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Train Rule (midwest.social)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago (10 children)

I read in a book that the current system of drivers acting on their own without something coordinating their every move is actually 75% as efficient as a fully coordinated system.

Therefore, the benefit obtained with all people using self driving cars is nothing compared to just improving public transit or improving car infrastructure.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I don't think cars are ever going away, even if public is the main transportation method. Which obviously sucks, but it's the way it is.

I've always imagined a protocol that lets cars communicate their planned speed. I'm pretty sure this is how cars will work in the future. A decentralized mesh of coordinated vehicles. This means that cars can:

Maximize constant speed time, improving energy consumption and traffic flow.
Minimize distance between vehicles based on speed and acxeleration while complying with safety standards.
Connect to devices such as semaphores in order to tell if the vehicle will pass or not, to make a better decision.
Connect to other mesh devices such as AI cameras that feed events to the vehicle mesh.

Public is obviously the best option though. Imagine a city with no streets, only subterranean public transportation. You wouldn't even need such a large public transportation system, cities would be a fraction of the current size. I wonder what percentage of the area of a city is wasted on streets.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

A hybrid system would be cool. I could see a future where electric vehicles could link up to a pod like train cars for long trips along standard routes, and schedule automated disembarkation for their "stops" to continue the rest of the way to their destination. Full autonomous driving is a difficult problem be a lane pods of this nature could be quite efficient and easier to automate

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

PRT is kinda like this, but they don't link together.

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