
Ask HN: Why can’t self driving autonomous vehicles be taken underground? - jelliclesfarm
I have been looking at various levels of autonomy by different companies. It seems easier if we create an underground system of self driving autonomous on-call car service instead of tackling the problem of people driving with autonomous cars on above ground roads not built for them.<p>Further..you can have fixed rails.<p>Even better: no parking spaces as the cars would never have to come above ground. People can come up on elevators at drop off centers and we would still need last mile&#x2F;intra city transport.<p>I know..just like trains. But at least it’s a safe environment to test controls and requirements so we would at least know what changes need to ve made to above ground roads to accomplish autonomy.
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jelliclesfarm
Trains take hundreds of passengers from point a to point b..with limited
stops.

Autonomous underground cars can take and drop off individuals whereever they
want..even at every street corner if an elevator is installed at every street
corner. It’s on demand. There can be 12-16 lanes if necessary..

It’s best if it’s tested for intra city transit first. There will be a lot of
data points even in the controlled environment. After that..it’s just an issue
of overlaying it and making whatever tweaks if needed on overground roads.

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smt88
1) The US has hundreds of billions of dollars of roads. SDCs are valuable only
if they can use that door-to-door infrastructure.

2) As you said, we already have trains. If you're building new infra, it might
as well have tracks so that the vehicles on it can't veer off course.

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eesmith
So like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgantown_Personal_Rapid_Tran...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgantown_Personal_Rapid_Transit)
but underground?

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jelliclesfarm
Maybe? But multiple lanes.

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jelliclesfarm
I also think there should be three layers. Underground, roads and maglevs.

One for inter city, one for intra city transit and one hub to hub transit.

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amayne
-> www.boringcompany.com

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jelliclesfarm
If only I had Elon Musk on speed dial..

I think boring company should be looking into underground farms too

