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> more loss-making - easier for car drivers to lobby politicians to kill them off. This logic only holds if you assume public services must make money and this
by ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> more loss-making - easier for car drivers to lobby politicians to kill them off.
This logic only holds if you assume public services must make money and this is not a universal rule. Tons of public services hemorrhage money. It's called "spending money to get things" and we as a society have been doing it for basically as long as money has existed.
> If there's a lack of funding, and there's a tech that will make buses cheaper, it's a no-brainer to adopt it.
A regular car retrofitted to operate "autonomously" costs upwards of 100k by a quick google, and we're not talking a Mercedes here, we're talking a bog standard crossover. Busses cost near 6 times what that "autonomous" car costs for a boring one that a person drives, how much do you think a robo one will cost?
Also worth noting, the prototype pictured in the article looks to move WAY fewer people than a standard city bus.
- triceratops 2y ago> if you assume public services must make money and this is not a universal rule I don't assume that. But I'm not the electorate. > Tons of public services hemorrhage money And that makes them easy targets for cuts. I personally prefer having public services stick around to serve people. That means stiffening them against political attacks as much as possible, and taking easy wins if they're available. > how much do you think a robo one will cost? So now we're arguing the actual cost-benefit of the technology. That's a much better way to approach it than reflexively dismissing it.
- whimsicalism 2y agoi was just thinking that we aren't doing enough deficit spending and mortgage rates are not sufficiently crowded out by public borrowing