They are not misguided. They are not there yet, but progressing steadily.
There is nothing misguided in switching out a human for a machine that can do a job better, while keeping the job unchanged. Iterative improvement is the only thing anything ever gets done, and yes, that means we might first need to get drivers out of the streets before we're able to make more substantial redesign of the transportation fabric.
"[...] that can to the job better" is the key phrase here though.
It's probably a bit misguided in the sense that, if the end-result further down the line is the "more machines than humans driving in the streets" (let alone zero humans), then it might have made more sense to iteratively change the infrastructure instead, rather than have machines try to work under infrastructure that is designed to be good for humans but bad for machines, and then try to "iteratively improve" under conditions that carry significant risk of injury.
Brings Ford's quote on "faster horses" to mind. Imagine if we still required roads to be horse friendly, and expected our cars to go through mud and jump fences.
But the roads and cars were iteratively improved in a co-evolving way. Early cars with huge wheels could traverse cow-paths and mud and weren't very fast. (And you opened fences. :-)
Maybe it partially explains why cars hurt/kill so many people every single day?
I agree with GP: automating everything and removing humans from the equation would be a much better solution. Unfortunately it's not practical because it's not profitable.
We can barely manage the non-intelligent infrastructure because it's not profitable.
Getting humans to agree on something at scale larger than half a dozen is like herding cats. Money is catnip - it works well at aligning masses towards common goal.
> it might have made more sense to iteratively change the infrastructure instead
Except iteratively changing the infrastructure requires political capital along with actual capital in the form of tax dollars. Self-driving cars can be built outside of existing infrastructure and paid for entirely with private funding.
Changing infrastructure is a nice idea in theory, but the practicality of getting anything done in SF means that if you want progress, you should look to other options.
I think they meant that cars are bad and public transit is good and solves the problem of wanting to do something else while in transit as opposed to driving.
There is no public transportation that can bring me home after saying goodbye to friends at 1 AM in a big city and having to drive one hour to my home in a little town. There is no such public transportation even during the day unless I want to spend 2 to 3 hours on a mix of metro, train and bus. And I don't have many choices about the time to leave.
You could say that it's flawed to live in the countryside and/or have distant friends but my point is that public transportation on fixed lines will never reach every place at every time, especially where people are spread thinly. Taxis can do that, self driving cars can maybe drive their cost down. I could do without my own car if I could summon a public transport car at a whim anywhere I am to go anywhere I want.
>There is no public transportation that can bring me home after saying goodbye to friends at 1 AM in a big city and having to drive one hour to my home in a little town.
There's a class of "ban cars" city people who cannot fathom this.
The ban cars (or fuckcars) is a cult in itself thinking that everyone in the world needs to live in a Amsterdam or Barcelona type city. Similar to OPs comment, they should just be ignored mostly as trolls because they offer no actual argument other than "cars bad".
Your preference for where and how to live or inconsequential to their goal of removing cars from earth.
There isn’t in the US, dominated by urban design built for cars, but in many societies it’s entirely possible to have drinks until late and then safely get home via transit.
No there isnt. You didn’t even read the comment and jumped to a political attack on the US out of habit which is very common from the types that vehemently support public transit
NYC is not exactly typical although I'm sure there are other one-off examples per the comments, especially if you relax the constraints to 11pm or so. But I'm not sure it's terribly common most places to take a late train to a small town and get home from there without driving from the train station.
I think my last commuter rail is around 10:30pm but I'd have little confidence that I could get a taxi/Uber from the train station; it's not that far but certainly not safely walkable especially late at night.
It's common surrounding larger cities in many countries. The trains from about 23.00 to about 01.00 in Copenhagen are busy with people going home to the suburbs and beyond.
Picking some random village I've never been to, from Copenhagen to Uggeløse (population around 2000) takes 65 minutes, the last connection to the bus requires leaving Copenhagen at 23:16.
Picking some other village that's on a railway line (Veksø, population 1800), the trains run all night every 30 minutes on Friday and Saturday nights. On other days the last train is at 00:30-ish.
The original claim was from a city to a town, which is easier than either of these examples.
It's better for some metrics - number of passengers moved per vehicle, fuel efficiency etc.
What it isn't optimal for is getting from origin to destination without walking and without waiting.
If I am carrying heavy/bulky things or I am less mobile than average, walking to the nearest public transport stop isn't great, and every change of transport is painful.
Waits are also long basically anywhere that isn't the center of a densely populated city, and add up with every change of vehicle.
Eventually, a public transport based solution to travel ends up using "find ways to travel less" as a component.
The existence of direct door-to-door transport with cargo space, however it is achieved (cars, self-driving, carshare, taxis...) is needed to close these gaps, and therefore I do not see it ever going away.
Societies need to make the other forms of transport attractive enough that, given access to direct door-to-door transport, they still remain a viable choice.
And by better you mean that you prefer it. Because obviously most do not prefer it, otherwise they would use it.
Various countries in Europe have a dense network of public transport that you can use - often unlimited all around the country - for less than 50 Euros per month. Given the choice, most would take cars, especially outside of dense cities.
People in aggregate don't have any preferences actually. They just want to get to their destination in the cheapest/most convenient way, which is mostly dictated by what has been designed to be that way. If you design everything around the car, then obviously choosing the car will be the most convenient; it's hardly a choice at that point.
There is only one country that isn't completely drunk on cars that I know of - the Netherlands - and even then it's only barely so. The bar is on the floor.
Even public transportation would benefit greatly from reliable self-driving.
Shortage of bus/tram/train drivers is a major bottleneck all across Europe, especially in places where they just can't offer competing wages and lose their drivers to the richest cities of the EU. Rural Bulgaria will never be able to pay their drivers as much as Vienna or Munich can. Not even third of that, the economic gap is just too big.
Many of the current drivers are in their 50s and 60s and with the bad demography of the continent, situation is likely to worsen in the near future.
With self-driving buses, you would be able to add more connections, as shortage of drivers would cease to become a factor, plus the cost of running the service per km/mile would be reduced with the salaries going away from the budget.
Today, even a flu epidemics will mess up the reliability of the system. If one in five drivers calls in sick, canceled services will skyrocket. Nothing like waiting on a desolate windy stop in subzero conditions for half an hour only to find out that the bus just didn't arrive, period. Been there, done that. (A perfect way to fall sick too, by the way.)
at least in north america, the public transit labour cartel will shut down any attempts to automate public transit; notably, the NYC MTA blocked subway one-person train operation with automatic train protection. It'll be a good day when private AV services force public transit to finally get costs under control (who am i kidding, they'll just tax AVs to shovel more money to the unions)
I can drive to work in twelve minutes. If I humor the premise of a bus that stops in front of my home and also my workplace, which is unlikely to ever exist no matter how much money is thrown at public transit, it would still take several times longer than driving myself because there are numerous other homes and businesses between which the bus would stop at.
Using a bus would mean I have to wake up earlier, and therefore fall asleep earlier, and also get back later. It would mean less time at home with my family. I suppose next you'll say that I should be living in walking distance of my job, like my life and indeed entire communities should be structured around employers like during the industrial revolution. God forbid you ever want to change your job, you'll have to hope the new one is next door or you'll be moving your family... more likely you're locked into your current job which is just the way employers would like it. The normalization of cars were a huge win for labor, but the anti-car crowd always ignores this. I guess being locked into my job and at the mercy of public transit is meant to be compensated by the benevolence of The Party who will surely have my back? No thanks.
Considering that each time you are driving your it costs money to you and the society and reduce your health and life expectancy unless you exercise separately, that cycling and walking improve your life expectancy while saving money to both you and the society, and that a 12 minutes drive can't be much more than a 40 minutes bicycle ride, my bet is that riding to work would be a better option for both you and the society as it would save everyone money[1] and time while improving everyone general health and life expectancy.
[1] combining exercising + commuting will make you gain time over commuting faster + exercising separately in that kind of distances.
I'm genuinely curious how much doing heavy aerobic exercise (cycling) right next to a road with a bunch of cars affects my life expectancy. Especially since we're starting to discover that things like the tire dust from car tires wearing down while driving also has a huge impact on areas near roads.
I know a singer that avoids doing any heavy exercise near major roads because it affects their performance after even just after a short exposure.
Then you can cycle there in ~20 minutes. The difference would be that cycling infrastructure is dirt cheap, bikes are dirt cheap, you can fit way more bikes on a path than cars, you get daily physical exercise - longer lifespan, emit trivial amounts of pollution and parking is a non-issue.
Unless, you know, there's no way to actually cycle there in 20 minutes because the routes are not cyclist friendly or accessible. Or maybe they live in a hilly area where cycling means either working up quite a sweat, or getting an e-bike to assist. Or there's inclement weather that makes cycling extremely uncomfortable if not impossible. Or if you have an injury that makes cycling difficult or painful to where you can only go very slow. Or when you have to carry something heavy with you.
There was a point where I had a 15 minute commute to work by car. Cycling, it was 40 minutes and required getting pretty sweaty. Why? Because by car I could take the highway, and by bike I couldn't. Cycling was also much more dangerous on that route than the highway drive, because I had to go through many intersections, pass multiple schools during the morning drop-off time, cross over a major highway overpass that always had heavy traffic that time of day.
If you can drive in 12 minutes surely the walk itself isn't that long. Public transport is never going to be able to compete over a short distance.
I used to commute 1.5 hours each way on the train from Wollongong to Sydney. The alternative drive takes the same or longer, depending on traffic. Hundreds and hundreds of people do this trip every day (and the equivalent from Newcastle).
Another period of my life was living in Brunswick (MEL) and working in Richmond (MEL). Drive 40 mins to 1 hour, train including 5-6 min walk at both ends 44 mins. I can read on the train though.
Every situation is going to be different. When the public transport is as bad as most US cities I'm not surprised that people don't want to take it, but with European/UK and Australian public transport you're almost certainly better off commuting that way (excluding things like carrying goods, or mobility issues).
It highly depends I guess. A 12 minute drive in peak hour in Melbourne on one of the walks I used to take was about 50 minutes of walking. At a different time of day, about 1hr and 50 mins of distance (using Google Maps to find examples).
Granted an hour of walking each way isn't necessarily doable. But that same track can be done in about 25 mins on a bike, probably less on an e-bike.
Lol it's 9 miles. The anti-car motte is "just put a little bit more funding into buses and it'll be great", but the indefensible subtext is that we also need to abandon our homes, our present communities, and get relocated into high density urban zones.
I've been there, done that. I used to commute from Philly to Radnor on SEPTA's regional rail. I like trains but the amount of time I burned every day on the train, let alone walking back and forth to the stations, was simply a waste of my life. Reading on the train is great and all but I'd rather have that free time at home.
If you're outside a city and hopping on a freeway, you're obviously not going to be able to walk that.
I would never recommend more buses - buses suck. Trains and trams though, are great.
I'll also take European and Australian communities over the parking lots that are American communities any day of the week. I'll also take the high-speed rail between London and Paris (and a host of other EU/UK examples) rather than driving.
Europe is absolutely an example of how you don't have to have a terrible experience if you have good public transport. London by train is ~2.5 hours, and by car it's 5-6 hours at a minimum.
So I'm a 7 minute drive to the nearest commuter rail station, but that's using an interstate. Google tells me it would be a 2 hour walk which included a section of dark country road without sidewalks and at least one set of interstate ramp crossings. So not practical. (I do drive to the train station and take the train into the city if I have a 9-5 type customer meeting.)
Yeah, I made the mistake of not quantifying that my comment was very city based where you can sit in traffic for 10 minutes and move nowhere. It's also based on the experience in Europe where the public transport, particularly in Western Europe is insanely good.
It's rare I would consider driving my own car for 12 minutes in a city (would probably take twice that again to find parking) and I would normally not take an Uber unless I had a heavy load, was in a rush, etc.
There is a small regional small bus system that serves the train station and the Walmart about a mile away. No idea of the schedule--I'm sure it doesn't run late. But I'd still be taking my life in my hands to walk the mile to the Walmart.
Public transportation cannot compete over long distances either as they stop dropping people off anywhere close to home once you leave the city. They are only able to complete within a city at medium range where they special lanes.
It can, when cities are not built with dumb land use patterns.
I am moving to an apartment 50km away from my workplace. Commuting by car or by train will take around the same time (~50 min door-to-door), but the car will be subject to random traffic, hunting for parking spot, stress, etc. Oh, and the train is several times cheaper.
How is that relevant? No one commutes from NY to LA everyday, much as no one commutes from Berlin to Munich everyday.
> and half the country does not live in a city
Yes, and that's what I mean by "dumb land-use patterns". That people living in suburbs are not technically within a city's boundaries is a distinction without a difference. Land is wasted to highways and parking lots no one can cross without a two-ton machine, useless lawns no one really has time to enjoy or maintain, dumb McMansions that cost and arm and a leg and so on.
Fine, you drive between London and Paris, but I'm going to catch the Eurostar (tube and metro). You drive between New York and SF, but I'm going to fly.
I'm not recommending buses, buses suck. European public transport is amazing and the US could learn something.
Im talking more going from Chicago to small town central Illinois. You’re biased and assuming everyone who travels lives in, leaves from and arrives at a city. You assume everything else is fly over country instead of most of the countries land and half its population.
And you're biased in thinking everything has bad public transport like the US. I could use an absolute bucket load of examples from UK, Europe and Australia where to drive long distance you will always come off second to public transport of one form or another.
Europe and the UK has an absolutely extensive train network, not just big cities. I could have as easily said Ancona to Bologna, or Strasbourg to Stuttgart. You're just unlikely to know anything about those places. Or even smaller stations/towns -- Hinkley or Inverness.
Australia's regional towns are primarily linked by regional airlines, the drives are insanely long to get to the nearest city. People do, of course, but flying is always going to be quicker.
It being a better solution is your opinion and not one a large number of people agree with. I for one taking hate public transportation and avoid it at all costs.
What do you mean by efficient? When I lived in Austin, we lived in a neighborhood where the (only) train picked up, and it dropped me off 5 blocks from my office downtown. It was an extraordinarily pleasant period of my life. But even then, in ideal conditions, it still took longer than driving, and I had to time my departures to avoid waiting 15-30 minutes at the station.
I'm definitely in favor of re-designing our cities and infrastructure to support that kind of lifestyle; I believe most people would prefer it if they experienced it. It seems inevitable from a carbon stand point. But I'm skeptical it will ever be more efficient?
They might mean energy efficiency or time efficiency (reading a book etc on the train). Or maybe construction energy efficiency, which in Austin is presumably a sunk cost.
Note a 15-30 minute wait is what I have to endure at night (21.00 to 01.00) if I want to travel to/from the suburbs of Copenhagen on a weekday, similar population to Austin. On Friday and Saturday nights each line runs every 20 minutes all night.
It's more efficient for society as a whole. Public transit simply moves more people using less space and less energy, causing fewer deaths, while also being more equitable to boot.
And your comment noted, it's a godsend for the mind. I've moved to a country with public transit and haven't commuted by car in the last 5 years. Daily driving was destroying me.
Public transport solves an overlapping but distinct problem area, and it's not always a feasible solution. Think of e.g. cargo, disabled people that require door-to-door transport, or areas and times where operating public transport isn't viable.
No idea why the downvotes. In my city (Seattle) there has been a dozen violent attacks in the last few months ranging from a couple being beaten with a hammer, a stabbing to a gun shooting. You aren’t likely to be beaten with a hammer while driving your own car that’s for sure
Because it's an incredibly US-centric POV. Of course public transport will be unsafe if 95% of the population drives, leaving only the marginalized groups to use it.
You won't get beaten with a hammer in your car, you'll just be driven into by a 16yo on his phone or a drunk driver. Neither should be driving in the first place, but there are no viable alternatives to cars, so we've just got to deal with it.
In California chp has been dealing with a spat of road rage related shootings. Can’t get into one of those on the bus. These games don’t win arguments when you can cherry pick stories like this from both sides.
For example average utilization of a self driving car would be at least an order of magnitude greater than non-self driving one. Think about how much time a car spends parked and waiting to be used.
With greater utilization we should have a lower absolute number of vehicles that are replaced more frequently. This would lead to less polluting and better maintained vehicles since they would all be fleet owned/operated in this scenario.
How cool would it be to have the public transit of the future be a point to point, any point, transit system using an army of electric minivans (minibus in urban areas).
> How cool would it be to have the public transit of the future be a point to point
I don't really see any benefit to this being public transportation.
When people go out with their cars, they expect their car to be there when they are done. They expect to be able to stop at a store, buy some things, stop at another store and buy some more, leaving their first purchase in the car while they keep shopping.
Making this work is less "public transportation" and more "short term rental" like Car2Go. Which was a shitty service that I hated using.
If we get self driving cars, I am still personally going to want to buy my own, not rely on some public transportation fleet.
That logic falls apart if everyone buys a self-driving car, and then decides that a 2+ hour commute is not so bad because they can use it as a mini mobile living room+bedroom+dining room. An overnight car ride to the weekend house in a distant mountain region might become a common habit too.
Your comment is a misguided attempt to point out that even if we have safe cars we still have cars with all of their challenges around noise and other inherent dangers and problems. Hope you do better next time.
"While I'm excited about the potential improvements to traffic safety, congestion and waste of life that self driving cars can bring. I still yearn for improvements to public transit and micromobility that can eliminate cars from the road altogether and yield major improvements in density, efficiency, safety and pollution (noise, tires)"
