Response below.
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------ Original Message ------
From: "EVDL Administrator" <[email protected]>
To: "Peri Hartman" <[email protected]>; "Electric Vehicle Discussion
List" <[email protected]>
Sent: 05-Dec-20 6:10:24 PM
Subject: Re: [EVDL] 'All's not well with UK public charging' / Autonomy
On 6 Dec 2020 at 0:50, Peri Hartman via EV wrote:
there would be fewer workers from longshoremen to rig drivers and,
therefore, the unions would fight hard against it.
I'm not so sure. After 40 years of union busting, it seems to me that other
than police unions, US unions don't have much remaining power.
(I think a plan like this would have to include a retraining and
placement program for displaced workers.)
That's a good idea that never seems to work very effectively.
Whether it's fundamentally flawed or just never implemented right, I don't
know, but my admittedly limited observation is that when well-paid workers
are displaced by progress, most of them end up in low-pay and low-skill jobs
no matter how hard anyone tries.
But for better and/or worse, human costs have never stopped progress. They
certainly don't when large, wealthy corporations stand to gain still more
wealth from such progress.
Much as I hate to see people hurt, if human costs stopped progress, we'd
have precious little of the latter.
As for passenger service, I don't think it precludes it at all. Nothing
would prevent using the existing model of sharing the rails with Amtrak.
Hmm, maybe I misunderstood the concept here. I thought we were still
talking about laying rails down the center of a dedicated highway lane. But
you and Lee seem to be proposing something different.
It sounds like semitrailers would be fitted with rail trucks (wheel units)
so they could drive onto existing tracks, engage the tracks, disengage the
road wheels, and travel in unlinked, computer-controlled convoys.
Presumably these convoys would somehow be under the same control as trains
are, so they could properly share the tracks.
Do I have that right?
Yes. And without drivers - they aren't needed except for maybe the front
cab. So, you see, the existing rail infrastructure could be used as is.
The locomotives are gone. The harbor activity might stay more or less
the same, though the truck drivers probably won't be needed once
autonomous driving works (and it only has to work in a very limited
setting).
So, you end up with the efficiency of a train and the flexibility of
semi trucks being able to where ever they need in the "last mile." And
there would be little reason to drive a semi on the freeway for long
distances.
Peri
David Roden, EVDL moderator & general lackey
To reach me, don't reply to this message; I won't get it. Use my
offlist address here : http://evdl.org/help/index.html#supt
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can't mind their own business, because they have no business of
their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.
--William Burroughs
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