Reality check: if there's no public transport, driverless car services probably aren't about to serve those areas either.
- removes the biggest expense: drivers
- works well with restricted area/route requirements
- is flexible with respect to deployment of services in response to demand
The ultimate goal of public transport should be that it is as flexible as a taxi (which is also public transport) with costs lower than buses or trains which have higher capital costs.
Constant traffic makes urban streets unpleasant. City life is better when the streets are mostly empty, with at most one or two vehicles per minute in each direction.
The nightmare scenario in self driving is if we can no longer own cars, but have to subscribe to car services, money from public transportation goes to private corporations, and they can raise profits or remove routes as they see fit for the most money.
I’m sure if it were Tokyo instead I wouldn’t have a problem (or even the option given the higher cost of taking a taxi).
Instead we have networks of roads that are largely unsafe, inefficient, and more costly to replace, and a dated rail system that hardly services major cities any more.
A self-driving car would cost tens of thousands. A good bus, maybe up to 10x more. Compare that to a train and tracks and geoengineering for the tracks and building stations, etc. Otherwise, is there a minimum number of trips per year to justify such an enormous, enormous, enormous build as a rail line extension? 200? 20? 1?
We did this before, so it's not that it can't be done efficiently. A lot of the cost savings comes from the millions of people taking the trains in the cities, and the fact that you were going to build the rail anyways. So the costs are not as exaggerated as you seem to think...which is the point. They effectively amortize costs in a way no other transportation can even dream of.
The cost savings you mention aren't savings: If the extensions to the villages aren't build, the folks in the cities would still use the train just as much as they do now. The question, then, is the marginal cost of bringing an existing rail line, from a city where it already exists, to a village of 4 person-rides per hour. The millions of dollars it costs are just for the parts that go to the village. Or, simplified further:
- having a train in the city which millions take, and then spending millions more dollars extending that train line to a village where 4 people/hour take it
versus
- having a a train in the city which millions of people take, and not spending millions more dollars extending that train line to a village where 4 people/hour take it
The second one is economically feasible, the first one not so much. As for doing things efficiently, that is only 1 requirement. We also have laws, regulations, safety, the environment, and many more considerations to factor in. Once you do, the cost gets to the orders of magnitude I mentioned.
Your error is in assuming that all extensions to villages are built as just to villages.
There are trains between cities, which presumably have non-zero traffic, or some mix of commercial/pedestrian traffic. That's where you garner the savings - you were already spending millions on intercity traffic.
If you have your blinders on with this false-choice of city or city + villages, then you'd have a point, but this is not the case for rail between two cities. In Europe/US there are more than enough cities to make this feasible.
A rail system doesn't solve the problem of truly remote regions where there are no nearby cities, but it does allow for intercity transport with stops at minor villages along the way.
As for "providing the numbers", I'd encourage you to inspect the numbers for city rail systems, they operate on the same principle, albeit at a lower scale - trains operate on loops or lines through many neighborhoods, instead of a hub and spoke system that would require an exorbitantly expensive central hub and N lines, they can operate at a fraction of that cost with usually ~10 lines per city, servicing usually hundreds of stops (an order of magnitude savings).
Compare that with the cost of vehicles with the same city (parking, fuel, licensing, insurance, road upkeep), its fairly obvious that the one system (line with many stops) is far superior to the other (individualized transport).
We can have a train going between cities, which is good. But as soon as you want to branch off and have another line going tens or hundreds of miles in a different direction, to reach that village in the middle of nowhere (maybe 'it's just off a straight line by a little bit' - ok, that will be several million), and make sure to reinforce and grade the land first, and of course the village needs a station, etc.
It adds up. The city nearest me has paid billions over 20 years to lay 75 miles of track. They're trying to do exactly what we're discussing: adding smaller towns into the commuter rail network which already serves larger cities fine. Billions with a "B". And you better believe the funding prospects involve more than 4 tickets per hour. Compare this to the cost of 1 or 2 self driving cars which serve the entire village (currently 1 car serves their needs, but they might grow).
The people in the two cities will happily go back and forth between, whether the branch-to-nowhere is built or not. So whoever wants the branch-to-nowhere, has to justify the marginal cost of building it, which, yes, costs millions. Even if the village was literally on existing inter-city commuter rail steel, which it likely isn't, the station and required changes alone would likely cost millions. Can fewer than 4 tickets per hour at least pay for the ongoing operational cost of a station and regular stops there? Maybe.
Also, please be nicer.
I understand your general point - diversions have realized material and labor costs. However, not all "diversions" need to be individually costly nor expensive. Partly, arguing over specific costs is political (varies by regional policies) or regional (costs of transporting goods/excavations into a particular geological region).
However, again, as with any data set, it is possible to fit the line to the curve. If viewed strictly from a "point a to point b" situation, sure, you may incur costs by increasing the curvature of the line by routing through some village, however mother nature/politics sees fit to create those costs regardless (mountains, lakes, major roads, airport, etc).
If you must make these million dollar "diversions" as you put it anyways (whether by tunneling, avoiding protected regions), then it should be possible to create low cost stations (the land should not cost much in excess of 40k$ and the station itself should be mostly concrete with possibly some electronic flagging mechanism, no need for fancy stations at every stop) within reasonably close vicinity to many villages on a route between two cities (not every station need run through a town center). This is still more economical than attempting to draw a straight line between two cities, which usually proves to be impossible anyways, due to the increased traffic from the additional rail network entry points.
Regarding being nice, my apologies, "you" is not always intended as a personal attack, rather a pronoun closer to the somewhat archaic term "one".
That's just it: those costs incurred are millions to billions, no matter how strictly you view them. The line running between cities is already a straight-ish line, or as straight as it can be. It's already built to deal with geographic features, etc. Any additional routing or rerouting would cost millions to billions.
Now, imagine someone wants to include in the rail network, a village that's 10-50+ miles off this existing line. You could:
- Turn the straight-ish line into a "T", where at some point along the line, it branches off and veers towards the village. Cost: millions to billions for the land, zoning, approvals, terraforming, track buildout, environment assessments, safety assessments, probably legal issues.
- Connect each city to the village with a new straight-ish line, forming a "V". Cost: millions to billions for the same.
- Build no additions to the existing line between cities. Cost: nothing
If there isn't already a line, then the decision is between a straight-ish line which ignores the village, and a "V" which doesn't, with the latter costing millions to billions more. If the latter is chosen, will those extra millions to billions be paid back with marginal tickets purchased as a result of the change? Probably not.
As for the station, it alone would cost millions. Sure, you or I could build a concrete shelter for little money and no bureaucracy or rules or aesthetics, but that won't work for a government rail station. Examining the cost of recently built train stations should bring us closer to an accurate estimate. Here one[0]: £15,000,000 for a station built where there was infrastructure already (a decades-closed station). With all due respect to the architect, it looks like a pretty bare-bones station made from a bunch of concrete.
[0]: https://www.transport.gov.scot/news/transport-minister-opens...
Some hard numbers. We can talk about "millions" of dollars in train costs as if that's some bad thing, actually some back of the envelope math reveals this is a pittance.
Average cost of a vehicle (generous) 30000 (actually much higher after repairs, maintenance), lets say 35000, our drivers all experience great luck and need very few repairs over the life of their vehicles.
Average number of vehicles, per person, lets say, 5. So about 17500$. Lets maybe round that up for easy math, the consumer needs to also pay for insurance (150 USD a month for 12 months and about 40 years of driver time, another 72000 USD).
Already, 5 consumers then cost about 1 million in car costs.
Average lifetime of a train, 40 years. Average cost of a (traditional) train track about 1 million per mile. So the number here is already pretty low per mile (of track, we are assuming for simplicity the mile of track is paid for for 40 years - actual life time is usually 50-60 years, so we are about safe here).
Lets say we cost fit, lets say, 20 villages along a route. Each one causes average 2 miles of track divergence (about 2 million cost per village), and because of politics/regulation, each 40k$ plot of land is closer to 100k$. Roughly 42$ million cost of fitting the track along these routes between two cities.
Using our numbers from earlier, we need about 5*42 or ~210 customers over 40 years to just break even with the automobile cost(s). If we assume we just want to break even, no profit, over those 40 years, that's about 5k$ per consumer per year, or assuming weekly trips, about 96$ per trip.
For 20 villages at ~1k population, I'm gonna bet a lot more than 210 consumers are going to want to use these tracks.
Lets assume best case, all 20 villages of 1k average populations are utilizing these trains now, we have 20000k users now, or 95x times the room for growth. That 96$ ticket? It can be a dollar and still break even.
Charge 10$ and you've covered the cost. And we haven't even gotten into amortizing the costs due to regular city traffic, or talked about real cost of ownership, energy inefficiencies, maintenance costs (hint, much much lower).
The benefits are absurdly high, even after a quick back-of-the-envelope run of the numbers. You have to have some absurdly high costs or do something really dumb, like install T junctions that lead to nowhere, for a rail system to become unfeasible.
For example:
> Lets say we cost fit, lets say, 20 villages along a route. Each one causes average 2 miles of track divergence
Let's say, instead, they aren't along the route, because they likely aren't, and let's say it's closer to 10-20 miles of track divergence each. Even at the super, super low estimate of $1m/mile (the real numbers from recent commuter rail expansions tend to be at least an order of magnitude or two larger), that adds up to $28-38m for the track and station.
Remember, the use case is a village whose taxi needs are satisfied by 1 car per village, so I don't know where you got 5 cars per person or five people per car. That means the self-driving option costs 1 self-driving car per village. Maybe 2.
Additionally, this is a village whose train needs add up to fewer than 4 passengers per hour. But then you mention,
> 20 villages of 1k average populations are utilizing these trains now, we have 20000k users now
Here you're conflating train riders with literally everybody who lives in the village, which is a huge red flag. The demand is fewer than 4 rides per hour per village, so 20 villages adds up to fewer than 2,000, an order of magnitude smaller.
Plus, now that it's 20 villages, the cost is 20*(millions to billions) instead of just (millions to billions).
Those numbers just don't break even, especially when you add in the cost of maintaining those 20 stations and the additional track. Going back to the example, at an optimistic cost of $28-38m per additional station, and a ridership of 4/hr, and let's say a ticket price of $10. The math says each additional station would take 80 years to pay off, and that's if the station and rails don't cost anything to maintain. But they do, so it'd likely take hundreds of years.
Eh? No, absurd. I'm not sure where you got that I was limiting myself to villages that only need 1 taxi per village. I think you are thinking of some 3 person 'towns' not a standard village.
Yeah sure you can dial down your prospective customers to some ridiculously low amount, but I already said, I was never talking about rail systems in obscure regions without cities. If that's your beef, you're wasting your time.
There might be different reasons trains would be more economical in some settings but for someone in a hut in Siberia no of course trains are not a sane idea.
> Your numbers seem to assume a lot that isn't supported by the data
What data? My numbers are facts easily and quickly verified on the web, cite sources, please. Saying 'the data' is tantamount to nonsense, here.
> Those numbers just don't break even
Yes so for your 10 huts in the prairie your self driving car is a superior solution, yay, sarcasm. Meanwhile, my rail line is servicing hundreds of thousands of people, in cities and towns, below cost.
One is far more economical than the other.
> Eh? No, absurd. I'm not sure where you got that
Scroll to the top of the thread you've been discussing:
> The square mile around me has fewer than 4 journeys an hour to anywhere[0]
> a taxi service would be brilliant, my son could get to scouts and back under his own steam. Automated or manual doesn’t matter, but we can’t sustain a taxi service. - there’s one in a town about 6 miles away. One taxi.[1]
So, not only not "absurd", but explicitly specified.
----
> I already said, I was never talking about rail systems in obscure regions
This thread concerns villages, not suburbs of cities. Specifically villages with 0-1 taxis serving them, and a total trip demand of fewer than 4 people per hour.
This thread is about running self-driving cars vs. train lines for that city and cities like that.
You joined this thread.
I think we can be forgiven for thinking you were talking about the topic of the thread you joined, and not something else :) Everybody makes mistakes, right?
Regarding the individual with a taxi in a town 6 miles away, I didn't mean to imply he would definitely be serviced. Instead, its more likely he would be able to walk/find some transportation to a local rail line, if we had a rail line network.
This would still be better than the current state of affairs, by the sound of it - maybe be able to hire a taxi vs being able to walk with their son to a nearby station.
If this individual is truly in a remote region, nothing will solve that. Last mile can and should still be solved by alternative low-cost low-frequency transportation such as cars, bicycles, low-cost trams, buses, airplanes, drones, etc.
That seems a little fatalistic! I would hope the comment would be "I can't think of anything that would solve that".
Because I and a few others can: Self-driving vehicles. Cars or busses. That's what we were discussing before someone mentioned that no, self-driving cars are bad for this specific use case, trains would be better.
That's a gross mischaracterization of what I actually said, which was that we have an unfortunate network of roads and barely any rail.
And, furthermore, if you have the infrastructure to support refueling stations, then you aren't so remote, are you? If you have such infrastructure, then you probably have a population density to support other infrastructure, like rail. And yes, that is always preferable (as your main means of long distance land based travel).
Enable a different sort of public transport and that promotes decentralisation, which is much more humane as well as more economically and environmentally attractive.
The original argument doesn't hold though: even if a bus line isn't profitable in a place because there's not enough people doesn't mean that a cheaper taxi service wouldn't be.
[1] "Depending on bus type, driver cost accounts for between 40 and 70 per cent of total bus operator cost in Singapore (Ongel et al., 2019) and Australia (own calculation based on ATC, 2006). In Japan, driver salaries account for 53% and 70% of total operating costs of buses and taxis, respectively (Abe, 2019)."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22120...
As far as profits on rural lines… each line doesn’t need to be equally profitable. Some might even lose money, as long as the popular lines can make up for the less popular ones. There is a significant value to a community in having ubiquitous coverage.
It's always going to be a trade-off
We had rails 200 year ago; it’s a solved problem that mostly requires political will and capital allocation to execute.
Self driving cars have been in development of some kind for at least 40 years[1] and it’s still a struggle technically, and will still require some political will going forward as we try to solve all the legal problem they bring up, and the development has also been very capital intensive[2].
If we have to spend the money and deal with the politics anyway, why not put that effort toward something we know works, we can do today, will reduce traffic on roads, and has a better safety record than automobiles.
Augmenting a rail system with some kind of taxi system is fine, but it seems odd to put all the eggs in the autonomous car basket. We were promised cars would be driving themselves across the country 6 years ago, and it’s still just promises[3]. How long are we willing to wait for something that’s actually viable for the masses? And how much are we going to pay per ride? Right now it looks like it will be more expensive than hopping on a train.
People often say Elon pitched the HyperLoop and Boring company ideas to try and kill rail plans, since he owns a car company. I have to wonder if these someday promises of self-driving are a similar tactic.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_self-driving_cars
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-06/even-afte...
[3] https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/1474/elon-musk-says-tesla-...