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Comment by eodecker | Hacker News Reader

you are describing a train

That's the bit. For some reason trains come up on these threads all the time like it's some kind of gotcha alternative solution to driverless cars, forgetting that cars can go to your front door.

having a decent train system in a city can cut car ownership in half, it's a solved technology we've had for 100 years but pretty much no one builds it because it's not some private ownership tech hype bullshit

That's fine but you still have to get to/from the train station, which is a problem cars solve very well. All the better if the car drives itself. They complement each other which is why I find it so strange that discussion of trains shows up in these threads so often as though though they're some kind of panaceanic alternative that is being overlooked.

> because it's not some private ownership tech hype bullshit

I don't want to own a car, but I do want privacy, and I do want to go directly from point A to point B without being on a train. I have absolutely no reason to want to board a train as an alternative unless I want to go very fast from A to a very far away B. That is a real problem that is being solved for, not just hype. Aspiring to be cattle isn't noble.

EDIT: Also - rail doesn't get built because they're expensive projects, they take up a lot of space that people can't walk on, that cars can't drive on, that isn't useful to park housing or commerce near. Autonomous vehicles slot nicely into infrastructure that exists already, that already has the advantage of being point-to-point.

If the goal is "improve transit", autonomous vehicles achieve that without directly competing with trains. If the goal is, for some reason, "less cars", they also arguably achieve that because you'd end up with less private ownership of cars. If the goal is "no cars", I have no idea what the point of that would be.

You're speaking authoritatively but you don't even understand the basics of a lot of municipal train systems.

> they take up a lot of space that people can't walk on, that cars can't drive on, that isn't useful to park housing or commerce near

there are multiple cities that already have systems where all of this is true through various sections — Boston for example has the green line, which has rail embedded in streets that people often cross, cars drive on, and run center to streets that cars park on. Businesses near transit lines like this see increased foot traffic as people leave the train to walk home. People take groceries, bikes, furniture on trains... children use them to get to school, they're accessible the elderly and disabled. Many things that automated cars can not do.

Not everybody lives in a dense city center or wants to, which is where the usefulness of trains ends and cars begins.

> children use them to get to school, they're accessible the elderly and disabled. Many things that automated cars can not do.

...all of those things are things cars can do today, why would automated cars be any different?

yeah but guess where they're trying to get self driving cars to work: dense city centers — robotaxis aren't economical if they're driving an hour out to rural areas, so again... they're trying to turn a profit in an area that's best suited for trains

it's yet another scam under the guise of futurism

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