StrudelStrike t1_iue91lz wrote on October 30, 2022 at 5:46 PM

Reply to comment by ocktick in Ford and VW Abandon the Self-Driving Road to Nowhere. Big story that with little fanfare by newleafkratom

My favorite semi-autonomous vehicle infrastructure is trains. What’s that? The technology has existed for over a century?

DevCatOTA t1_iuf6vev wrote on October 30, 2022 at 9:30 PM

Start by creating an elevated tram system that services 80%+ of the population. Envision something like the rail-based individual PeopleMover cars at Disneyland. For those unfamiliar with the PeopleMover, picture a small train car able to hold six people at most. If these were independent of one another, they could be called up using an app on your phone and take you to major shopping or event locations.

This reduces road congestion and frees up real estate. It also reduces the amount of data an FSD system has to deal with. You can now concentrate on using fully autonomous cars that travel the roads servicing the remaining 20% as well as transporting people to and from PeopleMover stations.

ocktick t1_iueh1yz wrote on October 30, 2022 at 6:38 PM

Sure, if a train could take you everywhere that a car can then it would be amazing. I don’t think AVs are trying to solve the same problem as trains though.

fizzlefist t1_iueo3ra wrote on October 30, 2022 at 7:25 PM

Well it’s hard to overcome a century of terrible car-centric city planning.

FruitbatNT t1_iufbh5l wrote on October 30, 2022 at 10:01 PM

Woooo! Terrible car centric planning!!!

StrudelStrike t1_iuf0m7b wrote on October 30, 2022 at 8:48 PM

If we’re going to completely rebuild the infrastructure to support AVs on roads, it would be dramatically more effective and ecologically friendly to replace them with trains, bus rapid transit, standard busses, bike paths, etc.

ocktick t1_iuf16my wrote on October 30, 2022 at 8:51 PM

Bike paths don’t work in climates unsuitable for biking for large parts of the year. And a train will never achieve the granularity of a vehicle. There are too many use cases where a vehicle needs to access an individual address for the solution to be “just do trains.” In terms of environment, AVs would be drastically more efficient since they could be shared. Again comparing it to rail is silly since a train will never deliver your sofa to your doorstep or wait for you to take your Costco haul of groceries inside.