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Comment by sammychl | Hacker News Reader

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sammychl·

In a few years, subway and mass transit will be obsolete. Everyone will travel by autonomous cars.

Like the internet, a distributed architecture, will cause traditional server mainframe networking to be obsolete.

Train networks will be the biggest waste of public money for those who start these projects within next couple years.

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If by "in a few years" you mean "in a few decades at the earliest" then, maybe. But it's really hard to beat the capacity of a subway. Subways can transport north of thirty thousand people per hour. That's a lot of cars, even if you increase the occupancy from ~1 to four or five.

No. Too slow, and inefficient. Oh, you also need to build a ton more parking garages that could be used for housing or office space. One person does not need 4,000 pounds of metal for a 30 minute drive each morning.

Why would AVs need parking?

To avoid having two additional trips?

To realize that you would need autonomous street building robots. Cars are simply not space-efficient enough.

Honest question: what if those self-driving cars have multiple people in them? With 4 people you quadruple the throughput, and this seems technically achievable with technology. Minivans and the like go further. I certainly haven't run the numbers vs rail but in most regions it seems like 4x ing the highways would meet current needs comfortably.

At which point why not just use buses and... trains?

Busses and trains aren't available in my driveway when I want them.

But an autonomous vehicle with 3 strangers is?

Presumably I could order up an AV and it could drive to my house when I needed it.

Why would there need to be strangers?

what if those self-driving cars have multiple people in them?

You mean, say, sixty or seventy people, maybe? Let's think big! I wonder what such a vehicle might look like...

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