5 ms·

> AVs will make public transit work a lot better and reduce traffic, make pedestrians safer, etc Highly doubt it. 1. if you have a regular car you get from po

by ajuc 3y ago

> AVs will make public transit work a lot better and reduce traffic, make pedestrians safer, etc Highly doubt it. 1. if you have a regular car you get from point A to B, park, do sth, go from B to A. If you use AV it has to go from point X to A, take you to B, go do sth else at Y, you do your thing, it has to go back from Z to B and take you to A. Instead of using the road from A to B and back you're using the road from X to A, from A to B and back and from Z to B (going from B to Y counts for the other customer so I don't add it). It uses road LONGER per passanger - so traffic will be WORSE and it will use MORE fuel. It will save some parking space tho. Basicaly AVs (and taxis/ubers etc.) trade parking space for road space and fuel. You can't reduce traffic by driving more :) 2. it will only make pedestrians safer if it drives conservatively, but from what I've seen by AV advocacy is people want AV cars to interface with each other and use that to cut the safety margin for efficiency. That's an inherently American idea that assumes people don't walk so you can just change cars and everything will be fine :) It would make pedestrians inherently less safe (because AVs become a train basically - you cannot suddenly stop 1 AV because other are behind it and they assume it won't suddenly stop). If you want a city in which every street is effectively a rail track and every pedestrian crossing is a train crossing with all the disruption to pedestrians and others - do this. Otherwise just use public transport and bikes, please - all the benefits and more, for fraction of cost, and it's healthier. Moving individual people in huge cars just doesn't scale, no matter who drives them.

ghaff 3y ago
As someone who lives far enough out of the nearest major city that I don't really pop in casually for a meal or drink. (It's very doable but I end up being on the road for a good two hours total around whatever activity I'm doing.) An AV wouldn't be free to travel that distance but I would absolutely do that and other activities requiring 1+ hour drives each way more frequently if I didn't need to do the driving myself.
- ajuc 3y ago
  I mean you could just use public transport? I lived in a small village 40 minutes from a big city half my life. There are buses going every 30 minutes each way between around 06:00 and 20:00. They cost under 1 USD per trip. Lots of people use them - kids going to schools, people commuting for work, grandmas who don't have driving licence. I probably used them over 1000 times through my life. That city isn't even that big - 350 000 people. And the buses are profitable. Why can't cities over million people afford public transport is beyond me. BTW notice how old people who can't drive still might want to go to a cinema/theater/doctor/whatever without asking their family or paying for a taxi. It's a huge benefit to everybody that these buses are available. I doubt you can get AV profitable transporting 1 person where buses transport 10-20 people.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    The only public transit option for me is commuter rail which would require me to drive to and park at the (relatively) nearby station. (I'm well outside the city's local bus and subway transit system.) It takes 60-90 minutes to go the 50 miles depending upon whether I need to connect to the subway at my destination or not. It runs no more frequently than hourly and the last couple of trains at night are more like 90+ minutes apart. It's utterly impractical to take in for an evening event. (And it's about $30 round-trip with parking; I do take it in the rare times when I'm going in for the day to work because driving in and back at rush hour is awful.) The commuter rail is "fine" but its schedule doesn't really work outside of commuting hours--and even that is significantly worse than pre-COVID.
    - ajuc 3y ago
      Yeah for me it was like 500 meter walk to the bus stop :) And bus stops were every 2 km or so :) I'm wondering why there are no such buses where you live? It it a matter of population density, different road network architecture (here most villages are build along the roads so you can put bus stops every 1-2 km and you'll get enoguh passangers to get by), or just a chicken-and-egg problem of customers not being used to it so it's not profitable if you create it?
      - ghaff 3y ago
        There is a small regional transit system that covers the grocery store, Walmart, train station, and I'm not sure what else. My sense from seeing it at the grocery store is that it's mostly for seniors and others who can't drive. It covers the nearby ~40K population pair of cities. The surrounding towns--one of which I live in--are pretty rural, or at least exurban, with a very limited commercial tax base and generally don't even have sidewalks outside of the town centers. We'd have neither the density/demand or the budget to have a public transit system.
        uoaei 3y ago
        Comparing your experience of the service for ~40k people vs an urban setting intended to serve ~400k people or more seems at least irrelevant and at most intentionally misleading.
uoaei 3y ago
Imagine, for a moment, accepting the consequences of your choices. You could drive to the nearest transit hub, use public transit for the last 10-30 miles, and still experience a transit without friction.
lamontcg 3y ago
AV cars could be programmed to never stop in bike lanes or bus lanes or do anything else to disrupt transit. They could automatically get out of the way of buses. AV buses and AV cars could coordinate to move people around faster making the public transit more efficient. And all the emotional stress and conflict between buses and cars could be eliminated.

by ajuc 3y ago

ghaff 3y ago

As someone who lives far enough out of the nearest major city that I don't really pop in casually for a meal or drink. (It's very doable but I end up being on the road for a good two hours total around whatever activity I'm doing.) An AV wouldn't be free to travel that distance but I would absolutely do that and other activities requiring 1+ hour drives each way more frequently if I didn't need to do the driving myself.

ajuc 3y ago
I mean you could just use public transport? I lived in a small village 40 minutes from a big city half my life. There are buses going every 30 minutes each way between around 06:00 and 20:00. They cost under 1 USD per trip. Lots of people use them - kids going to schools, people commuting for work, grandmas who don't have driving licence. I probably used them over 1000 times through my life. That city isn't even that big - 350 000 people. And the buses are profitable. Why can't cities over million people afford public transport is beyond me. BTW notice how old people who can't drive still might want to go to a cinema/theater/doctor/whatever without asking their family or paying for a taxi. It's a huge benefit to everybody that these buses are available. I doubt you can get AV profitable transporting 1 person where buses transport 10-20 people.
- ghaff 3y ago
  The only public transit option for me is commuter rail which would require me to drive to and park at the (relatively) nearby station. (I'm well outside the city's local bus and subway transit system.) It takes 60-90 minutes to go the 50 miles depending upon whether I need to connect to the subway at my destination or not. It runs no more frequently than hourly and the last couple of trains at night are more like 90+ minutes apart. It's utterly impractical to take in for an evening event. (And it's about $30 round-trip with parking; I do take it in the rare times when I'm going in for the day to work because driving in and back at rush hour is awful.) The commuter rail is "fine" but its schedule doesn't really work outside of commuting hours--and even that is significantly worse than pre-COVID.
  - ajuc 3y ago
    Yeah for me it was like 500 meter walk to the bus stop :) And bus stops were every 2 km or so :) I'm wondering why there are no such buses where you live? It it a matter of population density, different road network architecture (here most villages are build along the roads so you can put bus stops every 1-2 km and you'll get enoguh passangers to get by), or just a chicken-and-egg problem of customers not being used to it so it's not profitable if you create it?
    - ghaff 3y ago
      There is a small regional transit system that covers the grocery store, Walmart, train station, and I'm not sure what else. My sense from seeing it at the grocery store is that it's mostly for seniors and others who can't drive. It covers the nearby ~40K population pair of cities. The surrounding towns--one of which I live in--are pretty rural, or at least exurban, with a very limited commercial tax base and generally don't even have sidewalks outside of the town centers. We'd have neither the density/demand or the budget to have a public transit system.
      - uoaei 3y ago
        Comparing your experience of the service for ~40k people vs an urban setting intended to serve ~400k people or more seems at least irrelevant and at most intentionally misleading.

uoaei 3y ago

Imagine, for a moment, accepting the consequences of your choices. You could drive to the nearest transit hub, use public transit for the last 10-30 miles, and still experience a transit without friction.

lamontcg 3y ago

AV cars could be programmed to never stop in bike lanes or bus lanes or do anything else to disrupt transit. They could automatically get out of the way of buses. AV buses and AV cars could coordinate to move people around faster making the public transit more efficient. And all the emotional stress and conflict between buses and cars could be eliminated.