Saying we shouldn't design around that use case isn't being a jerk.

And the exact number wasn't the point. The percent of consumer vehicles on the road that are carrying a significant payload to/from home is pretty small. Especially areas where transit even halfway makes sense. What's your best estimate?

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losvedir 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Where I live, the percent of cars that carry a load that would be unwieldy to manage on public transit at least once per month has to be at least 50% and probably closer to 90%.

From Costco trips to babies to wagons, strollers, wheel chairs, hardware stores, bigger box purchases like a TV, out of town trips to visit friends, pet grooming, airport trips with luggage, it's hard for me to imagine a life without a car.

I know you can just say that I'm a product of my circumstances and culture and you don't need a car for any of that, or there are other ways to accomplish my goals, but I could say the same back to you. And the arrow of time seems to point to people everywhere moving in the direction of wanting personal mobility whether horses, bikes, or cars.

It's not all or nothing, but it seems to make sense to me to build around cars as a first class concern, in addition to other forms of transit. Some places in Europe obviously can't, for historical reasons, but I don't see that as a benefit per se, so much as something to have to work around.

Edit: I should add, I did live car free in Boston for 10 years and loved it and didn't really perceive any shortcomings at the time, and even hated having to buy a car when I moved. But now in my 40s with two young kids and a house and an elderly mother, it's an entirely different situation and I can't see how it would work. I would suggest if you're totally anti-car but only in your 20s or early 30s, your opinion might change as your circumstances do. I also lived for a year without a car in Singapore and that was tolerable in a way that wouldn't have been in most places, since it has some of the best public transit in the world, but even there cars are considered luxuries and it would have made things a little easier.

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Dylan16807 2 days ago | parent [-]

No no no, not the percentage of cars that sometimes carry a load, the percentage of cars on the road that are currently carrying such a load.

If you do that once a week, then you can use transit the other 90% of the time. If people use transit 90% of the time, then we can build smaller roads and de-prioritize cars. That's the argument here, that transit can dominate in co-existence with self-driving cars, not that we'd need to get rid of cars. And especially in the context of waymo there's no effect of "I'm already paying a ton of money to own and insure a car, I might as well use it every trip".

(And again, this is in moderately dense areas where transit works and you actually care about how many cars are on the road to begin with. And it doesn't have to be 90% in particular.)

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glitchc a day ago | parent | next [-]

It doesn't work that way. Once a car is obtained, it has fixed costs. My monthly finance payments can't be pro-rated to the days I actually use the car. Ditto for insurance. In many cases, the best deal for insurance is to pay for the year up-front. Bears repeating, a year, up-front. Insurance companies incentivize this. Between those two, that's 80% of the TCO. Fuel and maintenance are actually incidentals based on usage and account for < 20% of annual ownership costs.

Ergo, it's no surprise that people want to use them as often as possible. They want to recoup value from those fixed costs. It's simple economics.

	▲	Dylan16807 a day ago \| parent [-]
		Did you not read my entire comment? I directly addressed that. > in the context of waymo there's no effect of "I'm already paying a ton of money to own and insure a car, I might as well use it every trip"

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dgfitz 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> And again, this is in moderately dense areas where transit works and you actually care about how many cars are on the road to begin with. And it doesn't have to be 90% in particular.

This caveat destroys the rest of your points, as logical as they may seem.

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Dylan16807 2 days ago | parent [-]

The first caveat or the second one?

Remember the original argument was "I think public transit will continue to dominate in parts of the world where it currently dominates" I'm taking that and strengthening it to a significant expansion of transit, but obviously not everywhere can do transit.

If the lanes on the road can fill up, you have enough traffic to sustain some busses.

In emptier areas that's a pretty different discussion, but importantly you still wouldn't need to design around cars. Slap in a very basic road and it'll handle all the cars fine.

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glitchc a day ago | parent [-]

If you need an alternative mode to get to public transit, it has already lost the battle. I can walk to my car in 20 seconds. I can carry many items in its trunk, making it worthwhile to make multiple stops on my journey. Public transit is not meeting my use-cases.

	▲	Dylan16807 a day ago \| parent [-]
		>If you need an alternative mode to get to public transit No one was suggesting that. > I can carry many items in its trunk, making it worthwhile to make multiple stops on my journey. Public transit is not meeting my use-cases. Well the guy I was talking to was only worried about one or few trips per month, and we only need most people to use transit for the scenario to work.

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2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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