| ▲ | cbondurant 2 hours ago |
| I'd much rather all of the resources that are going into autonomous cars was instead going into proper public transit infrastructure. Cars are so hopelessly space and energy inefficient, and I hate driving them. If I could get around by bus, light rail, bike, and all of the wasted city space devoted to parking could be turned into more housing and amenities, that would be great. I think it would be meaningful to also compare the fatality rates of the time tested and proven forms of public transit to these self driving cars too. |
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| ▲ | ElijahLynn 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Public transit doesn't really go that far, when you talk about the last mile it's pretty limited. But I do like what you're going with that and maybe we could have public autonomous car infrastructure that we all share. And just one large global team working on awesome autonomous vehicles. That could be little pod type vehicles for one person and bigger ones as needed. Cuz the road system is pretty broad and amazing right now. |
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| ▲ | embedding-shape 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > the last mile it's pretty limited. Where is that last mile exactly? In many metropolitan areas, you typically have available a broad selection of trains, subways, trams and/or buses of different sizes that takes you last mile. Some places even have special buses, like the "Neighbourhood Bus" we have here (https://www.barcelona.cat/mobilitat/sites/default/files/bcn-...) for narrow and steep neighborhoods up on mountains. It's certainly doable, if you wanted to have last mile public transport. | | | |
| ▲ | amelius an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > when you talk about the last mile it's pretty limited. That's like a 15 minute walk. And with sufficient infrastructure investments this can be 5 minutes. | |
| ▲ | Clamchop an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is where I've always assumed things were going. People talk about one day owning a self-driving car but I look forward to the promise of not owning a car, never needing to buy, maintain, register, insure, or drive one. Not having to buy into a depreciating compromise, do I prioritize economy or seating or cargo or...? Gas, hybrid, electric? Not having to hunt or pay for parking. Private cars are costly and spend most of their time just taking up space. We'll see if it ever works out that way but a boy can dream. | |
| ▲ | marssaxman 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Rental scooters/bikes cover last mile service very well in my experience. I use transit a great deal more than I would if I had to walk so much on either end of the trip. | | |
| ▲ | vrosas 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Americans would rather die than give up their air conditioned bubbles on wheels. I've wondered why someone hasn't tried manufacturing an enclosed go kart with AC and enough trunk space for a few groceries. | | |
| ▲ | radarsat1 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > I've wondered why someone hasn't tried manufacturing an enclosed go kart with AC and enough trunk space for a few groceries. I see these all the time here in the Netherlands. Very small cars. Some on the road and even smaller ones people drive on the bike paths. Small motorized vehicles, ebikes and scooters share the paths with regular bikes which works because they have usually at least two lanes, so they are more like tiny roads. Very handy. | |
| ▲ | marssaxman 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Regulation kills the value proposition. You are basically describing a "neighborhood electric vehicle", but US law limits them to 25 mph, and it is not legal to drive them on many arterials, so they are only really useful inside communities which were designed for them. | |
| ▲ | alightsoul 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They are very popular in china, such as the Wuling ev. In America, they are afraid of them because they are small. They want big cars to have a large crumple area in a crash. | | | |
| ▲ | efavdb an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That’s the smart car | |
| ▲ | warkdarrior an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > I've wondered why someone hasn't tried manufacturing an enclosed go kart with AC and enough trunk space for a few groceries. Because they are completely unsafe against a twice-the-height, multi-ton Ford pickup truck. |
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| ▲ | edgarvaldes an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >Rental scooters/bikes cover last mile service very well in my experience. Not so great for family trips, shopping around, etc. | | |
| ▲ | ricardobeat an hour ago | parent [-] | | Those (rare) occasions are when you rent a car. You can do it many times per year before it becomes a financially worse option. | | |
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| ▲ | EA-3167 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Let me guess… you live somewhere warm and mostly dry? Probably on the younger side and don’t have any kids. | | |
| ▲ | toasty228 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm in a 200 inhabitants village in eastern Europe, we have 3 bus stops in the village (so at most you're 10min away from a stop), the bus goes to the closest city every hour from 4:30 to 22:30 except on Sunday (every two hours from 6 to 21), from there you can take a train to every major city in the country, my neighbor is a 76 year old widow who goes to the city by bus regularly and who bikes around a lot. Half of the kids go to school via this bus, many people go to work with it. It's free for kids and retired people too. When public transportation is designed properly it works fine for the extreme vast majority of people, and taking a taxi for the last mile if you're disabled, obese, lazy, etc. will cost you less than owning and maintaining a car. I think you're coping, like most car owners, we bought the propaganda of freedom &Co and now we're all collectively stuck in this dumb system in which every household need to own two 2500kg hunks of steel and plastic to transport 70kg of meat 1% of the time and use public space the other 99% | |
| ▲ | marssaxman 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Seattle, late middle age. Kid just started high school. My wife has a large e-bike with a passenger seat, but replaced it with a cargo basket a couple years ago after the kiddo outgrew it. I didn't say that scooters were a solution for everyone, you may note. I don't think there ought to be one solution for everyone, but given the option of micromobility, I really have no use for autonomous vehicles. | |
| ▲ | sensanaty an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | The famously warm and dry countries of Norway[1] and Finland[2]! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCedclz03uI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU | | |
| ▲ | EA-3167 19 minutes ago | parent [-] | | The famously small conurbations and the reality that Finns and Norwegians only are able to bike part of the year. They have cars and public transit for the rest. I'd add that these discussions tend to handwave the reality of safety when you're on an open platform movie at high speeds, the reality that not all people are physically able, and a lot of others issues that the vocal "cars are the devil" folks don't engage seriously with. It's getting really old, and it increasingly feels like trying to reason with the "kill all pitbulls" crowd. |
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| ▲ | SrslyJosh 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think you need to re-read the parent comment, specifically this part: > I'd much rather all of the resources that are going into autonomous cars was instead going into proper public transit infrastructure. You're almost certainly an American, and you probably have no idea what public transit is like in countries that have been investing in it for decades instead of focusing 95% of their resources on infrastructure for cars. |
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| ▲ | WD-42 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Autonomous cars are pretty space and energy efficient if they act as public transportation. Cars spend something like 95% of their life parked. If AVs replace personal ownership, that's a HUGE reduction in the number of cars in existence. The future looks like a lot less parking lots and 8 lane suburban stroads. |
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| ▲ | 1970-01-01 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >all of the resources that are going into autonomous cars was instead going into proper public transit infrastructure. They need not be separated. This is the entire point of the Cybercab and the Cybervan: Get self-driving cars, vans, etc. with the one job of moving people around. They only park to recharge or repair. |
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| ▲ | arjie 41 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It does. About the same amount of money was spent in funding for Waymo as funding SFMTA over the period Waymo has existed. So in SF we are putting in as much money on public transit as Alphabet et al. is on Waymo and we both have the results we have. |
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| ▲ | maxwellg 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| We can have both. The resources aren't coming from the same bucket. Public transportation must be built by the local government, and is subject to that local government's ability to execute. In contrast, Self driving cars are largely siphoning resources from for-profit companies. I live in the west side of San Francisco, and we may get a subway station by 2050 if we're exceptionally lucky. I'd rather have self-driving cars this decade, please. |
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| ▲ | lazyasciiart an hour ago | parent [-] | | > Public transportation must be built by the local government, Amtrak is public transportation. Airlines are pretty close to public transportation. Local government doesn't need to be involved. | | |
| ▲ | mdorazio an hour ago | parent [-] | | To my knowledge there are only a handful of public transit systems in the world that operate at a profit, let alone that operate at enough of a profit to recover construction costs. As in, maybe 5 if you squint really hard. Who do you expect to fund new ones if not the government? |
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| ▲ | daedrdev an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Public transit is too often a jobs program |
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| ▲ | jeffbee 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| AVs and public transportation are not comparable. The cumulative lifetime investment in Waymo would not fund even half a year of capital expenses for the New York MTA, for example. |
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| ▲ | Gigachad an hour ago | parent [-] | | I'm not sure that's a fair comparison. The most expensive part of self driving cars is building the roads and highways. Would make more sense to compare Waymo to the operating expenses of PT, hiring the drivers and maintaining the trains. |
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