• HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml
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    4 days ago

    No. That only solves some of the issues, and creates brand new ones.

    You haven’t solved the inherent inefficiencies of having everyone sit in their own cars. The same bottlenecks will still exist and will still cause congestion, only with automation you can have slightly more capacity because it’s taking out the delays between one driver moving and the driver behind reacting and starting to move as well.

    All the issues with tires rubbing asphalt creating micro rubber particles will stay, as will the massively cost ineffective infrastructure needed to support mass car travel like freeway interchanges, as will the fact that you need orders of magnitude more materials to manufacture enough cars to do the job of just a few hundred trains.

    And having the cars autonomous will make them even more vulnerable to cyber attacks than modern cars already are.

    Also, trains are even easier to automate than cars. I live in Vancouver and we’ve had autonomous trains since 1986.

    • David Scott Moyer@mas.to
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      4 days ago

      @HiddenLayer555 In NYC, my example, how many more train lines do you suppose you would need? Above ground? Underground? Are you going to lay track on every street? underground? Are you sure this would be more efficient than a network of smaller vehicles? There is no need for everyone to sit in their own car if it is all electric and automated. A single person vehicle, if if even existed, could be much smaller.