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There’s already extensive road infrastructure pretty much everywhere. Autonomous cars that could just use that would be much better than having to build out and

by imgabe 4y ago

There’s already extensive road infrastructure pretty much everywhere. Autonomous cars that could just use that would be much better than having to build out and maintain rails. Buses do not work absurdly well. They take three times as long to go the same distance and operate on a fixed and often infrequent schedule. They aren’t available all the time. You can’t easily transport cargo in them. Ideally we’d redesign cities to be more walkable and bikeable so cars aren’t as necessary, but that’s not going to happen overnight.

arcticbull 4y ago
> Autonomous cars that could just use that would be much better than having to build out and maintain rails. Not if everyone has to spend $50-100K on a car + maintenance + insurance + fuel + parking every 10 years or so and live in cities optimized for those. Regardless how much it costs to invest in infrastructure it will cost far less than equipping everyone in America with a new car at their own expense and socializing the cost of maintaining roads, highways and interstates. Replacing each car in America today with an electric, self-driving car (using a Tesla ballpark and factoring in the aforementioned additional expenses) is $10-20 trillion dollars. Imagine the kind of public transit we could have for twenty trillion dollars invested every 10 years. China put in 24,000 miles of high-speed rail for $500B.
- imgabe 4y ago
  People don't have to all run out at once and buy a new car right away. They'll just replace their current car whenever they were going to anyway. Prices will come down over time. Taxi services that don't have to pay drivers will be far more abundant and affordable in the meantime. Spending that $10-$20 trillion by the government would mean collecting it all at once from people via taxes, not them spending it at their own discretion. That's a big difference.
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    I didn't propose investing $10T at once in transit, I'm saying people are currently spending about $1T/yr on cars and that could be spent on a stellar public transit system yielding much more livable cities. Remember, America is spending money hand over fist on the socialized roads, freeways and interstate all so people can then spend a ton of private money on a car averaging 1.5 person occupancy that spends 95% of its time sitting still not doing anything.
    - imgabe 4y ago
      But every person who is buying a new car in a given year (usually via a loan they pay off over 3-5 years) is not going to just give that money to the government to build a train line that might be finished in 10 years instead (and they have no transportation in the meantime). That makes no sense. These things are not interchangeable.
      - arcticbull 4y ago
        This is a well-trodden path. The government finances the projects over a number of years through the capital markets and then levees a tax to cover the payments. They are quite interchangeable. 30% of New Yorkers and 35% of DC residents don't even have access to cars. 90% of Hong Kongers don't have cars. Yet they manage to thrive.
        imgabe 4y ago
        It's not replacing the money that gets spent on cars. People buying a new car are buying it because they need it now, they need to get around today, not in 10 years when the new train gets built. They're still going to buy the car and then have to pay the tax to build the transit on top of that.
        arcticbull 4y ago
        So you've identified the chicken and the egg, I agree, which is why we finance these things. By the time its built that money won't need to be spent on cars anymore on an ongoing basis.
pwinnski 4y ago
Buses in the USA with limited funding do not work absurdly well, no. I've ridden buses in Hong Kong that are very nearly as efficient as anything else, and one comes along very frequently. Some of that is that Hong Kong is small, but it illustrates the point that buses can be better if funded well. Spend as much money on buses as the Boring Company wastes with silly unusable routes nobody wants, and you'll get great bus service.
- imgabe 4y ago
  I actually live in Hong Kong and don't have a car and that has nothing to do with buses. Everything is within walking distance. Within 5 blocks of my apartment off the top of my head I can think of 4-5 grocery stores, 3-4 butcher shops, a wet market, 3-4 vegetable stands, 3-4 different dentist offices, several different daycares / pre-schools, at least 2 gyms, a public pool, about a dozen hair salons / barbers, dozens of restaurants and bars, and on and on. There is literally nothing I need on a daily basis that I couldn't walk to. I almost never take the bus anywhere. If you had to commute regularly from, say the New Territories in to Central (about as far as you can go in HK), the bus/MTR takes 2-3 times as long as driving.
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    I am not suggesting that the bus service is essentially for daily life in HK, just that it is remarkably efficient for getting from Sai Wan Ho to Central and back again, for example. It's efficiency would amaze more US residents, who've never seen a bus system so well-funded and well-operated. FWIW, Sai Wan Ho to the New Territories took me MTR and light rail, where I was ultimately picked up in a car by the person I was visiting. People living in the New Territories seem to find a car nearly-essential, but that seems to be because MTR doesn't run out there, and the bus service is not nearly as well-developed as Hong Kong Island or Kowloon.

by imgabe 4y ago

arcticbull 4y ago

> Autonomous cars that could just use that would be much better than having to build out and maintain rails. Not if everyone has to spend $50-100K on a car + maintenance + insurance + fuel + parking every 10 years or so and live in cities optimized for those. Regardless how much it costs to invest in infrastructure it will cost far less than equipping everyone in America with a new car at their own expense and socializing the cost of maintaining roads, highways and interstates. Replacing each car in America today with an electric, self-driving car (using a Tesla ballpark and factoring in the aforementioned additional expenses) is $10-20 trillion dollars. Imagine the kind of public transit we could have for twenty trillion dollars invested every 10 years. China put in 24,000 miles of high-speed rail for $500B.

imgabe 4y ago
People don't have to all run out at once and buy a new car right away. They'll just replace their current car whenever they were going to anyway. Prices will come down over time. Taxi services that don't have to pay drivers will be far more abundant and affordable in the meantime. Spending that $10-$20 trillion by the government would mean collecting it all at once from people via taxes, not them spending it at their own discretion. That's a big difference.
- arcticbull 4y ago
  I didn't propose investing $10T at once in transit, I'm saying people are currently spending about $1T/yr on cars and that could be spent on a stellar public transit system yielding much more livable cities. Remember, America is spending money hand over fist on the socialized roads, freeways and interstate all so people can then spend a ton of private money on a car averaging 1.5 person occupancy that spends 95% of its time sitting still not doing anything.
  - imgabe 4y ago
    But every person who is buying a new car in a given year (usually via a loan they pay off over 3-5 years) is not going to just give that money to the government to build a train line that might be finished in 10 years instead (and they have no transportation in the meantime). That makes no sense. These things are not interchangeable.
    - arcticbull 4y ago
      This is a well-trodden path. The government finances the projects over a number of years through the capital markets and then levees a tax to cover the payments. They are quite interchangeable. 30% of New Yorkers and 35% of DC residents don't even have access to cars. 90% of Hong Kongers don't have cars. Yet they manage to thrive.
      - imgabe 4y ago
        It's not replacing the money that gets spent on cars. People buying a new car are buying it because they need it now, they need to get around today, not in 10 years when the new train gets built. They're still going to buy the car and then have to pay the tax to build the transit on top of that.
        arcticbull 4y ago
        So you've identified the chicken and the egg, I agree, which is why we finance these things. By the time its built that money won't need to be spent on cars anymore on an ongoing basis.

pwinnski 4y ago

Buses in the USA with limited funding do not work absurdly well, no. I've ridden buses in Hong Kong that are very nearly as efficient as anything else, and one comes along very frequently. Some of that is that Hong Kong is small, but it illustrates the point that buses can be better if funded well. Spend as much money on buses as the Boring Company wastes with silly unusable routes nobody wants, and you'll get great bus service.

imgabe 4y ago
I actually live in Hong Kong and don't have a car and that has nothing to do with buses. Everything is within walking distance. Within 5 blocks of my apartment off the top of my head I can think of 4-5 grocery stores, 3-4 butcher shops, a wet market, 3-4 vegetable stands, 3-4 different dentist offices, several different daycares / pre-schools, at least 2 gyms, a public pool, about a dozen hair salons / barbers, dozens of restaurants and bars, and on and on. There is literally nothing I need on a daily basis that I couldn't walk to. I almost never take the bus anywhere. If you had to commute regularly from, say the New Territories in to Central (about as far as you can go in HK), the bus/MTR takes 2-3 times as long as driving.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  I am not suggesting that the bus service is essentially for daily life in HK, just that it is remarkably efficient for getting from Sai Wan Ho to Central and back again, for example. It's efficiency would amaze more US residents, who've never seen a bus system so well-funded and well-operated. FWIW, Sai Wan Ho to the New Territories took me MTR and light rail, where I was ultimately picked up in a car by the person I was visiting. People living in the New Territories seem to find a car nearly-essential, but that seems to be because MTR doesn't run out there, and the bus service is not nearly as well-developed as Hong Kong Island or Kowloon.