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All this work is impressive, but I'd rather have better trains
by caycep 8mo ago
All this work is impressive, but I'd rather have better trains
- chufucious 8mo agoMe too but given our extensive car brain culture, Waymo is an amazing step to getting less drivers & cars off the road, and to further cement future generations not ever needing to drive or own cars
- xnx 8mo agoIsn't a vehicle that goes from anywhere to anywhere on your own schedule, safely, privately, cleanly, and without billions in subsidies better?
- anigbrowl 8mo agoI don't think individual vehicles can ever achieve the same envirnmental economies of scale as trains. Certainly they're far more convenient (especially for short-haul journeys) but I also think they're somewhat alienating, in that they're engineering humans out of the loop completely which contributes to social atomization.
- xnx 8mo ago> I don't think individual vehicles can ever achieve the same envirnmental economies of scale as trains. I think you'd be surprised. Look at the difference in cost per passenger mile.
- Mawr 8mo agoI'm looking. Comes out unfavorably to cars. Obviously. I guess you're comparing the total cost of trains vs a subset of costs of cars, as is usual. Road use and pollution are free externalities after all.
- kidk 8mo agoBillions of subsidies? Im confused you talking about cars or trains.
- xnx 8mo agoNo major US public transportation system is fully paid for by riders.
- JimmyBuckets 8mo agoThat includes cars on public roads.
- semiquaver 8mo agoYep. https://www.transitwiki.org/TransitWiki/index.php/Farebox_Recovery_Ratio https://www.transitwiki.org/TransitWiki/index.php/Farebox_Re... is a sobering reminder that many cities’ public transportation would cost $20-50 per trip if paid entirely by riders and thus could not exist without subsidy.
- caycep 8mo agoNYC congestion pricing seems to be working quite well though, and probably helps offset MTA costs.
- xnx 8mo agoNYC "congestion" pricing (actually cordon pricing) is a good idea. Would be great to see more road use fees proportional to use (distance, weight^3, etc.).
- cleaning 8mo agoNeither is any private transportation system?
- epsylon 8mo agoPublic transportation is the backbone of a functioning economy. It doesn't need to be fully paid by riders precisely because the rest of society benefits from it multiple times over.
- g947o 8mo agoNot necessarily, and your premise is incorrect.
- appreciatorBus 8mo agoTrains only require subsidies in a world where human & robot cars are subsidized. As soon as a mode of transport actually has to compete in a market for scarce & valuable land to operate on, trains and other forms of transit (publicly or privately owned) win every time.
- kentiko 8mo agoCars don't work in dense places.
- IshKebab 8mo agoSure but most of the world has a density low enough that cars work and trains don't really. I like trains as much as the next nerd, but you're never going to be able to take a train from your house to your local farm shop or whatever. Where trains work they are great. Where they don't, driverless electric cars seem like a great option.
- epsylon 8mo agoMost of the world's population lives in places where trains and public transit works far better than cars. Density doesn't move around, people do.
- kube-system 8mo agoI don’t believe the data supports that claim. https://csh.ac.at/news/over-half-of-global-commutes-are-by-car-says-study/ https://csh.ac.at/news/over-half-of-global-commutes-are-by-c...
- Hikikomori 8mo ago>without billions in subsidies Is there a magic road wand?
- xnx 8mo agoNo, but roads are paid for by road users (i.e. everyone).
- 47282847 8mo agoHuh? Last I looked, roads are paid for by the general public, not (car) road users?
- generalenvelope 8mo agoAFAICT, the majority (60%) of funding for roads doesn't come from direct user charges... Roads are subsidized, free parking (and generally a lot of paid parking) is subsidized, and the sprawl encouraged by car dependence combined with the resulting infrastructure costs has and will continue to bankrupt cities. I don't think we should "just only have trains", but the current US transit landscape is absurdly stupid and inefficient.
- kube-system 8mo agoYeah I think the single biggest red flag that the US absolutely could support more public transit is the fact that many cities successfully had more public transit in the past.
- fragmede 8mo agoWho pays for the war in Iraq?
- Hikikomori 8mo agoSo its subsidized? I thought that was the problem.
- white_dragon88 8mo ago[dead]
- takethebus 8mo ago>cleanly >without subsidies Source? The biggest source of environmental issues from EVs, tire wear from a heavier vehicle, absolutely applies to AVs. VC subsidizing low prices only to hike them later isn't exactly "without subsidy" - we pay for it either way
- sznio 8mo agobetter for the person vs better for the people sure, a private vehicle is better for me, but a train is better for the world
- andoando 8mo agoSki lifts man, ski lifts all over the city
- underdeserver 8mo agoWhat a glorious utopia we could have
- bryan_w 8mo ago> Ski lifts man, ski lifts all over the city Don't they have those somewhere in South America?
- mkl 8mo agoQuite a few places. Cable propelled transit (CPT) is the term to search for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondola_lift#Urban_transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondola_lift#Urban_transport
- scoofy 8mo agoAs someone who lives in the Bay Area we already have trains, and they're literally past the point of bankruptcy because they (1) don't actually charge enough maintain the variable cost of operations, (2) don't actually make people pay at all, and (3) don't actually enforce any quality of life concerns short of breaking up literal fights. All of this creates negative synergies that pushes a huge, mostly silent segment of the potential ridership away from these systems. So many people advocate for public transit, but are unwilling to deal with the current market tradeoffs and decisions people are making on the ground. As long as that keeps happening, expect modes of transit -- like Waymo -- that deliver the level of service that they promise to keep exceeding expectations. I've spent my entire adult life advocating for transportation alternatives, and at every turn in America, the vast majority of other transit advocates just expect people to be okay with anti-social behavior going completely unenforced, and expecting "good citizens" to keep paying when the expected value for any rational person is to engage in freeloading. Then they point to "enforcing the fare box" as a tradeoff between money to collect vs cost of enforcement, when the actually tradeoff is the signalling to every anti-social actor in the system that they can do whatever they want without any consequences. I currently only see a future in bike-share, because it's the only system that actually delivers on what it promises.
- caycep 8mo agoWell then invest in those things, then. It would probably cost less than the amount they're spending to make a Waymo World Model.
- scoofy 8mo agoLighting money on fire by funding an extremely expensive system that most people don't want to use is not an "investment." It's just a good way to make everyone much poorer and worse off than if we'd done nothing. The only way to change things is to convince the electorate that we actually do need rules and enforcement and a sustainable transportation system. This isn't just happening in America. Train systems are in rough shape in the UK and Germany too. Ebike shares are a much more sustainable system with a much lower cost, and achieve about 90% of the level of service in temperate regions of the country. Even the ski-lift guy in this thread has a much more reasonable approach to public transit, because they actually have extremely low cost for the level of service they provide. Their only real shortcoming is they they don't handle peak demand well, and are not flexible enough to handle their own success.
- servo_sausage 8mo agoTrains need well behaved people, otherwise they are shit. I don't want to hear tiktok or full volume soap operas blasting at some deaf mouth breather. I don't want to be near loud chewing of smelly leftovers. I don't want to be begged for money, or interact with high or psychotic people. The current culture doesn't allow enforcement of social behaviour: so public transport will always be a miserable containment vessel for the least functional, and everyone with sense avoids the whole thing.
- neysofu 8mo ago> some deaf mouth breather I quite agree with the overall point but can we leave this kind of discourse on X, please? It doesn't add much, it just feels caustic for effect and engagement farming.
- raincole 8mo agoRoads (cars) need well behave people too. The only way cars filter some of the out is by the price.
- servo_sausage 8mo agoPrice helps a whole lot, I think more than you give it credit for. Driving is also an active thing, this also helps. We also police driving behaviour, in a way that nobody does for public behaviour. And no matter what I don't have to hear or smell other drivers.
- scoofy 8mo agoThe vast majority of the anti-social behavior on public transit not relevant in automobiles because (1) you can't turnstile jump the gas tank, (2) an automobile is effectively very expensive set of headphones, and (3) you can inhale whatever you want in your vehicle and your neighbor doesn't have to breath it. Automobiles are a wildly inefficient and expensive form of transportation in urban areas. At the same time, we ought to be willing to ask why a significant amount of our urban population still prefers to pay all that extra money to sit in traffic.
- joenot443 8mo agoI think future generations will resent us for bureaucratizing our way out of the California HSR.
- atleastoptimal 8mo agoNo matter what, people are going to still use cars because they are an absolute advantage over public transportation for certain use cases. It is better that the existing status quo is improved to reduce death rates, than hope for a much larger scale change in infrastructure (when we have already seen that attempts at infrastructure overhaul in the US, like high-speed rail, is just an infinitely deep money pit) Even though the train system in Japan is 10x better than the US as a whole, the per-capita vehicle ownership rate in Japan is not much lower than the US (779 per 1000 vs 670 per 1000). It would be a pipe dream for American trains/subways to be as good as Japan, but even a change that significant would lead to a vehicle ownership share reduced by only about 13%.
- dyauspitr 8mo agoEnough with the trains. I’m all for trains but theyre good for in city or 1-3 hour journeys. Taking a train across the US would take a day even with high speed trains. I’d much rather have my own vehicle than share my space with a bunch of people.
- bsnnkv 8mo agoPretty much this. Wild that you can traverse most of China in affordable high speed trains, yet the Amtrak from Seattle to Portland barely crawls along and has to regularly stop for long periods of time because the tracks get too hot in the Summer.
- eddiekm 8mo agoI'd rather be able to go wherever I want.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]