8 ms·
Automated cars will make this kind of commute a lot more practical and enjoyable. A warm, comfortable and clean Uber will pick you up and drive you directly to
by ttul 9y ago
Automated cars will make this kind of commute a lot more practical and enjoyable. A warm, comfortable and clean Uber will pick you up and drive you directly to your destination while you start your work day.
- wbl 9y agoWe've already got the technology to do that. It's called a train.
- stuxnet79 9y agoI had to laugh at this. Crazy how car-centric some regions are.
- strictnein 9y agoI'm not sure why the inaccurate statement that a train can pick you up at your house and drop you off at work made you think about how "car-centric" some regions are.
- wbl 9y agoThe World Trade Center is over a train stop. A typical Wall Street commute is two five minute walks at either end of a train ride.
- strictnein 9y agoThis doesn't improve your argument.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- knowaveragejoe 9y agoNot quite, at least not in the US.
- lykr0n 9y agoThe NYC/Hudson Valley area has this.
- Terretta 9y agoFTA: ”The train leaves at 4:43 a.m. and Cherry, 60 years old and a couple of years away from retirement, rides it all the way to the final stop, more than two hours away. That’s Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. Scheduled arrival time: 7:05.”
- noobermin 9y agoThe solution to this is: more train lines, more frequent and faster trains.
- intopieces 9y agoTrains don't pick you up where you live and drop you off where you work. Self driving cars can do this.
- carbocation 9y agoImagine a combination of self-driving cars and trains. Perhaps the self-driving car can take you to the train station that is nearest, if there is a train that is coming in a reasonable amount of time.
- intopieces 9y agoFor trains to be truly useful, we needed to not build our cities around the highway, around sprawl. We didn't do that. So self-driving cars will prove to be far, far more useful than trains, especially since trains require long term public investment, which Americans generally do not favor.
- ecshafer 9y agoWe can change that. The current city is built around an combination of parking minimums, subsidized free parking, and a system that supports building detached single family homes and not dense mixed use housing. If we change the policies that ruin the cities and design them around the human and not the car, we can make transit work more.
- intopieces 9y agoWe absolutely can change that and we absolutely won't. Rich people don't like transit, they like personal vehicles and sprawling neighborhoods, not loud trains and dense apartment blocks. Rich people write laws.
- wbl 9y agoSo no millionaires live in Manhattan?
- closeparen 9y agoA train picks you up where you live only if you are a 1%er who can afford the extreme real estate premium for transit access on an infrequently spaced system (i.e. BART), or the train stops so frequency that it barely adds value relative to a bicycle (i.e. Muni).
- s0rce 9y agoI suggest, if you haven't you visit London, many places, not all expensive, are a 5-10 minute walk to a regional train stop that can get you to city center in 45minutes.
- closeparen 9y agoI will have to check that out! I suspect that these neighborhoods have a level of density that, if proposed in a typical American suburb, would spark cries of "Manhattanization."
- wutbrodo 9y ago> I suspect that these neighborhoods have a level of density that, if proposed in a typical American suburb, would spark cries of "Manhattanization." Well yea, density is what enables a transit-centric, and American having an intense phobia of density is part of what makes them so car-centric.
- s0rce 9y agoThere is a big middle ground between suburban ranch homes on 0.25 acres and "Manhattan", see some nice areas of dense row (aka. townhouses) houses in London suburbs.
- drieddust 9y agoI have travelled in London for 5 years and it is anything but predictable. My commute of 45 minutes would last anywhere between 45 minutes to two hours depending upon the excuses they will cookup. Sometimes my train travel will be converted to a nice picnic on London bus as train will be cancelled abruptly. Their list of excuses is legendary[1]. And then comes these patronising messages "This [Chrismas|Easter|Weekend|Holiday] I am working for you." I saw those messages for 5 years and still saw services going downhill. One funny anecdote probably illustrates their lethargy. Station I used to board from was upgraded and platform extended to allow boarding from 10 carriages. This happened long before I started living their. But announcement always said only 9 carriages will open. I lived their for two years and same message was played everyday. [1] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/a-year-of-excuses-to-rail-against-6353246.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/a-year-of-excuses-to-rail-ag... [2] https://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/check-before-you-travel-over-christmas-and-new-year-as-investment-on-london-to-norwich-line-continues https://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/check-before-y...
- matte_black 9y agoBut at what price? How can a company afford to have a car transport one person at a time for hours for a low price everyday?
- gh02t 9y agoPaying the driver is a pretty big cut. If there's no driver to pay and fuel is cheap (because electric / hydrogen / whatever futuristic efficient tech) then the numbers start to work out. You've also got a persistent customer, so you can probably operate on lower margins since you have a fairly stable customer base.
- JetSpiegel 9y agoAnd then some data miner will discover most workers live near each other and will cut costs by getting a bigger self-driving bus to pickup several people. And then another data miner will discover the bulk of the traffic time is spent on traffic, so they will buy land to create a right-of-way lane to optimise the commute times. Finally, the Ouroboros eats his own tail by creating a private subway system.
- gh02t 9y agoHeh, what I had imagined in my own little scifi vision of the future was a hub system. Everybody gets their own little single seat self driving car pod thing that drives you to the train station. But here's the twist, instead of getting out and boarding the train the pod just drives up and latches in. You're then whisked away in the comfort of your own personalized vehicle, which automatically undocks at the appropriate station and delivers you to your workplace.
- aninhumer 9y agoSo you're carrying around tonnes of useless metal just so people don't have to walk a few feet and sit next to other people?
- xocyabencl 9y agoIf that sort of commute becomes popular, it'll just lead even more massive congestion around job centers. In the limit, you'll reach your destination halfway through the workday and immediately turn around to go home.
- joe_the_user 9y agoCars will simply become mobile bedrooms. It's not legal to camp in your car in a parking place but with a self-driving car, people can just sleep in the back while the vehicle drives aimlessly around. If this process makes traffic go very slowly, so much the better - less gas spent and a gentler ride.
- xocyabencl 9y agoI don't think our roads have the capacity to allow everyone to be sitting on them in their own personal automobiles all day. And even if they do, the roads won't actually function as transportation infrastructure.
- joe_the_user 9y agoNo, indeed the roads don't have that capacity. I was being a bit facetious above and aiming to show the multiple contradictions that seem to be in play in the idea that self-driving cars could solve the interlocked high-rent/absurd-commute problems. I mean, sure, maybe the final absurdity is going to be a mass of people telecomuting from the back of their self-driving RVs as these inch along in some random location but maybe the complex will fall to pieces before this.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoIf all cars were self driving, road capacity could be optimized by 2-3X, at least (they could move smoothly bumper to bumper). It won’t happen in the states first, but highly contested Asian cities in autocratic countries sure.
- mtgx 9y agoHopefully we'll have better options than Uber by then.
- myth_drannon 9y agoTrains are nice too. I can hack on my projects, that's the only time I can work on them during the day. I used to take the subway and it was hell, specially during Canadian winters.
- untog 9y agoExcept that scales horribly. Autonomous cars can't replace public transit, no matter how paranoid Elon Musk is about serial killers.