Originally Posted by
pedex
Finite planet, 2nd law of thermodynamics, and our own behavioral nature. Per seat mile or pound mile of freight rail is better than pretty much anything else over land it still requires an industrial base to produce and maintain which is based on non renewable finite resources,
You're talking about freight rail, not passenger rail.
Have you ever taken a real critical look at a multilane highway filled with cars? If you own stock in auto companies, that might just look like money rolling in, but if you think about transportation efficiency and land/resource waste, it looks like a bag of popcorn kernels that's been opened and popped until it takes up an entire bucket.
Buses consolidate traffic on highways, so they are good for that reason; but trains don't have tires so there is less rolling resistance, plus all the cars of a train are linked head to tail, so each car doesn't have to cut through the wind on its own, the way buses do.
Now I don't see why automation technology shouldn't be used to link multiple buses in close sequence so they could get the same wind drag advantage as a train; but if some foolish human driver caused the lead bus to crash, the rest of the 'bus-train' could derail and the result would be real train wreck, so to speak.