Comment by llbbdd
12 hours ago
> If the US bothered to build out the infrastructure, you could go anywhere you wanted to go via public transport as well.
Public transit != mass transit. There's no reason that self-driving vehicle fleets can't be municipally subsidized and provide a dramatically better private experience than any mass transit anywhere in the world, and we already have the infrastructure for it.
Let's say you go to a concert or similar event where there's potentially thousands of people leaving at the same time. How many robotaxis do you need to carry the same amount of people as a single train carriage is capable of carrying? 200? 300? What about what an entire train, with multiple carriages, could carry?
Also why on earth would I want the gov't paying fucking Google for their robotaxis, rather than having them put that money into public transport which serves everyone else and not just the pockets of some silicone valley douchebags?
Sure, 200 or 300, why not? I've been to events of this size and left them in taxis or rideshare. Automatic demand allocation + wage surging systems at companies like Uber funnel drivers to the events and people leave. Presumably that allocation only gets smarter when the cars all drive themselves. Trains would still have the last mile problem here, the main difference would be spacing out the congestion potentially to different remote hubs.
This misses a couple things:
- As an individual going between destinations, my mind is on my travel and not focused on the externalities of how optimal or efficient the transport is for other people. The fact that a train can fit more people is a downside, because being packed in with the public while trying to travel is not actually desirable. This is why even trains charge for expensive private rooms.
- Whether a private company or Google provides it is immaterial to this as well: I'm not chasing after Google trying to pay them, it is just literally more desirable to travel alone and privately whoever is providing it. I have no problem if the government wants to build its own robotaxi fleet, maybe it'd be better, maybe worse, let God sort them out. I'd use the one that has better service and fits my budget.
Seemingly very rare that anyone argues for public transit expansion based on any of the following:
- They like being in a box with strangers for a long duration, where bad behavior of just one individual becomes stressful and inescapable. You can increase funding for social services to reduce the number of homeless people responsible for this disruption, but you can't stop strangers from farting.
- They prefer the lesser convenience of having to plan 3+ legs of a trip instead of 1, e.g. having to walk to/from a transit station at both ends of the track.
Trains do some things better that matter to me as a rider: they are faster. They have food service and bathrooms. But "look how packed in we could be" is not an argument that's going to convince anyone who has a choice.
> Sure, 200 or 300, why not?
Because this creates a huge backlog and queues of cars. Even at 4 people per car a moderate 16k-person event needs 4 000 trips from the stadium in a short time.
Also because this creates a huge pressure on the system. Those 4k trips will starve the system in other places because companies won't just have a few thousand idle cars just laying around in case of events. Welcome to surge pricing.
BTW a similar pressure exists at peak hours when everyone leaves for work, or from work. Two trains carrying 2000 people with 15 minute intervals will need 500 cars minimum (4 people per car) for the same trip in the same direction.
> Seemingly very rare that anyone argues for public transit expansion based on any of the following:
<lists imaginary reasons no one has or argues for when talking about public transit>
How many private vehicles do you need to provide mass transit away from a mass event such as a stadium, or a concert?
See above comment, why does the number of vehicles matter? I've left stadium events via taxi and ride-share, often there is a queueing area where cars pull up, you get in and leave. It's like a train that takes you home.
> See above comment, why does the number of vehicles matter?
Oh no. The number of vehicles carrying 1-2 passengers through a bottleneck that is entry/exit to the venue doesn't matter at all.
Even though it's a trivial question of capacity and throughput.