>Reducing the (perceived) need to buy a car, e.g. by making it easy, cheap and reliable to get from A to B using a self driving car service

But this assumes the need for a car, but cars are one form of transport. A more wholistic look at transportation with be “Reducing the (perceived) need to buy a car, e.g. by making it easy, cheap and reliable to get from A to B.” If you have more services within walking distance, it reduces your need for a car. If there is lots of bike infrastructure, it reduces your need for a car. If there are reliable frequent trains, it reduces your need for a car. If there are reliable frequent bus services and bus lanes to get around traffic, it reduces your need for a car.

On the other hand, if there are more cars then you need, at minimum if we imagine self-driving cars, more road capacity. But realistically more roads and more parking. More space for roads is less space for the actual places people want to go, pushing those things farther apart. Being farther apart reduces the number of places you can get to by walking or biking, which means you are more likely to need a car, which means more cars, which means more roads, which means less space for the actual places people want to go, repeat. Cars are basically the worst option in terms of infrastructure cost, land usage per person, personal cost to use/operate, deaths and injuries, etc.

Sadly the evidence for Uber like services is that they take journeys away from public transport rather than encouraging its use.

The main effect of making the car more comfortable, in this case by removing the controls, is to encourage (subsidise) people to spend longer in the car.

So people will be willing to drive further for cheaper rent, or the self driving car might add a couple extra miles to park somewhere cheaper, so overall congestion would get worse.

Taxi services can potentially complement public service by filling in the gaps: last-mile connections (home to train station) and backup service late at night when transit runs less frequently or not at all.

There's a risk that robotaxis could become too cheap and people use them for point-to-point transportation because it's faster. This could be mitigated through taxes on robotaxis (with incentives to connect people to transit) and/or car usage in general, or maybe using robo-buses to provide a middle ground between personal convenience and system efficiency.

Can you imagine how much traffic there would be if NYC didn't have the MTA? The principle of induced demand tells us that as long as there are roads they will have roughly constant traffic because people are willing to spend some roughly constant amount of time getting to and from destinations by road each day. More roads speeds up everyone's commute which brings in more drivers, which brings traffic right back to the baseline terribleness.

The question is how shitty it would be if they also had everyone on them who's currently on public transit.

So basically, it is a traffic-free panacea for everyone who chooses to use it. It's not a goal of trains to eliminate traffic for everyone who insists on driving.

https://www.tomtom.com/newsroom/explainers-and-insights/indu...

This is what bikes and busses are for, or just walking because the metro system is comprehensive enough you are at most four blocks away from a station.

> have yet to bring on a traffic free utopia

This is a silly expectation to have. As long as there are roads for cars people will put cars on them.

Trains solve traffic for the people who get on them, not for drivers. The more people taking the train, the fewer people impacted by the traffic.

They help to remove some congestion in the Netherlands. That’s my everyday experience. Traffic would be way worse otherwise

> Trains are all very well but they've been around nearly 200 years and have yet to bring on a traffic free utopia.

Cars will always have a purpose. But if you go to somewhere like The Netherlands, they are much less relied upon - it's more about delivery vans than getting individuals to places.

Visit Tokyo and tell me they haven't brought about a traffic free Utopia

Human beings naturally take advantage of new conveniences.

If public transportation just encourages people to move to the suburbs and commute in every day you've actually just displaced the problem.

Well That’s certainly not been my experience when visiting Europe. In fact, it many cases it’s been the opposite - having a car would have been restrictive in any major city and a source of friction.

In effective countries trains run frequently enough that you don't need to consult a schedule and are less prone to unexpected delays than cars. Yes, they can't provide door-to-door service; like it or not, everyone travelling door-to-door in their private mobile living room during the rush hour is impossible if you want cities dense enough to be liveable.

Try a bicycle or a stroll instead of embracing the WALL-E.

If you feel that way about transit you may not have tried a good transit option like Hong Kong MTR with 90 second headways and travel from and to substantially everywhere you want to be.

Well for my commute the trains are every 30 mins or so - pretty convenient times and a short walk from the office. The ticket is cheap, much cheaper than a days parking and during the trip I get to sit, look at the view and sip a coffee. The train is way more relaxing than the equivalent drive - which due to traffic levels at rush hour would probably take twice as long (at least) and be extremely unpredictable.

So when I have the option I'd rather take the train - of course I also drive a lot of places.

I think the answer to this is microbility bike/scooter sharing (ex: lime)

Trains to cover the longer distance and micro mobility options to get to exactly where you need to go

Fairly unreliably? Unlike cars, trains do not typically suffer from traffic jams.

I'd gladly take a Waymo from my home to the train station, zip around the country without traffic jams and hop in another robotaxi at the other end.

Trains are one part of a larger transportation system. And they are very good at what they do. But you also need metros, trams, buses and so on.

And with that you can build a system where most places, including 50 people mountain villages are well connected.

I can go from Genf to a tiny village deep in the Eastern mountains with 4-6h. I can make that journey with no planning ahead what so ever.

Cars are actually restrictive. What if you want to have a drink? What if you are in a place that is different from your car? What if you are old or disabled? What if you are a tourist? What if you are not allowed to drive because of a traffic violation? And there are also these people called 'kids'. When I was 15 I went from Switzerland to Czechia with the train, no problem.

True freedom is to have a good public transit and potentially car as an option.

I live in Switzerland and commute mainly via public transport. We're very privileged here.

Because of decades to centuries of investment, holistic planning and expertise, we have one of the best networks in terms of quality, punctuality and density.

It's a plant the trees for future generations kind of deal, especially in Switzerland, because large, "flashy" projects are rare compared to to the more continuous and steady improvements, due to how funding and planning are set up.

> which is not where you want to go

Oh the horror, you might have to walk a couple of minutes (probably less time wasted than circling around to find a parking spot, and then walking from it to your destination).

> at a time that is probably not exactly when you wanted to arrive

Yeah, no. Trains in properly developed networks are extremely frequent. At the off-peakest of off-peak (Sunday late evening), the RER near me is every 15 minutes. During peak hours it's every 5 mins.

As with many "tech innovations" in the transportation space, this rapidly turns into reinventing the bus. #3 in particular is just "the bus, but more frequent" which you can do by simply increasing bus frequency dramatically, which most American cities should already be doing but don't, because of their budget priorities and the stigma of buses as something for poor people.

This rings less like some missing key points, and more like an entire, comprehensive traffic strategy. I'm not really sure what the point is meant to elaborate on. Maybe something like "Self driving cars in themselves wouldn't solve traffic, but well designed, purpose-built AV's combined with surge pricing and (when necessary, depending on the location and journey) trains/subways could do it." Did I understand you correctly?

The last mile is a solved problem. Most people can walk (and many of those who can't would need human assistance anyway). And then there are bikes, electric scooters, and other light vehicles that use space much more efficiently than a car.

Self-driving cars may help with the actual weakness of transit, which is the long tail of trips. Trips on routes with too few passengers to justify good transit service, and with the trips too long for the last-mile solutions.

The last mile problem is only a problem because of poor layout. Build homes and work near transit nodes (instead of in the middle of nowhere) and there isn't a problem in the first place.

> Problems like traffic waves and gridlock go away when all cars are driving themselves.

How would that make those problems go away? It could probably slightly alleviate them in marginal cases, but any given road has a finite throughput limitation, and once it is reached, it wouldn't matter even if every robo-driver were perfectly synchronized.

> Trains still don't solve last mile transport for most people

This has not been my experience since moving to Manhattan last January. Subways, alone, close the gap between regional rail and most destinations astoundingly well. I haven't yet needed to use a bus (but they seem abundant, too), and I haven't even thought of taking a taxi yet.

Here, robust transit has solved the last mile problem for most people.

self driving cars will increase traffic as they remove barriers that prevent people that cannot drive from using cars, thus increasing the amount of cars on the road.

> Do I really care about traffic if I’m not the one driving in it?

As someone who took the N across San Francisco every day for 5+ years: Yes, you would. Imagine a 5 mile journey taking 50 minutes. Even if you can nap or listen to a podcast, it's still a waste of time.

Ideally: there's a train close enough to walk, or a bus or tram that's nearby that runs frequently, is clean, and doesn't get stuck in traffic because there's not much car traffic.

Slightly more realistic: enough people can and do cycle or walk to the train that pressure is relieved on the roads for those who cannot cycle or walk.

> And how do you get to the train when it's too far to walk and you're not a cyclist?

You get the bus, or you cycle, which is a life skill any able-bodied adult should have, not limited to cyclists. Of course not everyone is capable of cycling, but not everyone is capable of driving either.

A person living in DC can take the subway to Union station, take the Acela line to NYC, and then take the subway to their final destination.