Eli Dourado on trains and abundance

One thing I got a bit of crap for in the hallways of the Abundance conference is my not infrequent mockery of trains on Twitter. I’m sorry, trains are not an abundance technology. I think many people in the abundance scene like trains because:

1. America’s inability to build HSR is the leading example of low state capacity, and we all more or less agree that state capacity is a tenet of the abundance agenda.

2. Trains have high transport efficiency, and people coming to abundance out of the climate movement can’t shake their old habits of caring about energy efficiency ahead of other considerations.

Obviously if we spend billions of dollars on high-speed rail, there should at least be some high-speed rail service. But a deeper element of state capacity is not picking dumb things for the state to build in the first place. And trains are a dumb thing to build in the 21st century.

A true transportation abundance agenda has to revolve around airplanes and autonomous vehicles. The goal should be able to go from any point in the country to any other point in the country in, like, two hours, door to door.

We should have supersonic airplanes made out of cheap titanium and powered by electro-LCH4. An autonomous vehicle should be available to pick you up within 30 seconds and whisk you to a nearby airfield. Security should be painless and instant (another state capacity task). If your trip doesn’t require an airplane, the autonomous vehicle should get you straight there at 100+ mph since it’s good at avoiding accidents. In cities, autonomous buses with dynamic route planning based on riders’ actual needs beat subways’ 1-dimensional tracks.

We should not be trying to build marginally better versions of 20th century (or 19th century!) technology. We should be more ambitious than that. Trains are unbefitting of a country as wealthy as I aspire for us to be.

Please join the anti-train faction of the abundance movement.

Here is the link to the tweet.