In high school I "designed" a system of independant privately owned cars that linked together whenever possible into a train. They then seperated and relinked as necessary to get you where you wanted to go, using the "group" mode as often as possible to tighten spacing and save fuel. Since no one can really go much faster than the flow of traffic anyways, it resulted in much higher average speeds and mileage, as well as dramatically lowered commute times.

I still think something very like it would be the best answer to the 2 problems we face in mass transit, efficiency and independance. Now its entirely possible to do it, and pretty cheaply, too. All we need to build this already exists. In fact something similar to it has been tried in several places. The only major difference is that in my design the cars actually linked physically, in the systems tried so far I don't think any of the cars touch.

None of the train systems tried so far work very well from an efficiency standoint, except where the population is densely packed enough to support it. IOW a train running across empty desert would have to be massively supported financially to be there in the first place.

Ed