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Comment by Talanes | Hacker News Reader

Show me a train that can show up at my grandmother's door and drop her at the doctor's.

Swiss somehow manage to use trains in massive numbers even if grandmothers need car assistance occasionally. You don't need to poison the atmosphere every day with a car on your commute just because your grandmother might need a pick her up for her doctors checkup (having a medical facility come to pick someone up is not an uncommon service either).

Why do some of you think that finding a wierd edge case is enough to invalidate a whole infrastructure? This isn't derivation of a mathematical proof where counter-example invalidates the hypothesis.

>poison the atmosphere every day with a car

So you won't mind electric cars then, which fix that problem ?

They don't fix the problem. Nowhere on earth is there a sustainable electrical grid that doesn't pollute the atmosphere, let alone one that supports electric cars for every household. Not only that but electric cars create local pollution in the form of particular matter from brakes and tyres and they are worse than internal combustion engine cars in that regard.

> and they are worse than internal combustion engine cars in that regard.

Regenerative braking means less wear on the brakes, and there's no particulate matter from the exhaust pipe. In what way are electric cars worse?

Regenerative braking does not replace traditional brakes. In particular it is only really efficient at high speeds and doesn't do much in cities. EVs have no tailpipe emissions, but particulate emissions from the tailpipe of modern ICEs is very low anyway. But EVs do produce significantly more emissions from the tyres and brakes compared with ICE vehicles because they are heavier.

https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/2020/1/28/tyres-not-...

It doesn't have to be 100% regenerative and an electric motor in generator mode it's very efficient at braking even at high speeds. One just needs to redirect the excess energy that cannot be absorbed by the battery to a controlled resistive load and trigger both mechanisms if the brake pedal is pushed more than 30% in which case you definitely need regular brakes. Trains already use these mechanisms.

The figures in the linked article are overblown: 5,8 g/km means one throws away a pair of used tires every 1000 km, which is not the case since the average tire lifecycle is 20k to 30k km.

> doesn't do much in cities

Incorrect. I drive a lot in the city and I use the friction brakes so little that they start malfunctioning after a week or so if I don't do some hard stops once a week or so to clean up the pad surface. I only use the 'regular' brakes if I am stopping from high speed, quickly, or at the bottom of a steep hill. Probably use regenerative breaking for >90% of all normal stops.

Trains use lots of metal in their construction, and even electric ones might use fossil fuel generated electricity.

Not really a good example, Swiss rails are supremely expensive to state and travellers too. Most countries wouldn't be able to afford such density to have good coverage. They definitely don't run very precisely in many places due to many factors, as a local I can attest to that with many late arrivals to work in the past.

These days they run almost empty at huge losses. You still need to haul 300 tonne of steel through whole country, even if there are 5 passengers.

Maybe its the best implementation of the train network for civil travel, but still needs to be heavily complemented by network of buses to all small places.

And that grandma drive to the door would still have to use a taxi every single time.

> Why do some of you think that finding a wierd edge case is enough to invalidate a whole infrastructure?

Why do you feel you need to talk about a different infrastructure when people talk about the one you yourself acknowledge is needed to transport people to/from trains?

"Why do some of you think that finding a wierd edge case is enough to invalidate a whole infrastructure?"

Last year I was nearly going broke spending money on Ubers when my then girlfriend's kidney's failed. She wasn't considered immobile enough to qualify for the transport to and from Dialysis, but would be drained enough that walking to and navigating public transit home after would be impossible for her. So this is not just weird edge case for me, this scenario was a constant part of my life.

I’ve seen plenty of elderly people use trains.

There’s a train outside my front door that will drop me off at the front of UCSF. But that’s about 10 stops away and requires a transfer. If one doesn’t mind the bus, there’s one that picks up in front of my door and drops off at the hospital (the bus stop is even closer to the main entrance than the parking garage!)

That's great! How soon can that train get to Talanes' grandmother's house?

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