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.
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> 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).
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.