Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by CPLX on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @06:43PM
(#16173173)
> Buy a fully autonomous car
Make sure you put a winged pony on the shopping list too. They're a great fashionable match any time you're making fantasies of acquiring things that don't exist.
Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by jhall1468 on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @07:09PM
(#16173357)
At least one of those is far closer to reality than the other.
Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by chipotle_coyote on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @08:53PM
(#16173981)
While that's true, the less flippant question is whether fully autonomous cars -- where "fully autonomous" is defined as being able to climb in one, kick back and do your work with no concern the way you conceivably could on a train -- will (a) exist, (b) be road-legal, (c) be widely available, and (d) be generally affordable within a timeframe that makes a high-speed rail line moot. I don't think that's remotely a given.
Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by Animats on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @09:05PM
(#16174034)
We're going to have autonomous cars that can drive SF-LA long before we have high-speed rail. Self-driving cars from the big players are planned for the 2020-2021 model years.
Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by CPLX on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @09:18PM
(#16174106)
I have this weird feeling that before we have many of them in mass production, we'll have a single car that fits this description.
Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by abritinthebay on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @05:24PM
(#16172609)
This is peak Hacker News: "Don't buy a $50 train ticket - buy a not-actually-invented yet probably $120,000 car instead".
The high-speed rail project is a shit show, but more cars is not the answer either.
Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by dragonwriter on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @07:05PM
(#16173327)
More cars, or at least more car trips,—independent of whether they need drivers or what kind of powerplant they have—is, in fact, exactly the problem at which HSR is directed.
Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by erikpukinskis on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @09:27PM
(#16174143)
Almost no one will buy autonomous cars. You will just hail one for less than the cost of gas.
Only rich people and people in and out of a car all day (full time parents, car-based workers, etc) will buy them.
Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by dx034 on Thursday January 18, 2018 @03:36AM
(#16175585)
And every family and anyone who likes having a car. I'd expect not more than 10-20% to stop buying cars. Having your own car is about more than just access to transportation.
Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by ubernostrum on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @09:37PM
(#16174193)
You will just hail one for less than the cost of gas.
If the cost of the ride is less than the cost of gas, how is the operator making a profit? Especially since they have to cover more than just the cost of gas.
(an Uber-style "use VC money to subsidize below-cost services" model is not sustainable in the long term, by the way)
Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by sah2ed on Thursday January 18, 2018 @12:47AM
(#16174982)
In addition to closeparen's point that such autonomous cars will be electric, they will also have much lower mantenance costs due to the lower internal complexity of doing away with the ICE.
Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by CPLX on Thursday January 18, 2018 @07:57AM
(#16176706)
This is self evidently true because incredibly complex software implementations that interact with the real world have no maintainance requirements.
Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by abritinthebay on Thursday January 18, 2018 @07:00PM
(#16182828)
... hoping sarcasm. But you never know on here...
Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by closeparen on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @10:08PM
(#16174350)
I think the point is that they’ll be electric.
Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by ebikelaw on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @06:11PM
(#16172962)
Some trains will run sf-sj-la without further stops. Those will be far faster than air if you are traveling between city centers.
Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by magila on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @10:02PM
(#16174319)
Not really. The platform-to-platform time from LA to SF is going to be, at best, a little less than three hours. That's comparable to the time it takes to fly from LAX to SFO plus the ~30 minute BART ride to downtown SF.
LA is so spread out that departing from LAX or Union Station doesn't make a big difference. Most people are going to have to fight traffic to get to either location.
Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by 7952 on Thursday January 18, 2018 @01:33AM
(#16175173)
It is only two tracks. How can they run express services at the same time as stopping services?
Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
by dx034 on Thursday January 18, 2018 @03:35AM
(#16175580)
Having an extra track at the station and timing so that they pass while the other train stops. You don't have services every 5 minutes so that works quite well usually. Worst case the express train has to go a bit slower before but they tend not to go at maximum speed so can catch up again later.
The train will stop at SFO and BUR -- if the train's last-mile delivery is better then we should focus on that last-mile rather than the stretch in the middle that is already well-solved.