Years ago I thought the idea of regional high speed rail lines in the US was a great idea, but I think the time for that has come and gone. The future seems to be clearly moving towards autonomous cars (and buses one presumes). Why sink billions into high speed rail when on our current pace it will be only a couple decades before we have all electric cars powered by solar and other clean energy sources that are 90 something percent autonomous? I think most people would easily choose a 5 hr autonomous car ride from LA to SF with complete freedom of movement in both cities compared to a 2 hr train ride with possibly a couple hours in both cities dealing with connections getting you to your specific destinations.
I do wonder what would happen if they built a new double lane highway between two cities that is only usable by autonomous vehicles? How fast do we trust autonomous vehicles to go?
In a fairly straight line and in good weather? Very fast (compared to current US highways). 150 mph or more.
The primary factor I can think of in terms of risk, are wild animals crossing and vehicle malfunction (eg tire rupture). Censors/radar, both in the vehicle and along the perimeter, should take care of the animal threat. On the mechanical side, well, the goal would be to get the rate of death down to perhaps airline-like numbers.
A fence and over/under animal crossings would probably deal with the non-flying animals. Birds require a bit of intervention sometimes.
I wonder if anyone has done a paper on how fast / how dense you can drive automated cars while maintaining a decent safety margin.
Also, different makes of automated cars are going to be a pain in the butt for the system. I'm sure the Kia and Ferrari are going to want to go different speeds.
This completely excludes "walkable cities" out of the equation. If everyone is moving around on their autonomous vehicles that means that the entire city is criss-crossed with wide roads that take up tons of space, instead of dense walkable city centers with big transit corridors.
I lived next to a commercial area. You'd think it would have been very walkable with a grocery store across the street, a rec centre just a block away, and tonnes of useful businesses. But the biggest problem I had walking anywhere was the vast amount of surface parking surrounding every business. It was a few minutes just to walk across the grocery store parking lot.
Autonomous vehicles would mean valet parking for everyone, which in turn means that we don't need to surround every business with vast fields of parking spaces. Yeah, the parking needs to still go somewhere, but at least you can put it off in a corner somewhere and most of it can be walkable.
The personal autonomous car is just the first, simplest version of the autonomous vehicles.
It won't be long before much smaller, short-distance, rentable systems come out -- self-balancing cycles that convert to cycle-trains, and so forth.
As autonomous vehicles makes roads much safer, two-wheel systems that are currently too dangerous will become much safer, and much more desirable.
As people are less inclined to own their own vehicle, and as delivery systems are more common, there will be less incentive to own a large car. People will rent two-wheel autonomous bikes instead of four-wheel autonomous cars, if its going to cost half as much.
I think it would be ideal to have it all. Autonomous cars acting as taxis for cheap when you arrive in a city and also high speed rail lines as alternatives to flights to get to another city. Autonomous buses will basically be the new electric street cars. Do their route, stop and plug themselves in to charge, then off to take over a route when needed.
That will happen. What's going to be difficult is the high speed rail to compete against the airlines. I would really prefer an alternative to air travel myself. I hate it and the type of people that seem to be in airports from security to passengers.
