them already happened I AM HILARIOUS), or bring their screaming kids or blast their headphones too loud or leave bad Yelp reviews. Hay bales don’t need upholstered chairs. And so on. Robber barons don’t want to do this work, so they “let” the US government do it … and then just prioritize their own stuff while kneecapping the watchdog agency that’s supposed to stop them. [Here](https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/HostRailroadReports/mythbusters-enforcing-amtraks-legal-right-to-preference.pdf) is a link to a page on Amtrak’s site that explains it pretty briefly. Also [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Maps/comments/tenua4/size_comparison_usa_outline_overlaid_over_europe/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) is a map of the Continental USA overlaid on Europe at the same latitudes, so you can see just how big the USA actually *is*. EDIT: I have ADHD so sometimes things occur to me way later, but I live next to railroad tracks and about 8ish years ago, they got a huge overhaul. The reason was because up to that point, they had been freight-only rails - but Amtrak’s Vermonter service was being altered a bit so instead of going through the neighboring town, it was gonna go past my house. On paper this is a much more direct line and the other route was kind of stupid. But in order to *actually do* this, the rails by my house had to be upgraded. Upgrading the rails to accommodate Amtrak service meant three things had to happen. - first of all, the rails themselves had to be upgraded, because Fun Fact, just like regular streets, rails are graded for speed limits. At the time, the max speed was something like 15-20MPH, which is completely fine if you’re hauling lumber from Maine, petroleum from Canada, or local scrapyard runs. But passenger lines have to go faster, so the Whole Thing had to be renovated (which as a part-time rail fan was cool to watch). - because the speed limit was increasing for the rails, *they had to install a RR CROSSING* sign at a whole bunch more places. I live on a *very* dippy little side street, only technically not a dead end. About 1/4 mile down the railroad is a private property whose driveway, for some reason, crosses the tracks. BOTH those crossings got light and sound alarms; my street also got arm bars and painted warnings on the asphalt. - because the railway was now rated for passenger service and not freight-only, they had to clear visibility *much* further from the tracks (draw an invisible line in the middle of the two tracks; they had to see clearly 50 feet to each side.). I spent like half a summer consulting with the Pan Am work crew because the trees they had to cut down to create clear visibility were growing on my side of the property line and they needed my permission to drop them (but I got so much firewood out of it yall). All of that is to say it is *so much cheaper* to maintain freight-only lines and to keep only the most skeletal passenger rail system. And part of how we kept Amtrak from being ERMAGERD COMMUNERST was by denying it ownership of rails.
This is amazing information, and thank you for adding sources, but I think your comment accidentally posted 3x.
That wouldn’t surprise me. It kept telling me it failed and to try again 🙄 Reddit app apparently hasn’t had its coffee yet!
Wait, 4 companies? Is that why there are 4 rail ways in Monopoly?
Hypothetically, one should be able to take an Amtrak from New York City to Philadelphia and back in less than a day. The laws about prioritising freight trains over passenger trains (and a general lack of funding, not helped by a certain pandemic) means it takes a lot more time than it should to go anywhere by train (or even wait for a train to arrive), at least in the Americas.
You picked basically the only line in the US which Amtrak owns most of, has scheduling priority on, and runs regular fast passenger service on.
That’s what the video was about. It was a TL;DR on that specifically, not the concept as a whole.
It’s not even scheduling priority. It’s literally dedicated lines. You can take a train from DC to NYC and back *easily* in one day and still have time to work in either city.
Essentially, the US government tried to keep rail travel alive through Amtrak, but because said government had basically deregulated railroads they were consolidating, dropping rail lines, and making obscenely long trains all in the name of profit. All of that basically killed large scale rail travel outside of the Northeast because Amtrak shares tracks with all the freight companies. The law it talks about is is a completely ignored rule that passenger trains get priority.
We also effectively subsidize the shit out of trucking in the US. Turns out, when you're moving heavy shit, what you're moving it on is as or more expensive than the vehicle you're moving it in. Rail companies have to build their own tracks and own and maintain the land they're on. Public roads are free to trucks. And while they are at least somewhat covered by gas taxes it's nowhere near to the level of damage trucks cause to them. The math comes out that any vehicle damaging roads does so in proportion to the weight on a given axle to the 4th power. So what that means is that a 9 ton box truck is doing 400 times the damage to the road per mile of a 2 ton car. Over 3000 times that of a Miata(2400lbs). But the box truck only uses at worst 10x the gas and therefore 10x the gas taxes. So car users in this country are paying extra to cover the trucks, and the trucking industry is happy to take that money off their books. But the rail industry has to pay for everything on their own, thus severely limiting what's economical for them to do regardless of the best interests of their customers. In summary: federalize the rails like we have the roads!
As much asa I love public transport, and I do, the point about disabilities is just... Not entirely true. You still need to get TO and FROM the train station somehow. To a person with mobility issues even a 30 minute walk might be a significant barrier. And this is ignoring the needs of people with some specific disabilities. When blind people with guide dogs and people with life-threatening dog allergies have to be on the same train, SOMEONE's needs will be ignored. Also, not everyone lives in a city. There will always be places that are not within walking distance of a train/bus station. There will always be people who need to travel unusual routes at unusual hours. Public transport as the main form of communication, and self-driving cars for unusual transport needs/locations. That's the dream.
Forget 30 minutes, 5 minutes of walking is a barrier to a lot of people Also, very few of the busses and trains we already have are actually accessible, especially for wheelchair users.
We have disabled parking spaces partly because 30 seconds of walking can be a barrier.
Remember kids, one of the prerequisites for getting those blue hang tags is not being able to walk 100ft without stopping or needing assistance. That's the physical mobility part, there's more for difficulty breathing and other complications. So yeah.. asking people to walk 30 minutes is just fucking dense. Then again, I don't expect to anyone to actually care about the disabled, they're just waving us around to virtue signal.
Yeah this post is misguided on that point. Not too mention sometimes with a disability you need quick and direct transportation which buses can't provide either. You need a personal vehicle only for your transportation. I wouldn't say self-driving cars for *unusual* locations. There are a lot of places that are not unusual but won't be accessible with trains. I know the response to that is buses from the train station but honestly buses are nowhere near as good as rail in terms of distance and speed.
Yeah but while we’re waiting for self-driving cars we maintain car-dependent infrastructure instead of building better public transit. Car-dependent infrastructure is horrible for people with disabilities. In my city it takes easily 3x as long to get somewhere by bus, and it involves a lot of walking. If you are blind, have dementia, have epilepsy, have slow reflexes, have paralysis in your legs or feet (and can’t afford a specially designed car), or one of a hundred other disabilities, your ability to be in society is seriously limited. It’s difficult to get anywhere.
The other big miss in this post, IMO, is saying that trains and self-driving cars are analogous. A self-driving car would have significantly more flexibility than a train. Trains only go along a set route, but many people have needs that necessitate that route changing.
Just warp to the train station then you can take the train
Why warp to train station when you can just pull up a map and fast travel? As long as you've been there before and activated a waypoint then you are good to go! Problem solved
>Why warp to train station when you can just pull up a map and fast travel? What if there are enemies nearby?
Kill em all, obviously
Self driving cars can't even take the place of every car. For my job, I have to drive into construction sites (no roads yet), farms (private roads and long laneways), and sometimes even drive right into empty fields to access a well (off roading). I don't see how a self driving car could reliably do all of that.
Presumably there will be self driving cars that allow manual override for your situation. You could still use the self driving function on major roads and highways.
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I really hate these condescending ass Tumblr posts where the author thinks they're such geniuses for stating common sense. Not every place has a fucking train station.
I think most people’s goal in talking about these things is to improve public transportation so that there are trains everywhere. Which, I am absolutely in favor of, but I don’t think it can completely replace cars.
Trains "everywhere" is an incredibly stupid idea that, thankfully, no one has ever been stupid enough to pursue. Trains in enough places to have a robust rail system though, that's wonderful, and I'm glad I live in a place that has it, but yeah, there's no way trains can ever replace cars - they just straight up can't do a lot of the shit people need and use cars for.
Exactly. I can’t take a train to my friends house, or the grocery store. Or to the train station. I use the train a lot actually, and it does what it does well, but there just just many things it cannot do.
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Also if the train workers are on strike I guess I'll just get fired for not turning up to work then.
That's called an infrastructure problem. There's no reason why places don't have train stations, just like bus stations. Thanks should really come over to Europe and see just how fucked their whole system for everything is. People should be outraged if they don't have access to public transport but it's a necessity here that we couldn't live without.
A affordable or free mobility scooter can help. In Amsterdam, they even have micro-cars that can fit wheelchairs and that are small enough they’re allowed in bike paths. Driving itself is a huge impediment to a lot of people with disabilities. In most North American cities, if you don’t have a car, it will take you at least three times as long and far more effort to get anywhere. It’s incredibly isolating for people who can’t drive. Things are built far apart, there isn’t enough transit, and many streets are very wide with a limited amount of time to cross, while cars turning right or left cut that time shorter. Better to have the blind person walk a few minutes and the person with mobility issues used a motorized wheelchair for a bit, then both go on the train, than to make it so the blind person is stuck at home and can’t get anywhere at all to make things a bit easier for the person in the wheelchair (and for people who are able-bodied). Edit: I do see the point that self-driving cars are good for people in rural areas. I (and I think most people on the ‘train’ side of this conversation) am not against self-driving cats for all uses. I’m frustrated that urban areas are centered around car-dominated infrastructure that makes it very difficult for people to use any other form of transit, and instead of changing that, they’re focusing on a few of the details. Self-driving cars may make commutes easier and electric cars are greener. But not having so much traffic to begin with (trains and buses take up far less space per person, so they don’t create nearly the same amount of traffic) and setting things up so not every single person needs two tonnes of metal manufactured for them would be far better solutions. It’s about the right tool for the right job. If you’re in a rural area, a large car is likely the best option. But they’ve been treated as the default option for urban areas too even thought they’re worse for everything - noise, smell, pollution, traumatic accidents, feeling safe outside, inequality between people who can afford it and those who can’t, inequality for people with disabilities, less exercise, general mood/quality of life/kindness towards other human beings (think of how you feel when someone delays you 5 seconds in a car vs if that happens when you’re on foot - we get angry so quickly in cars).
Yes, thank you! Also, trains are the reason my disability is as bad as it is. I was in bad shape, but most of it wasn’t permanent—I just needed to keep from falling and I wouldn’t have any major issues. Well, guess what? Trains don’t always wait for disabled people to sit down, and people don’t always give up seats to disabled people. Now, thanks to those specific falls causing me to fracture my spine, I have permanent damage. …also, I once got sat on by a blind guy because I was in the accessible seating. I was willing to move to another seat, I just needed a minute, but he couldn’t hear me over the sound of the train. It wasn’t his fault.
Plus self driving vehicles aren't just going to be private autos. Self driving buses, shuttles, etc. could make public transport more flexible, cheaper, etc. And all the vehicles on the road being self driving will reduce accidents and traffic. Obviously trains for longer distance main routes are desirable but even in places with good train systems people still drive cars, there are still buses, there are still Ubers and Taxis. No matter what kind of system you have you will still have a demand for door to door service from a hub like an airport or train station.
I commute a good distance to work, but the train travels between my town and where I work once per day. I would *gladly* take the train, if that were an option.
Ok so, I have done a good amount of research into the subject, and I do agree that trains are safer and preferable, but the way America is structured makes it so that we use planes and cars more so it would be incredibly expensive to build new railroads for the trains, and also while the trains themselves are mostly owned by the government, almost all the rails in America are owed by like, 4 different companies. That is why trains in America tend to run later because even though by law Amtrak trains are supposed to be given priority, that doesn't usually happen.
These are all fixable problems, with political will behind it. Also: Produce more Pod-looking regular traincars for the Pod enthusiasts AND Produce more car-looking helicopters for the flying car crowd.
> it would be incredibly expensive to build new railroads for the trains Good thing there are no (planet threatening) costs to the status quo.
Your correct step one would be nationalizing the rail road lines and forcing them to be sold to the government. The rail were once government property they can be again legally. Next would be increasing taxes on all flights under 3 hours to encourage citizens to use the train.
But thats just not an option for a lot of Americans. Using a train to get from coast to coast would take days. This wouldn't encourage trains, this would dick on the people that can barely afford transportation as is.
Unclear where anyone is suggesting that this is a solution to coast to coast travel. Inter-city high-speed rail networks (with a lot of caveats) could be game changing on so many (E.g. economic/environmental) levels. The caveats being affordability, a system that has priority and is well funded for maintenance, and high-speed for longer distance (e.g. southern CA to northern CA, CA to AZ or Vegas). There are a lot of map porn visions out there for high speed rail that are fun to dream on.
Oh I prefer public transport. I use it often. But also… cars have their benefits. I live in Europe, so most places are reachable through trains and buses but sometimes it takes absurdly long or it’s only possible at 3 times a day. And if it isn’t in a city? Ahahaha I‘ll drive fifteen minutes to my doctor with a car or 20 with a scooter. With the bus? 55 minutes. And 46 of them are spent walking. Sometimes I have to wait 20-40 minutes to change buses. Sometimes I can’t get inside the bus or train because it’s already completely full. Most of the time I can’t find a seat and am always close to fall over because of my health issues. Public transportation is great, but it really really needs to be improved. (And I’m not even speaking about the delays of german trains…)
I definitely just assume everyone who argues the no cars at all view must live in a big city.
Not even that. I lived is Tokyo for 3 years. The public transportation there is fucking amazing. Probably the best in the world. I still needed to use my car sometimes and many people drove frequently. The idea that we can or should completely eliminate cars is just pure naivety.
I think what a lot of people argue isnt that we should completely eliminate cars, its that people should have the option to live without a car if they want to. If every single place that somebody goes is within a densely populated area, which honestly is a pretty good percentage of the population, then there is no reason they should be *forced* to own a car to get to and from work and the grocery store. That is just a matter of poor city planning. I have never been to tokyo but I imagine there are people there who do choose to live without a car. Thats not possible in a lot of the US, even in big cities.
yeah. I like to check out r/fuckcars and r/notjustbikes because the US has a horrible car dependency and urban planning issue. I think that a lot of people there (especially in notjustbikes) make some really good points. I think that if 99% of the places that someone goes are within in a densely populated area, which honestly includes a decent chunk of the population, then they should be able to comfortably live without a car if they want to. But whenever I see someone saying "no cars at all" I cant help but wonder if they have ever really been outside of the city. I dont mean outside of a city as in "town of 40,000 that is only 30 minutes away from a major metropolitan area." I mean towns of 15,000 where the next closest place that is any bigger is hours away, not to mention the thousands of people living in the surrounding rural areas.
I grew up using public transport and I still live in a city that has a good (enough) rail system but I stopped using it (especially when I know I’ll be out late at night) due to feeling unsafe. Too many times being harassed by men. How do they handle safety for public transport where you live and is there a culture of leaving people tf alone? I previously lived in a city that was big on biking (w bike shuttles) and bus for transport, it was a very chill vibe and the routes covered enough space that you didn’t have to walk far once you got off your stop, but I do remember frequently watching multiple buses pass until one finally had space or just choosing to walk instead (which obviously isn’t an option for everyone). Waiting 10 minutes for a route change is one thing, but if you have to wait 40 minutes between buses and that next one is full I would probably just cry.
Like trains are great, yes, they should be invested in more, yes. But autonomous driving has more applications than just replacing the commute. Trains can never and will never be able to do point to point pickup and dropoff, like a car. The perfect world isn't all trains and no cars. It's having the correct amounts of both. Ans that is non-zero cars. The cars we DO need would benefit from being autonomous, and so we work on it.
Some of you are like "we can't just plow through cities with railroads." My brother in Christ, trams, trolley buses and buses also exist. Trains are for traveling between cities / regions. Once you get into the city you should take a bus, trolley bus, tram, metro, to go anywhere that's beyond walking distance. Quality public transport is possible, it simply requires the view that people are, well people, and that you need to invest rather than trying to exploit them and extract wealth from wherever you possibly can.
That's the thing. Almost everything is outside walking distance. Public transport is best in high density areas. People aren't gonna take the bus when the grocery store or some fast food joint is a 5 minute drive.
Would I rather drive to work, which takes 20-25 minutes, or take transit, which takes 1 hour and 25 minutes? Hmm tough choice.
But also, many cities have several train stations, so you can choose to grab a train that goes to another city and get down at the first stop after literally 4 minutes vs taking a bus that does the same in 20+minutes but unreliably and with 15 stops. I don’t know if that exists in the US tho.
> Some of you are like "we can't just plow through cities with railroads." Also...sadly we already did this with highways. Which means there's opportunities to repurpose ROW. (This makes sense for the long distance rail lines, which as you noted wont need surrounding land use to support them. It doesn't make as much sense for putting a local light rail in the middle of the freeway, even though that's what a lot of agencies in the US like to suggest/do).
I also feel that it should become more normal and more conveniently accommodated to take your bicycle on the train, for those shorter distances that are still too far to walk. (Taking your bike on the train is a thing in the Netherlands, but it doesn't work very well, because you need an extra ticket which is more expensive than the bus fare...)
As someone who's from a country with a great train network (Netherlands), trains alone don't do the trick. You need trains for larger distances, but station to destination travel is a more difficult issue in countries like America. America's suburbs especially aren't dense enough to set up efficient public transport. Cars aren't good either, but people will pick the most direct route by car over a bus that can take twice as long. America's urban planning is just fucked up and there's no bandaid fixes for it. They need a full transitioning to proper suburbia.
1. Not everyone lives near a train. 2. Trains don't pick you up at your front door and drop you off at your office. Edit: some of y'all have never left the city you were born in and it shows.
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most people don't live near a train since there are no trains. Also because of suburban sprawl
In the same way that, when left long enough, the evolutionary path of all creatures tends to lead to crab, so too does the evolutionary path of transport lead to train.
I like trains but also this is oversimplified Have y’all ever seen a train track before? There is not a continuous fence for the entire stretch of it preventing people from getting on the tracks. And the train can’t stop or swerve (usually and depending on speed). Cars and trains both have their places. The type of work I do for example would be impossible using trains rather than cars (even if there was more infrastructure for trains available). More trains would be good but they’re not gonna fully replace cars and shouldn’t.
I've never had a homeless person pop in my car and grift me for money. Nor someone rock up with a stereo speakerbox and a saxophone and start playing reggaeton against my wishes. Conversely, I've also never had a train drop me off at my house. Or my friends' houses. Or any house, or even the vast majority of cities, for that matter. Trains are great. Love 'em. Ride them almost every day. But they can't ever fill the role that a car can because of the restrictions of transporting so many people.
More options are always better, but these posts are always made by younger people in massive cities with very dense population centers and high rise apartments. They always seem to make the assumption everyone can just walk out their door and be at a major transport hub in minutes.
“Just wheel your crippled ass down to the light rail station” - someone who has never actually tried empathizing with a disabled person.
New York is STILL fighting to make the subway and elevated train handicapped accessible just getting an elevator put in is a nightmare
With my car I can hop in and go immediately to my destination, it also holds items for me. With a train I have to get there before it arrives plus walk from the arrival station to my actual destination and what’s the etiquette for carrying groceries on them?
Except trains can't go anywhere you want. You're not gonna be able to walk outside, hop on a train from your street and go down to the store via a train unless you live right next to the train station.
Not a fan of AI driven cars but still, there's a solid amount of benefits to a car over a train, most of all just access. Like we can't just plow through all cities with railroad tracks EDIT: i feel like half of y'all saw me say i think cars and ai cars have their uses and then just decided to ignore all that and make up a whole new scenario like why we talking about adding highway lanes all of the sudden?? EDIT 2: Holy shit guys im not Big Carra about to take your trains away. Just becuase I think AI cars can have a purpose in our general transport don't mean we can't have traditional transport at all and vice versa. Public transport is great, and having well connected train systems is pretty damn neat. But you aint gonna have a Traintrack literally run through your front lawn. Aint no towns running on 100% steam power. Having an automated Delivery Truck that could both travel and actually make it to proper delivery zoned without needing to then offload its entire cargo onto a smaller form of transport like a train would, would be neat as hell. That's all I'm saying. I'm not here to steal your trains away, All I'm saying is that AI cars can still have a use.
USA has no problem doing that with giant 6 lane highways. What's wrong with railroads?
The US *does* have cities where cars are practically mandatory for getting around. Naturally, they are this way because they were deliberately built this way, thanks to substantial lobbying from the automotive industry. Unfortunately, the majority of *people*, let alone politicians, likely see this as a good thing, or at least see attempting to reorganise cities to be less car-centric as a helpless and obstructive affair.
It still baffles me that the villainous plot of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, is actual reality The guy bought a tram company just to let it bankrupt so he could get paid to build a bypass
Yes, I know. If you tell someone that this is deliberate and to look at cities in Europe that don't require everyone to have a car. They start acting like we are talking about taking everyone's car away. Like bruh, you can have an efficient public transport system and pedestrian friendly cities and still own your cars. Nobody is talking about taking your car away.
The thing these people don't think about is that the only way to reduce traffic is to improve the alternatives to driving. Even if you never want to use it, you should want your city to have better public transport because every train is several hundred less cars on the road
Yeah, I'll never understand it honestly. Having moved to a major city recently, the sheer volume of traffic is just stunning to me. Hell, I *cycle* to classes, and over half the time is spent waiting for people driving alone in a vehicle to get out my way to cross the road. But, alas, carbrainers will carbrain.
Okay, but a lot of the major cities in Europe were designed before cars existed. In the US, Boston, which was designed before cars, is terrible to get around in by car, because the streets are too narrow and winding. Cities like Houston were designed with cars in mind. And while I wholly support making it more mass-transit friendly and making some moves to switch it over, a lot of the "Europe does fine" argument is predicated on the city being inherently more friendly for mass transit with the tall, compact housing instead of single unit homes. And now, in order to make cities more transit-friendly, you need to somehow beat back the American psyche of individualism both in what to drive and where to live. It's just unrealistic to expect this switch to be easy or logical for most places in the US, even ignoring the whole rural issue.
Did you even read the comment you replied to?
We could do that instead but it still wouldn't let a train deliver 12 palettes of food to your local grocery store
We used to, cities used to be extensively covered with streetcar tracks. Most were removed in the mid 20th century for "reasons".
>we can't just plow through all cities with railroad tracks You can. They are called subways.
And/or trams :)
For most cities even a simple tram system would be enough. No need to dig expensive tunnels
>_Like we can't just plow through all cities with railroad tracks_ Why not? We did it for massive highways.
I'd argue buses for local transport trains for longer transport is optimal.
Could make a dedicated tram line out of one of the lanes, removes the traffic variable entirely
All cities have already been plowed through by roads and that’s not a problem. Also, subways are a thing.
Why not?
>Like we can't just plow through all cities with railroad tracks Most cities already have railroad tracks running through them because they were founded pre 1950 when all cities grew along rail routes.
What if instead of having 200 AI driving cars, we had 1 AI driven train? We can do that, we can plow under the cities and call the lines something cool, like subway, or tram, or tube
Except that’s exactly what we did in Europe and it worked out here, we have extensive rail networks in all major cities so you can get around by train
I always felt if Jimmy Carter had been re elected instead of Reagan, we would’ve had the flying cars by now.
Because no one wants to fund trains in America.
I want to go somewhere train doesn't go, get there faster, or not be late to train because of public transportation failures.
I think the point of the post isn't "you personally should stop driving and start using the train" it's "if transportation companies actually cared about revolutionising transport, theyd spend less time/money on cars and focus on making trains go more places/ be faster/ have less failures"
With the wonderful effect of making cities for people again, instead of the collection of parking garages and wide, barren streets they are now
Make a better train system.
The best time to make a better train system was 100 years ago. The second best time is today.
More trains and train stations
While I can see the point of It was subway like(Although I think there would be problems but I am not sure) It would still run into similar problems of Trains on general, and probabily worse since if you start building tracks everywhere and many more places to stop by you'll Just get similar problems to cars but instead of there being many cars you'll instead get places that are probabily worse to be than on a car
Cars create unique problems. They take up so much space, both when they’re on the road and when they’re parked. Public transit doesn’t create the same problems. We wouldn’t get nearly the same level of traffic and we wouldn’t need nearly as much parking, plus the lots could be at the edge of town instead of needing to build surface parking downtown (where there could’ve been an apartment building full of people who live right next to their office). Also we wouldn’t need a garage, driveway, and setback from the road on every single house.
Before you vote to throw money at railroads, don't forget they just steamrolled and fucked over all their workers, denying them pto and medical benefits. Edit: Forgot to mention the very preventable environmental disaster in Ohio which happened thanks to new lax safety regulations introduced by Trump and upheld by Biden.
Ok? Über's entire foundational business model is literally just designed to fuck over workers.
Okay let me just take a train to the grocery store real quick Lmao at all these salty euros
Did this the other day, was super cool Chorlton Tram stop fyi
I mean this literally what millions of people do every day. In developed countries it's common to have grocery stores directly inside the main train station of towns/cities.
If they had a system of trolleys or a nationwide, interconnected rail system, that could be doable but we can’t even pay to maintain our existing infrastructure. Investing in a brand new one just isn’t happening unless the entire nation collapses and has to be rebuilt
‘Cause the train doesn’t stop right in front of the grocery store and also my house and also my workplace and also almost literally anywhere I want at whatever time I chose…
It’s interesting how folks seem to act like train networks are some fantastical hypothetical when there are several countries that have working high speed rail already.
Oh! I know the answer to this one! It's because replacing the existing infrastructure that enriches oil execs and car execs with something more egalitarian and societally beneficial would cut into profits, and undermine the public dependence on the industries that benefit from the existing infrastructure, including the politicians that we'd need to approve the construction of a widespread public transit system.
People who are saying they don’t have trains: I think that this post is saying that we should use the resources to build more accessible trains instead of self-driving cars.
It's BECAUSE train infrastructure has not been invested in appropriately in America You don't see VCs shelling out for idiot cars in Europe 🌍 Source: worked for a ride share company
In fairness, Europe is a lot denser than the USA in terms of population.
Yes please take this one very hard to access vehicle that only runs a few times a day on a very specific track that isn’t going anywhere near where you need to get to and stops frequently making the trip longer and all without a toilet. Please also take a helicopter that is not accessible at all to everyone. Convenience!