7 ms·

> 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

> 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.

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.