Arrivo

Fun fact: The train was invented in 1804.

I have so many questions.

A "fast lane" for self driving cars would be *much* more practical than this.

So an autonomous shoe for your car that already has wheels.

I love when "feel good" kickstarter videos gloss over the insurmountable bureaucratic red tape that will inevitably toss this utopian fantasy into the junkpile with the Space Elevator (remember that one?).

Let's hope the maiden voyage has better luck than Amtrak Point Defiance :-(

Pros:

I liked the video. It made me feel that I could solve all my worldly problems with a fast train for my car.

Cons:

May cost BILLIONS to bring to market in most cities. This is the Boston Big Dig for what amounts to Amtrak v2.0.

There was a project that aimed to deliver self-driving capsules in the town I currently reside, Austin, Texas. These capsules don't use technology that has "yet to be invented" they are mimicking what is already happening at Terminals around the world's busiests airports, i.e. Heathrow. Each capsule could provide space for a family of 4 plus their luggages and could be requested with the press of a button, a la Uber. Instead of using lanes on the current road, the idea proposed was to create elevated lanes on top of pedestrians walk. For a small innercity loop the cost was estimanted to be 160M to build these over-your-head lanes. The capsule technology already exists and the "stations" to allow safe passenger pickup could easily just be a part of the second floor of the many "parking garages" available around the city. Innovative, cheap (considering the train track costed over 1B dollars here) and sustainable (electric vehicles). Guess what happened next when proposals reached the lobbies :>