5 ms·

BART is the ailing infrastructure / life support before self-driving cars come online, and that should be immensely respected. We should always remember where w

BART is the ailing infrastructure / life support before self-driving cars come online, and that should be immensely respected. We should always remember where we came from.

AlotOfReading 4y ago
Autonomous vehicles are not a replacement for intra-regional transport systems like BART, they're complementary last-mile transport competing against things like taxis. The relative costs make the difference obvious. A one way BART ticket between two distant stops like Dublin and 16th st/Mission is currently $3.45. Using a conservative cost-per-mile figure of $0.50 for the car and ignoring the bridge toll, the 37 road miles between those stations would cost over 5x more than the BART fare. An expensive autonomous vehicle that has to recoup R&D and generally be profitable would probably have to be an order of magnitude or more expensive than BART.
- lawrenceyan 4y ago
  Given the costs for development of roads has already been paid for, self-driving cars are actually incredibly cheap. It’s the cost of electricity plus amortized depreciation of the vehicle. R&D is pretty even I think when you consider the development costs that also went into engineering the BART system. The cost per mile is definitely within the range of ~.09 ($3.45 / 37 miles), with immense value from being able to travel anywhere that has roads and been geo-mapped. One of the primary limitations of public transport is that it’s limited to specific locations. Self-driving removes that constraint.
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    $0.09 is more like the cost of energy than the total cost including depreciation. The federal $0.50 rate is much closer to the actual targets companies are aiming for.
    - lawrenceyan 4y ago
      The cost of labor is roughly zero, so energy is really the primary driver here.
      - AlotOfReading 4y ago
        The federal reimbursement/tax deduction rate doesn't incorporate the "labor costs" of driving either. Depreciation is usually the main component in both.
        lawrenceyan 4y ago
        I don't fully understand what you're saying. Can you clarify what you mean by federal reimbursement/tax deduction rate incorporating labor costs?
- midoridensha 4y ago
  The other factor is that roads simply cannot handle the volume of people that trains can. One subway train can easily result in hundreds of cars not being on the road.
  - duskwuff 4y ago
    Same goes for parking, especially in cities like San Francisco. (And if someone wants to counterargue that self-driving cars can drive away to park somewhere else -- that just makes the traffic even worse, since now there's twice as many cars entering and leaving the city around rush hour.)
  - Gibbon1 4y ago
    I saw a transportation guy that said what transit systems like BART are good at is getting people on and off quickly. Better than buses and far better than taxi's.
- thereisnospork 4y ago
  >Using a conservative cost-per-mile figure of $0.50 for the car and ignoring the bridge toll, the 37 road miles between those stations would cost over 5x more than the BART fare Do note that the BART fare is heavily subsidized, actual costs[0] are closer to .40cents per passenger mile. So Bart is only slightly cheaper, by lets say 25cents per mile[1], than a car which is much faster, cleaner, serves a larger geographic area, and is far more convenient. [0]https://www.bart.gov/kpi/stability https://www.bart.gov/kpi/stability .39$ in 2019, undoubtedly more now with inflation. [1]2022 IRS deduction of 62.5cents
  - jen20 4y ago
    > which is much faster You must be driving on different Bay Area roads than me.
    - thereisnospork 4y ago
      You must be taking different Bay Area transit than me (not that Bay area roads aren't hellish). Other than peak commute times cars are far faster to pretty everywhere BART serves outside of SF proper, and obviously much faster to anyplace BART doesn't. The aforementioned Dublin > mission BART route is only about parity with driving for a 9:00am arrival in SF, and much slower after[0]. To say nothing of the obvious choke point that is the bay bridge, which would be well served by either an expansion or a hybrid approach. Robotaxi to west Oakland, hope on a bart, pick up a new robotaxi in SF to get to e.g. the sunset, or other not-bart served location. [0]https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Amador+Lakes+Apartment+Homes,+8105+N+Lake+Dr,+Dublin,+CA+94568/Mission+St+%26+10th+St,+San+Francisco,+CA+94103/@37.7946518,-122.3021698,11z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m18!4m17!1m5!1m1!1s0x808fec3613381c8f:0xe87af5ff73cb08f1!2m2!1d-121.9220006!2d37.7250386!1m5!1m1!1s0x8085809dabfed783:0x4de35e0d56c98612!2m2!1d-122.4159441!2d37.7752882!2m3!6e1!7e2!8j1663664400!3e0 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Amador+Lakes+Apartment+Homes...
klyrs 4y ago
> We should always remember where we came from. Especially before we get there.
evil-olive 4y ago
cars are not a replacement for trains, period, full stop. autonomous operation does not change the fundamental math. a single BART train car carries 50 people seated, up to 200 people when packed nuts-to-butts. the longest trains are 10 cars [0]. so at rush hour, you'd expect 500-2000 people per train. say we replace one single train with autonomous cars. that means the roads surrounding the subway station now have an additional 500-2000 cars, beyond the existing traffic of rush hour. and they're all trying to navigate to a curb lane so they can pick up or drop off their passenger safely. if your trains are running 10 minute headways, that means in order to compete, those 500-2000 autonomous cars have 10 minutes to clear the area around the station, and at the same time another group of 500-2000 cars needs to come in, in order to pick up or drop off the next trainload. the math simply doesn't work. even if a genie granted you three wishes and you used all of them on having cars that are perfect, absolutely bug-free, incredibly smart, 100% autonomous in all driving conditions, there is no way to match the density of people movement that trains allow. 0: https://www.bart.gov/about/history/cars https://www.bart.gov/about/history/cars
- lawrenceyan 4y ago
  The US isn’t really dense enough to support trains except in major population centers. Self-driving vehicles scale to all areas. I think it’s important not to forget the suburban / rural places we have. There’s a lot of value there.
  - evil-olive 4y ago
    your original statement was that self-driving cars would replace systems like BART that operate in dense urban areas. now it seems like you're moving the goalposts to talk about rural areas. > except in major population centers 80% of the US population lives in what the Census considers an urban area [0] for the remaining 20% in rural areas...I don't think anyone would argue that subway trains are the ideal mode of transport for them. but at the same time, I don't think the "shared fleet of autonomous robo-taxis" model is the right fit for rural areas either. if I lived in a rural area, I'd want to have a vehicle I owned in my driveway, ready to go whenever I needed it. it may have some autonomous features, but I would have no interest in any of the "have your car make money while you sleep" [1] programs that autonomous car companies have proposed. if your concern is promoting transportation methods that are useful and effective across rural, suburban, and urban areas, the best example of that that I'm aware of is the humble bicycle. are you in favor of improving bicycle infrastructure as well, such as by building more protected bike lanes, tax credits for e-bikes, etc? that is in many ways not as "sexy" as autonomous cars, but that's because it's a boring, proven technology that could easily be implemented in a wide variety of jurisdictions. 0: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-areas/urban-rural/ua-facts.html https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/g... 1: https://futurism.com/the-byte/ride-hailing-tesla-elon-musk https://futurism.com/the-byte/ride-hailing-tesla-elon-musk

BART is the ailing infrastructure / life support before self-driving cars come online, and that should be immensely respected. We should always remember where we came from.

AlotOfReading 4y ago

Autonomous vehicles are not a replacement for intra-regional transport systems like BART, they're complementary last-mile transport competing against things like taxis. The relative costs make the difference obvious. A one way BART ticket between two distant stops like Dublin and 16th st/Mission is currently $3.45. Using a conservative cost-per-mile figure of $0.50 for the car and ignoring the bridge toll, the 37 road miles between those stations would cost over 5x more than the BART fare. An expensive autonomous vehicle that has to recoup R&D and generally be profitable would probably have to be an order of magnitude or more expensive than BART.

lawrenceyan 4y ago
Given the costs for development of roads has already been paid for, self-driving cars are actually incredibly cheap. It’s the cost of electricity plus amortized depreciation of the vehicle. R&D is pretty even I think when you consider the development costs that also went into engineering the BART system. The cost per mile is definitely within the range of ~.09 ($3.45 / 37 miles), with immense value from being able to travel anywhere that has roads and been geo-mapped. One of the primary limitations of public transport is that it’s limited to specific locations. Self-driving removes that constraint.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  $0.09 is more like the cost of energy than the total cost including depreciation. The federal $0.50 rate is much closer to the actual targets companies are aiming for.
  - lawrenceyan 4y ago
    The cost of labor is roughly zero, so energy is really the primary driver here.
    - AlotOfReading 4y ago
      The federal reimbursement/tax deduction rate doesn't incorporate the "labor costs" of driving either. Depreciation is usually the main component in both.
      - lawrenceyan 4y ago
        I don't fully understand what you're saying. Can you clarify what you mean by federal reimbursement/tax deduction rate incorporating labor costs?
midoridensha 4y ago
The other factor is that roads simply cannot handle the volume of people that trains can. One subway train can easily result in hundreds of cars not being on the road.
- duskwuff 4y ago
  Same goes for parking, especially in cities like San Francisco. (And if someone wants to counterargue that self-driving cars can drive away to park somewhere else -- that just makes the traffic even worse, since now there's twice as many cars entering and leaving the city around rush hour.)
- Gibbon1 4y ago
  I saw a transportation guy that said what transit systems like BART are good at is getting people on and off quickly. Better than buses and far better than taxi's.
thereisnospork 4y ago
>Using a conservative cost-per-mile figure of $0.50 for the car and ignoring the bridge toll, the 37 road miles between those stations would cost over 5x more than the BART fare Do note that the BART fare is heavily subsidized, actual costs[0] are closer to .40cents per passenger mile. So Bart is only slightly cheaper, by lets say 25cents per mile[1], than a car which is much faster, cleaner, serves a larger geographic area, and is far more convenient. [0]https://www.bart.gov/kpi/stability https://www.bart.gov/kpi/stability .39$ in 2019, undoubtedly more now with inflation. [1]2022 IRS deduction of 62.5cents
- jen20 4y ago
  > which is much faster You must be driving on different Bay Area roads than me.
  - thereisnospork 4y ago
    You must be taking different Bay Area transit than me (not that Bay area roads aren't hellish). Other than peak commute times cars are far faster to pretty everywhere BART serves outside of SF proper, and obviously much faster to anyplace BART doesn't. The aforementioned Dublin > mission BART route is only about parity with driving for a 9:00am arrival in SF, and much slower after[0]. To say nothing of the obvious choke point that is the bay bridge, which would be well served by either an expansion or a hybrid approach. Robotaxi to west Oakland, hope on a bart, pick up a new robotaxi in SF to get to e.g. the sunset, or other not-bart served location. [0]https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Amador+Lakes+Apartment+Homes,+8105+N+Lake+Dr,+Dublin,+CA+94568/Mission+St+%26+10th+St,+San+Francisco,+CA+94103/@37.7946518,-122.3021698,11z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m18!4m17!1m5!1m1!1s0x808fec3613381c8f:0xe87af5ff73cb08f1!2m2!1d-121.9220006!2d37.7250386!1m5!1m1!1s0x8085809dabfed783:0x4de35e0d56c98612!2m2!1d-122.4159441!2d37.7752882!2m3!6e1!7e2!8j1663664400!3e0 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Amador+Lakes+Apartment+Homes...

klyrs 4y ago

> We should always remember where we came from. Especially before we get there.

evil-olive 4y ago

cars are not a replacement for trains, period, full stop. autonomous operation does not change the fundamental math. a single BART train car carries 50 people seated, up to 200 people when packed nuts-to-butts. the longest trains are 10 cars [0]. so at rush hour, you'd expect 500-2000 people per train. say we replace one single train with autonomous cars. that means the roads surrounding the subway station now have an additional 500-2000 cars, beyond the existing traffic of rush hour. and they're all trying to navigate to a curb lane so they can pick up or drop off their passenger safely. if your trains are running 10 minute headways, that means in order to compete, those 500-2000 autonomous cars have 10 minutes to clear the area around the station, and at the same time another group of 500-2000 cars needs to come in, in order to pick up or drop off the next trainload. the math simply doesn't work. even if a genie granted you three wishes and you used all of them on having cars that are perfect, absolutely bug-free, incredibly smart, 100% autonomous in all driving conditions, there is no way to match the density of people movement that trains allow. 0: https://www.bart.gov/about/history/cars https://www.bart.gov/about/history/cars

lawrenceyan 4y ago
The US isn’t really dense enough to support trains except in major population centers. Self-driving vehicles scale to all areas. I think it’s important not to forget the suburban / rural places we have. There’s a lot of value there.
- evil-olive 4y ago
  your original statement was that self-driving cars would replace systems like BART that operate in dense urban areas. now it seems like you're moving the goalposts to talk about rural areas. > except in major population centers 80% of the US population lives in what the Census considers an urban area [0] for the remaining 20% in rural areas...I don't think anyone would argue that subway trains are the ideal mode of transport for them. but at the same time, I don't think the "shared fleet of autonomous robo-taxis" model is the right fit for rural areas either. if I lived in a rural area, I'd want to have a vehicle I owned in my driveway, ready to go whenever I needed it. it may have some autonomous features, but I would have no interest in any of the "have your car make money while you sleep" [1] programs that autonomous car companies have proposed. if your concern is promoting transportation methods that are useful and effective across rural, suburban, and urban areas, the best example of that that I'm aware of is the humble bicycle. are you in favor of improving bicycle infrastructure as well, such as by building more protected bike lanes, tax credits for e-bikes, etc? that is in many ways not as "sexy" as autonomous cars, but that's because it's a boring, proven technology that could easily be implemented in a wide variety of jurisdictions. 0: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-areas/urban-rural/ua-facts.html https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/g... 1: https://futurism.com/the-byte/ride-hailing-tesla-elon-musk https://futurism.com/the-byte/ride-hailing-tesla-elon-musk