Comment by titzer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by titzer | Hacker News Reader

I hate to be so negative. Elon is a really bright guy and electric cars are fantastic; a real advancement away from fossil fuels. We need more of that!

But we don't need hyperloop. We need decent subways, lightrail, buses and trams. And decently fast (200km/h) intercity trains. We don't lack the technology or the engineering, we lack the political will. Pissing away billions on more techno fantasy is just a distraction while the number of cars and parking lots and freeways just keeps on growing, accreting ever more, little by little, like it has for the past 60 years in the US. The layout of and density of US cities is already profoundly inefficient due to streets, parking lots, and freeways.

A lot of comments here seem to be betting big on self-driving cars, like somehow magic chariots will appear from the sky and whisk us away to fairy land where we never have to look at a stranger or sit in a seat next to someone we don't know, or god, touch a railing! And they'll just as easily disappear into the ether where they require neither maintenance nor upkeep, storage, or cleaning. Apparently these self-driving cars will also run on magic engines that are somehow going to be more efficient than electric light rail or subway, or god forbid, a bike.

Then don't be. There is room for one more transportation system. Money is not a single pot which gets distributed to a number of things. It's a fallacy to think that if hyperloop didn't happen more money would go to other transportation systems.

> And decently fast (200km/h) intercity trains.

Surely you mean 200mph? 200km/h barely qualifies as high-speed rail on old lines in europe, new lines require 250, 350 lines are being rolled out and plans are being drawn for 400 lines in the UK and Russia.

200km/h would be smoking fast in the US. Sadly.

Almost all Dutch intercity trains run 140km/h, and that's fast enough (it's faster than cars, and goes city center to city center). Of course cities are close together here, but we are in Europe.

I'd certainly call 200km/h "decently fast".

> Almost all Dutch intercity trains run 140km/h, and that's fast enough

When it's hard to find cities more than 100km apart, sure. And the US already have passenger trains in that range.

> Of course cities are close together here, but we are in Europe.

I quoted what's considered high-speed rail in Europe, I'm sorry that offends you.

> I'd certainly call 200km/h "decently fast".

Not when your cities are 500km apart or more.

New high speed railways in Germany are built only for 250km/h: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendlingen%E2%80%93Ulm_high-sp...

A specific 80km rail section with a long tunnelled ramp is only built for 250 (which does qualify as high-speed anyway). Germany also has 300km/h rail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurt–Leipzig/Halle_high-spee...

The trains almost never go that fast, and even if they do, it's for short periods of time. Average speed is the key thing.

Why are we only impressed by megafast trains? They aren't really cost efficient and probably won't be built at all. The best train is the one that exists! 200km/h is already probably reaching. Even 150km/h means you could go Chicago to Cincinatti in 3 hours (vs 4.5 by car) or San Francisco to LA in under 5 hours (vs 6 hours by car). At 5 hours, that beats the hassle of an airplane, IMO.

> The trains almost never go that fast

Sure they do. Worldwide, Acela is a peculiar exception, not a rule (and no if you're going to put your train on old low-speed rails and give priority to freight you definitely don't need high-speed trainsets, I'm not going to disagree with that one, turns out only in the US do people do that, go figure)

> Average speed is the key thing.

And the average speed is higher if the train can reach a higher top speed. All of the top average service speeds are high-speed trains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record_for_rail_veh...

> Why are we only impressed by megafast trains?

Because megaslow trains are pointless for long distances?

> They aren't really cost efficient and probably won't be built at all.

Considering the US's love for trains, I just assume you guys won't build any either way, that's usually a pretty safe bet.

> Even 150km/h means you could go Chicago to Cincinatti in 3 hours (vs 4.5 by car) or San Francisco to LA in under 5 hours (vs 6 hours by car). At 5 hours, that beats the hassle of an airplane, IMO.

When the flight is 1h15~1h30, you'll be a very small minority, the general annoyance of transport and loss of the whole day means flight pretty much always win. Lower that to ~2h30 city center to city center, however, and train might become competitive, especially without security check and with better cabin comfort.

Well, you specifically mentioned trains in Germany. I've ridden quite a few, and I can tell you, they almost never go that fast, and not for long periods of time. With all the stop and go, all the slow tracks, quiet areas, and whatever else, the average speed isn't that high. So in general the US should probably not focus on superfast trains, since they don't pan out usually, but just getting some decent trains that are on-time and reasonably fast.

I will give up my car when the people driving the subways, lightrail, buses, and trams promise not to strike.

The day the subways, lightrail, buses, and trams are run by private enterprises and are not subject to the political whims of the unions and elected officials, then I might consider giving the concept a test run.

In the US in general, strikes are NOT the problem. I do not recall a single strike in the past 20 years or so (In the Boston area). There are tons of other problems (like outdated cars, frequent equipment issues, etc) - but I doubt a private enterprise would improve things much by itself.

Introducing competitive environment, on the other hand, would.

Because the transit systems do not have that as a tool. Look at other countries and see that where the system is used by more hostages, the number of times a ransom is demanded anecdotally appears higher.

In the last 15 years for U.S. transit:

* 2005 New York City transit strike

* 2007 Orange County transit strike

* 2010 Spirit Airlines Pilot Strike (U.S.)

What does private enterprise need to improve as it currently stands? The government subsidizes transit to such an extent that private players stay out and any hint of a profitable line is look unfavorably upon by government players that they ban it or try to robustly oppose it; examples include Google Bus', and Jitney's in New York.

Tl,dr: If the US is going to give up personal driving, it needs fast intercity connects and ubiquitous in-city transportation.

- Subways and light rail are high cost, high visibility, negative return investments for most municipalities.

- Intercity could be trains or a hyperloop, given hyperloop developers' projected cost structures.

- In-city should be buses and, eventually, self-driving quasi-taxi fleets.

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On the in-city transportation:

Subways are very expensive to build, very expensive to move, and a deficit on their community if the areas in which they're built don't have very high population densities.

See: almost any city in the US with a subway, many cities elsewhere.

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Light rail, if the tracks are built into existing roads, is a little less expensive to build and move but suffers the same population and planning issues as subways, as well as being an added impediment to traffic and imposing the same commuting inefficiencies on the rider as if they were in a car.

If they're instead given dedicated space, they become much more expensive as extra road lanes must often be built (or easements otherwise negotiated and purchased by municipalities), and they end up much harder to move for want of further easement & road expansion.

The light rail requiring expansion of paved traffic surfaces would also make them less environmentally friendly from the perspective of urban surface radiance.

See: The Arlington/Alexandria, Virginia light rail project most quickly comes to mind.

I'm looping "trams" in here as well because I'm assuming they're electric-line-driven mass transport boxes of some sort. If they're not track-dependent then cost is installation and maintenance of a whole bunch of tram power lines, so cheaper than light rail but still slow to respond to population growth and change.

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Buses require no tracks, no tunnels, no $5 million train cars, and a route can be switched in a day by putting up a couple new bus stop posts. Bus systems can actually be profitable if local governments don't try to make political wins by drawing expensive bus routes in distant, low-volume rural areas. Buses suffer from traffic like most light rail does.

As an answer to urban congestion, buses are cheap, require almost no new infrastructure, can carry a ton of people, and with kinetic recovery and alternative fuel systems can be very low-impact. When used in higher density areas where personal car parking would be onerous, bus commuting can be quicker than private driving.

See: Lots of bus systems. Stuttgart, Germany's SSB has hybrid buses with kinetic recovery systems improving efficiency by 18%, for example.

Self-driving cars or crowd-shared cars (e.g. Car2Go) provide gap-filling where bus routes don't conveniently link up.

Having lived for a few years in Europe now, I can tell you that thoughtful city planning is totally possible at critical densities, and highly worth it. The quality of life for citizens is highly improved by having first of all, walkable cities. Every bus station, 4-lane road, and parking lot within a city makes it less walkable. Since many European cities were already quite large well before automobiles, they inherit their walkability through their centuries of necessity. It is going to be hard to push many US cities towards that density threshold with just buses and taxis. I'll respond to some of your points.

<quote>Subways and light rail are high cost, high visibility, negative return investments for most municipalities.</quote>

That's absolutely fine. The government and public infrastructure is not really meant to turn a profit. They are funded through tax dollars since they have positive externalities for all citizens. It's just usually the case that pay-per-use is just too expensive to bootstrap effectively. We need to rid ourselves of this mental model. The government needs to spend money to make the public system work, hands down. And that means taxes. And even if you don't use the subway, you benefit that other people do (because they don't have their huge cars taking up your road space and parking space!)

<quote> Subways are very expensive to build, very expensive to move, and a deficit on their community if the areas in which they're built don't have very high population densities. </quote>

So what. It works in NYC and in pretty much every major European city. These are old, well-established cities where digging is fraught with peril. As I mentioned before, the problem is that US cities usually aren't dense enough.

<quote> If they're instead given dedicated space, they become much more expensive as extra road lanes must often be built (or easements otherwise negotiated and purchased by municipalities), and they end up much harder to move for want of further easement & road expansion. </quote>

Well, considering that public transport is generally more space efficient than autos, replacing a lane with a tram or light rail track should actually increase capacity. Why do we keep thinking that it has to be additive (i.e. in addition to existing roads)? No wonder people balk.

<quote> Buses require no tracks, no tunnels, no $5 million train cars, and a route can be switched in a day by putting up a couple new bus stop posts. Bus systems can actually be profitable if local governments don't try to make political wins by drawing expensive bus routes in distant, low-volume rural areas. Buses suffer from traffic like most light rail does. </quote>

That's great, let's have more buses! (Although I disagree that routes into rural areas are for political points.) But buses won't be enough. Subways are unbelievably efficient once they are in place (you can fit literally 500 people in one train!), and again, they require critical density. We need to get there, and buses are step along the way.

Also, BIKES and BIKE lanes. Nothing really beats walking or riding a bike to work on a nice day. Hands down! Try Copenhagen.

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