7 ms·

I really wish all the money that gets funneled into trying to re-invent travel (self-driving buses, hyper-loop, boring company, this, etc) could get invested in

I really wish all the money that gets funneled into trying to re-invent travel (self-driving buses, hyper-loop, boring company, this, etc) could get invested into developing competent American public transit networks based on technology that already exists.

Dylan16807 4y ago
Okay, so you take an $80 billion yearly budget and dump an extra fraction of a billion on top. Is that going to do much? I'd rather risk it on an attempt to make self-driving busses. Getting more development money for electric planes is a nice side effect too, but just in terms of improving transit, reducing the need for drivers would be massive.
- soco 4y ago
  I wasn't aware that the lack of drivers is what was holding up public transit.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Presumably their wages is meant. Labor, not just by drivers but also mechanics and other staff, is a substantial part of transit costs. Cutting fuel cost makes wages a bigger fraction. Reduced maintenance load of an electric fleet could be important.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - teh64 4y ago
      But that is more the cost of other stuff. I bet the difference in costs between driver and self-driving vehicles that are as reliably and safe as bus drivers is not that much. Mechanics etc... would still need to exist for driverless vehicles just as much. I think creating electric busses is much needed, without dumping lots of money into making them autonomous at the start.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        Well, electric busses have already been created. We need a lot of them, for sure, but an extra half percent on the budget isn't going to replace fleets. I'm happy for that money, all paid for by random investors, to go into further-flung research.
  - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
    It's not. What would make Americans take the bus is frequency, reliability, cleanliness and free wifi. And fucking bus lanes. But that's boring isn't it?
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      What would make Americans take buses would also be if they just stopped openly hating homeless people as a matter of life.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      And if you save a lot of money, you can improve all of those.
    - nradov 4y ago
      Americans don't take the bus because they don't want to sit next to the type of people who can't afford a car or get a driver's license.
jahewson 4y ago
The amount of money put into these R&D projects is small in the grand scheme of things. The entire eVTOL space is ~$5bn. Compare this with $6.5bn for the replacement span of the Oakland Bay Bridge or $113bn for California’s non-existent high speed rail.
- benj111 4y ago
  Ok then. Can we funnel all the marketing, spin and hype towards existing public transport?
  - falcor84 4y ago
    Serious question - how would you actually spin and hype something that already exists? It just reminds me of that old soviet-era joke that goes something like this: First grade teacher in Moscow: "Kids, today I want to teach you all about how life is great in the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union we have the tastiest food, the most fun toys, the most interesting shows ..." Kids: "Oh, teacher, that sounds amazing, can we please go visit the Soviet Union?"
    - benj111 4y ago
      You realise all these new fangled things are old things with a different spin. The boring company makes something worse than the underground. Evtol is basically helicopters, etc.
      - 6510 4y ago
        If there is an hourly train one could say there are 60 moments at which one could chose to travel. In the worse one you've missed it by 0-1 min. It seems reasonable to add the average 30 min to the travel time + margins. One could similarly say there are 60 moments to arrive in an hour. Your appointment could live at the most unfortunate. It seems reasonable to add the average 30 min to the trip again. If the train stops a lot it might be close to accelerating and decelerating most of the time. It seems reasonable to lose half the possible for speed. If it doesn't stop a lot it might take a long time to get to the station. If you need to take 2 trains you might have to wait for the second. Buses and taxis stop far away from the train and traffic is unpredictable. No matter how fast the train is, it can still take a long time to get places. There are countless puzzles left to solve.
pjc50 4y ago
To a great extent, the hyping of infeasible transit plans by a car company is intended to crowd out sensible discussion about public transport.
MomoXenosaga 4y ago
You can see it in any major East Coast city: you need to get 1 million people from the suburbs into the city center between 7 and 9am and the only reliable way to do it is subways and rail.
- thehappypm 4y ago
  In Boston, which has a hub-and-spoke transit system that is oriented towards getting people downtown to an almost absurd degree, the numbers bear out that the T takes about as many people in and out of downtown as the freeways do by car. The report below states about 500,000 cars enter Boston via its main highways, and about 500,000 people take the T, daily. https://www.mass.gov/doc/massachusetts-transportation-facts/download https://www.mass.gov/doc/massachusetts-transportation-facts/...

Dylan16807 4y ago

Okay, so you take an $80 billion yearly budget and dump an extra fraction of a billion on top. Is that going to do much? I'd rather risk it on an attempt to make self-driving busses. Getting more development money for electric planes is a nice side effect too, but just in terms of improving transit, reducing the need for drivers would be massive.

soco 4y ago
I wasn't aware that the lack of drivers is what was holding up public transit.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Presumably their wages is meant. Labor, not just by drivers but also mechanics and other staff, is a substantial part of transit costs. Cutting fuel cost makes wages a bigger fraction. Reduced maintenance load of an electric fleet could be important.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - teh64 4y ago
    But that is more the cost of other stuff. I bet the difference in costs between driver and self-driving vehicles that are as reliably and safe as bus drivers is not that much. Mechanics etc... would still need to exist for driverless vehicles just as much. I think creating electric busses is much needed, without dumping lots of money into making them autonomous at the start.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      Well, electric busses have already been created. We need a lot of them, for sure, but an extra half percent on the budget isn't going to replace fleets. I'm happy for that money, all paid for by random investors, to go into further-flung research.
- MomoXenosaga 4y ago
  It's not. What would make Americans take the bus is frequency, reliability, cleanliness and free wifi. And fucking bus lanes. But that's boring isn't it?
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    What would make Americans take buses would also be if they just stopped openly hating homeless people as a matter of life.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    And if you save a lot of money, you can improve all of those.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Americans don't take the bus because they don't want to sit next to the type of people who can't afford a car or get a driver's license.

jahewson 4y ago

The amount of money put into these R&D projects is small in the grand scheme of things. The entire eVTOL space is ~$5bn. Compare this with $6.5bn for the replacement span of the Oakland Bay Bridge or $113bn for California’s non-existent high speed rail.

benj111 4y ago
Ok then. Can we funnel all the marketing, spin and hype towards existing public transport?
- falcor84 4y ago
  Serious question - how would you actually spin and hype something that already exists? It just reminds me of that old soviet-era joke that goes something like this: First grade teacher in Moscow: "Kids, today I want to teach you all about how life is great in the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union we have the tastiest food, the most fun toys, the most interesting shows ..." Kids: "Oh, teacher, that sounds amazing, can we please go visit the Soviet Union?"
  - benj111 4y ago
    You realise all these new fangled things are old things with a different spin. The boring company makes something worse than the underground. Evtol is basically helicopters, etc.
    - 6510 4y ago
      If there is an hourly train one could say there are 60 moments at which one could chose to travel. In the worse one you've missed it by 0-1 min. It seems reasonable to add the average 30 min to the travel time + margins. One could similarly say there are 60 moments to arrive in an hour. Your appointment could live at the most unfortunate. It seems reasonable to add the average 30 min to the trip again. If the train stops a lot it might be close to accelerating and decelerating most of the time. It seems reasonable to lose half the possible for speed. If it doesn't stop a lot it might take a long time to get to the station. If you need to take 2 trains you might have to wait for the second. Buses and taxis stop far away from the train and traffic is unpredictable. No matter how fast the train is, it can still take a long time to get places. There are countless puzzles left to solve.

pjc50 4y ago

To a great extent, the hyping of infeasible transit plans by a car company is intended to crowd out sensible discussion about public transport.

MomoXenosaga 4y ago

You can see it in any major East Coast city: you need to get 1 million people from the suburbs into the city center between 7 and 9am and the only reliable way to do it is subways and rail.

thehappypm 4y ago
In Boston, which has a hub-and-spoke transit system that is oriented towards getting people downtown to an almost absurd degree, the numbers bear out that the T takes about as many people in and out of downtown as the freeways do by car. The report below states about 500,000 cars enter Boston via its main highways, and about 500,000 people take the T, daily. https://www.mass.gov/doc/massachusetts-transportation-facts/download https://www.mass.gov/doc/massachusetts-transportation-facts/...