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Comment by CamperBob2 | Hacker News Reader

Progressive to me means, simply, "That which leaves the most options open for the most people."

Creating hardwired infrastructure to transport people from one place where they don't want to be to another place where they don't want to be, over timespans measured in decades for construction and a good part of a century to pay off, at a time when technology is delivering more options for individual mobility concurrent with other options that render commuting and travel less relevant, doesn't strike me as progressive.

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Compared to the progressive utopia that is sitting in traffic? Passenger vehicle lanes move 1500-2000 cars per hour. Even with extensive carpooling and possible future technology that allows cars to bunch more, 10-15k people per hour is likely the limit. A double tracked train line can easily push 40-50k per hour without much stress and with grade separation can be fully automated with short dwell times and huge frequency.

I'm a huge fan of ebikes and other micromobility solutions for solving the last mile problem that has always plagued rapid transit, especially in low density areas. You want to move huge amount of people any significant distance? You need a train. Pretty much every proposal I've seen to move masses of people without a train ends up being train but worse, either in OPEX or CAPX (usually both).

Even with extensive carpooling and possible future technology that allows cars to bunch more, 10-15k people per hour is likely the limit. A double tracked train line can easily push 40-50k per hour without much stress

Of course, you're comparing a single rail line to a single road, rather than to the entire network of roads that could have been built with the same funding in a fraction of the time, but... that's why I offered the OP the advice I did.

I'm comparing roughly similar right of way width requirements. Super-wide roadways are awful for pedestrian safety and walkability since it means destinations worth going to are further apart. Using huge amounts of space for the transportation network itself puts huge limits your goal of the most options open to the most people. Trains being incredibly space efficient is why so many people love them so much. Roads for cars are the exact opposite.

When you compare total CAPX and OPEX including the vehicles themselves and then actually moving people from place to place trains crush everything else. A highway-mile might be cheaper to build than a rail-mile, but it requires maintenance and replacement far more often and the vehicles don't last any where near as long. Large amounts of total costs like vehicles and fuel are shifted to the traveller, reducing the options for many unless they meet a certain economic threshold.

Trains being incredibly space efficient is why so many people love them so much. Roads for cars are the exact opposite.

And yet when people have a choice, they take their car.

And nobody ever asks why. They just stamp their feet and demand more trains.

Where train networks are extensive, frequent, and reliable the ridership numbers are huge, orders of magnitude beyond what a road network of equal right of way could hope to support.

I have no issue with people choosing a car. I have issues where a car is the only choice due to the built environment being actively hostile to all other forms of transportation. Walking --> Cycle --> Train depending on how far you want to travel is far more sustainable and opens options for far more people than car-centric infrastructure where only a car is functional.

Building out a train network also doesn't mean we shouldn't also have a quality road network as well; there are plenty of long tail needs where a vehicle that can go direct point-to-point is very valuable. We just need to be building more than just a road network as roads alone simply cannot handle the needs all travellers.

> And yet when people have a choice, they take their car.

That just false. Yes some people prefer cars, others don't. Overwhelming evidence shows that people most often prefer what the fastest thing is, and secondarily what the cheapest is.

I have plenty of money for a car, and I don't use one. So apparently I don't exist. Talking in absolutes makes you seem foolish.

The question you should be asking is, looking at society as a whole, whats and efficient and green way to meet the transportation needs of the population.

The reality in most cities less then 50% of population have cars, often much less. And that is after 50 years of pro-car policy. And literally every other possible benefit for cars.

What you should actually educate yourself on is that HUGE AMOUNT of pro car subsidies that actually exist in the real world. Of course if you make parking free, ram a highway right into the city center (burning existing communities down) and then make those people not even pay for the cost of that, then they will prefer the car.

If you design your roads in a why that makes it incredibly dangerous for anybody that is not in a car, guess what, more people take cars.

> And nobody ever asks why. They just stamp their feet and demand more trains.

There is actually lot of people that ask why. There is lots of research on this topic.

This research you clearly ignore because you have already made up your mind.

So maybe you should ask the 'why' question about your own position and study the history of it.

That's just factually false.

The reality is cites don't move, and population don't move very much either. And once you actually have fixed trains, population are even less likely to move. Many cities in Europe have literally been in the same place for 1000+ years.

Your augment might apply to mongolians in 1800s, but not to real existing western society.

Living in a country with amazing public transport, its just amazing what you can do. I was using public transport by myself when I was like 10, by 14 I was traveling all over the country and by 16 internationally without parents.

I can at any part of the day, randomly decide to go literally to any village above 100 people (and sometimes below), check and App that gives me a step by step guide how to get there. I have no fixed cost (if I don't want to) and then I can efficiently reach my destination while using almost no carbon. How is this not progressive? And btw, this can be done by anybody from 14 to late 70s. And this works right now, not in some amazing techno utopia future.

And I can use may laptop with high speed internet. I can easily go to a high quality bakery in between and get a high quality meal without losing any travel time either.

How non progressive it is to sit in a nice quite place with my laptop, eating a sand-witch driving threw beautiful country side.

A railway is simply the most efficient way to transport goods and people and if you have city and you have a lot of people, it will always be better then whatever 'individualized fancy AI pod' you imagine.

Notice how those companies working on all these individual pods eventually come back to 'platooning' and then 'docking'. Then they realize that operations on rubber wheels suck. Just slowly reinventing trains. The same techno future ideas existed in the 60s.

The fact is 2 cities exist, and will continue to exist. People will want to continue travel between them, that was true 100 years ago and its true today, and its still true in 100 years. Rail ways were the most environmentally friendly and efficient way to do that, both 100 years ago, and still today and it will still be true long into the future.

And its absolutely perfectly compatible with the most intelligent individual of transport, the bike. Getting on low impact, high threw-put trains to connect urban centers (urban doesn't mean big city) and then having individual transport in terms of bikes and e-bikes waiting for you is by far the most progressive and most innovative transport system you can design today. People on bikes will navigate more efficiency then whatever AI pods some California startup will come up with.

In Netherlands a staggering amount of people arrive at the train station by bike and they can easily pick up another bike when the arrive at their location. This is not only incredibly green, incredibly energy efficient, its also good for health and fitness (one of the biggest public health crisis) and road safety.

And the sad thing is, non of these are fancy high tech solution. These are literally all technologies that existed 50 years ago. But we should really way for some company to finally sell us some individualized EV pods that cost 40k$ per pod.

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