Comment by kccqzy
7 days ago
The author spends a lot of words talking about short trains and Jersey City, but didn't once mention the Hudson Bergen Light Rail which was at least built in recent memory? I mean other than driverless operation it seems to check all the boxes. And in that light, I really fail to see the novelty in this argument; it's basically the multi-decade-old argument that building light rails is cheaper and better than real metro or heavy rail.
there is nothing new about trains - we need to stop looking for innovation and just build them with small incremental improvements. The only useful innovation since 1920 is full automation (though I'm going to call high speed rail incremental since it is mostly a lot of small improvements on the way - this is debatable). Even full automation was a lot of incremental improvements.
That said, full automation is a major game changer because it enables short trains with high frequency which you would otherwise struggle to afford. Don't build light rail, build light metro which is a small cost more (build a metro with light rail) but now you can have full automation.
I also thought this omission was conspicuous. The author has some reasonable points, but the sections on NYC and NJ felt like political wish (spite?) casting: just about the only state in the US that struggles more to build mass transit than NY is NJ. The HBLR is a rare survivor in an otherwise very crowded graveyard of NJ mass transit projects.