Anonymous #1 1d

I’m talking about the route, not the driving. An interstate is a line from city A to city B. Lanes and merging are width, they don't change where you're going, how far, or even how fast. Everyone's on the same corridor in the same two directions. That's why flying cars are pointless here. We already have 3D travel, it's called planes, and it still runs on fixed corridors, air traffic control, and airports. Buses are great locally, but between cities rail moves way more people per corridor.

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Anonymous OP 1d

Yeah maybe I’m being over technical about the distinction, I get your point despite it still being physically 2d. Devils advocate here but flying cars, if they actually worked and weren’t purely a stunt prop from Elon, would still increase transportation access because they wouldn’t need to be stuck in traffic, there are lots of flight corridors they could choose from.

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Anonymous #1 1d

But yes I agree, between cities rail is the move 100%. I so wish we could build high speed rail like what the Chinese or Japanese have but our government just won’t invest in it. I was speaking to the disappointing truth that busses usually outperform LRT in performance for intercity routes, but yeah connecting cities is a perfect use case for passenger trains, I hope we get a candidate who will invest in them!

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Anonymous #2 19h

Okay so if you read my other comments you would know that I’m very obviously not talking about dimensions in the material cartesian sense.

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Anonymous #1 19h

Yeah I don’t mean physical dimensions, I mean logistical ones. A trip is a single variable: distance remaining from A to B. Turns, hills, lanes, and altitude are just the path that line takes. Flying cars add freedom of movement, but the trip is still A to B, so you get the same traffic in the sky, with thousands of independent pilots and crashes that fall on people below. More dimensions don't fix congestion. Making the line itself faster and more reliable does, and that's rail.

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Anonymous OP 18h

I mean not really, in isolation added lanes reduce congestion because there is more space for traffic to flow smoothly and not get backed up. If there was no backup that ever formed because there were infinite paths to choose from then yes that would ease congestion. Of course there are numerous practical issues with that (air traffic control being a huge one) but that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t reduce congestion

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Anonymous #1 18h

I mean that’s why people are working so hard to get evtol air taxis certified, because it is just true that taking some road users out of cars and letting them fly over traffic reduces congestion

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Anonymous OP 18h

I just don’t think describing interstate traffic as one dimensional makes much sense to begin with tbh. Sorry to be a hater but I think that’s a confusing way to describe what you’re trying to describe

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Anonymous #1 18h

Look up Duranton & Turner, "The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion" (American Economic Review, 2011). Across US cities, driving rose in proportion to highway capacity, so new lanes fill right back up. Houston's Katy Freeway is the textbook case: widened to 26 lanes for about $3B, and some commutes got up to 51% longer. More space just invites more cars. Rail moves the same trips with far fewer vehicles, and riders skip the traffic entirely.

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Anonymous OP 18h

That’s why I said in isolation. I’m not arguing for building more lanes everywhere because I know that doesn’t usually reduce congestion but just saying that a higher number of paths does reduce congestion if volume is the same. Extra lanes don’t work because lanes still fill up but the sky can’t fill up like a lane can. There are plenty of real issues with flying cars but your point abt congestion just isn’t one of them

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Anonymous #1 18h

I do agree with you that busses and trains are the move for terrestrial congestion though

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Anonymous #1 18h

Personal air travel sells a fantasy that you get to rise above everyone else's traffic. That only works if almost nobody else does it. Scale it up and the sky gets the same congestion, now in 3D, needing constant coordination, with crashes that fall on people below, plus far more energy per passenger. eVTOL air taxis will be a luxury for the few who can afford it , not public transit for everyone. Real freedom of movement is a fast, reliable system everyone can use, not an escape hatch for some.

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Anonymous #1 18h

Volume never stays the same though, that's the whole point of induced demand. Make a faster path and more people use it until it's as slow as before. And the sky absolutely does fill up. Aircraft need separation, and every flight starts and ends at a vertiport, which becomes the new bottleneck. Even at fixed volume, more paths can make things worse (Braess's paradox). The sky doesn't remove the line from A to B, it just moves the traffic jam to the landing pad and adds more danger.

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Anonymous #1 18h

"In isolation" means holding everything else constant, but traffic isn't a fixed amount of water in a pipe. It's people making choices. Change the system and the choices change: new paths make travel easier, so people take more trips, take longer trips, move farther out, and drop transit. Congestion is an equilibrium; it settles wherever travel feels just barely tolerable. So any analysis that freezes volume is studying a world that doesn't exist. You have to model how people respond.

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Anonymous OP 18h

I mean it’s not a fantasy it’s just a fact about how transportation works, it is impossible to have gridlock or slow traffic in the sky. There could be congestion around ground infrastructure but we don’t have enough vehicles or people for the sky itself to become congested. Again, plenty of real issues with it, no need to make arguments that the sky behaves in the same way a road does.

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Anonymous #1 18h

Real issues like navigation (although that’s solveable) and cost like you say. Because yes evtols are gonna be expensive when they launch but like all things they will become cheaper as they become more widely produced. I’m not arguing against the utility of trains and busses at all, I’m just saying that any good transportation network needs a variety of transportation methods. Any system that works well is gonna need some cars, some busses, some trains, and some evtol. They all excel at d

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Anonymous #1 18h

Different things

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Anonymous OP 18h

I mean yes that’s what I was saying about ground infrastructure maybe getting crowded, which is an issue. Just pushing back against the idea that there will be some sort of sky traffic jams because that doesn’t make sense. Simply put sky big and evtol small. Also I disagree with the danger point, there’s no reason to expect evtols to be anywhere near as dangerous as driving a car. They’d probably be about as safe as air travel today, which is on par with busses and trains

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Anonymous #1 18h

You conceded the whole point: "congestion around ground infrastructure." Every flight starts and ends on the ground. Vertiports have limited pads, and each takeoff and landing needs spacing for safety and downwash. That's the bottleneck, same as an on-ramp. Open sky in between is like an empty highway between two jammed exits. Airports already prove it: planes sit in holds and ground stops because runways, not sky, set capacity.

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Anonymous OP 18h

Also are you using ai to respond to me?

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Anonymous #1 18h

Mass production makes vehicles cheaper, but that does not make the physics cheaper. Lifting and hovering a vehicle takes far more energy per passenger-mile than rolling on wheels, and a train spreads its energy across hundreds of riders. Batteries, pilots or certified autonomy, maintenance, and insurance stay expensive. Helicopters have existed for 80 years and are still for the rich. eVTOLs will beat helicopters on cost, but not enough to be how most people get around.

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Anonymous #1 18h

Nobody's arguing against a mix. The question is what we pour public money and land into. For 70 years the answer has been cars, and eVTOL is the same logic in the sky: private vehicles for whoever can pay, built on public infrastructure. That's the hegemony I'm rejecting. Rail and buses should be the backbone, with cars and aircraft filling gaps, not the other way around. A mix where the backbone serves everyone is the whole point.

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Anonymous OP 18h

I think you’re misrepresenting my argument then. All I’m advocating for is an appropriate mix, of course evtols won’t replace cars or trains

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Anonymous #1 18h

I mean that and your original point about how the sky would clog like roads do, which I think we’ve agreed doesn’t happen

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Anonymous #1 18h

“sky traffic jams” is very much not what I said. And the danger point should be common sense. When I am speaking at a very high level of abstraction, and I have to catch you up on the basics, that’s exhausting for me. If you want less words, maybe comprehend them instead of immediately pushing back.

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Anonymous #1 18h

I’m using my will and my knowledge to respond to you. Do you question amputees for having a prosthesis?

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Anonymous #1 18h

You’re the only one who thinks I’m saying that.

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Anonymous #1 18h

Honestly, I just think eVTOL is a stupid thing to really care about. It's a solution for oligarchs who are already rich enough to fly over traffic, and not for the average person stuck in it. Every bit of attention, subsidy, and airspace planning spent on it is energy not spent on transit that serves everyone. Even if it works perfectly, it does nothing for most people. It's a toy for the top that gets sold to the rest of us as progress.

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Anonymous OP 17h

What an interesting way to answer a straightforward question. Are you using AI to respond to me?

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Anonymous #1 16h

Why does that matter? You’re being more avoidant than I am. Just because I’m challenging your hegemony doesn’t make the framework invalid. It’s just different. Claiming that it’s wrong to work inside a different framework is orthodoxy protecting that hegemony. And mean those words in the most general philosophical sense.

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