It is nice to say people will have a choice in self-driving cars. I am not stating it is right or wrong, but, such a national system a huge cyber network has to work all the time around the clock without errors. The security of these needed networks will be under attack all the time.
Advanced rail is a better investment until the self-driving cars are proven to be completely safe. That is not the case right now. The number of self-driving cars are few. The needs for an entire country of self-driving cars is a dreamscape that seems extremely unlikely to me. The rails are here, now and can be a real asset to regional and national transportation.
February 12, 2018
By Michael Friedberg
Several recent railway accidents (click here) may have struck fear into the hearts of passengers — but the next one could cripple our economy as well. And the deteriorating and outdated infrastructure along the Northeast Corridor rail system means that, sadly, that next disaster is just around the corner.
The Northeast Corridor’s 457 miles of railway — connecting major cities from Boston to Washington, D.C. — is the nation’s most economically critical stretch of infrastructure. These railways enable hundreds of thousands of workers to get to work each day, as one-third of all jobs in the region (that's 7 million jobs, all told) are located within five miles of a rail station. Those workers alone contribute over $50 billion annually to the American economy;altogether, the region would be the fifth-largest economyin the world....
