Image transcript:

Calvin (from Calvin & Hobbes) sitting at a lemonade stand, smiling, with a sign that reads, “Trains and micromobility are inevitably the future of urban transportation, whether society wants it or not. CHANGE MY MIND.”

  • Hikiru@lemmy.worldEnglish
    24·
    1 year ago

    The more people try to “innovate” transportation the closer it gets to going back to trains. Driverless cars, for efficiency have them communicate with eachother, to accelerate and brake at the same time, for example. That’s just less efficient and more expensive trains.

    • Tangent5280@lemmy.worldEnglish
      61·
      1 year ago

      There’s a massive failure condition for your example - sure, autonomous cars behave like trains when they communicate with each other to sync acceleration and deceleration, but they can also separate themselves from the collective to drive you to the door of your home. In the train metaphor this would be like you sitting in your own train car, and the train car separating from the rest of it and driving you to your doorstep.

      • vivadanang@lemm.eeEnglish
        23·
        1 year ago

        oh no, if only someone hadn’t centralized like, a point, say, a station, where people could conveniently access the train of cars…

        they could call it a… hmm… TRAIN STATION?

      • uis@lemmy.worldEnglish
        13·
        1 year ago

        You reinvented switches.

        I think you miss part of transportation system that says system. It’s more than one element.

    • kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      That not true!

      For some places rail is too expensive or inflexible. So you need driverless cars, but you can make them cheaper by not having so many of them, instead having really big ones, and since driverless is not ready we hire a human to drive for now.

      So sometimes you get buses!

    • uis@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      1 year ago

      How to not make a train out of cars:

      1. Remove driver
      2. Make them follow predefined path
      3. Make them accelerate and decellerate together
      4. Link them together for better space-efficiency

      Now you got Certanly Not A Train™.

      Why it’s certanly not a train? Because it still has terrible rollong resistance and low material efficiency.