Comment on The first driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes | CNN Business

• lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Maybe 2 or 3 single rail lines across the country.

  You guys gotta remember that the US is double the size of the entire EU. I will say that I don’t disagree in that more rail would be nice, but you have to think about this logically.

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  • glitchdx@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    how about historically? we had rail, and it was great. Most of it was ripped up at the behest of auto manufacturers.

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    • lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It was mostly the street car systems that got ripped up, not the stuff that carries freight.

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      • glitchdx@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        trams were the biggest casualty, but not the only.

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  • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Oh I do, it’s where I live. At current costs its about $1.6m(1) per mile, so yea, agreed, probably not much. Will have to check back in 5 years after we see the costs to operate and lawsuits from accidents 😆

    1. compassinternational.net/railroad-engineering-con…

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• sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m not so sure. Infrastructure is hella expensive and the US government already maintains the highways that make trucking make sense.

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  • jenesaisquoi@feddit.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Not necessarily. A 40 tonne lorry damages the motorway as much as 1000 passenger cars. It will lead to the state having to renew the road surfaces every few years. Rails don’t have that problem, they’ll happily take 100 tonnes for decades.

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    • futatorius@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      A 40 tonne lorry damages the motorway as much as 1000 passenger cars.

      According to an old and well-attested empirical formula, road damage is proportional to the fourth power of vehicle weight. So if we make the pessimistic assumption that those passenger cars weigh 2 tons (pretend they’re all SUV-sized EVs), then the damage ratio is on the order of (404)/(24), which means your 40-ton lorry does as much damage as 160,000 cars.

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      • jenesaisquoi@feddit.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Thank you for the correction! I remembered incorrectly.

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    • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The point I’m making is that the government has already decided to maintain the highways, so continuing on is the status quo. If they wanted to make new railroads they’d have to expend political capital to get anything new funded.

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