Even with traffic waves, the capacity of a road is not infinite and trains beat it hand over fist, simply because of physics. Imagine a crowded highway with invisible cars: people would be sitting 30 feet x 15 feet apart. That is why there is traffic more than anything, the limits of that capacity with that really loose packing that cars enable.

Walking 30 mins from the station is no issue. Try walking through a far flung terminal at DEN or ATL or the new TBIT at LAX, you will walk 30+ mins from the gate before you hit your rideshare point I expect. Also, rail stations do not exist in a vacuum. They often interface with bus lines that go parallel or perpendicular to the rail routing, so that 30 min walk could just be a 2 min ride.

We also do have railbuilding experience in this country. LA metro has built out their entire network of over 100 rail stations within the last 35 years. This is the fastest rate of railbuilding on the entire continent, not just in the U.S., in a high land value land labor cost area to boot. As we speak multiple concurrent rail projects are being planned or actively built. Much of the build out is paid by a 1 cent sales tax measure that local voters approved with 71% in favor.

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cman1444 3 days ago | parent [-]

I agree that rail still wins on the capacity front by far. I was just pointing out that self driving cars should offer some improvements over the current state of traffic.

I don't think that walking for 30 minutes is "no issue". Of course at airports you have to walk 30 minutes because those are a special case, and you have no other option. Also, trips to/from the airport do not make up a large portion of the average person's trips.

A better and more common example would be going to a friend's house or grocery store. Compare:

Home>self driving car>destination

Home>bus>train>bus>destination (with likely higher amounts of walking between each)

Admittedly the car performs much worse our traffic score, but cars are essentially point-to-point which I think is a huge advantage. Additional advantages include privacy and cargo space.

Like it or not, our built environment has been made for cars. Metros still offer value for high density areas, but for the huge number of Americans that live in suburbs/exurbs, self-driving cars are the answer.

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asdff 3 days ago | parent [-]

I am not arguing the car isn't supremely convenient. Even in Tokyo, drop two arbitrary point A or B about 5 miles as the crow flies apart and the car will win 9/10. That is beside the point. I am arguing against the idea that transit usage is impossible. Virtually everywhere that people take transit en masse, the car is faster. Seemingly there is some culturally learned impatience surrounding transit that is deep rooted in north american culture, to the point where the idea of taking a little extra time is an outright impossibility to most people. This is a highly individual culture where tragedy of the commons externalities are handwaved away in favor of a supremely convenient individual experience, as the climate of the earth is more damned by the year.

	▲	tuna74 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Tokyo (and a lot of other cities) has basically priced parking so that it is a luxury. You save a lot of money by taking public transport even if you own a car.