There is technology for fast rapid mass transit: high-speed rail. Technology was never the issue here. Political will to fund, approve right-of-way, and build it was always the problem, and Musk never even tried to address that part.
When folks suggest a new "changes everything" way to go fast, always remember that we used to run NY to Chicago at 120 MPH on steam power and bolted rails.
Maybe someone should just buy up some lines and run steam at 120 MPH again.
If it burned natural gas it probably wouldn’t even be that polluting and it would rock hard.
There is a world where we dig tunnels under federal highways, and stick freight trucks down there. They'd run on a monorail, at 120+ mph. Surface vehicles would be dramatically limited in terms of height, width, and length. Maybe people buses could go down there? In my imagination these tunnels are, like, 200' down. Like mole people.
Why do people keep trying to invent more expensive, less traffic dense railroads. Did they stop teaching arithmetic in school?
There is a world where we dig tunnels under federal highways, and stick freight trucks down there. They'd run on a monorail, at 120+ mph. Surface vehicles would be dramatically limited in terms of height, width, and length. Maybe people buses could go down there? In my imagination these tunnels are, like, 200' down. Like mole people.
Seattle has some underground light rail tunnels that are shared with buses
The Downtown transit tunnel (better known as the Bus tunnel). It was built for both buses and light rail, however it only hosted buses for the two decades of operation. Shared buses and trains only lasted for 10 years. A couple of years ago the buses were kicked out of the tunnel and it only services light rail now.
To my knowledge it has never serviced freight, only transit.
I aim to keep calling it the Bus tunnel—even though the transit authorities are keen on changing it—and I hope fellow Seattlites keep the name alive just for the pure quirkiness of the concept.
If the US rail network wasn't in such a state of disrepair and freight trains weren't miles long to cut labor costs, you wouldn't even need to dig tunnels for them. That also saves the cost of digging those tunnels and actually making them safe (i.e. having service tunnels, ventilation, fire escapes, fire suppression systems, etc etc). And of course with tunnels you'd want rail anyway because you don't want to be stu…
The US freight rail network is in excellent shape. It's the passenger network that's in shambles.
It is not in excellent shape. It is riding the coattails of investments made a century ago, optimizing profits through consolidation, relentless squeezing of costs, and minimal investment in growth. Freight rail companies have constantly reduced routes and cargo types while increasing latency, discarding just about everything in order to focus on low-cost bulk transportation of extremely high-tonnage regular loads like coal and grain, while becoming more and more uncompetitive and impractical for transportation of flexible or timely loads like containers, refrigerated products, and manufactured goods. The freight trains have meanwhile gotten longer and slower, and overgrown the rails that they run on. American freight rail is eating its seed corn without investing in the long term. It remains efficient at transporting the bulk goods that it is currently handling, but it's far below what freight rail's potential should be, or perhaps even what it once was. Trucking has taken up the difference, but that's not because trucks are better-suited to such jobs. It's because the highway investments are paid for by the government, and railway investments are not.
There is a world where we dig tunnels under federal highways, and stick freight trucks down there. They'd run on a monorail, at 120+ mph. Surface vehicles would be dramatically limited in terms of height, width, and length. Maybe people buses could go down there? In my imagination these tunnels are, like, 200' down. Like mole people.
Much like highways and trains, the tracks are the easy part. The hard part is in routing and termination - think interchanges, onramps, and offramps. Being underground compounds the routing and termination problem dramatically.
I think it also massively complicates the failure modes. Freight trains pretty frequently lose cargo and or derail. That's probably way more annoying to deal with if it's in a really long tunnel.
There is a world where we dig tunnels under federal highways, and stick freight trucks down there. They'd run on a monorail, at 120+ mph. Surface vehicles would be dramatically limited in terms of height, width, and length. Maybe people buses could go down there? In my imagination these tunnels are, like, 200' down. Like mole people.
Seattle has some underground light rail tunnels that are shared with buses
That was a horrible hack that was understood at the time to be unworkable. Much ink was spilled in The Stranger about it.
Saying that something is an average cost does not mean everything costs that much. For example, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38234972 you said you have a 2001 Chevy Silverado short bed regular cab 4x4 truck. That's going to have higher fuel costs than a Honda Civic. Even if you leave out depreciation - and low-mileage vehicles have a higher resale value than high-mileage ones so I don't think you can do th…
This is supposed to be a forum where people think a little... You extrapolated depreciation due to age on a new car (which isn't anywhere near the same later), full coverage insurance that seems grossly over priced anyway (that people change to lower coverage as a car becomes worth less), taxes and fees that are not as high by the time a car is older, and you added $12000 of finance charges on a $20000 car. It does n…
It’s the same bad math that says it costs $250k to raise a kid so the family down the street with five kids must have access to $1.25 million.
There is a world where we dig tunnels under federal highways, and stick freight trucks down there. They'd run on a monorail, at 120+ mph. Surface vehicles would be dramatically limited in terms of height, width, and length. Maybe people buses could go down there? In my imagination these tunnels are, like, 200' down. Like mole people.
If the US rail network wasn't in such a state of disrepair and freight trains weren't miles long to cut labor costs, you wouldn't even need to dig tunnels for them. That also saves the cost of digging those tunnels and actually making them safe (i.e. having service tunnels, ventilation, fire escapes, fire suppression systems, etc etc). And of course with tunnels you'd want rail anyway because you don't want to be stu…