Replacing interstates with rail doesn't work. For one thing, there is already rail running parallel to most of them, so there is no need for it.
Moreover, the usage is different. A person lives in the suburbs, they drive five miles through their suburb, then get on the interstate for 10 miles, then drive to an office park 5 miles off the interstate. If you get rid of the interstate, what are they supposed to do? Drive 5 miles to the train, take the train 10 miles and then walk 5 miles? Buy a second car to use for the other leg of the commute?
What you need is to relax the zoning/density restrictions in the city so that more people and businesses can afford to be there instead of in the suburbs. Then they can use the existing mass transit within the city, which unclogs the interstate for the people who can't, e.g. because one of their endpoints is outside the city for legitimate reasons or because they have to transport bulk material in addition to humans.
One possibility is to take a Lyft to the train station and then an Uber to your office. Which is slightly easier if you've automated the cars so that you don't have to load-balance the wetware part of it, but it's not entirely necessary.
Getting more people into the city is also helpful, but that's a lot of change. A lot of people have become adapted to the pace of suburb life, including me. Getting me into the city is less about cost than about the stress of having so many people around all the time. A lot of people want that, but a lot of people will want to live in the big empty green space, and would pay the costs -- including externalities, if we were to price them in. Improving city mass transit is good, but ultimately I think we'll also have to cope with a lot of people who just want to disperse at the end of the day.
> One possibility is to take a Lyft to the train station and then an Uber to your office. Which is slightly easier if you've automated the cars so that you don't have to load-balance the wetware part of it, but it's not entirely necessary.
Sure. But you can do that already. There are already trains/subways/buses in cities and there is already Uber and Lyft, without any need to close interstates that still have other uses, like transporting bulk material. (Notice also that most interstate highways go between cities.)
Moreover, the original claim was that we should have more trains which would make it so we wouldn't need electric cars. But now we're back to at least needing electric cars for Uber and Lyft.
> A lot of people want that, but a lot of people will want to live in the big empty green space, and would pay the costs -- including externalities, if we were to price them in.
Which is fine. Let the people who prefer the suburbs to live there. You don't need 100% of people to live in the city, what you need is to make it so that all the people who want to live in the city can afford to do so.
And fortunately electric cars powered by solar/nuclear get rid of most of the "externalities" of that -- the only one really left is traffic congestion. Which can be solved not by making it more expensive to live in the suburbs but by making it less expensive to live in the city. Then more people do, even if none of them is you, and there is less congestion on the road because all the people who do prefer to live in the city can use its existing mass transit system.
Well I agree people should work locally and communities should be organised to facilitate that.
> Moreover, the usage is different.
What I am suggesting is in an effort to force/encourage different usage (que communist/fascist labels).
But in answer to your question. Take tram/bus, change to train, change to tram/bus. Pain in the arse. Yes. Maybe that is what is required to re organise around more sustainable communities?
The problem is that you can't have a tram/bus there because the population density for that part of the trip is too low to justify it. An empty bus is worse than a single occupant car.
Sure, so a combination of on demand and better scheduling.
Lightweight electric transport (ebikes, scooters, golf carts? etc.)
Obviously implementation depends a lot upon the local geography/density/weather etc.
Definitely not proposing a one size fits all solution.
> Lightweight electric transport (ebikes, scooters, golf carts? etc.)
These already exist. But compared to an electric car they're less safe, slower, less comfortable, have less cargo capacity, etc. Their primary advantage is being less expensive. The reason they aren't already used more is some combination of not being able to meet the relevant safety standards and their cost advantage not overcoming their numerous disadvantages.
There is a reason hospital emergency rooms call motorcycles donor cycles. The fatality rate for that kind of transport is astoundingly high.
The reason they are less safe is because our infrastructure is setup for massive lumps of steel. I'm not suggesting driving lightweight vehicles on roads. I'm suggesting changing the roads so they are optimised for lightweight vehicles and big lumps of steel are second class citizens, either banned or only allowed to operate at certain times etc.
Get the big lumps of steel off the roads and you have far less issues at the ER.
> The reason they are less safe is because our infrastructure is setup for massive lumps of steel.
It isn't. If you want to go 60MPH on an ebike, it's not just hitting a car at 60MPH that will kill you, it's hitting anything at 60MPH with nothing to protect you from it, including the ground.
The only way for something with no airbags, crumple zones or even seatbelts to be as safe as a car is to limit the top speed to about 20MPH, at which point the collective response will be "no" because you're tripling the length of everyone's commute.
Moreover, the usage is different. A person lives in the suburbs, they drive five miles through their suburb, then get on the interstate for 10 miles, then drive to an office park 5 miles off the interstate. If you get rid of the interstate, what are they supposed to do? Drive 5 miles to the train, take the train 10 miles and then walk 5 miles? Buy a second car to use for the other leg of the commute?
What you need is to relax the zoning/density restrictions in the city so that more people and businesses can afford to be there instead of in the suburbs. Then they can use the existing mass transit within the city, which unclogs the interstate for the people who can't, e.g. because one of their endpoints is outside the city for legitimate reasons or because they have to transport bulk material in addition to humans.