8 ms·

I never understood why big, congested cities in the USA (NYC, Boston, L.A., D.C., Chicago) aren't dumping money into funding FSD research hand over fist. It's n

by 1970-01-01 10mo ago

I never understood why big, congested cities in the USA (NYC, Boston, L.A., D.C., Chicago) aren't dumping money into funding FSD research hand over fist. It's not a moonshot anymore, and it would be the game-changer of the century in terms of public transportation and GDP. This is a long-term no-brainer for prosperity.

QuadmasterXLII 10mo ago
What's the theory of change here? FSD fundamentally is going to make keeping a car moving on the road cheaper, and making something cheaper makes it happen more.
- JasonADrury 10mo ago
  FSD could largely eliminate privately owned vehicles, it could also allow cities to get rid of most parking infrastructure.
  - garbawarb 10mo ago
    But a good mass transit system, pedestrian/cycling infrastructure, and efficient urban design are already proven ways of doing that.
    - JasonADrury 10mo ago
      And FSD would just be one more thing to add to that list.
    - rayiner 10mo ago
      They come with fundamental compromises that Americans aren’t willing to live with, namely having to adhere to schedules, ride with other people, and not going directly to their destination.
      - JasonADrury 10mo ago
        Not just Americans, all the big European cities with good public transportation are usually full of cars.
        amanaplanacanal 10mo ago
        Imagine how much worse it would be without the public transportation siphoning off so many riders.
        JasonADrury 10mo ago
        For sure, but in many places it just couldn't realistically be much worse and the main consequences would probably be on the local economy rather than the amount of road use. Less people would be able to travel at all, inevitably leading to reduced need for travel.
    - triceratops 10mo ago
      FSD can make mass transit cheaper. Imagine not having to pay bus drivers' salaries. Being able to adjust vehicle sizes to the route's demand dynamically.
      - JasonADrury 10mo ago
        The biggest win is probably dynamic routing, just select your pickup-point and a destination and a bus will get automatically routed. You'd never be forced to waste time driving past a stop for which there's no customer demand on that particular trip.
        cogman10 10mo ago
        Doesn't work (IMO). Very functional mass transit lives and dies on predictability. Having dynamic routing would be the antithesis to that. Maybe your trip will take 20 minutes, maybe it'll be 1 hour. It'd be impossible to tell which one it'll be because the route changes based on when you request and who else has requested. If you wanted something like dynamic routing, then what you'd do is have it as a supplement to standard routing. Effectively taxi to the nearest bus stop.
        JasonADrury 10mo ago
        For the same amount of trips, this system could reliably allow shorter and more frequent trips than previously possible. Given that the system would work better, it would need to scale up to meet increased demand. There's absolutely no reason for dynamic routing to not reliably be faster than or as fast as static routes.
  - idontwantthis 10mo ago
    That’s public transportation except tiny vehicles taking one person at a time instead of large vehicles taking many. It’s not an improvement.
    - JasonADrury 10mo ago
      Why do you think it's not an improvement over tiny vehicles used by only one person ever? A single Waymo can replace multiple private vehicles.
      - 1970-01-01 10mo ago
        You could also create virtual paths, whereby you're heading north in one Waymo until say 38th street, and then you hop out and grab another waiting for you in just 30 seconds. Now you move east for 5 more blocks and arrive home without fiddling around at any other stops or stations.
        JasonADrury 10mo ago
        Sure, and you could totally do this with multiple passengers at a time too. You could even profile your passengers to avoid any unpleasant partner choices, restrict this to specific hours, etc. You could even design vehicles for transporting multiple individual passengers in totally separate spaces. There are endless improvements to the status quo you can achieve with self driving vehicles, things which will simultaneously improve quality of life for literally everybody.
      - idontwantthis 10mo ago
        It can replace multiple private vehicles sitting at home doing nothing. Moving individuals in individual vehicles cannot replace individual vehicles moving individual people on the road at one time.
    - 1970-01-01 10mo ago
      You assume FSD would jam traffic as it does with human drives, but you need to make the case for this as it's apples and oranges in terms of traffic. Why almost all traffic jams occur is distracted and poor driving.
  - bryanlarsen 10mo ago
    Number of cars isn't the relative metric for congestion, it's number of miles driven. FSD makes driving easier / cheaper / better. It'll increase the number of miles driven.
- 1970-01-01 10mo ago
  It eliminates traffic, parking, and alll the other pain points of owning a vehicle just to get from A to B when a car is the only true option. Certainly, FSD buses would be a win-win for cities too.
  - bryanlarsen 10mo ago
    So instead of parking the FSD cars will be dead-heading from one pickup to another, increasing traffic.
    - 1970-01-01 10mo ago
      It's important to make the distinction that flowing traffic and sitting traffic are different things to people. I really don't think a flowing river of FSD is worse than a static jam, but I could be wrong here, as there has never been a full self-driving city.
  - Analemma_ 10mo ago
    It's very much a question mark whether FSD would eliminate traffic. If people can zone out and be on their phone while their car drives them, that encourages a lot more trips which might not otherwise be taken because of bad traffic. I can easily see FSD making traffic much worse.
  - triceratops 10mo ago
    It doesn't eliminate traffic without congestion pricing. FSD reduces the annoyance cost of driving in traffic, which means there's going to be a lot more traffic.
bfeynman 10mo ago
In what world do you get that conclusion? Dense cities in other parts of the world rely on mass transit to move people. FSD so you can have self driving cars in the street -> ? -> increasing congestion. The point is you should have more effective volume transit not optimizing random ones. 1000 cars on FSD are an optimization better than 1000 taxi drivers, compared to a train or a few buses.
- rayiner 10mo ago
  > Dense cities in other parts of the world rely on mass transit to move people But they don’t solve the fundamental problems with mass transit: comfort, convenience, and trip times. I was just at Disney World and joking to my wife that the park is propaganda to get people to use public transit because Walt loved trains. (You can’t get into the parks by driving. Only the train, bus, or gondola. If you drive you have to park at this giant lot and take the train from there.) But even within that self contained environment—where land for transit infrastructure is basically free because Disney bought it all decades ago—public transit still isn’t great. Trying to get three kids and all their shit out the door to catch a bus or train, having to fold up strollers, etc., just sucks in comparison to throwing them into a car.
  - vikingerik 10mo ago
    Clarification: only Magic Kingdom has that extra step of train/ferry/bus transportation from the parking lot. For all the other parks at Disney World, you can drive in and walk to the entrance. (There are trams if you're far out, but you can also walk.) Yes, Walt did want that extra step of separation from the real world. Then Disney realized the logistical problems with it and didn't repeat it for the other parks, but they're stuck with it at Magic Kingdom. (And it also acts as an upsell for the premium resorts that are positioned right next to Magic Kingdom in walking distance.)
    - lisbbb 10mo ago
      Let me tell you something about Magic Kingdom: Everything between the parking lot and the rides exists the way it does in order to SLOW YOU DOWN so you spend more money. All of it! Okay, maybe not the parking lot trams, but all their other gimmicks are just part of a funnel to keep you away from the rides as long as possible and once you're inside, to keep you from leaving.
mcc1ane 10mo ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0

QuadmasterXLII 10mo ago

What's the theory of change here? FSD fundamentally is going to make keeping a car moving on the road cheaper, and making something cheaper makes it happen more.

JasonADrury 10mo ago
FSD could largely eliminate privately owned vehicles, it could also allow cities to get rid of most parking infrastructure.
- garbawarb 10mo ago
  But a good mass transit system, pedestrian/cycling infrastructure, and efficient urban design are already proven ways of doing that.
  - JasonADrury 10mo ago
    And FSD would just be one more thing to add to that list.
  - rayiner 10mo ago
    They come with fundamental compromises that Americans aren’t willing to live with, namely having to adhere to schedules, ride with other people, and not going directly to their destination.
    - JasonADrury 10mo ago
      Not just Americans, all the big European cities with good public transportation are usually full of cars.
      - amanaplanacanal 10mo ago
        Imagine how much worse it would be without the public transportation siphoning off so many riders.
        JasonADrury 10mo ago
        For sure, but in many places it just couldn't realistically be much worse and the main consequences would probably be on the local economy rather than the amount of road use. Less people would be able to travel at all, inevitably leading to reduced need for travel.
  - triceratops 10mo ago
    FSD can make mass transit cheaper. Imagine not having to pay bus drivers' salaries. Being able to adjust vehicle sizes to the route's demand dynamically.
    - JasonADrury 10mo ago
      The biggest win is probably dynamic routing, just select your pickup-point and a destination and a bus will get automatically routed. You'd never be forced to waste time driving past a stop for which there's no customer demand on that particular trip.
      - cogman10 10mo ago
        Doesn't work (IMO). Very functional mass transit lives and dies on predictability. Having dynamic routing would be the antithesis to that. Maybe your trip will take 20 minutes, maybe it'll be 1 hour. It'd be impossible to tell which one it'll be because the route changes based on when you request and who else has requested. If you wanted something like dynamic routing, then what you'd do is have it as a supplement to standard routing. Effectively taxi to the nearest bus stop.
        JasonADrury 10mo ago
        For the same amount of trips, this system could reliably allow shorter and more frequent trips than previously possible. Given that the system would work better, it would need to scale up to meet increased demand. There's absolutely no reason for dynamic routing to not reliably be faster than or as fast as static routes.
- idontwantthis 10mo ago
  That’s public transportation except tiny vehicles taking one person at a time instead of large vehicles taking many. It’s not an improvement.
  - JasonADrury 10mo ago
    Why do you think it's not an improvement over tiny vehicles used by only one person ever? A single Waymo can replace multiple private vehicles.
    - 1970-01-01 10mo ago
      You could also create virtual paths, whereby you're heading north in one Waymo until say 38th street, and then you hop out and grab another waiting for you in just 30 seconds. Now you move east for 5 more blocks and arrive home without fiddling around at any other stops or stations.
      - JasonADrury 10mo ago
        Sure, and you could totally do this with multiple passengers at a time too. You could even profile your passengers to avoid any unpleasant partner choices, restrict this to specific hours, etc. You could even design vehicles for transporting multiple individual passengers in totally separate spaces. There are endless improvements to the status quo you can achieve with self driving vehicles, things which will simultaneously improve quality of life for literally everybody.
    - idontwantthis 10mo ago
      It can replace multiple private vehicles sitting at home doing nothing. Moving individuals in individual vehicles cannot replace individual vehicles moving individual people on the road at one time.
  - 1970-01-01 10mo ago
    You assume FSD would jam traffic as it does with human drives, but you need to make the case for this as it's apples and oranges in terms of traffic. Why almost all traffic jams occur is distracted and poor driving.
- bryanlarsen 10mo ago
  Number of cars isn't the relative metric for congestion, it's number of miles driven. FSD makes driving easier / cheaper / better. It'll increase the number of miles driven.
1970-01-01 10mo ago
It eliminates traffic, parking, and alll the other pain points of owning a vehicle just to get from A to B when a car is the only true option. Certainly, FSD buses would be a win-win for cities too.
- bryanlarsen 10mo ago
  So instead of parking the FSD cars will be dead-heading from one pickup to another, increasing traffic.
  - 1970-01-01 10mo ago
    It's important to make the distinction that flowing traffic and sitting traffic are different things to people. I really don't think a flowing river of FSD is worse than a static jam, but I could be wrong here, as there has never been a full self-driving city.
- Analemma_ 10mo ago
  It's very much a question mark whether FSD would eliminate traffic. If people can zone out and be on their phone while their car drives them, that encourages a lot more trips which might not otherwise be taken because of bad traffic. I can easily see FSD making traffic much worse.
- triceratops 10mo ago
  It doesn't eliminate traffic without congestion pricing. FSD reduces the annoyance cost of driving in traffic, which means there's going to be a lot more traffic.

bfeynman 10mo ago

In what world do you get that conclusion? Dense cities in other parts of the world rely on mass transit to move people. FSD so you can have self driving cars in the street -> ? -> increasing congestion. The point is you should have more effective volume transit not optimizing random ones. 1000 cars on FSD are an optimization better than 1000 taxi drivers, compared to a train or a few buses.

rayiner 10mo ago
> Dense cities in other parts of the world rely on mass transit to move people But they don’t solve the fundamental problems with mass transit: comfort, convenience, and trip times. I was just at Disney World and joking to my wife that the park is propaganda to get people to use public transit because Walt loved trains. (You can’t get into the parks by driving. Only the train, bus, or gondola. If you drive you have to park at this giant lot and take the train from there.) But even within that self contained environment—where land for transit infrastructure is basically free because Disney bought it all decades ago—public transit still isn’t great. Trying to get three kids and all their shit out the door to catch a bus or train, having to fold up strollers, etc., just sucks in comparison to throwing them into a car.
- vikingerik 10mo ago
  Clarification: only Magic Kingdom has that extra step of train/ferry/bus transportation from the parking lot. For all the other parks at Disney World, you can drive in and walk to the entrance. (There are trams if you're far out, but you can also walk.) Yes, Walt did want that extra step of separation from the real world. Then Disney realized the logistical problems with it and didn't repeat it for the other parks, but they're stuck with it at Magic Kingdom. (And it also acts as an upsell for the premium resorts that are positioned right next to Magic Kingdom in walking distance.)
  - lisbbb 10mo ago
    Let me tell you something about Magic Kingdom: Everything between the parking lot and the rides exists the way it does in order to SLOW YOU DOWN so you spend more money. All of it! Okay, maybe not the parking lot trams, but all their other gimmicks are just part of a funnel to keep you away from the rides as long as possible and once you're inside, to keep you from leaving.

mcc1ane 10mo ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0