[njarboe]

Imagine in the middle of every American interstate a light-weight, elevated track holding up a lane in each direction designed for automated cars. Tech today could easily drive vehicles in such a controlled space at high speed and density. Switch to manual upon exit. At 100mph and 40ft per car one gets a rate of 13200 cars per hour. This is on par with the capacity of the current 5 lane Bay Bridge at 9,000 per hour [1]. This could be the future, if society could embrace it. (Electric?) automatic cars would be adopted very quickly if you got to use such a system for commuting and cross country travel. As driving tech got better cars could travel right next to each other on long trips to get the aerodynamic benefits of trains. Google, Apple - you have billions sitting around. How about building a demo track and start building the system on the 280 and 101 for a nice loop.

[1] Wish I had a better reference (http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Peak-hour-...)