With the continued interest in self-driving cars operated by artificial intelligence, one wonders what was ever wrong with trains. Recently The Wall Street Journal published an article stating that Google plans to partner with Audi to implement the Android operating system into cars. This news comes alongside the continued interest from Google in self-driving cars.
But why should the company jump at the chance to make intelligent cars when we have trains?
Before we start comparing trains to self-driving cars, we have to cross oceans to understand how a railway system can best be utilized.
While other countries rely heavily on train transportation for passengers, the United States has a less than poor example of a railway infrastructure.
The International Union of Railways’ 2013 report found that Switzerland alone transported about 447 million people in 2012, while the U.S. as a whole failed to transport 100 million passengers. To put that in perspective, Switzerland is about the size of Colorado—a country the size of Colorado transported more than four times the amount of passengers our entire country did. That’s horrendous.
At some point, the development of our railway system went horribly wrong. A combination of factors caused the U.S. to become such an atrocious example of railway transportation.
Early in U.S. railroad development, we mirrored the development of England’s railway system with the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in May, 1869.
But there is not much good news after that.
Economists debated the benefit of railway systems to the overall economy, which halted investment and development, and The Great Depression led to the failure of most interurban train lines.
Then, instead of developing a firm railway structure, we invested in the Interstate Highway System while the Great American Streetcar Scandal was occurring. The scandal involved General Motors, Firestone Tire, Mack Trucks, Phillips Petroleum and Standard Oil of California investing in the purchase of more than 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 different cities. They converted these into buses and were criticized for monopolizing transportation and creating automobile independence.
After years of technological upgrades, we are arriving at self-driving cars. Someday we will all be heading down the interstates, relaxing with our hands off the wheel next to other self-driving cars, in one long train of self-driving cars.
We’re simply taking the long way to arrive at what other countries already have.
A smart car may not have a scheduled departure and arrival time, but are we really so obsessed with the freedom to control everything that we can’t have a successful railway system and abide by a few schedules?
We cannot justify the assertion that a train system is worse than the interstate system until we’ve experienced a successful railway system similar to those in other countries. Trains are so plentiful in European countries that their railway systems look like our interstate system with the trains running constantly. For example, Switzerland has 24,500 km of public railways while Colorado has 1,517 km of interstate highways, which can be increased to 4,827 km if you want to include the smaller state highways. Switzerland also has more than 26,000 stations and stops.
If that can’t fit into your schedule, I don’t know what can.
Everything about a public train system screams improvement. I don’t have a large enough space to justify how it is safer, faster and more sustainable, but I hope to revisit the topic. It would also take pressure off air travel’s performance during times of high traffic around the holidays.
It’s always better late than to never so take a step down from Independence Island and realize railway’s dominance.
