11 ms·

Is it that you don't want self driving cars to happen or you don't THINK it will happen? I, for one, am super excited for self driving personal vehicles and wil

Is it that you don't want self driving cars to happen or you don't THINK it will happen? I, for one, am super excited for self driving personal vehicles and will be glad to see the eradication of mass public transportation like trains and buses.

jamestimmins 9y ago
There's a strong case to be made that this isn't a desirable outcome in a lot of areas. Trains and buses are much more efficient at moving people than individual cars, even if they're self-driving. I'm also extremely excited about autonomous cars, but neither desire nor think they will replace mass transit. edit: As a few people have mentioned, my suggestion that "trains are buses are much more efficient" is dubious. And I certainly don't mean to say they're better in all circumstances. It's more accurate to say that in certain scenarios, it still makes sense to use mass transit instead of self driving cars. Moving inside Manhattan, or commuting from a suburb to Manhattan, are examples where mass transit likely makes sense. With the obligatory disclaimer that I could be incorrect, this is simply my understanding.
- hossbeast 9y ago
  "Trains and buses are much more efficient at moving people than individual cars, even if they're self driving" Dubious claim that needs evidence. I think you're underestimating the potential throughput gains from autonomy. As just one example, speed limits can probably be greatly increased when you take the realities of human reaction times out of the equation.
  - mozumder 9y ago
    How much energy does it take to move 500 cars? How much energy does it take to move one train? That's your answer.
    - briandear 9y ago
      How much energy does it take to operate a train station or get people to the train station? What is the time and monetary cost spent getting to and from a train station and waiting on trains? How many NYC or Paris or Seoul subways run at 3am?
      - vonmoltke 9y ago
        Can't speak for Paris or Seoul, but in NYC probably about helf the lines run 24/7. Of course, that's one of the reasons the system is so hard to maintain.
- freehunter 9y ago
  Trains are great at moving people to train stations. Buses are great at moving people to bus stops. Cars are great at moving people to their homes and businesses. When millions of Americans live in rural or suburban areas, what do you think is easier? Extending rail and bus routes to within walking distance of every house, or convincing everyone to move to a city? The answer is neither, and that's why cars exist. Here's one that isn't a trick question: is it more efficient to build a rail line to my office and have a train run there or to have individual cars drive there? I don't know the answer for sure, but considering you may possibly need 15 trains filled mainly with people who don't work there converging on one location or 15 cars with one person each who does work there converging on one location, I'm almost willing to bet 15 electric cars would be more efficient than 15 trains. There's a certain density requirement that mass transit needs that doesn't always exist. That's why we have cars.
  - mozumder 9y ago
    And streetcars are great at moving people that last mile. Take that road in front of your office, and just put rails in it. If your local government can pay for a road in front of your house, it can pay for a streetcar. This applies to dense areas as well as rural areas. Rail lines actually cost less to maintain than roads, and they cost YOU less because you don't have to buy and pay for a car. And you don't have to fear dying in a crash every time you set foot inside a streetcar, like you do in a car.
    - freehunter 9y ago
      But would a streetcar go past my house? How far do I have to walk to get from my house to a bus stop or train station? Because I own 19 acres and my nearest neighbor is three miles from my house. The nearest town is 20 minutes by car. How would public transport deal with that kind of remoteness? My office is one end of the equation, my home (and the homes of my coworkers) are the other end. It's surprisingly common when you leave the bigger cities. 90% of the country might live in cities, but the other 10% is spread out across the other 99% of the nation.
      - 9y ago
- scarmig 9y ago
  I think you overstate how much better mass transit is than self driving cars. Transportation is fundamentally about traversing a graph, and transportation infrastructure is about maximizing the value of the flows on that graph. Mass transit only makes sense when the edges become a certain weight. The vast majority of point to point connections are far too light to support mass transit. Car transit is a bit better for these P2P and near P2P connections, but still pretty mediocre, because of coordination costs. To a significant extent the issues with mass transit can be remedied by breaking the global graph up into connected subgraphs, and each subgraph can be similarly subdivided, recursively down to the point where the form factors and utilization rates cause the economics to break down. The edges between those subgraphs is mass transit. Autonomous technologies make both point to point and mass transit transportation much cheaper. But labor (market or not) comprises a much more of car transportation costs than mass transit costs. Eliminating that cost inherently drives a shift from mass transit to car transit. Combine that with an efficient coordination algorithm to increase car utilization rates, and it gets a significant upper hand. Each approach will still have its place, of course.
  - jamestimmins 9y ago
    That's an interesting approach to breaking the problem down, and a way in which I hadn't thought of it. I can see that I likely overstated my initial comment. I'll edit it to clarify what I meant.
  - robinsloan 9y ago
    Just a nitpick here, but when you write > breaking the global graph up into connected subgraphs I feel like it's too conservative -- and takes "the transportation graph" as too fixed an entity. Consider how much the shape of the U.S. changed between 1917 and 2017 -- suburbs, the Interstate Highways, malls, fast food, huge parking lots, and on and on. The car literally gave us new ways of living with each other, for better and for worse. So I think we should expect changes at least that radical in the next hundred years -- which suggests that we'll not just divide some abstract, eternal graph differently, but really truly reshape it. I can't wait for super-fast trains + self-driving cars, AND I can't wait to see what kind of world they create.
- didip 9y ago
  What if trains and buses can be made autonomous? From software perspective, there isn't much difference between form of vehicles.
  - robertlagrant 9y ago
    Well there is, because you get autonomous trains today due to the massively reduced problem space.
- mikebenfield 9y ago
  I would love to have reliable and efficient mass transit. However, for most places in the USA, that seems to be politically and socially impossible. For whatever reason, Americans have almost completely rejected public transit. For that reason, I'm more excited about self driving cars than about public transit.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  Public transit in the US generally fails at the last mile for me especially in the suburbs. Self driving cars would be awesome for getting me to the train station. Currently I'd have to take a bus for that. However the bus stops at literally every block which is insane. Extremely frequent stops are a general problem I've had in both the bay area and the Portland area as well as the few times I've used public transit in LA. I'm more than happy to walk 5-10 minutes but I'm not happy to sit in a bus or train that is stopping all the time and never gets up to speed.
- Turing_Machine 9y ago
  "Trains and buses are much more efficient at moving people than individual cars, even if they're self-driving." I've said this on here before, but I'll say it again: efficiency is not everything. Individual houses (or even apartments) are less efficient than having everybody living in barracks, hot-bunking the beds in three shifts, and eating some sort of nutrient-balanced kibble in cafeterias. Human beings have goals other than efficiency. One ignores this fact at one's own peril.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    If we stop pulling oil out of the ground efficiency will become everything. The whole western economy is based on cheap energy.
  - lmm 9y ago
    > Individual houses (or even apartments) are less efficient than having everybody living in barracks, hot-bunking the beds in three shifts, and eating some sort of nutrient-balanced kibble in cafeterias. Efficient at what? The comment you replied to explicitly talked about what's "efficient at moving people". Of course some people like cars for reasons other than how good they are at getting from A to B, but is that a matter of fundamental human needs, or something more like fashion? Certainly people who commute by car don't seem to actually enjoy doing it.
    - Turing_Machine 9y ago
      "Efficient at what?" Efficient in terms of resource usage, which is exactly how the comment I replied to was using it. "but is that a matter of fundamental human needs, or something more like fashion?" I'm pretty sure that being able to go where you want, any time you want, in a conveyance that doesn't smell like urine, isn't just a "fashion".
      - aninhumer 9y ago
mozumder 9y ago
My belief is that it just won't happen without infrastructure changes, such as new road designs and car-to-car communications regulations. And I don't see those changes happening without an infrastructure overhaul, at which point you might as well create a streetcar infrastructure.
nolta 9y ago
Self-driving cars are not going to replace mass transit. Even electric cars produce produce small-particle pollution, e.g.: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/04/fewer-cars-not-electric-cars-beat-air-pollution-says-top-uk-adviser-prof-frank-kelly https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/04/fewer-ca...
Tiktaalik 9y ago
I suspect you would not be so happy when all the people that travel on the more space efficient public transportation systems buy cars and clog up the roads in front of you.
lmm 9y ago
That would be terrible if it were to happen; it would mean either sprawling, inhumane cities or small settlements that are awful to live in if you don't conform to the norm. Possibly both. Personal vehicles just take up far too much land.

jamestimmins 9y ago

There's a strong case to be made that this isn't a desirable outcome in a lot of areas. Trains and buses are much more efficient at moving people than individual cars, even if they're self-driving. I'm also extremely excited about autonomous cars, but neither desire nor think they will replace mass transit. edit: As a few people have mentioned, my suggestion that "trains are buses are much more efficient" is dubious. And I certainly don't mean to say they're better in all circumstances. It's more accurate to say that in certain scenarios, it still makes sense to use mass transit instead of self driving cars. Moving inside Manhattan, or commuting from a suburb to Manhattan, are examples where mass transit likely makes sense. With the obligatory disclaimer that I could be incorrect, this is simply my understanding.

hossbeast 9y ago
"Trains and buses are much more efficient at moving people than individual cars, even if they're self driving" Dubious claim that needs evidence. I think you're underestimating the potential throughput gains from autonomy. As just one example, speed limits can probably be greatly increased when you take the realities of human reaction times out of the equation.
- mozumder 9y ago
  How much energy does it take to move 500 cars? How much energy does it take to move one train? That's your answer.
  - briandear 9y ago
    How much energy does it take to operate a train station or get people to the train station? What is the time and monetary cost spent getting to and from a train station and waiting on trains? How many NYC or Paris or Seoul subways run at 3am?
    - vonmoltke 9y ago
      Can't speak for Paris or Seoul, but in NYC probably about helf the lines run 24/7. Of course, that's one of the reasons the system is so hard to maintain.
freehunter 9y ago
Trains are great at moving people to train stations. Buses are great at moving people to bus stops. Cars are great at moving people to their homes and businesses. When millions of Americans live in rural or suburban areas, what do you think is easier? Extending rail and bus routes to within walking distance of every house, or convincing everyone to move to a city? The answer is neither, and that's why cars exist. Here's one that isn't a trick question: is it more efficient to build a rail line to my office and have a train run there or to have individual cars drive there? I don't know the answer for sure, but considering you may possibly need 15 trains filled mainly with people who don't work there converging on one location or 15 cars with one person each who does work there converging on one location, I'm almost willing to bet 15 electric cars would be more efficient than 15 trains. There's a certain density requirement that mass transit needs that doesn't always exist. That's why we have cars.
- mozumder 9y ago
  And streetcars are great at moving people that last mile. Take that road in front of your office, and just put rails in it. If your local government can pay for a road in front of your house, it can pay for a streetcar. This applies to dense areas as well as rural areas. Rail lines actually cost less to maintain than roads, and they cost YOU less because you don't have to buy and pay for a car. And you don't have to fear dying in a crash every time you set foot inside a streetcar, like you do in a car.
  - freehunter 9y ago
    But would a streetcar go past my house? How far do I have to walk to get from my house to a bus stop or train station? Because I own 19 acres and my nearest neighbor is three miles from my house. The nearest town is 20 minutes by car. How would public transport deal with that kind of remoteness? My office is one end of the equation, my home (and the homes of my coworkers) are the other end. It's surprisingly common when you leave the bigger cities. 90% of the country might live in cities, but the other 10% is spread out across the other 99% of the nation.
    - 9y ago
scarmig 9y ago
I think you overstate how much better mass transit is than self driving cars. Transportation is fundamentally about traversing a graph, and transportation infrastructure is about maximizing the value of the flows on that graph. Mass transit only makes sense when the edges become a certain weight. The vast majority of point to point connections are far too light to support mass transit. Car transit is a bit better for these P2P and near P2P connections, but still pretty mediocre, because of coordination costs. To a significant extent the issues with mass transit can be remedied by breaking the global graph up into connected subgraphs, and each subgraph can be similarly subdivided, recursively down to the point where the form factors and utilization rates cause the economics to break down. The edges between those subgraphs is mass transit. Autonomous technologies make both point to point and mass transit transportation much cheaper. But labor (market or not) comprises a much more of car transportation costs than mass transit costs. Eliminating that cost inherently drives a shift from mass transit to car transit. Combine that with an efficient coordination algorithm to increase car utilization rates, and it gets a significant upper hand. Each approach will still have its place, of course.
- jamestimmins 9y ago
  That's an interesting approach to breaking the problem down, and a way in which I hadn't thought of it. I can see that I likely overstated my initial comment. I'll edit it to clarify what I meant.
- robinsloan 9y ago
  Just a nitpick here, but when you write > breaking the global graph up into connected subgraphs I feel like it's too conservative -- and takes "the transportation graph" as too fixed an entity. Consider how much the shape of the U.S. changed between 1917 and 2017 -- suburbs, the Interstate Highways, malls, fast food, huge parking lots, and on and on. The car literally gave us new ways of living with each other, for better and for worse. So I think we should expect changes at least that radical in the next hundred years -- which suggests that we'll not just divide some abstract, eternal graph differently, but really truly reshape it. I can't wait for super-fast trains + self-driving cars, AND I can't wait to see what kind of world they create.
didip 9y ago
What if trains and buses can be made autonomous? From software perspective, there isn't much difference between form of vehicles.
- robertlagrant 9y ago
  Well there is, because you get autonomous trains today due to the massively reduced problem space.
mikebenfield 9y ago
I would love to have reliable and efficient mass transit. However, for most places in the USA, that seems to be politically and socially impossible. For whatever reason, Americans have almost completely rejected public transit. For that reason, I'm more excited about self driving cars than about public transit.
ajmurmann 9y ago
Public transit in the US generally fails at the last mile for me especially in the suburbs. Self driving cars would be awesome for getting me to the train station. Currently I'd have to take a bus for that. However the bus stops at literally every block which is insane. Extremely frequent stops are a general problem I've had in both the bay area and the Portland area as well as the few times I've used public transit in LA. I'm more than happy to walk 5-10 minutes but I'm not happy to sit in a bus or train that is stopping all the time and never gets up to speed.
Turing_Machine 9y ago
"Trains and buses are much more efficient at moving people than individual cars, even if they're self-driving." I've said this on here before, but I'll say it again: efficiency is not everything. Individual houses (or even apartments) are less efficient than having everybody living in barracks, hot-bunking the beds in three shifts, and eating some sort of nutrient-balanced kibble in cafeterias. Human beings have goals other than efficiency. One ignores this fact at one's own peril.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  If we stop pulling oil out of the ground efficiency will become everything. The whole western economy is based on cheap energy.
- lmm 9y ago
  > Individual houses (or even apartments) are less efficient than having everybody living in barracks, hot-bunking the beds in three shifts, and eating some sort of nutrient-balanced kibble in cafeterias. Efficient at what? The comment you replied to explicitly talked about what's "efficient at moving people". Of course some people like cars for reasons other than how good they are at getting from A to B, but is that a matter of fundamental human needs, or something more like fashion? Certainly people who commute by car don't seem to actually enjoy doing it.
  - Turing_Machine 9y ago
    "Efficient at what?" Efficient in terms of resource usage, which is exactly how the comment I replied to was using it. "but is that a matter of fundamental human needs, or something more like fashion?" I'm pretty sure that being able to go where you want, any time you want, in a conveyance that doesn't smell like urine, isn't just a "fashion".
    - aninhumer 9y ago

mozumder 9y ago

My belief is that it just won't happen without infrastructure changes, such as new road designs and car-to-car communications regulations. And I don't see those changes happening without an infrastructure overhaul, at which point you might as well create a streetcar infrastructure.

nolta 9y ago

Self-driving cars are not going to replace mass transit. Even electric cars produce produce small-particle pollution, e.g.: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/04/fewer-cars-not-electric-cars-beat-air-pollution-says-top-uk-adviser-prof-frank-kelly https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/04/fewer-ca...

Tiktaalik 9y ago

I suspect you would not be so happy when all the people that travel on the more space efficient public transportation systems buy cars and clog up the roads in front of you.

lmm 9y ago

That would be terrible if it were to happen; it would mean either sprawling, inhumane cities or small settlements that are awful to live in if you don't conform to the norm. Possibly both. Personal vehicles just take up far too much land.