Russotto)
Nothing like coming into the middle of the conversation without any idea what is being discussed, huh?
1 more time...
Individual, self-propelled, self-navigated railcars (IOW, no damn locomotive nor linking cars together to be pulled by something) that run whenever there is a demand (rather than on a schedule you have to wait for) and use electricity generated by a fixed power plant (that, ideally, is something that doesn't emit anything and especially doesn't use oil).
Just think of it like the automated highway people think of self-driving cars, only this is done on rails, without having to account for the side-to-side positioning of the vehicle since the rails do that for you. If automated highways with cars under computer control are possible (some scientists working on it think it is - I don't think it is in our lifetimes because of too many variables that the computer won't be able to account for) then this system is possible (I think it is possible, because most of the variables that a car under computer control has to account for don't have to be accounted for by a rail system. For instance, a car under computer control has to distinguish between a piece of blowing paper and something that is dangerous to hit. A rail car can just go ahead and hit whatever it is - probably nothing bigger than a deer, elk, or moose, and a 20,000 lb combined railcar and automobile is not going to be hurt by hitting even a moose, although it should be possible to keep the critters off the tracks anyway.)
rude drivers nope. rude TRUCKERS... 1978All right, I'll offer a serious reason why it wouldn't work. Cost. What you are proposing is very costly to build, very costly to maintain. I seriously doubt that there will be developed...
Now, wanna take another stab at it?
DPH
