Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare • Hacker News Board

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#431

Post by eru » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 10:26 AM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #430

eru wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freight trains don't have to be louder than passenger trains. (Though from what I've heard, the US has incredible noisy trains, thanks also to lots of horn blaring?) And quite a few industrialised countries around the world are building more rail lines. The US already has an extensive freight rail network. It's the one part of their rail transport that works fairly well. Expanding that should be possible. Especially…

Freight is noisy in the US for two reasons: (1) much heavier than trucks on poorly maintained tracks and (2) required horn blaring for safety at road crossings.

Yes, the horn blaring is really crazy.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#432

Post by eru » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 10:30 AM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #429

eru wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My own adopted home of Singapore is highly industrialised, and building more rail lines. China is reasonably industrialised and building more rail lines. Spain is building more, etc. You can do some web searches. Alas, it's a bit hard, because Google seems to insists that I am only interested in new _high-speed_ rail lines, instead of all new rail lines. But if you are willing to only look at those, https://en.wikipe…

The original post suggested to build more passenger rails to reduce burden upon freight rails. Does Singapore move any freight by rail? Also, the original post wrote: > the US built it's current freight network in a comparatively low tech era, yet I doubt it could do it again in the current era due to funding and beauracracy. My reply was specific to that. Saying: The original post says little because _no_ highly ind…

> Does Singapore move any freight by rail?

Not as far as I know.

However, if you can build any rail at all, you can build freight rail, too.

It's mostly in the US that freight rail is noisier than passenger rail. As explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39023890

If you are building new freight rail in your country, you can avoid problems (1) and (2) from that comment. Freight rail doesn't take more land than other rail (if anything, it has lower requirements, because lower speeds mean tighter curves are possible). And freight rail doesn't have to be noisier than passenger rail.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#433

Post by cariaso » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 6:35 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #175

cariaso wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sure here’s one. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(ship) As part of the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae

The free-gratis supply of bread; as a daily life-preserving staple; to a portion of the population doesn't appear to match the spirit of "more stuff faster". Surely basic food supply is "the bare minimum of stuff" and the rate is fixed to 'each day' (and the delivery to grain stores is 'each harvest in the supplying region'? Yes, it's more as populations grow and centralise, but that appears to be occurring the conte…

my point was not about the existence of a bread ration it was about the drive for ever bigger boats to haul ever more capacity.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#434

Post by capitainenemo » Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

AniseAbyss wrote: post #390

capitainenemo wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. I did a quick search on freight percentages, EU vs US and google gave me this snippet off the top hit. "46 percent of European freight goes by truck while only 11 percent goes by rail, while in the United States more than 40 percent goes by rail while just 30 percent goes on the highway." Seems US is doing pretty well on prioritising freight rail transport, despite brainwashing, at least compared to europe. Which…

Europe has rivers and canals.

That doesn't change the fact they are transporting half their freight by truck while the US transports a small fraction of that.. Also, US does have rivers and canal transport as well. Mississippi and Erie canal.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#435

Post by sarchertech » Fri, Jan 26, 2024, 3:01 AM UTC

datameta wrote: post #428

sarchertech wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is number 3 in the world in both total tonne-kilometers and tonne-kilometers per capita shipped by rail, and it’s in the top 10 in percentage of freight moved by rail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag...

I could been specific - I mean passenger rail.

You’re replying to a comment about freight rail, in a thread about freight rail, and you mentioned autonomous trucking. I’m thoroughly confused how you could possibly have been talking about passenger rail.