5 ms·

>Commute traffic is very bursty and very unidirectional. Which creates carpooling opportunities through economies of scale, as Uber/Lyft pool is already demons

>Commute traffic is very bursty and very unidirectional. Which creates carpooling opportunities through economies of scale, as Uber/Lyft pool is already demonstrating.

dmortin 8y ago
There will be self driving (mini)buses too cheaper than a self driving car ride (more stops because of more passengers carried).
- nordsieck 8y ago
  Bus vs car is just a miniature version of hub-and-spoke vs direct flight. Outside of very dense cities (Seoul, Tokyo, New York, etc.), mass transit isn't a very good idea because humans care about trip latency. A lot. That being said, there's probably still a place for busses during rush hour in a lot of places.
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    Humans care about trip latency, but there are different components. One person walking five minutes to a designated corridor may save ten people on a minibus three minutes on their trip each by avoiding unnecessary diversion. And this can add up quite a bit depending on how many passengers you are avoiding diverting for. There's a reason why (good) bus lines tend to be direct and on main roads. The main reason why non-dense places don't see good bus service is because of labor costs. In developed countries labor is easily the biggest source of cost when it comes to a bus, so agencies will run one 40-passenger bus every half hour rather than three 15-passenger buses every ten minutes. Removing labor makes the latter scenario affordable, and if buses are coming every ten minutes average wait time is about five minutes, which is comparable to Lyft or Uber today in some places.
  - tomjen3 8y ago
    We are used to busses going at set times from set positions. Why can't I request a $STARTUP ride from A to B, at about 30 minutes from now and let them try to calculate a route based on who else is going now? You could run that when you get out of bed and see what comes up, so that by the time you had showered it would be clear when you could go and then you could make the go/no-go decision. I mean today it is a no-go decision from be, simply because it takes a minimum of twice as long to go to work by bus as by my car, but with a smarter route, that may not be an issue.
- smogcutter 8y ago
  How is that different than just... taking the bus?
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    Lack of pre-defined and centrally-planned route.
    - bobthepanda 8y ago
      Is that a good thing, though? In practice the lack of a pre-planned schedule means that rideshare vehicles have to divert to get to you, being as much as 10-15 minutes away, which is not much better than just waiting for a bus.
      - sokoloff 8y ago
        Quickly catching a bus that isn't going where I want to go isn't ideal either.
    - untog 8y ago
      That doesn't seem like a positive. People like predictability. They know their drive home takes X minutes, give or take Y, which is a small number. Having a different route every day makes the value of Y a lot more variable.
      - eesmith 8y ago
        There's another aspect to "predictability." Back when I was a bus commuter, it was comforting to see the same faces every day. Even without chatting or acknowledging each other, there was a sort of familiarity to the strangers.
  - dmortin 8y ago
    It can pick you up at your house.
  - pavon 8y ago
pm24601 8y ago
> Which creates carpooling opportunities through economies of scale Like busses and trains? Seriously. Public transit. The issue is a geometric one. There is only a fixed road capacity. Consuming that road capacity with deadheading vehicles is the worst usage.
- stale2002 8y ago
  Public transit has other significant drawbacks. IE, it can't go point to point, and is instead stuck in a movement pattern that isn't changing.
  - VintageCool 8y ago
    A self-driving taxi might help that a lot. Call up a self-driving uber to take you from your home to the nearest train station, and take the light rail into downtown. I think it would be feasible for the self-driving taxi companies to have a small fleet of cars in each neighborhood that could respond rapidly to take people for short trips.
    - stale2002 8y ago
      That would still significantly increase commute times. By definition, public transit can only serve a specific segment of the commuting population.
  - scarmig 8y ago
    > IE, it can't go point to point, and is instead stuck in a movement pattern that isn't changing. That's not inherent to public transport. You can easily imagine a public network of bus transit where users send in a request for transit an hour or two beforehand; software coalesces the set of requests into a dynamic set of routes and stops; and tells the user to turn up at a stop (relatively) near the origination point and drops them off at a stop (relatively) near their destination point. Whether it's economic or feasible is a separate issue. But funding mechanism, transport form factor, and autonomy are all distinct parts of a transportation method, and it's a mistake to think of "private autonomous cars" as competing with "legacy human-driven buses with set routes."
joe_the_user 8y ago
Which creates carpooling opportunities through economies of scale, as Uber/Lyft pool is already demonstrating. Links? I haven't found any way to practically share Lyfts for long-ish trips. I don't see any evidence Lyft or Uber will ever do much with shared-rides. For self-driving cars, people wanting to save money will drive their own cars before they share rides. If you have a car, you've sunk a lot of money into it and so the per-ride cost is fairly small. Even a self-driving car has to price-in wear-and-tear.
- swiley 8y ago
  It's a shame, that would probably solve a lot of their problems with the ratting system.

>Commute traffic is very bursty and very unidirectional. Which creates carpooling opportunities through economies of scale, as Uber/Lyft pool is already demonstrating.

dmortin 8y ago

There will be self driving (mini)buses too cheaper than a self driving car ride (more stops because of more passengers carried).

nordsieck 8y ago
Bus vs car is just a miniature version of hub-and-spoke vs direct flight. Outside of very dense cities (Seoul, Tokyo, New York, etc.), mass transit isn't a very good idea because humans care about trip latency. A lot. That being said, there's probably still a place for busses during rush hour in a lot of places.
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  Humans care about trip latency, but there are different components. One person walking five minutes to a designated corridor may save ten people on a minibus three minutes on their trip each by avoiding unnecessary diversion. And this can add up quite a bit depending on how many passengers you are avoiding diverting for. There's a reason why (good) bus lines tend to be direct and on main roads. The main reason why non-dense places don't see good bus service is because of labor costs. In developed countries labor is easily the biggest source of cost when it comes to a bus, so agencies will run one 40-passenger bus every half hour rather than three 15-passenger buses every ten minutes. Removing labor makes the latter scenario affordable, and if buses are coming every ten minutes average wait time is about five minutes, which is comparable to Lyft or Uber today in some places.
- tomjen3 8y ago
  We are used to busses going at set times from set positions. Why can't I request a $STARTUP ride from A to B, at about 30 minutes from now and let them try to calculate a route based on who else is going now? You could run that when you get out of bed and see what comes up, so that by the time you had showered it would be clear when you could go and then you could make the go/no-go decision. I mean today it is a no-go decision from be, simply because it takes a minimum of twice as long to go to work by bus as by my car, but with a smarter route, that may not be an issue.
smogcutter 8y ago
How is that different than just... taking the bus?
- sokoloff 8y ago
  Lack of pre-defined and centrally-planned route.
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    Is that a good thing, though? In practice the lack of a pre-planned schedule means that rideshare vehicles have to divert to get to you, being as much as 10-15 minutes away, which is not much better than just waiting for a bus.
    - sokoloff 8y ago
      Quickly catching a bus that isn't going where I want to go isn't ideal either.
  - untog 8y ago
    That doesn't seem like a positive. People like predictability. They know their drive home takes X minutes, give or take Y, which is a small number. Having a different route every day makes the value of Y a lot more variable.
    - eesmith 8y ago
      There's another aspect to "predictability." Back when I was a bus commuter, it was comforting to see the same faces every day. Even without chatting or acknowledging each other, there was a sort of familiarity to the strangers.
- dmortin 8y ago
  It can pick you up at your house.
- pavon 8y ago

pm24601 8y ago

> Which creates carpooling opportunities through economies of scale Like busses and trains? Seriously. Public transit. The issue is a geometric one. There is only a fixed road capacity. Consuming that road capacity with deadheading vehicles is the worst usage.

stale2002 8y ago
Public transit has other significant drawbacks. IE, it can't go point to point, and is instead stuck in a movement pattern that isn't changing.
- VintageCool 8y ago
  A self-driving taxi might help that a lot. Call up a self-driving uber to take you from your home to the nearest train station, and take the light rail into downtown. I think it would be feasible for the self-driving taxi companies to have a small fleet of cars in each neighborhood that could respond rapidly to take people for short trips.
  - stale2002 8y ago
    That would still significantly increase commute times. By definition, public transit can only serve a specific segment of the commuting population.
- scarmig 8y ago
  > IE, it can't go point to point, and is instead stuck in a movement pattern that isn't changing. That's not inherent to public transport. You can easily imagine a public network of bus transit where users send in a request for transit an hour or two beforehand; software coalesces the set of requests into a dynamic set of routes and stops; and tells the user to turn up at a stop (relatively) near the origination point and drops them off at a stop (relatively) near their destination point. Whether it's economic or feasible is a separate issue. But funding mechanism, transport form factor, and autonomy are all distinct parts of a transportation method, and it's a mistake to think of "private autonomous cars" as competing with "legacy human-driven buses with set routes."

joe_the_user 8y ago

Which creates carpooling opportunities through economies of scale, as Uber/Lyft pool is already demonstrating. Links? I haven't found any way to practically share Lyfts for long-ish trips. I don't see any evidence Lyft or Uber will ever do much with shared-rides. For self-driving cars, people wanting to save money will drive their own cars before they share rides. If you have a car, you've sunk a lot of money into it and so the per-ride cost is fairly small. Even a self-driving car has to price-in wear-and-tear.

swiley 8y ago
It's a shame, that would probably solve a lot of their problems with the ratting system.