Thursday, September 6, 2012

Is High Speed Rail Irrelevant?

Via Meadia


Researchers at Colombia University took a look at what would happen if we started relying on autonomous or semi-autonomous cars equipped with sensors and/or intervehicular communications systems, and the increase in efficiency is fairly incredible, simply due to the fact that cars can safely travel closer together. When traveling at 100 kph, if all vehicles on the road are simply equipped with adaptive cruise control, highway capacity can safely increase by a factor of 1.4. And if all vehicles on the road are equipped with both adaptive cruise sensors and communication, capacity can be increased by a factor of 3.7.

The technology is available today, he says.

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