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Comment by HPsquared | Hacker News Reader

(I've been playing a lot of Factorio lately)

Current public transport is like transport belts in Factorio. Fixed routes. This works ok in a simple old-fashioned economy (a few large employers, large hubs where everyone goes to the same place).

What we need is a more flexible, on-demand model of public transport. Something like logistic bots in Factorio. Lots of small people-movers which go direct from point to point, on demand. Buses and trains were already obsoleted by cars and can only survive by targeted anti-car policy.

Some kind of taxi (which would need to be automated to be at all economical for regular use) or electric scooter hire is the next stage of evolution.

Logistic bots do require a lot of energy, but that's the nature of progress.

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> Current public transport is like transport belts in Factorio. Fixed routes. This works ok in a simple old-fashioned economy (a few large employers, large hubs where everyone goes to the same place).

It works just fine in new-fashioned economies as well because good public transit is made of networks and criss cross.

As an example, even in the middle of the night, the majority of Toronto's population has public transit available just a short walk away:

> Then in 2005, several routes were added so that east–west service would run on every grid street instead of alternate ones in much of the city. This has brought the Blue Night Network up to a total of 24 routes, serving 97% of the city's population within a 15-minute walk.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Night_Network

Stumble out of a bar at 3 AM? You can take the bus/streetcar home.

During the day the network is much more extensive, with more routes operating, so most people probably have to walk <10 minutes to get to a route (some routes though having more frequent service than others).

Transfers add latency and uncertainty. It's just about tolerable on a metro system with trains every 5 minutes, but that's super expensive and only the largest, well-run cities have it.

The largest cities have the greatest need. Small towns that aren't high population centers aren't so strangled by traffic hopefully. And also hopefully are made to be more walkable and not spread out so unnecessarily.

Rural areas are rural. One car or truck every mile or so isn't the problem we're talking about here. It's the hundred cars per mile chokepoints that are the issue.

> Buses and trains were already obsoleted by cars and can only survive by targeted anti-car policy

Where? In France most people would take the train to travel a long distance (2h+ drive). I can be in Paris in 2 hours at 320km/h using the high-speed train whereas it would take me 6 hours at 130km/h using a car. Not counting the nightmare of going through the Parisian périphérique.

To be completely fair, Paris is an exception. France is an unbelievably centralised country, and everything goes to Paris. Bordeaux is similarly well served, but past that... Good luck in the southeast and its broken 80km/h lines, good luck in the southwest and its complete lack of lines... Hell, even Lyon takes a very long time to get to if you're not coming from Paris.

I don't agree, let's take 5 big cities spread around the country to Lyon:

- Toulouse: 4h by train, 5h30 by car

- Nice: 5h30 by train, 5h by car

- Strasbourg: 4h15 by train, 5h15 by car

- Le Havre: 5h05 by train, 7h by car

- Nantes: 4h50 by train, 6h45 by car

>Nice: 5h30 by train, 5h by car

Closer to 4h30 by car, although the train does drop you off directly in Part-Dieu. Still, this doesn't take into account the need to go to the train station.

>Nantes: 4h50 by train, 6h45 by car

From personal experience, I can promise you that 6h45 is horribly optimistic.

But really, that only furthers the point: Lyon is the second biggest city in France, and it's more or less equivalent to take the car to get there, with farther places slowly winning out on time. That's _dreadful_.

Those are not door-to-door times. Edit: and how about the cost? Especially if more than one person is going the same way.

Berlin, and Germany in general seems to be a better role model then. Germany is the opposite of France, very decentralised with multiple population/economical centers dotting the country: Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, München, Stuttgart, Köln/Dortmund/Düsseldorf/Essen corridor.

Trains definitely have a role. The "2-4 hour drive" is the sweet spot.

Planes are best for longer distances, and some sort of personal transportation is best for short distances.

When it comes to public transit, "flexible" is usually a negative attribute. If you rely on public transit, you want reasonable guarantees that the service will be there in the future. If it's too flexible, someone will eventually ruin the service for you by changing it too much.

Public transit is also called mass transit, which gives a better idea of what the service is about. Traffic is a necessary evil. It's not valuable in itself but only as a means to an end. Mass transit works best in urban areas, where it maximizes throughput while minimizing the space wasted for traffic. The resulting urban topology is different from that arising from individual modes of transport. Instead of a grid of streets, you get a network of walkable neighborhoods. And much less traffic per person.

> What we need is a more flexible, on-demand model of public transport. Something like logistic bots in Factorio. Lots of small people-movers which go direct from point to point, on demand. Buses and trains were already obsoleted by cars and can only survive by targeted anti-car policy.

Why?? Cities like Berlin work perfectly fine with a massive public transport network, you get to almost anywhere in 30-45 minutes (except for the most far away places).

I don't need point-to-point on demand, I just need to be able to get into public transport in 5-10 minutes and get through the network to destination B in 30-45 minutes. That moves a lot of people efficiently, there's no need for this hyper-individualisation of transportation...

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