- 24 minutes
Trains cant take you to specific spots, especially outside the greater urban areas.
When my public transport to work stops being 3-4x longer than simply driving, not to mention the inherent issues of being stuffed into a bus, let me know.
- 2 hours
Trains don’t rule that much when they lose power in a 40 degree heat which is happening all over Europe right now.
- 51 minutes
Trains don’t have a higher failure rate than car infrastructure. Most of the rail infrastructure works just fine, at 40C. Occasionally something can get damaged. Aviation is much more fragile regarding weather but interestingly doesn’t get all that heat from transit haters and cars are way more dangerous and on top of that can overheat at extreme temperatures.
- 45 minutes
Yes, most of it works fine but when it doesn’t:
- the AC stops working, the windows don’t open and it gets real hot real fast
- unless it’s some extreme situation they will not let you leave the train
- you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no infrastructure in sight
- it’s really hard to get you to alternative transport
- fixing the issue can take hours
With a car:
- you can get outside
- you will have to wait 30-60 minutes to get towed
You see multiple news every day about trains in Spain,Poland or Germany with broken AC or just completely failing between stations.
- 11 hours
What is the “self-driving car problem” that the comment refers to?
- 43 minutes
Self driving cars as so far pretty shit. They have a tendency to fail ungracefully leading to considerable death and destruction.
This could be fixed by making purpose built roads for electric cars so that the environment is always predictable. However at that point you’re describing a train track and might as well run trains on it.
- 1 hour
If you think self driving cars suck you should see regular people driving cars
Best of 2025 - Dash Cam Owners Australia
- Katana314@lemmy.worldEnglish20 hours
“I have invented a computer that can handle the complexities of a dense, conflicting network of streets prone to collisions with on-traffic. It just needs a specialized road that is less dense and doesn’t have conflicts with other on-traffic.”
“Is your program just ‘Accelerator-turn-on()’?”
“How did you get that information?? Who broke NDA!?”- 14 hours
There’s more to it than that, you also have to decelerate now and then
I have to go, I’ve said too much
- 21 hours
Techbros really going beyond to invent shittier less efficient trains.
- 18 hours
They’re not really trying to do anything. They’re trying to get venture capital money. The more impressive and revolutionary the blender render is, the more likely they are to get some fat, unsecured VC money. Then they’ll cash out and move on to the next thing.
It’s a grift. They just need the poors to be excited about their bullshit to convince someone with money that there’s money to be made with their bullshit.
- 20 hours
They insist on recreating everything in modern society from first principles, rather than just learning from the past.
They can’t just accept that X is a bad idea, and we know this because we fucking tried it several times. That’s why we do Y, even though it might seem counterintuitive. They just need to go through it themselves, and fuck the people whose lives are ruined in the process. Collateral damage. To learn something that we already fucking know and have been telling them
- brewbart@feddit.orgDeutsch19 hours
Several years back there was a startup?, I think, that tried to revolutionize rail traffic with autonomous wagons that intelligently form wagontracks with decentralized coordination. The question, how they would coordinate between all the local rulings and different track designs, was answered with ‘There is data for that to use and everyone will restructure for their glorious idea’ - safe to say they didn’t went viral
- 19 hours
There have been a few. The best idea was a rail that went down every road. You could call train pods like an Uber to go anywhere. Computers could regulate everything. Anyone could use them. Cars are dumb.
- 21 hours
I am currently at the tail end of a 3 week trip from Amsterdam to Lisbon, all via train. It is fucking awesome. Not to mention that as a tourist you can use the public transportation in various cities for free. Europe has it figured out.
What if we made the train wide and flat, gave it armor plating, bolted a pair of claws on the front, and let it run sideways?
- 1 day
why would an individual car “train” that can go anywhere (eg. train tracks on all roads for self driving cars) be shitter than a train that has limited availability and is extremely restrictive in where it can go?
- 1 day
Because you have to pay a good chunk of a year’s salary for one, store it around your house somewhere, and then when you finally do get to use it, there are a million other people with the same idea and you have to compete just for space in which to use it.
And that’s before you get to all the maintenance the government has to spend on the paths (and make you pay tax for all that). Oh, and it’s incredibly dangerous, so dangerous that it’s one of the leading causes of death in the US.
- 1 day
We are talking about an equivalent ‘pod/train car’, not a car but I’ll bite anyway
Have you ever been on a train? It sucks, a bus 10000% more, buses fuckin suck so much, I’m sorry for you to hear this in the echo chamber which features ‘fuck cars’.
Like I said, trains and buses have 2 big negatives:
limited availability and is extremely restrictive in where it can go
Trains especially so, my local train would be a 20-30 minute walk away and it goes far south and to the city, if i don’t want to go to either of those I’m in for a 5 hour marathon of a trip at best
But we should invest more in trains you might be saying, and again the question goes back to, why would a train be better than a pod/car that can roll around on train tracks
This whole thread took the original meaning and warped it into a circle jerk about trains which is not what the OP was saying
- 3 hours
Have you ever been on a train? It sucks, a bus 10000% more, buses fuckin suck so much
Skill issue. Japan, Korea, China all have extremely comfortable and efficient trains. Trains can be quite nice if the government is interested in having good trains instead of making infinitely dollars for the shareholders while spending nothing on maintaince and charging as much as possible.
- 2 hours
Thanks for mentioning Japan and Korea
https://files.ikt.id.au/y0q8ls.webp
Japan, South Korea and North Korea would all fit into a space the size of our second smallest state Victoria but that state has a population of 8 million, the combined Korea’s and Japan would be 200 million
Speaking of large population sizes:
We are nearly as big as China but with 1.4 billion, if you took their desert which has fuck all trains and transposed that onto Australia we’re actually pretty close in terms of trains and public transport
But regardless:
One in Four Japanese Households Do Not Own A Car
Which leaves 3 in 4 who do own a car, so much for skill issue right :)
- 37 minutes
I almost thought you were American given your “rail doesn’t work, look how big our country is” BS argument. I guess it works for Australia too, though. Funnily enough your own map shows how Australia is actually perfectly siuted for extensive rail infrastructure connecting most of the metropolitan regions with each other.
Adelade-Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane covers most of Australia’s population and is a model case for an HSR corridor, certainly also has the population to support one as well. Add to that a Dutch style multimodal urban model and Australia could be on par with the rest of the developed world infrastructure wise. Perth and Darwin are self contained urban islands anyway, too far for attractive rail but also road connection
- 2 hours
if you took their desert which has fuck all trains
They run hundreds of trains a day between population centers in that desert, I took them to get to Kazakhstan and back.
skill issue
The skill issue is being able to build efficient, comfortable, cheap trains, which Japan has the first 2, but they could be cheaper.
- 4 hours
The only reason cars are good right now is because countries like US and AU went 100% all in on cars. Do you have any idea the astronomical cost of public roads and car infrastructure? Imagine if we invested the same amount into a really really good train and tram system. Or, alternatively, imagine if we underfunded roads the same way we do public transport.
- 3 hours
The only reason cars are good right now is because countries like US and AU went 100% all in on cars
Not 100%, Melbourne kept its trams around and Victoria still has massive car use
We’re just a huge massive low density country so it’s hard to compare to inner western europe
- 19 minutes
Melbourne’s trams are terrible because cars are given priority even though having much lower capacity. The “low density” argument is meaningless. Most people live in metropolitan regions and they are as well suited for transit as you build it. Turns out, Australia went all in on car only design on new projects. Surprisingly that makes anything other than cars unattractive.
- 3 hours
Yes you’re right, I was being hyperbolic. We’re 90% mostly-in on cars
- 18 hours
Have you ever been on a train? It sucks, a bus 10000% more, buses fuckin suck so much, I’m sorry for you to hear this in the echo chamber which features ‘fuck cars’.
Have you?
Trains and buses, when funded, are fine. Millions of people take them every day.
I work from home but I used to daily commute by train. Walk to station. Wait a few minutes. Get on. Arrive at destination. I read so many books and finished so many games.
- 9 hours
Have you?
sadly yes
https://translink.com.au/service-updates/june-july-26
and as mentioned I need my car to get there:
Trains especially so, my local train would be a 20-30 minute walk away and it goes far south and to the city, if i don’t want to go to either of those I’m in for a 5 hour marathon of a trip at best
- 9 hours
That’s not a general problem with trains that proves they suck. The suck is places have been built out for cars with other modes as after thoughts.
I live somewhere with much better train and bus coverage, and it makes it easier than driving for the vast majority of trips.
The day to day suffering is because of cars. So fuck cars. Fuck the culture that made them primary.
18 hoursI take the train and the bus all the time, it’s awesome. No traffic, no road rage, no anxiety, no danger. I just shitpost on My phone until I’m at My destination.
- 1 day
Sure badly built or unprioritized public transit infrastructure might suck, but busses and trains sure are amazing when prioritised, built correctly.
Many European cities combine well functioning train, bus and cycle infrastructure, which together makes it possible to go anywhere at any time for cheap.
I think it really just comes down to prioritizing to develop the infrastructure (costs money and requires political will to move away from car based infrastructure).
Also I don’t think a pod system would solve any of the problems of either cars or trains/busses and would be much more expensive…
- 1 day
can you name all these European cities combining well functioning train, bus and cycle infrastructure outside of the netherlands? (where the average person/household does not have a car as they don’t need it)
- 1 day
Public transportation seemed to work well in Brussels, Paris, Prague, Copenhagen, and even Edinburgh. Just thinking of the last few cities I was in outside of the Netherlands (leaving out the USA, which is obviously a nightmare for transportation of all kinds). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- ms.lane@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
Buses are the worst (actually, pneumatic tyred ‘trams’ are the worst)
Trains are great though.
- 1 day
yeah tbh i was being a bit hyperbolic, i don’t mind my train trip to work despite it being slow af
but it would take an insane public transport network to service south east queensland, until we find an infinite money glitch it’s only going to be used for a minimum viable amount of very popular trips, eg between brisbane and the gold coast and soon the sunshine coast
but for example if you want to go to crows nest from brisbane there will never be a train that goes that way because of low numbers
Brisbane was built by car users for car users. If you go to central Melbourne, that’s a great place to catch the tram because it was built for the tram. On the other hand, the Melbourne suburbs stink ass because they were built after cars became popular.
- 19 hours
Trains but without having to sit next to people who aren’t your staff.
- 19 hours
What if we had trains, but bigger?
I’m not making a joke, I honestly think making the track a little wider would be a great innovation.
- Corn@lemmy.mlEnglish19 hours
Well it would require wider curves and be incompatible with existing rolling stock.
I mean… I’d totally rock a personal mini train that left when I wanted and rode on a track.
- rainwall@piefed.socialEnglish1 day
That basically how trains work in Copenhagen. They use small, automated trains that come every couple of minutes. You just wander to the station and get on, no planning or anything.
Nah, that would make it hella dangerous to just be a person existing in that space. Much safer to use trains to get to a city and then travel in the city by personal conveyance, like a bike or something. Imagine how awful life would be if we gave all that space to train tracks just for individual use. It would be an isolated, lonely nightmare. Not to mention super expensive too. Train engines, no matter how small, are not cheap to own or operate.
- OwOarchist@pawb.socialEnglish1 day
I’m going to want something with a roof, windows, and climate control, though – for when the weather is bad.
I bicycle plenty, but there are definitely times when I’d rather not and it’s miserable.
- BillyClark@piefed.socialEnglish1 day
trains rule
All I know is that the tunnel snakes rule. I don’t know whether a train is technically a tunnel snake or not.
- 18 hours
I agree about tunnels snakes. You cannot deny. They just manifested ruling in their default introduction and have not given one reason NOT to rule since. They too, are born from train’s sibling using a term someone made a portmonteau of the subterranian…WAY? Normalize subtrainian.
Trains for long haul + autotaxis (or air taxis) for short, low speed rides actually sounds pretty dope.
- 1 day
The only way to solve the self driving cat issue is to ban all human drivers from the road.
So, if some techbro wants self driving cars, just give everybody one. All electric of course.
- 18 hours
My hope has always been that if self driving cars are successful, almost nobody will own a personal car.
Cars are massively wasteful. Put aside the idea you’re hauling around multiple tonnes of steel and glass frequently to just move one person. Ignore the pollution aspect too. They’re also wasteful because they’re used for maybe 2 hours per day, and the other 22 they just sit somewhere taking up space and getting rusty.
Just think about how many stationary cars you pass when you’re out in the world. Nobody’s getting any use out of them, they’re just sitting there in case they’re needed, meanwhile they’re taking up useful space. There are other potentially expensive things you only use for a short amount of time each day: say, a good kitchen knife. But, most of them are indoors where they’re not exposed to the elements and deteriorating without being used.
In a future with self-driving cars, owning a car could be a luxury that enthusiasts could pay for, if it was worth it to them, but everybody else who needed a car could just rent a car for an hour or two.
- 15 hours
I think that is the difference of perspective. Living in Germany, I did my driver’s license with 22, didn’t need it before. I could live without a car.
Yes, many would profit from shared, autonomous cars. But many would profit from public transport here in Germany to, and guess what. They want cars.
I hate this as much as the next dude. But if they really really want them, at least make them electric
- 12 hours
if they really really want them, at least make them electric
And very expensive.
- 1 day
The only way to solve the self driving cat issue is to ban all human drivers from the road.
…and cyclists, and pedestrians, and farm tractors, and horses, and wagons, and stray pets, and wildlife, and…
- 21 hours
Cyclist belong on their bicycle lanes , and those lanes belong besides every road.
Pedestrians belong on walkways, along every road
What is about stray pets and railroads? Horses , dogs, cats?
If we are talking about something so unrealistic and futuristic like autonomous vehicles lvl 5+. We may as well assume that we fixed everything else at that point of time.
Or, we just can take this as what it is. A sarcastic joke
- ms.lane@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
Cyclists and pedestrians shouldn’t be on the road.
Unless you’re in the US (my condolences) you have a footpath/sidewalk/pavement for walking.
Bikes should (but rarely do) have their own physically seperated infrastructure, so they’re not getting hit by cars/busses/trucks/etc and not hitting pedestrians.
- 18 hours
Cyclists can go on the road just fine, as long as the road is built and regulated for more than just cars
- 19 hours
Eh, it depends. Faster bike traffic shouldn’t really be in such close proximity to pedestrians. On a lot of city streets, a fast bike is way closer to the speed of a car than to a pedestrian. City centers, especially non arterials, I’d say they should be in the street if there’s no path. I’m not particularly fast at just under 30kph and it’s rare for traffic to be much faster downtown here, especially non arterials I’m often passing them. I think that’s generally too fast to safely ride on a sidewalk, but a safe speed there would make cycling not very practical for me.
Which I can assure, unfortunately, no cycle paths is often the case in my part of eastern/central Europe
Giving everybody a self-driving car completely defeats the purpose. Human-driven cars spend about 23 hours of each day just sitting around. A car that can drive itself doesn’t need to spend any time being parked - it can provide another ride! Liberally assuming a self-driving car would need to spend a full half of its time (12 hours/day) charging or being serviced, that would still mean that replacing all cars with autonomous vehicles could reduce traffic volume by a theoretical limit of 12× (12 hours/day/vehicle vs. 1 hour/day/vehicle).
- 11 hours
you’re forgetting here that all people want to commute at the same time between 7am and 9am in the morning. so you can’t just operate 1 vehicle 24 hours around, you need the vehicles for these two hours especially and then some in the afternoon.
- 11 hours
Elimination of personal vehicles would make public transit more attractive; with the previously foregone conclusion that one must own a vehicle gone, the choice is between a few dollars for transit, or several times more than that for a private vehicle. How many people currently choose to take an Uber or Lyft to and from work?
Also, it’s certainly not all people, nor all commuters.
- SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zipEnglish1 day
Is that realistic, though? A car is already a status toy, what’s to stop conspicuous consumption in the form of buying one’s own self-driving car? Or, say, moving to a cheaper house further from the city, because commute time can now be used as work time? Shared cars won’t work in that scenario.
Also, rush hour is still a thing. There have to be enough UAVs to handle peak demand, and then most of them will be parked somewhere, idle most of the time. Or running errands. Traffic congestion is bad enough now, with average vehicle occupancy of 1.2 people; it’ll be apocalyptic when that number drops below one.
Also, in cities with sky-high housing costs, i guarantee that people will live in self-driving RVs, because road space is “free.”
In short, the only way to realize the benefits of the shared UAV future is to ban private car ownership, and cap the number of UAVs in a city. That sounds a lot like a train, except trains’ enormous capacity offers better service.
I doubt that we’ll be seeing UAVs for personal transport anytime soon. Terrestrial vehicles are significantly easier to manage.
The main thing that will prevent people from purchasing their own AVs will be availability. Waymo and Zoox, for example, are running services, not selling their multi-hundred-thousand-dollar vehicles to the general public. (I’m not bothering to address Tesla as their autonomy stack is an industry joke.)
Elimination of personal vehicles would make public transit more attractive; with the previously foregone conclusion that one must own a vehicle gone, the choice is between a few dollars for transit, or several times more than that for a private vehicle. How many people currently choose to take an Uber or Lyft to and from work?
Also, trains don’t have curbside service.
- SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zipEnglish1 day
UAV meaning Unmanned Autonomous Vehicle. (In contrast to rideshare services, like Uber. When they were heavily subsidized, it must be noted, they increased traffic congestion.) Availability of them will increase. The reason that we have an auto-dominated landscape today is that car makers wanted to sell more cars. There’s approximately 0% chance that car makers today will be satisfied selling a limited number of vehicles for ride services, when they could sell vastly more cars to individuals.
UAV already stands for “unmanned aerial vehicle.” Besides, using both “unmanned” and “autonomous” is redundant. Anyway, the standard abbreviation for autonomous vehicles is AV.
Buggy whip salesmen gonna have to deal with it.
- 24 minutes
I suppose a vehicle that is being driven by remote control is unmanned but not autonomous.
- Lodespawn@aussie.zoneEnglish1 day
Why would it reduce traffic volume? The cars that are on the road are the ones that are currently in their hour of driving that day, it would more reduce the size of parking lots and parking space allocation, or at least move it to charging hubs away from where people congregate.
- OwOarchist@pawb.socialEnglish1 day
it would more reduce the size of parking lots and parking space allocation
Which would in turn affect city design, letting buildings be placed closer together, making it so you don’t have to drive as far, which would then reduce traffic.
- Lodespawn@aussie.zoneEnglish1 day
I think the reduction would be slight versus the reduction realised by improving the quality of existing human operated public transport like buses and trains. A mass transit system relying on individual automated cars is a tech bro brain fart.
Elimination of personal vehicles would make public transit more attractive; with the previously foregone conclusion that one must own a vehicle gone, the choice is between a few dollars for transit, or several times more than that for a private vehicle. How many people currently choose to take an Uber or Lyft to and from work?
- Lodespawn@aussie.zoneEnglish1 day
Yeah it would be better still if we we had actual improved public transport systems for carry more people at once rather than automated personal vehicles, even if those automated personal vehicles are shared like taxis. The cost of automation and requirement for removing all other vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists and animals from the roads is immediately removed and the benefits obtained by reducing traffic is immediately realised just by using human driven buses and trains.
Well, one of them is happening faster than the other, so let’s not perfect be the enemy of good.
Get rid of privately owned cars and you might be on to something. If the state owned a fleet of self driving cars you could rent at the car library, that would probably be better than everyone having their own car they park somewhere most of the time.
Building walkable living spaces with mass transit would be better for more people environmentally, economically, health-wise, socially…
- ms.lane@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
If the state owned a fleet of self driving cars you could rent at the car library
Until Trump or equivalent decides you’re not allowed to leave the city because you posted some nasty things about him.
Forcing non-private ownership means everyone is at the mercy of the state allowing them to borrow transport. How long before the Gays aren’t allowed to drive? Women can’t drive? That’s the future your espousing.
Well, nobody’s gonna be able to afford an actual working autonomous vehicle, and it won’t make sense either economically or operationally to privately own one even if they could.
- ms.lane@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
Giving everybody a self-driving car completely defeats the purpose.
Not really, battery-electric cars can double as your household battery bank.
It seems a lot cheaper to buy a battery bank than to spend a sizeable fraction of a million dollars for the rest of the AV and the operational costs.
