Does rail go straight to everyone's office building?
Example cities with okay or good rail infrastructure: New York, London, Paris, Vienna.
You also save a LOT of time, because you are never stuck in traffic, and you can use the time in the train to check up on your emails, etc – and you never risk getting into an accident because you are tired after work.
I’d like to have even better infrastructure, and 24/7 service, but I don’t have an issue. I have 3 bus stations within of 300 meters, and a train station 800m from my current home.
Part of the problem in 2015 is that unless there was planning for rail from the start, the cost to build out rail in established areas is enormous - typically because you need to tunnel - in addition to the cost of community consultation and other access-related issues.
I otherwise agree that well-planned rail into key areas would have benefited a lot of cities, especially those feeling the pain from road congestion now.
Make every lane 30cm thinner, remove 1.5 lanes, and you have enough space for a bike path on every side and light rail tracks.
Clearly you've never ridden the subway in NYC during rush hour. Most of the major lines will have some delays, you'll have to wait for multiple trains to pass before you can get on, or once you're on the train will stop because "we are waiting for train traffic ahead".
I’ve seen bad train traffic, too (here is my city at 2am during a festival http://i.imgur.com/KyWkUzJ.jpg), but still:
Imagine the same amount of people using the train now being on the street, everyone in a seperate car.
The human congestion in the central tube stations at rush hour is appalling, as is the air quality down there, as is the lack of personal space on the train itself. It's a very stressful, undignified experience for everyone.
I'd much rather be spending a bit of extra time in traffic, sat comfortably in a self-driving taxi, than take the tube. That said, I think there's good reason to believe that as self-driving cars become more prevalent, traffic flows will actually improve due to better flow management, less need for traffic lights, and fewer cars parked.
Rail does the job, but it does not do it elegantly. It's very unpleasant to take mass transit railways in major world cities. Nobody who's done it for any length of time would reasonably contest this. Self-driving personal vehicles could be a major improvement on the commuting experience, if indeed the future involves commuting at all - a vast increase in remote work may simply sidestep the issue completely by the time self-driving cars are a mature tech.
A single person in the tube takes, technically, 0 space due to being in a tunnel, and even in overground railway a single person takes less than a square meter.
With a car, you waste far more space.
And, by the way, I’m taking public transport every day, all year round, even in situations like http://i.imgur.com/KyWkUzJ.jpg and I still find it far more pleasant to wait 20 minutes in a crowd than to be stuck for 40 minutes on the highway.
Do you have any sources on this? I agree that space on the roads of major cities is an issue now, but several changes in the future could mitigate these issues significantly:
1) Self driving cars will probably end parking in city centres. Suddenly, a lot of congested roads have ~twice the surface area.
2) Self driving cars may eventually be able to drive within centimetres of one another.
3) No need for a huge bonnet (small electric engine), boot/trunk (rooftop rack storage), pedals, dashboard, etc in an electric automated taxi. A 2-4 person vehicle is now rather compact indeed.
4) Remote/part-time-remote work may mean commutes are avoided, or staggered throughout the day, for the majority of people. There's a lot less peak capacity required, compared to today.
Additionally, in many cities there is already almost no downtown parking.
It’s not like you’re going to turn the laws of physics over.
One of the sources why cars are worse than bikes or busses, from the city of Münster: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2014/07/Public_Tra...