[zdragnar]

We could have possibly automated some existing rail, but I am not altogether certain that doing so would have lead to any significant improvements in cost or efficiency.

Actually laying the infrastructure for mass transit via rail is an entirely different league of cost from what has been dumped into self driving cars.

We have a hard enough time agreeing on how to do light rail transit in places that want it, and then actually getting it done.

[jvanderbot]

I'm not altogether convinced that the money and effort spent on self-driving cars has led or will lead to any significant improvements in cost or efficiency either.

Even if it does succeed, it seems to be about convenience anyway.

[zdragnar]

If self driving succeeds, it is because it is safer than a human driver. If nothing else, it'll cut down on insurance premiums, and increase fuel efficiency by reducing speeding and unnecessary hard acceleration.

There are also a lot more people currently driving than there are existing train drivers (which you can see I was comparing existing infrastructure) so the time tradeoff could easily lead to increased productivity, however you choose to measure it.

All of this, of course, assumes fully autonomous driving. I'm somewhat sceptical that we'll actually get there, myself.

[jeffbee]

A self-driving streetcar, that only has 1 degree of freedom, might be a practical problem to solve and maybe if it existed we would not have had to go through the 90-day outage of VTA light rail service that the Bay Area just experienced, an experience which in all likelihood killed VTA light rail forever.

[mynameisvlad]

The VTA control building/center was badly damaged in the shooting that caused the outage you're talking about. Surely a fully automated light rail line would require everything in said building to likely be running at full capacity to work.

Also, it was a result of a mass shooting. Have some tact.

[wumpus]

VTA restarted service a couple of days ago.