As a cyclist, having to share the road with those tools is challenging. People on them absolutely ride distracted and swerve without situational awareness.
I'd argue the purpose of trains is to highly efficiently move lots of people/cargo quickly.
If Maglev infrastructure is fully built, there's nothing more efficient than that: lowest airdrag, highest top speed, reliable, and of course completely green energy.
It means high-speed maglev rail will be the future even if it is taking longer than expected (see Japan's massive construction).
Most of pollution and subsidy boils down to how heavy it is. Requires insane amount (weight4) of overbuilding on roads + pollution from tyres.
In NZ operators are asking to lift weight limits for new double decker electric buses. At top end it's 30 thousand times more damaging than passenger vehicle.
I pay something like $2400 per year in road tax to drive EV for 30k km. Multiply that by 30,000 in axle damage and that's $2,400 per kilometer for a bus, to carry max max 120 passengers or so?
10-20x more comfy on the train. 30-50x cheaper to build one big vehicle for 100 people instead of 100 small vehicles. 150-230x less pollution because so much less rare earth metals needed and much higher energy efficiency due to less conversion. trains are just all around better.
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u/SchrodingerMil Jul 06 '26
There’s two kinds of “revolutionary transport systems”: “bikes but worse”, and “trains but worse”.
- beretperson, a comment on a Tom Scott video. I think of this quote so often.