At this point just pay China to build the damn thing, everything we have is already made in China anyway what’s the difference
So this is going to end up with them using lots of public transport budget to build the dedicated high speed bus freeways, the idea immediatly falters for reasons obvious to anyone that hasn’t been kicked in the head by a horse and then ah well, since we have the dedicated bus highway network but no busses might aswell open it to cars
Reasons for California HSR’s troubles:
- Bureaucratic hurdles, constant political uncertainty
- Land acquisition issues/NIMBYs
- No local knowledge on how to build high-speed rail so everything’s bespoke
- Too many layers of subcontractors and consultants
The only thing this alleviates is maybe land acquisition, because you can more easily follow existing highway corridors and just drive into downtown, while making all other problems worse because now there’s no GLOBAL expertise!
In the article, a professor suggests that it could be used to supplement high-speed rail by setting them up as “feeder lines” between HSR stations and nearby towns. But the line is already designed so that most towns in the Central Valley are less than thirty minutes away by car from an HSR station, so what’s the point?
Autonomous + 140mph = “fun”
Straight from the Onion wtf
Great, those are obviously unsafe on the freeway for a thousand reasons, so let’s just whack those on dedicated roads. And since only those buses go on the roads, they could be steel wheels on steel road for extraordinarily better efficiency, and obviously steel is pricey so we’ll just limit the road to two ‘rail’ like lengths. Dedicated lines can be electrified for more efficiency, build some dedicated bus board/alight platforms, a bit of signalling to prevent crashes and avoid building excessive rail, extensible for varying passenger numbers, and BAM, perfect project.
I was thinking maybe you could connect more buses together to improve efficiency. You can remove the engine from most buses that way!
I’m suggesting a new form of transportation that is truly American.
What we will do is create a giant gun. The bullet will house the passengers who are then launched to their destination. In order to safety stop, we will create giant mannequins out of ballistic gel…
The giant mannequins will be named after prominent African American figures
This could’ve been a perfect comic if the black ranger was missing in the last panel
this is cheaper than paying a bus driver min wage, somehow
What’s that thing? How many times are they going to reinvent the train?
They are literally doing the onion bit…
autonomous buses
Ah cool I wonder how many people it will run over per week.
I’d love to ride in one of these things only for it to smash directly into a car because it’s in the “designated” bus lane
These people are just fishing for government handouts. They have no intention of actually making this happen.
What if we had something that was like a train, except far more dangerous, obscenely more fuel inefficient and expensive to run, subject to far more unpredictable conditions due to other drivers, and would travel on a road instead of a railway line which requires far more maintenance? And would just go far slower than HSP anyway?
And would just go far slower than HSP anyway?
Imagining a bus racing next to a styrofoam container of chips and meat, and the bus still loses
Damn, can’t believe I didn’t notice that.
High Speed Phail.
My problem with public transport has always been that it’s just not terrifying enough to ride
Dear China: you may have a safe and sprawling high-speed transport network, but we will have Mickey’s Dick Smasher
Forget Good Idea: Here’s Worse Idea
Not even just worse. It’s like the worst idea ever. a 140mph bus has enough kinetic energy to turn the average passenger vehicle into a literal pancake. Nobody is surviving that.
Just put it on a dedicated, physically separated lane, connecting each bus to maximize throughput. You can use harder, metal tires to reduce friction loss.
now this is innovation right here
call it B-train
Not to mention the only way to get a bus up to that speed consistently is if it had its own dedicated lane with limited entrances with very gradual curves. And if you’ve bothered building out the infrastructure for all that, you might as well have just built out the infrastructure for HSR.
Methinks the idea here is they’ll add “just one more lane” with the pinky promise for it to be for the high-tech bullet buses. A shit-ton of money will be thrown at startups and consultants to “innovate” the bus lane design, in the end they’ll produce butkis, and it’ll end up just being an overpriced highway widening.
Cowards won’t even match highspeed rail speeds.
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