6 ms·

It's not feasible to have a bus stop right in front of every house. It's unavoidable that most people are going to have to walk a bit. How far is reasonable, is

by mcv 8mo ago

It's not feasible to have a bus stop right in front of every house. It's unavoidable that most people are going to have to walk a bit. How far is reasonable, is a matter of trade-offs. It also depends on how fine grained the network is. If there are buslines every block, it's annoying if they don't stop there. But you have to walk a block or two to get to a bus line anyway, walking that bit more to get to the stop itself, matters a lot less.

JoshTriplett 8mo ago
> It's not feasible to have a bus stop right in front of every house. And this is why point-to-point transportation is almost always faster and more convenient, if you can afford to use it. (That load-bearing "if" is important, though.)
- njarboe 8mo ago
  Self driving cars for hire (Waymo, Tesla, others) can be that point-to-point system that is affordable. We will just have to build tunnels to deal with the increase in traffic. Hopefully the Boring Company or someone else can get tunneling costs way down.
  - JoshTriplett 8mo ago
    Hopefully someone else, so it actually happens and isn't overpromised and underdelivered. (Also, tunnels are useful not just for the increase in traffic, but for moving car traffic away from non-car traffic, which makes both kinds of traffic safer, faster, and more efficient.)
  - janalsncm 8mo ago
    If you are not being facetious, what you are describing is closer to a subway system, which has the disadvantage of being very expensive.
  - mulmen 8mo ago
    As long as one of those points is a transit stop then yeah, robotaxis make sense. In that model you don’t need the tunnels. They make even more sense if they are a bit larger and can accommodate multiple people at once. Something like a large van or small bus.
  - llbbdd 8mo ago
    I generally agree that self-driving cars are going to take this niche, but not with tunnels. Tunnels add the same dedicated infrastructure problems as mass public transit. I'd suspect most car trips today are 1 or 2 passengers with the back seat and trunk empty; we'll eventually see new form factors of on-demand vehicle that trim off unneeded space. If you need to get from A to B alone, no cargo to speak of, you order a ride that covers that class and it's small. If you're taking a shuttle from the airport with your whole family and luggage, you order a ride with those specs.
- xmprt 8mo ago
  > And this is why point-to-point transportation is almost always faster and more convenient Point-to-point transportation is faster and more convenient because: 1. we don't have bus lanes so buses are forced to sit in the same traffic as cars and 2. buses are often underfunded so have slow/infrequent service. Point to point transportation is often slower and less convenient if buses and public transit is done right. I can count on my fingers the number of times I used an Uber or drove a car in the 1 month that I stayed in Europe - this was going out every day, in multiple cities, rural and urban, and across different countries. This is a good thing! If more people use public transit when it's possible, it opens up the roads for the handful of people who actually NEED to use a car.
  - AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
    Bus lanes still seem like the thing people who hate cars propose to intentionally screw over the people who have them. "Hey, we have this road with two or three lanes in each direction but it's fairly congested. Each of the lanes is carrying something like 50 cars per minute during the day! Why don't we impound one of them so we can have a bus carrying 40 people drive on it once every 15 minutes?" If you have enough density to justify a bus lane, you have enough density to justify a subway.
    - Karrot_Kream 8mo ago
      > If you have enough density to support a bus lane, you have enough density to support a subway. Not at all. Building a subway in most US cities right now is very expensive. Raising the tax revenue alone is probably a non-starter. Moreover you're going to have to close the road down anyway to do any form of cut-and-cover or even deep bore construction, which means every business on the corridor and every person who lives on it is going to get angry for as long as the subway is being built. There's no painless way to do infill public transport. The problem is that nobody in the US is willing to compromise.
      - AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
        > Building a subway in most US cities right now is very expensive. This is true but seems like a problem worth solving. It's also true of more than subways; we have the same problem with bridges, housing and many other things. Better to get on with fixing it than use it as an excuse for doing something worse. > Moreover you're going to have to close the road down anyway That's a one-time cost, and you're not required to close a 500 mile stretch of road for years on end. Dig one block, install the tunnel, cover it, dig the next block.
cyberax 8mo ago
No, it's not unavoidable. Just ditch the buses and switch to cars, soon to be self-driving. Even the rush hour traffic is trivially solved by mild carpooling (small vans for 4-6 people).
- wussboy 8mo ago
  Not Just Bikes makes a compelling argument that self driving cars are not the answer, and will almost certainly make things worse
  - jacobgkau 8mo ago
    Would you care to summarize their argument?
    - mcv 8mo ago
      Self-driving cars still take up space on the road. Even more than human-driven cars, because now there will also be cars transporting 0 people. It's going to make congestion worse. Public transit is the solution to congestion. Well, one of the solutions, because bikes are probably a better solution for most people: they do start in front of your home, can park anywhere, and don't cause congestion the way cars do. We're talking about cities, of course; in rural areas, nothing beats cars.
      - ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
        > We're talking about cities, of course; in rural areas, nothing beats cars. Where I grew up in NW Scotland, it's a five hour round trip to go to the supermarket. You pretty much need a car for that. Where I live right now it's a five minute walk to the supermarket, but I still need a car because the things I work on are a long way from where I live, often up steep muddy mountain tracks. When I lived in the middle of Glasgow people used to come up and have a go at me about driving a massive V8 4x4 in the middle of a city. What am I supposed to do with it? Bike to the suburbs and then go and drive up a mountain? "But why not get a job where you don't need to drive hundreds of miles in a massive 4x4?" Because then the things on the tops of mountains don't get fixed when they break, and the radios don't work properly, and then people like you die in a fire. Sometimes it's hard for people to grasp that just because their not-really-a-job tapping numbers into an Excel spreadsheet all day can be done from home or from an easily walkable city centre location, it doesn't mean that everyone's job looks like that. I do wish I could usefully use a cargo bike. Those things are awesome.

by mcv 8mo ago

JoshTriplett 8mo ago

> It's not feasible to have a bus stop right in front of every house. And this is why point-to-point transportation is almost always faster and more convenient, if you can afford to use it. (That load-bearing "if" is important, though.)

njarboe 8mo ago
Self driving cars for hire (Waymo, Tesla, others) can be that point-to-point system that is affordable. We will just have to build tunnels to deal with the increase in traffic. Hopefully the Boring Company or someone else can get tunneling costs way down.
- JoshTriplett 8mo ago
  Hopefully someone else, so it actually happens and isn't overpromised and underdelivered. (Also, tunnels are useful not just for the increase in traffic, but for moving car traffic away from non-car traffic, which makes both kinds of traffic safer, faster, and more efficient.)
- janalsncm 8mo ago
  If you are not being facetious, what you are describing is closer to a subway system, which has the disadvantage of being very expensive.
- mulmen 8mo ago
  As long as one of those points is a transit stop then yeah, robotaxis make sense. In that model you don’t need the tunnels. They make even more sense if they are a bit larger and can accommodate multiple people at once. Something like a large van or small bus.
- llbbdd 8mo ago
  I generally agree that self-driving cars are going to take this niche, but not with tunnels. Tunnels add the same dedicated infrastructure problems as mass public transit. I'd suspect most car trips today are 1 or 2 passengers with the back seat and trunk empty; we'll eventually see new form factors of on-demand vehicle that trim off unneeded space. If you need to get from A to B alone, no cargo to speak of, you order a ride that covers that class and it's small. If you're taking a shuttle from the airport with your whole family and luggage, you order a ride with those specs.
xmprt 8mo ago
> And this is why point-to-point transportation is almost always faster and more convenient Point-to-point transportation is faster and more convenient because: 1. we don't have bus lanes so buses are forced to sit in the same traffic as cars and 2. buses are often underfunded so have slow/infrequent service. Point to point transportation is often slower and less convenient if buses and public transit is done right. I can count on my fingers the number of times I used an Uber or drove a car in the 1 month that I stayed in Europe - this was going out every day, in multiple cities, rural and urban, and across different countries. This is a good thing! If more people use public transit when it's possible, it opens up the roads for the handful of people who actually NEED to use a car.
- AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
  Bus lanes still seem like the thing people who hate cars propose to intentionally screw over the people who have them. "Hey, we have this road with two or three lanes in each direction but it's fairly congested. Each of the lanes is carrying something like 50 cars per minute during the day! Why don't we impound one of them so we can have a bus carrying 40 people drive on it once every 15 minutes?" If you have enough density to justify a bus lane, you have enough density to justify a subway.
  - Karrot_Kream 8mo ago
    > If you have enough density to support a bus lane, you have enough density to support a subway. Not at all. Building a subway in most US cities right now is very expensive. Raising the tax revenue alone is probably a non-starter. Moreover you're going to have to close the road down anyway to do any form of cut-and-cover or even deep bore construction, which means every business on the corridor and every person who lives on it is going to get angry for as long as the subway is being built. There's no painless way to do infill public transport. The problem is that nobody in the US is willing to compromise.
    - AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
      > Building a subway in most US cities right now is very expensive. This is true but seems like a problem worth solving. It's also true of more than subways; we have the same problem with bridges, housing and many other things. Better to get on with fixing it than use it as an excuse for doing something worse. > Moreover you're going to have to close the road down anyway That's a one-time cost, and you're not required to close a 500 mile stretch of road for years on end. Dig one block, install the tunnel, cover it, dig the next block.

cyberax 8mo ago

No, it's not unavoidable. Just ditch the buses and switch to cars, soon to be self-driving. Even the rush hour traffic is trivially solved by mild carpooling (small vans for 4-6 people).

wussboy 8mo ago
Not Just Bikes makes a compelling argument that self driving cars are not the answer, and will almost certainly make things worse
- jacobgkau 8mo ago
  Would you care to summarize their argument?
  - mcv 8mo ago
    Self-driving cars still take up space on the road. Even more than human-driven cars, because now there will also be cars transporting 0 people. It's going to make congestion worse. Public transit is the solution to congestion. Well, one of the solutions, because bikes are probably a better solution for most people: they do start in front of your home, can park anywhere, and don't cause congestion the way cars do. We're talking about cities, of course; in rural areas, nothing beats cars.
    - ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
      > We're talking about cities, of course; in rural areas, nothing beats cars. Where I grew up in NW Scotland, it's a five hour round trip to go to the supermarket. You pretty much need a car for that. Where I live right now it's a five minute walk to the supermarket, but I still need a car because the things I work on are a long way from where I live, often up steep muddy mountain tracks. When I lived in the middle of Glasgow people used to come up and have a go at me about driving a massive V8 4x4 in the middle of a city. What am I supposed to do with it? Bike to the suburbs and then go and drive up a mountain? "But why not get a job where you don't need to drive hundreds of miles in a massive 4x4?" Because then the things on the tops of mountains don't get fixed when they break, and the radios don't work properly, and then people like you die in a fire. Sometimes it's hard for people to grasp that just because their not-really-a-job tapping numbers into an Excel spreadsheet all day can be done from home or from an easily walkable city centre location, it doesn't mean that everyone's job looks like that. I do wish I could usefully use a cargo bike. Those things are awesome.