Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

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The likely roll-out of self-driving cars in the United States over the same time frame[1] is one reason not to expect high-speed train lines in the United States. The United States already has the infrastructure in place (the Interstate Highway system) to make self-driving cars a quite feasible means of long-distance, point-to-point transportation. The United States cities and towns in the central part of the United States are largely where they are because they are along historic railroad lines, but the railroad lines in my region of the country are increasingly being turned into rails-to-trails dedicated biking and walking paths, which I can take on very long trips from my immediate neighborhood, and except for the parts of the United States where there are already a lot of train users (notably the Northeast Corridor), there is not likely to be much increase in consumer demand for train rides, no matter how great the government subsidies supporting them.

China has rushed ahead in high-speed rail development, at the cost of human life[2] and corruption,[3] but the United States has no need to follow this example. We will mostly be taking long-distance trips here by plane (as we already do) or by car (as we also already do, except with self-driving becoming more and more commonplace). There isn't any particular need in the United States to build new high-speed train lines.

[1] http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/01/ff_autonomouscars/

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732380820...

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/01/safety-self-driving-car...

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230442800...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/29/world/asia/design-flaws-ci...

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/22/121022fa_fact_...

[3] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/08/liu-zhijun-sent...

Railroads and streetcars were hugely profitable in the US, until the government subsidized cars by:

- giving everyone high-quality roads

- setting road tolls to zero or almost nothing

- making dense housing illegal to build with zoning laws

- requiring businesses to provide free parking

- requiring home builders to provide free parking

- all the crap US does internationally to secure oil supply lines

- not taxing pollution, noise, or other car externalities

- enacting crazy regulations on railroads; for example, American railroads can't buy European trains, they must build their own custom-designed trains at enormous expense

and on and on and on it goes, all at taxpayer (or business owner) expense. An American on a road trip thinks cars are cheap because everyone else is forced to absorb the cost.

Your reasons are flawed even if your conclusion is right. People want non dense housing, it isn't required or even promoted by most city governments....quite the opposite in a city like Seattle that is trying to become more dense with incentives. Ditto with free parking.

Americans can't buy euro trains because our tracks share freight traffic, so passenger trains have to be built to survive collisions with heavier freight trains.

Tl;dr people want cheap driving, it isn't the evil government that forces them to drive.

"China has rushed ahead in high-speed rail development, at the cost of human life[2] and corruption,[3] but the United States has no need to follow this example."

I'm not sure how well the US is doing on those 2 counts.

34,080 people died in the US as a result of motor vehicle accidents in 2012. This is a high number (compared to recent wars (a bit more on that later), terrorism or rail deaths).[1]

On the corruption side, it's more subtle and kleptocratic and oligarchic tinged with some regulatory capture. There is no road pricing or carbon pricing in the US so taxpayers subsidize drivers. The cost of gas/petrol is not allowed to rise and has led to a skewed foreign policy and "strategic" wars that are paid for by taxes. There are also instances such as the GM/Los Angeles transit story which have a certain ring of truth and corruption to them. [2]

In short the US policy around automobiles has a high cost in lives and corruption too, possibly far greater than anything in China.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

Train is smoother and more spacious, and almost certainly faster even without HSR. Self driving cars won't change the physics of road/tire friction, nor the fact that the interstate system was not designed for cars traveling 100+ mph. In cities like NYC, self driving technology won't change the fact that rail tunnels have far higher passenger capacity than roadway tunnels.

Indeed, I think self driving cars will lead to a resurgence in rail travel. The biggest problem with rail is the last mile. Cheap self driving taxis will go a long way to addressing that issue.

There are billions of dollars in private money betting that you're wrong in Texas, one of the most car-oriented regions of the country.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/10/09/politics-high-speed-r...

Self-driving cars will increase road capacity, but I don't think they'll make driving costs cheaper than rail costs per passenger when all subsidies are taken into account. Rail lines are expensive, but so is expanding interstates, and Texas's three major interstates, I-10, I-35 and I-45, are all near capacity.

Self driving cars will be bigger in china before they are in America given chronic road capacity and pollution problems. There is just nowhere left to build roads in dense cities, and going self driving city-wide would automatically use limited infrastructure 10 times more efficiently. Americans just don't have as bad traffic and wouldn't want to give up manual control, while china has no problem dictating these kinds of things top down.

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