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[–] 11 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Trains are expensive, high-capacity vehicles.

If these small cheap vehicles can repurpose tracks in low demand areas, what's so bad about it?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    exactly, i'm catiously optimistic because if this works it could be kinda revolutionary, if rural germans can be convinced to use some form of public transport that's a huge step towards weaning that hideously car-brained nation off the deathmobiles.

    and the big thing with these is that they just run on normal tracks, so you can just.. start running normal trains once you see that ridership with the monocabs is reaching sufficient numbers!

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

    Because 9/10 times they are awful, expensive, unused, and quickly shut down.

    You don't see any of these niche techslop pods operating anywhere you actually go, because they don't work.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    I don't know why you're being downvoted. I'd say you're wrong, because it's 10/10 times these things don't work. I've seen many similar projects get proposed, funded and abandoned (even some that really did sound more efficient than this to me). The truth is, standard trains are still the cheapest thing you can put on those rails. They're simple, repairable, predictable, they don't break easily, can be easily driven by anyone or automated with standard systems that have been around for decades. Even if a small govt can't buy a new train, they can get second hand trains from other cities, which will still work perfectly for decades.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    have you actually looked at what we're talking about, like at all? or are you just following the programming of "small vehicle=bad"?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    okay so where do these things actually work?

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    on the testing tracks, because it's new technology and needs to be exhaustively tested before the government allows it to be put into service.

    like, trains were also new technology at one point, being new doesn't somehow inherently make it bad lmao

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