Posted on 04/23/2011 1:10:17 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
They said "operational tests with the public within 10 years" and "within 20" for deployment. Fourteen years and we're not even at operational tests.
It's nice that Google is pushing the technology ahead but it doesn't matter unless it can get to consumers.
On the co-worker: good thing it was only her hair that was run over. Some kids (or pets) aren't so lucky. The sooner we can get people out of the equation the more efficient and safe vehicular travel can be.
Part of the problem in bringing automated cars to market has been the development of peripherals that do something good.
A very good example has been Electronic Stability Control.
For cars with ESC the DEATH RATE was cut in half. The accidental injury rate was also cut. The accident rate was cut.
ESC is not exactly the most straightforwardly logical solution for deadly auto accidents, but it's half way there. All it does is put on your brakes to slow you down under certain conditions ~ slick roads, high wind, erratic steering. You might not even realize those things, but ESC does.
Radar didn't do that!
Then again ESC didn't do that until they'd developed four wheel disk brake systems, power steering, and a couple of other little items. My ESC equipped Hyundai can make it's way through ice cluttered roads like a champ ~ the special composition "you get more MPG tires" I bought work with the ESC to keep on moving at the right speed. It never sits there spinning in ice.
There's a air pressure monitoring system that's showing great statistics too.
These things aren't super computers, but as those critters come down in size and price it's just a matter of time until we can put one in charge of the ESC, the air pressure system, your onboard heating and cooling (so you don't need to fiddle with your hands on the dash and take your attention off the road).
I'm looking forward to the day I can hop in my car at the age of 108 and zip across town without killing anybody!
“Tested”.
But, as a general purpose, individual-owned, personal vehicle they will never be popularly ACCEPTED.
As I said, they may wind up having specialized uses, but the individual-owned, personal UN-AUTOMATED vehicle will continue to be the commonly accepted choice for most people.
Just because technology can do something does not mean that what technology CAN DO will be chosen for what most people WANT to do.
You'll be under a truck and your widows will grieve I am sure.
Imagine dopers being able to drive down highways secure in the knowledge that their car will never do anything to get them arrested. Then, mothers with 4 chilluns ~ they'll love that automation controlled parking system (currently available on some models).
Seriously, the more automated our automobiles have become the safer they've become, and the more traffic can be handled on the same amount of pavement at ever higher average speeds.
I worked there. Spent half the day looking at the vehicles, and watching the "experts" mess with them.
One of the DOE guys had been riding in our semi-carpool for half a dozen years too.
That's only 14 years ago.
Sorry, there is a difference between how we humans feel about “automation” improving how our private personal motor vehicle works (how it’s machinery works), and how we humans work our private personal motor vehicle. There is a human distinction between the two.
Humans, by our nature, will intentionally NOT buy into - in any general mass capacity - total automation of our private personal motor vehicles, by choice, regardless of the supposed “improvements” that technology may make possible - they will not be feasible in a socially acceptable sense.
But, you can keep your dreams - or nightmares, as the case may be.
I don't believe I was implying that. However, I don't believe the problems that crop up over China's high speed rail construction means they are doomed to failure in the long term. Its good that these issues come up early on as China is likely to have triple to quadruple the amount of high speed rail lines today.
And I not implying the US should join China in this pursuit. What road America goes down towards transportation infrustructure is America's business. But to suggest China's problems is proof that high speed rail is a bad idea is weak. If the argument is population density, etc., then that's different. But suggesting high speed rail is bad for the US because the author wrongly concludes it is bad for China.....well, that's not much of an argument.
“But to suggest China’s problems is proof that high speed rail is a bad idea is weak. If the argument is population density, etc., then that’s different. But suggesting high speed rail is bad for the US because the author wrongly concludes it is bad for China.....well, that’s not much of an argument.”
What’s weak is the sales pitch about the economics of high-speed passenger rail infrastructure and operating costs. Those costs vs getting the revenue to support them from ticket sales has proven more difficult than what was sold. The result has been steeply lower than predicted passenger acceptance, which has added to the level of subsidies to sustain operations and fund more development. That difference between what was sold and what has been obtained, financially, is not unusual for high-speed passenger rail.
The only factors that have mitigated those problems anywhere in the world ARE sufficient population density along or within easy reach of a high-speed line together with cost factors in other transportation modes available in the same area, or the absence of other competing transportation modes in the same area, and only if those conditions produce a ticket-price “market” for high-speed passenger rail at a price-point that will sustain the revenue needed to support both its operations and pay off its debt.
If those factors were not the case, every nation that now knows how to build high speed passenger rail lines would be scrambling to replace ALL their old rail lines for them. They are not. Not because they do not know how and not because they could not raise the funds if they wanted to, but because the ROI or the basic economic viability for them is NOT possible in just any and every circumstance.
China also has the unique circumstance of being forty, fifty or sixty years behind most western nations in the establishment of its total “modern” transportation infrastructure. Thus, a lot of what it is able to to it can do “brand new” from scratch without as much existing older, but working, transportation routes to consider, to have to tear up, build over, redo, disrupt and replace. The “high speed rail” considerations change immensely in an environment with a lot of existing and working modern infrastructure. Like the U.S.
China has another factor that plays well with “high speed rail” which is it has more places with strings of towns and cities with an aggregate population density along those strings that IS at levels more supportive of the passenger-density needed for revenues to sustain the higher costs of high speed rail - and they ARE higher costs.
If there is any question in all this for the U.S. it is not whether or not the U.S. should participate in the use of high-speed rail systems. It is WHERE in the U.S. we COULD RESPONSIBLY do so.
Unfortunately, the economics of building AND operating high-speed rail systems (two kinds of costs), the population densities they need in order to be financially sustainable without government subsidy, the location of such population densities in the U.S., and the economics of alternative systems of transportation, taken together suggest that their costs per passenger mile will be higher than where that have been built and are being built in other countries at this time, and they are NOT cost competitive at this time, with the alternatives.
Why? There is only one string/corridor of towns and cities in the U.S. with an average and aggregate population density sufficient for truly high speed rail to be supported by the revenue from its passengers. But that revenue would take a huge amount of time, or never (given the interest on the debt borrowed to do it) to recover the capital costs of building it; because that one area is the Boston to Washington, D.C.corridor; and the capital costs of building it along that corridor will be immense.
To work, operationally, it would have to be built as much as possible over the existing pathway (best case operationally, and for future passenger revenue, but worst case construction-cost wise). To save money on building it it would have to built miles away from the existing pathway where more vacant land might be available (operationally worst case, and less attrative to the population density needed to supply the needed level of passengers, though best case on initial construction costs). We could afford to build it, but then could not afford to keep it operating because it wouldn’t attract the passenger density needed, or we could build it and then never pay for both its operations and the bonds we sold to pay for it - perpetually issuing new bonds to pay-off the old, perpetually pushing off the end date of the debt.
Other than that corridor, the building costs may not be as humongous but the population densities will not be there to provide the revenue to pay for ongoing operations AND pay off the debt incurred to build them, because states will go into debt to help the operating subsidies.
Most new high speed rail operations in line to be built in the U.S. WILL be sites of PERPETUAL need for government subsidies just to continue to exist, and subsidies at a higher rate per passenger mile than other modes of passenger transportation.
In the U.S. they will all be Concordes. Technological successes and financial failures. If that were not the case, our best private rail companies in the country, those that know the most about rail transport and about high speed rail - our rail freight transport companies, would be scrambling to get into the high speed rail passenger business on their own dime, believing the investment would pay off. They know better. The politicians know little other than how to attract another class of crony capitalists who will take their profits and leave the taxpayers with operations that have to be subsidized to stay alive.
And I while I agree, overall, it may not be a good idea for the US as a whole, I do believe there are specific corridors of populations where it will be beneficial and cost effective. America's population is spread out over the 48 states whereas most of China's population is in the Eastern 1/3 of the country. Still, places like the Los Angeles to San Fransico corridor would be a good bet.
Not really.. When you can catch a plane or drive.. Why spend billions that no will use??
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