Four states have already legalized them. Once they become widely adopted, they will ease congestion. When every car on the road knows what every other car on the road is going to do, there will be far fewer accidents, no situations where some idiot crosses five lanes of traffic to get off at the next exit, etc. It is quite likely that ride-sharing will become more popular, since the computers will know where everybody is going.
This is a 21st century solution; railroads are a 19th century relic.
The wheel is just so last millennium. They take so much time to carve out of a piece of limestone. They're heavy. They break easily. It's time to move on.
I predict they will have trouble selling driverless cars because the very market (drivers) like to be in control. So you'll have driverless cars where someone sits in what used to be the driver's seat and that person will demand override capability because we just don't trust machines. He/she won't buy the infernal machine if it doesn't have optional U-Drive mode. And that same driver will cross five lanes of traffic and all the program-driven cars will go into Star Trek Robot Confusion Loop and break down. "Does not compute. Zigma 23-07 is not performing logically. Continue on course. Crash!"
I predict they will have trouble selling driverless cars because the very market (drivers) like to be in control. So you'll have driverless cars where someone sits in what used to be the driver's seat and that person will demand override capability because we just don't trust machines. He/she won't buy the infernal machine if it doesn't have optional U-Drive mode. And that same driver will cross five lanes of traffic and all the program-driven cars will go into Star Trek Robot Confusion Loop and break down. "Does not compute. Zigma 23-07 is not performing logically. Continue on course. Crash!"
That some percentage of drivers will remain irrationally opposed to self-driving cars is undeniable. I know people who still insist that driving without a seatbelt is safer; I call them future Darwin Award nominees. However, at some critical mass the owners of driverless cars will demand that certain freeways and routes be only open to computerized vehicles.
Twenty, or even 15 years ago, I would have agreed that the risk of computer failure was probably greater than that of driver error. Nowadays I don't think you can make the case. According to Google, the only accidents its vehicles have been involved in were caused by human error; in one case a Google car was rear-ended, and in another the human override was selected and the driver screwed up.
That some percentage of drivers will remain irrationally opposed to self-driving cars is undeniable. I know people who still insist that driving without a seatbelt is safer; I call them future Darwin Award nominees. However, at some critical mass the owners of driverless cars will demand that certain freeways and routes be only open to computerized vehicles.
I think Brainster is on the right track here. Oops, maybe that's not the best metaphor. Anyway, at one time HOV lanes were vehemently opposed by every driver on the road. Now they're an accepted fact. The same will happen with driverless cars. In fact, the HOV lanes are ideal for the first lanes to be opened to them because there are very few hazards on them. Slowly as cars improve and more arteries are approved for their use, they will become accepted.
I'd also note that driverless cars won't be introduced all at once. Even now, cars are becoming ever more automated and include more and more computerized safety features. The switch to totally automated cars won't seem like a quantum leap to drivers 10 years from now. It'll be just more extensions of the same tools.
I wonder if we'd be better off figuring out how to extend the current conventional coastal rail line all the way to the bay area. What's the price differential to put a few bridges and tunnels to the central valley from the SLO area, versus an entire new right of way?
Huh? The coastal route now goes through SLO all the way to the East Bay area. Can you describe (maybe using a map) what new routing you're talking about?
I can't see it. You're almost certainly going to need a car at each end to get to your final destination. LA and SD don't have dense secondary and tertiary mass transit services to allow for much car-free trips. Plus the time to load and unload, etc. just swamps the (admittedly very, very crowded) current freeway. Per my previous post, I'd argue for HOV lanes converted to driverless car lanes that go from city center to city center. It's convenient to get to the high speed lanes, the high speed lanes are, well, high speed with driverless cars and it is convenient when you get off the HOV lane.
Thanks for that. I was under the impression that Union Station was ruled out due to the expense of refitting the approaches and making two-way (through) tracks. I admit, though, that that impression was from the decision of the Vegas Fast Train to terminate far to the west. Apparently, Union Station is on board with the California HSR program.
Meh? I'm all for it. The USA needs intercity HSR. Someone's got to do it, and the sooner the better because the longer you wait the more expensive it's going to get. Here in Thailand our rail system is such a disaster that the long lines have to be gutted and replaced anyway, but the Thai government is partnering with the Chinese to do the job. (We currently have a rail service from my town of Pattaya to Bangkok.... once a day.... and it takes 3 h 15 m... to go 120 km (70 mi). )
All this tells me is that you haven't actually seen a map of the CA HSR. LS and SF are involved. However, there's a LOT more to the system as it is currently designed.
I know exactly where it is planned to go and where all the stations are located (again, I've read every document they've made available on the project). It will have a station within 40 miles of 85% of the state's population. I consider that a pretty good accomplishment. That said most of the traffic will originate or terminate either in SF or LA. All HSR systems have their lines going through rural territory. That's just how geography works. Airplanes fly over the same territory and no one cares.
You've also never tried to establish an ROW through LA, I see.
Here's a hint: Visual and noise resources. Read through any EIR/EIS to see just how big a roll those play in cities. I've seen these issues kill projects, and seen them add tens of millions of dollars to others (halfway through, AFTER the cities signed off on the plans).
The HSR line will mostly use existing railroad right of ways entering the cities. In the SF Bay Area they will partner with the ROW owned by Caltrain and use their tracks from San Jose. Eventually they'd like to add two tracks and operate independent of Caltrain but that will cost many billions. The price of doing that is, however, included in the $68 billion price tag.
In fact I should talk about that. The price is kind of misleading because, for one, that is a year expenditure price which accounts for inflation over the next decade. For another it includes things that likely won't be built for decades. I already listed the example with Caltrain but another surrounds the station in LA.
You see Union Station is owned by MTA, who run the LA Metro, and they want the high speed trains to use their own platforms that would be built under the existing one. This means the high speed line would have to go into a tunnel and dive under the existing station into a mined cavern. This would be incredibly expensive but at the time when budgeting was due they didn't have time to argue with the MTA about it. So the cost of doing all this (easily $2-4 billion with the approach tunnel construction costs unknown but assumed to be about a billion or more) had to be included even though nobody expects this will happen. Sure enough in recent months the MTA has been told by politicians that they need to find a way to get high speed trains into the station that already exists. There is no technical reason this can't happen and will save many billions.
There are other examples of things that provincial bodies have demanded and were included in the total price tag but are not happening. Orange County wanted dedicated tracks all the way to Anaheim costing about $3-6 billion. That got included in the total price tag too but over a year ago Orange County was told that wouldn't happen. If the HSR gets there it will use existing tracks owned by Metrorail (with grade separations).
The reality is that the $68 billion figure only represents a worst case scenario where everyone gets everything they demand no matter how ridiculous. They had to budget things that way by order of the state accounting office. But, as I've already demonstrated, the actual price tag to get high speed trains from SF to LA will be much lower.
Not to the extent that I'm discussing. I'm talking about the main line going JUST to population centers, sort of like how air travel goes from local airports to regional hubs, and smaller train lines branching out to the bigger cities in the region. I'm not talking a BART system here, but a fundamental shift in how we view rail travel. Of course, since we already have air travel doing exactly that, there's really little incentive to do so, outside the folks selling the HSR lines.
If people don't use the rails instead of their cars all you'll have is a very expensive door stop and some very, VERY expensive metal lines on the ground.
As I said before, I refuse to be fired to satisfy your curiosity. That's literally all I can say without violating the NDA I signed: Given what I've seen about how this project is run, I have zero confidence that it will be constructed. If you have been involved in this project in a significant way, I'll gladly listen to your opinion--but if you haven't, I probably know more about the internal workings. No, I don't expect you to take my word for it--you can dismiss me if you wish. But I have no reason to lie, I haven't lied in my time on this or any other forum, and there's no evidence of me doing so now.
I see. So this is personal. I'd hate to be the bearer of bad news but the project is already under construction and the rumors are the state is about to use their dedicated funding source for HSR to get a giant construction loan from the FRA.
Four states have already legalized them. Once they become widely adopted, they will ease congestion. When every car on the road knows what every other car on the road is going to do, there will be far fewer accidents, no situations where some idiot crosses five lanes of traffic to get off at the next exit, etc. It is quite likely that ride-sharing will become more popular, since the computers will know where everybody is going.
This is a 21st century solution; railroads are a 19th century relic.
Yes, self driving cars have been demonstrated. So have robots. But where can I go buy my android butler? Heck operational flying cars have been around for decades and yet we don't have freeways in the skies yet....hmm
Google has admitted that, as of right now, their self driving cars rely on weeks of extensive mapping of precisely laid out routes to overcome the fact that their car cannot distinguish a stop sign from a patch of bushes let alone see signal flares or construction zone cones and then figure out what to do.
Driverless cars work only in highly controlled environments and are useless anywhere else. Heck, according to Google maps there are several streets in my town that don't actually exist. If they can't get that right why would I get in a car that supposedly relies on it?
Purely a personal antidotal observation, but here in Southern Illinois, to great fanfare, we had a brand new high speed rail track laid down a couple years ago. The tracks pass about a football field from my house. It was beyond impressive to watch as a massive machine rolled down the old wooden rail tie tracks, destroying them as it passed, and placing the new concrete ties and rails in it's place, rolling on the new sections from behind. (I wish I had done a video of this process, I could have sold it to Travis as High Speed Rail porn.) However, that same HSR track has also been in a near constant state of repair ever since. Just a few nights ago we were awakened at 2 am by, what at the time I described to my wife as what sounded like someone moving gravel with a Bobcat right in our backyard. I looked out the window, just to be sure someone wasn't, only to see another machine slowly rolling down the tracks, at about walking speed, doing who knows what to the tracks, again, and generating a seismic field of noise in the process. This thing took nearly an hour to pass by. Did I mention this was at 2 in the morning?
I've lived here a quarter century, and the old tracks never saw this level of constant repair. Ever. Apparently one of the problems they are having is the concrete ties are breaking. I think 'boondoggle' is too kind a word for this complete waste of time and energy.
To it's credit, when they aren't fixing it, it's quieter, and the ground doesn't tremble as bad when a train goes by as it did with the old wooden ties. But that's about it. I've ridden the train from here to Chicago since it's installation, and they only hit top speed (They announced over the PA when they were going top speed) a couple times over full the 250 mile trip, which was still punctuated by stops every fifteen to twenty minutes the whole route. Not much more impressive than the trip before the HSP rail was laid down.
That some percentage of drivers will remain irrationally opposed to self-driving cars is undeniable. I know people who still insist that driving without a seatbelt is safer; I call them future Darwin Award nominees. However, at some critical mass the owners of driverless cars will demand that certain freeways and routes be only open to computerized vehicles.
Twenty, or even 15 years ago, I would have agreed that the risk of computer failure was probably greater than that of driver error. Nowadays I don't think you can make the case. According to Google, the only accidents its vehicles have been involved in were caused by human error; in one case a Google car was rear-ended, and in another the human override was selected and the driver screwed up.
To be fair, google cars weren't always driving autonomously. I think they've admitted that systems don't work particularly well when the road is poorly defined (eg boondockistan or parking lots), but that's why you have a driver ready to take the wheel.
For 99% of us though, most of the commute can be automated outside of parking.
To be fair, google cars weren't always driving autonomously. I think they've admitted that systems don't work particularly well when the road is poorly defined (eg boondockistan or parking lots), but that's why you have a driver ready to take the wheel.
For 99% of us though, most of the commute can be automated outside of parking.
No, it's a conclusion based on what I've seen. Since I'm not allowed to discuss what I've seen in any detail, I see no reason to continue to debate with you. I'll just say that given what I've seen your interpretations are wildly optimistic, and almost certainly more driven by your desire to see an HSR than the realities of the project.
And here's the thing: when I do the drive, I don't start in downtown SF, I don't end in downtown LA, and I need a car at both ends. That two hour train ride would never, ever, be the totality of my travel time, not even close (and that's even assuming that the two hour station-to-station time is achievable, which I wouldn't count on either).
Oh, and I generally don't do the drive alone either, it's usually been two to four people in the car. So even at subsidized ticket prices, it's a losing proposition on cost for me.
Part of the issue is that the USA has more environmental regulations. There's a lot of land that's still relatively undisturbed, where as in Europe everything's been re-worked to the point where native and non-native are an open question.
The destert totoise once shut down the US Army. They were on a training exercise, ran over a tortoise, and got shut down. There aren't a huge number of enemy states that can make that claim. My dad and I get a kick out of making fun of each other over it--I'm environmental compliance (though I don't generally deal with living things), where as he's civil engineering ("run the explatives over!"). If we can shut down THE MILITARY for running over one of these guys, imagine how well a contractor is going to fair. And that's only one of between a dozen and a score of organisms in your typical WEAP training. And that's just one module of the WEAP training. I've seen a project shut down for over a year because Native American remains were found and the various tribes in the area started suing one another over who the remains belonged to, and that was in a historic and active ag field.
Different country, different rules, different chance of success. And that's without getting into the economics.
I, personally, would pay a hefty premium if I could walk from a DC-Metro station to a high-speed train to a Manhattan-subway station. Especially if the entire trip were underground. although the cost would be utterly enormous. I don't suppose one could get away with it, but it would be intriguing to fantasize about doubling the train fares on last minute purchases any time a DC or NYC airport closed for weather problems.
I predict they will have trouble selling driverless cars because the very market (drivers) like to be in control. So you'll have driverless cars where someone sits in what used to be the driver's seat and that person will demand override capability because we just don't trust machines. He/she won't buy the infernal machine if it doesn't have optional U-Drive mode. And that same driver will cross five lanes of traffic and all the program-driven cars will go into Star Trek Robot Confusion Loop and break down. "Does not compute. Zigma 23-07 is not performing logically. Continue on course. Crash!"
Let's hope it is not Star-Trek-computer-confusion mode because that usually activates the self-destruct sequence. On the plus side, if all those cars did self destruct, then the guy cutting across five lanes probably would make his exit.
Joking aside, I agree with your post.
Although, to be fair, in the era of the self-driving car. It will be easier to document The a-holes' violations and easier to enforce court-ordered driving bans.
The cost of the Health and Safety plan alone would be in the six-digit range. I've seen a few propposals, and helped draft a few. To be blunt, this is the kind of proposal clients ask for when they want to make their preferred construction option look good; NO ONE goes for this sort of thing. It's not cost-effective.
Railroads cannot go anywhere, they are limited to the tracks. Aircraft can travel anywhere there's a runway. Aircraft don't have to stop at every podunk town along the way. Airlines can discontinue unprofitable routes, railroads are locked into them.
HSR is ideal only for trips of 200 miles or less, iffy 200-500 miles and far inferior to airlines for 500+ miles.
You're absolutely correct and commercial aircraft can go where there's a commercial airport. Where I live there are tens of railway stations within a 30 minute drive. My nearest airport is nearly an hour away.
Well planned and designed routes are likely to be profitable in any case (though TGV in France is taking a beating from low cost airlines at the moment but that may change).
If you're doing city centre to city centre travel and you factor in travel to/from the airport and waiting at the airport to board and collect luggage then I reckon that rail is still faster in the 20-500 range (you;re right about the 500+ though)
For example Paris --> Marseille is 3 1/2 hours by train. with a half hour either end to get to/from the station
By plane it could easily be:
1 hour to get to the airport
1 hour wait to board
90 minutes flight
30 minute wait for luggage
1 hour to get into town
I once heard that highways have straight shots of some minimal length at some minimal frequency, specifically to allow planes to use them as runways in case of emergency.
Plus, if you get a pilot's license and get a helicopter, or get some experimental aircraft, you don't need a runway. My dad's set up landing sites for LifeFlight in stubble fields. Not a terribly good idea--it's hard on the aircraft--but it demonstrates that air travel isn't JUST limited to runways, if you're willing to put some effort in. No amount of effort can make railroads go somewhere there aren't tracks, though.
Perhaps not in Europe, but in the USA the politics involved make establishing stations at at least a large number of towns a necessity to getting the thing built. Everyone wants their cut of the taxes from ticket sales.
If you're doing city centre to city centre travel and you factor in travel to/from the airport and waiting at the airport to board and collect luggage then I reckon that rail is still faster in the 20-500 range (you;re right about the 500+ though)
Add in the convenience of having your own transportation once you get to your destination, and car travel remains viable for a surprisingly long distance. When I was living in California anything less than an 8 hour car ride was more efficient to drive than to fly--particularly if I had to pick up a rental vehicle.
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