![[meme] Trains -- not driverless cars -- are the future of transportation](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f6468af5-8151-4b4c-b339-2fa0b0373c3a.webp){kind=link}
Image transcript:
Calvin (from Calvin & Hobbes) sitting at a lemonade stand, smiling, with a sign that reads, “Trains and micromobility are inevitably the future of urban transportation, whether society wants it or not. CHANGE MY MIND.”
Image transcript:
Calvin (from Calvin & Hobbes) sitting at a lemonade stand, smiling, with a sign that reads, “Trains and micromobility are inevitably the future of urban transportation, whether society wants it or not. CHANGE MY MIND.”
Driverless cars will very much have a future because you can’t build trains everywhere. They won’t be personally owned though, i.e. they’ll be robotaxis. Just imagine cities without parked cars.
if japan can build trains, high speed ones at that then I think it’s safe to say you can build trains anywhere you fucking want.
You certainly can build trains wherever you want, but it comes at a cost that’s not necessarily worth paying everywhere, as it comes with both short term and maintenance costs. I say this as someone who works in rail and is passionate about it; in some locations there isn’t the demand to run the kind of high frequency service necessary to remove the need for car ownership. You can be better off with a demand responsive bus service, for example, to connect to your long-distance, high speed links.
counter argument, Switzerland.
I agree trains will just be more common for distance. I also agree driverless cars will be more common, but would add I think we’ll see more one person, two person, eight person cars in the city. No point in sending a four person car to take John to see his grandma.
We already have a system where you can request a car to come to your location, take you there and then it goes off and drives around doing the same thing for other people. I don’t know why it being autonomous means that people will ditch their private cars for it.