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As an American with extensive time spent in Europe, I’d much, much rather have European-style metros and tramways than self-driving cars. Waymo (though a techn
by archagon 1y ago
As an American with extensive time spent in Europe, I’d much, much rather have European-style metros and tramways than self-driving cars.
Waymo (though a technical marvel) is a bandaid over our inability to build and maintain public infrastructure. Be sure to cherish what you’ve got.
- whiplash451 1y agoEU’s amazing infrastructure is the Minitel that will prevent it from getting the internet of self-driving. Subways don’t solve last-mile problems or trucking.
- archagon 1y agoGood. Cars ruin walkable cities, and the last-mile problem can be solved in other ways. And it's not just the EU. I'm sure that e.g. China and Japan will continue to invest in their excellent public transit infrastructure even when there are more self-driving cars on the road.
- astrange 1y agoMuch of Japan's transit infrastructure is private. There's nothing special about transit that means the government has to own it; being a government, it can regulate things without owning them. Americans have this idea that transit is for poor people, which translates to "it's not important for transit to make money", which translates to "we need to make it illegal for transit to possibly try to make money", so there aren't even vending machines at the platforms. Whereas in Asia they do profitable land development at the transit stations.
- glitchc 1y ago> Much of Japan's transit infrastructure is private. There's nothing special about transit that means the government has to own it; being a government, it can regulate things without owning them. Japan's private transit infrastructure is only private in high-very high density environments (inner-city) and subsidized in low-density environments (rural, cross-country). Ultimately private group transit requires population density above a certain threshold to be viable.
- tonyedgecombe 1y ago>Subways don’t solve last-mile problems We don't have a last mile problem, we have legs for that.
- dgfitz 1y agoAs an American, I think you’re naive and short-sighted. You must realize that, at some point, self-driving cars will be ubiquitous. Maybe not for 50 years, but they will be. What you’re actually saying is “I’m virtue-signaling with Europe because that’s what the cool kids do”
- archagon 1y ago…What? What sort of terminally online strawman would be spending his free time “virtue-signaling with Europe” to some anonymous bozos on a tech forum? What a dull and intellectually uncurious reply. I think self-driving cars may eventually become common in areas where cars are currently common. I think public transit will continue to dominate in parts of the world where it currently dominates, because it is simply a superior user experience for the majority of people when the government cares to invest in it. (Not to mention far cheaper and more egalitarian.) I am conveying my lived experience in most European cities I've been to.
- glitchc 1y agoTry moving a few bags of sod and mulch via public transit. Condescending tone is condescending.
- archagon 1y agoDesigning our urban transit around the needs of the mulch-bearing 0.1% seems like a bad idea.
- dgfitz 1y agoThrowing out bullshit statistics like 0.1% is an ignorant take. See, it’s super easy to be a jerk.
- Dylan16807 1y agoSaying we shouldn't design around that use case isn't being a jerk. And the exact number wasn't the point. The percent of consumer vehicles on the road that are carrying a significant payload to/from home is pretty small. Especially areas where transit even halfway makes sense. What's your best estimate?
- rangestransform 1y agoAmerican public transit construction costs are now ridiculous in terms of both money and political capital. Even somewhere as sprawled as San Jose now requires well over 1b/mi to build a subway under; BART could've acquired an entire autonomous driving company for the cost of the Silicon Valley extension.
- sagarm 1y agoAnd a new freeway offramp costs $100M. Yet, nobody is bleating about killing and starving Caltrans.
- Manuel_D 1y agoMany American cities don't have the population density to make metros and trams economically viable. And those few cities that do have comparable density (New York, Chicago, namely) do have metros. Public infrastructure has high overhead costs, and low population density means there isn't enough ridership to make it viable.
- archagon 1y agoRotterdam — a city with a population of around 650,000 — has both a metro and a tram system. Extraordinary density is not a prerequisite. And in any case, there's no reason that public transit needs to be self-funded. We don't expect the same of most of our other public services.
- Manuel_D 1y agoRotterdam has 3,000 people per square kilometer. Contrast that with the San Francisco bay peninsula's ~1,100 people per square kilometer. This is demonstrating my point about population density and transit.
- archagon 1y agoThe peninsula might not be dense, but San Francisco has a density of 7,194/km2 and the transit situation pales in comparison to Rotterdam's. There are many urban areas in the US with population density of 3,000/km2 or higher that do not have any public transit at all.
- Manuel_D 1y agoPeople in the thread are asking why people ride Waymo to SFO, which is well outside San Francisco proper. Thus, the whole peninsula's density is what's relevant. The US does not have many metro areas with population densities above 3,000/km2. And those that do, like Washington D.C, NYC, Boston, Chicago, do have metro systems.
- 542354234235 1y ago
- minwcnt5 1y agoEuropean cities have lots of taxis. Same with Asian cities. They will obviously have AVs in the future. I'm not sure why you think they should be mutually exclusive with transit.