Fredtalk: VRE Commuters/Subsidy article 12-27-11

And then the guy will just add to the traffic on I-95, rather than pay for the always-expensive rail travel.

Now, I believe I have realized something about the future, and that is that all the public transportation efforts are going to be obsolete once we get self-driving cars.

Think about it. If you can get into your car, sit back and relax, read the paper, or even get some work done on the commute, leave the house whenever you want and not need to find a parking place close to work (your car delivers you, then gets back on the road to park in the cheap lot 8 miles away) how can public transportation compete with that? Further, once the highways are _all_ occupied by self-driving cars, there will be no need for speed limits, which are really only necessary because of human failings of sensory, cognitive, and motor limitations including not being able to see in the fog, having to have large following distances because of reaction times, etc. etc. The self-driving cars could run nose-to-tail, save a whale of a lot of energy via drafting, communicate with each other to anticipate hazards such as deer which their infrared sensors would spot and avoid. The machines will be able to do far better at driving than we will ever be able do to, and they further don't get scared and jam on the brakes and create a problem for everyone.

So, I believe that a forward-thinking infrastructure plan has to take this into account, and only build public transportation that needs to last maybe 20 - 30 years, and then will no longer be necessary.

And, BTW, note that there is no reason for people to gather together and bunch up to provide an opportunity for terrorists to kill large numbers with a single bomb.

And assuming that cars can get on highways,travel 100+ mph, and "draft" each other to save energy, would you buy a plane ticket to Los Angeles from DC, or just climb into the car and relax for a day or so while your car drives you there? I'd go by car, and there would be no sitting on the tarmac for 8 hours while ATC and the pilot try to figure out what to do with everyone 'cuz there's a thunderstorm in Texas and they can't take off. And, you'd get to LA with your baqs in the truck, just where you put 'em, and there would be no x-raying anything nor groping anyone nor 2 hours before arrival scheduling, etc. etc. And if we have electric cars by then, the fuel costs would be an order of magnitude less, as electricity is much cheaper to make than petroleum fuel.

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