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Self driving cars aren't the next stage of public transport; they're a bandaid solution to American urban design. They're still cars, so they still contribute t
by sheept 5mo ago
Self driving cars aren't the next stage of public transport; they're a bandaid solution to American urban design. They're still cars, so they still contribute to traffic and increased pavement wear, and I cannot imagine they'd be cheaper at scale than buses for storage/maintenance/cleaning.
- Karrot_Kream 5mo agoThey won't be better for maintenance but unless Portland can build the state capacity to fund public transport properly this is better than nothing. Plenty of developing countries rely on buses, jitneys, and low footprint vehicles like mopeds for traffic flow because they don't have the state capacity to enforce an urban framework conducive to public transit. Honestly many US states are the same.
- Schiendelman 5mo agoI spent ten years in the trenches of American urban design policy. The best we could do was lose very slightly less quickly. It's not changing. Trains are great, we should build more, and we probably should replace a lot of bus routes by subsidizing rides on Waymo and its ilk. It'll be cheaper and provide better service.
- Jblx2 5mo ago>Trains are great I wonder how much that sentiment is that based on steampunk and 1880's nostalgia?
- soiltype 5mo agoNone. Why would you think that? My guess is you're an American living nowhere near an urban rail system but I thought most people here would at least be passing familiar with modern trains. Even some American cities have them.
- dzhiurgis 5mo agoWhy the ad hominem? I've lived and travelled in a ton of places. Trains in low density cities are simply not working well enough. I now prefer to live in exurb and drive everywhere. It's so good.
- soiltype 5mo agoGuessing you're American is ad hominem?
- 0xffff2 5mo ago> ad hominem: appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect [0] Pretty much by definition, yes. 0: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ad%20hominem https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ad%20hominem
- soiltype 5mo agoI mean I wasn't making any rhetorical argument. That part of the comment was just me musing.
- dzhiurgis 5mo agoMuse this - train is a tool, just like a car, bus, bike, plane, drone or rollerblades. Repeating "trains" in every transport context is unproductive. Each mode of transport requires certain density. Most US cities just don't have it. It's that simple.
- soiltype 5mo agoNo
- Schiendelman 5mo agoIt's not at all that simple. One of the neat things about trains is their permanence - once you've built one, you can fight for allowing increased density repeatedly until you win. That's what we've been doing in Seattle!
- meowkit 5mo agoYesh go to literally any other industrialized part of the world and see how ** backwards the US is on trains I’ve become quite radicalized on trains after visiting Japan and Switzerland myself.
- dmix 5mo agoNot like the US didn't try. California spent 15yrs trying to build a high speed train and failed. Canada has been talking about building trains forever too and it usually goes nowhere because the budgets explode like every major infrastructure project these days. UK spent $100M just to deal with bats in a single train tunnel, which is representative of the issue https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wryxyljglo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wryxyljglo
- skyyler 5mo agoI wonder what's different between these English speaking countries you mention failing to build out rail transit, and places like Japan and China that have built fabulous rail networks.
- rootusrootus 5mo agoJapan is a fairly unique case, and probably does not share much with China aside from being in the same region. Japan is geographically well suited to serving a large portion of the population with one long line with a few branches. That's a convenient advantage. China just doesn't have to worry about environmentalists or anyone else locally trying to stand in the way, they just bulldoze them and build. China also has much lower labor costs, and even Japan is a good bit cheaper (than the US, at the least)
- dgacmu 5mo agoYes, but also: The metro area density of Tokyo is 3,000 / km^2 The metro area density of Beijing is 1,747 / km^2 Greater Los Angeles: 208 / km^2
- array_key_first 5mo agoAlso just like... looking at a train and noticing it can carry a ton more people than a car, has no concept of traffic, and can theoretically go as fast as possible.
- xnx 5mo agoBut in practice runs empty most of the time, is commonly delayed by any problem on the line or station, and operates on a very limited schedule.
- array_key_first 5mo agoIn the US, because the US is very bad at building public infrastructure. Or, lately, building anything.
- HDThoreaun 5mo agoThe ability to carry people is worthless if no one wants to use it
- array_key_first 5mo agoPeople generally don't want to use it because we design everything exclusively for cars, so cars are more convenient. At the cost of increased risk of death, increased travel time, increased land cost, etc.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- nunez 5mo agoBus Rapid Transit is another option that could be amazing (while being much cheaper to implement), but it falls short for the same reason as trains: they require dedicated infrastructure that complicates driving, and complicating driving is political suicide.
- Schiendelman 5mo agoOne of the things I found when advocating for transit was that BRT cost savings in the US almost always come from reducing quality at stations, which loses public support faster than you save money. I found that voters are usually willing to spend far more on trains than on BRT, in excess of any savings.
- nunez 5mo agoWow; that's surprising.
- Schiendelman 5mo agoPeople vote with their gut. Their gut tells them that buses are terrible and trains are generally good. They're right.
- HDThoreaun 5mo agoPeople have buses. Makes them feel poor. Trains feel sophisticated.
- dzhiurgis 5mo agoBRT is mostly "you get what you pay for" - cheaper at a cost of lower capacity. Given relatively low density of US cities - that might be the right tool tho.
- rsynnott 5mo agoOne thing you have to be careful about with things like this is induced demand. In Dublin in the early 90s, there was a debate about what to do with the right of way of an old commuter rail line, which had been closed in the 60s when closing rail lines was fashionable. Irish Rail wanted to reinstate the commuter rail line, Dublin Bus wanted to build a BRT system. In the early noughties, the transport authority split the difference and put in a tram system (green line Luas). A BRT system would have had a capacity of, very optimistically, 6,000 people per hour per direction (a 100 person bus arriving every minute), but in practice probably less (that is difficult to maintain without delays). At the time, there was some doubt that even this capacity was required. The original tram setup also had a capacity of about 6,000 people per hour. Within years, the trams were full to overcrowding, and the line was expanded to 10,000 people per hour. Now it's at capacity again, with some of the longest trams in the world arriving every three minutes at peak. The only realistic option to further increase capacity is to turn it into a metro line (which, fortunately, was in principle planned for from the start, and _is_ possible, albeit with some disruption). If they'd gone with a BRT, they'd now be looking at ripping up the whole thing and having nothing for years while they laid tracks.
- Schiendelman 5mo agoWhat makes you say that? I'd only propose them in very high density corridors (or in corridors where building a train would be paired with allowing high density).
- Jblx2 5mo agoA lot of it probably has to do with train advocates seeming like audiophiles extoling the virtues of phonograph records and the like. It seems like they are nostalgic for an 1880s utopia. That's just the vibe I get. I wonder what people in this thread think about The Line. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line,_Saudi_Arabia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line,_Saudi_Arabia
- Schiendelman 5mo agoThat's understandable, but I think the mass transit crowd is pretty different. I think you may need to meet more transit advocates!
- Jblx2 5mo agoI think there is also a couple of other factors at play with the online train / mass transit advocates on places like HN. It could just be my imagination, but I think there is trains-are-a-good-solution-for-other-people (but not necessarily for me) contingent. And there is a trains-are-good-for-you transportation method, that you have to put up with for the "greater good". A bitter pill to swallow, not something you actually want. Kind of the opposite for say, electric vehicles, where they currently are a much superior alternative to and internal combustion engine vehicle for almost ever use case (acceleration, $/mile, maintenance, general hassle). That's why I think EVs will inevitably win, even in the U.S.. Maybe someone could come up with a luxury light rail that people would actually want to use? I mentioned it up-thread in the context of California high speed rail, but now I'm going to broaden it. When will personal (flying) quadcopter vehicles have more annual passenger miles than every passenger rail combined (subways/light rail/Amtrak) in the U.S.? I'm could see it happening within my lifetime. Maybe this has some bearing on why I see trains as antiquated?
- xnx 5mo agoA huge amount, most self-proclaimed supporters of "public transportation" are primarily train enthusiasts (which is a fine hobby!). Any concern for safe, clean, effective transportation is incidental and is immediately abandoned if it ever means less trains.
- HaloZero 5mo agoIt's not a bandaid because American urban design isn't going to change substantially. I don't see American cities changing their mind on how they build and where they build.
- dzhiurgis 5mo ago> increased pavement wear That's buses. Even more with electric buses. They are insanely subsidized by public. Robot taxis are vastly cheaper for everyone.
- eklitzke 5mo agoA well run public transit system should obviously be cheaper at scale than robotaxis, but the incentives for Waymo (or Uber, or Lyft, etc.) are very different than the city's incentives. It's very possible that in practice private companies can operate more cheaply at scale than buses because they have much higher incentives to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
- saargrin 5mo agowell run public transit systems usually still lose money and thats a policy decision rather than a commercial one
- simondotau 5mo ago“Self driving cars aren't the next stage of public transport; they're a bandaid solution to American urban design.” That might be an unintentionally excellent analogy, because like a Band-Aid, self self driving cars have the potential to heal the urban environment. The widespread adoption of self driving cars doesn’t take cars off the road, but it does reduce the reliance on destination parking. Entire city car parks could be replaced with medium density residential, substantially increasing density and paving the way to walkable cities.