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Comment by unsupp0rted | Hacker News Reader

People shouldn't really drive 300 miles in individual private vehicles.

Apart from the chance of accidentally killing oneself or others, it's hugely inefficient.

If we changed an interstate full of cars to high speed trains (or hyperloop or whatever) which depart every half hour, it'd be safer, cheaper, cleaner... you name it.

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So what should I do? Take a train? Doesn't go there. Bus? Again. Fly? That's not more efficient. Maybe grandma just doesn't need a visit from her grandkids.

Instead, I bought an electric car. I bet it compares quite favorably to a typical bus. And grandma does like to see her grandkids, let me tell ya.

I expected to see better performance from the bus, but it is surprisingly poor:

https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint

Haven't dug into their sources, but I assume this is because buses often run with low utilization. Anyway the answer is trains, the answer is always trains in public transit.

Trains are a tough sell, at least in the western US. So much wide open space, trains are slow, high speed trains too expensive to justify given the sparse population.

I remember once doing the math and finding that there are many times when our local light rail is less efficient than just putting four people in a sedan. When the train is full, though, it's unbeatable.

EVs throw another wrench into that math since they're so much more efficient than ICEVs.

Not to mention, eventually the whole grid should be mostly renewable rendering questions of efficiency more-or-less moot.

The sparse population argument seems kind of BS

Switzerland has a low population and is covered in trains

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32180236

> sparse population

> low population

These are not the same thing. Switzerland has a pretty dense population. The section with low population is the Alps, where you're not going to put trains anyway.

https://www.atlas.bfs.admin.ch/maps/13/de/12614_75_3501_70/2...

Most people that live in remote areas have cars anyway, since sometimes busses only run twice a day. It's a tricky problem to measure "access to public transit".

(The BFS is an amazing source for information, they publish all kinds of statistics)

Switzerland has a similar number of people the bay area, 7-8 million, and is twice as large. So it stands to reason the bay area could have a system as large, useful, and as efficient as Switzerland if not better given it has the amount of same people in a smaller less mountainous area.

You just confused the Bay Area with “the western US”.

How so?

Population Bay Area 7.7 million

https://www.google.com/search?q=population+bay+area

Population of Switzerland: 8.6 million

https://www.google.com/search?q=population+of+swizterland

Size of Bay Area: 6900sq miles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_and_towns_in_th...

Size of Switzerland: 15940sq miles

https://www.google.com/search?q=size+of+swizterland

You picked a tiny subsection of the western US to be representative of it.

See if your comparisons make any sense looking around Fresno and Bakersfield (which is still generous). Then do the area around Elko Nevada.

I'm still not sure what your point is. My point is the Bay Area has shitty transit and people claim it's because it's spread out. Switzerland is proof that's bullshit. That the same is not true for Fresno or Bakersfield has no relationship to my point.

I don't really know what your point is. That we can't have trains that cover the entire country? So what. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have more in highly populated areas.

> Take a train? Doesn't go there.

It should, that's the point. The only reason it doesn't is because the US has been regressing on rail infrastructure for a century.

> Bus? Again.

It should. And it should be so often you don't need to check a schedule.

Biggest problem for any non big-city to big-city transit are the last few miles. In the end my options are often to use a taxi or get a rental car. In both cases the price needs to be added to the cost of public transit making my personal car cheaper, more convenient and often also faster. It's a tough nut to crack. And I'm saying that as a German with one of the best public transport systems in the world.

From San Francisco to Los Angeles, sure. From San Francisco to any one of the many small towns within 300 miles, well, that's a lot of track to lay.

not really. The population of the bay area is on par with the entire population of the country of Switzerland yet they manage to have tons of trains in a much larger area

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32180236

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