On Thursday, 16 March 2017 16:25:45 UTC, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
wrote:
On Thu, 16 Mar 2017 11:21:02 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:



of course. Which is why - especially given it's glacial timescale -
HS2 seems like an absolute waste of money.

Driverless cars will never match the speed of a train between city centres.

Who knows what may happen, a train at present is a collection of
vehicles physically joined together

And you can walk from one end to the other with it in motion. To get to
say the bog or buffet car.

, could in the future a
collection of vehicles such as driverless cars virtually joined
together be classed as a train with vehicles dropping in and out as
required.

Ever been on a train where it drops off a few carriages? ;-)

Yeah takes bloody ages, and it doesnlt happen while traveling along aty 80 MPH either, the train has to stop usualy at a station. Last time I was going from London to worthing.


So a "train " of vehicles leave the outskirts of London and head
North, those who want to go to a place en route such as Birmingham
break away and go there. Those who want to go to Glasgow carry on
with no stops, range and bladders allowing.

And all without breaking pace. ;-)

No stops means it doesn't get much chance to pick up passengers.


Raise the speed limit a bit to 80 and missing all those 5 min stops at
stations en route a normal and the journey times will become fairly
competitive with the traditional train as we know it where all on
board make no progress for a few minutes while others get on and off.

But an HS train doesn't stop every 5 minutes.

Makes one wonder why every train isn't high speed.

Anyway in a 'few' years time we'll have google drones that can turn from a car to a flying drone.


And that is before you include time getting to and from the Railway
station anyway, where you are in London that is just a few stops on a
tube but for large number of people they have to use another means of
transport to reach a railhead in the first place , and that is another
cost on top of the actual railway fare whether that is paying to park
a car or Taxi/Mini cab fare Interchanging between that and Railway
train is usually about 20 mins unless you want to risk being delayed
on the way and missing a train departure so that needs to be set
against your total door to door time as well so makes doing the whole
journey by driverless car even more favourable.

So what does that driverless car do after your journey? Hang around for
the return one - or go back to base empty?

I've wondered about that but in theory it could return to the closest
car pool a bit like how the boris/barclay/sandader bikes work now.


Sadly, many of the disadvantages of taxis apply with or without a driver.

Other thing is those who can't currently drive for whatever reason might
just buy a driverless car. Increasing the numbers on the road.

Yes it'll ad to teh total number of cars but maybe those without cars wont want to spend the amoint requred to buy a driverless car but rent them in the same way I don't need a car I can just phone for a cab. I don't think I've really needed a car so far this year.