Comment by jcfrei | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jcfrei | Hacker News Reader

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I always feel like the hindrance to new public transportation systems is never the technology or the price. A lot of existing public transportation systems are superior to cars, like metros, aerial tramways, even buses. The biggest problem public transportation faces is the lack of adoption. And in my opinion this is because people never felt and never will feel comfortable about transportation if they have to abolish the basic "horse and carriage" metaphor. A moped is just like a small horse, more powerful and less heavy on maintenance - but otherwise the metaphor holds - same with a car. A train however violates the basic "horse and carriage" metaphor - you can't put a train inside your garage (stable) over night and it won't be just waiting for you once you leave your house. skyTran has the same problem - and I really believe if we want such technology to be adopted we don't need to improve so much the technology as we need to change its perception in the eyes of the people.

It is amazing what can be done when you commit to a public transport system. Tokyo a city with 13 million inhabitants have 40 million journeys per day on public transport. [1]

Despite being a huge city, the traffic on the roads in my experience is very light compared to many Western European or US cities.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway#Networks

A public transit system crosses the threshold from 100% useless to extremely useful at the instant that it's good enough to not drive.

Conservatives rig the game in most cities so that a small, infrequent, unreliable bus system is built. Then they can say, "Look, no one uses public transit here! This is a waste of money." And they're right, because it is a waste of money until you commit to a massive all-at-once expenditure in the hundreds of millions to billions. Which they won't ever let you do.

Government wants to half-ass things (excuse me, "pilot" them) but public transit doesn't work when it's half-assed.

I agree. Public transport has to be treated like a network. A network's usefulness increases with the number of connections it can make. A half-assed public transport system will never convince people and if it's done right it's usually very very expensive. Switzerland has excellent public transport, but only because much of it is run by a national, government funded enterprise (SBB) and is considered a matter of national cohesion (hence splurging so much money is accepted by the public).

Once self-driving taxis are cheaper than car ownership, that all-or-nothing dynamic goes away. Start out using the taxis, switch to cheaper public transport wherever it's available.

Public transport will always be inferior to cars in the sense that it goes from somewhere that isn't exactly where you are to somrwhere that isn't exactly where you want to be, at a time that isn't exactly now, in the company of people that you don't necessarily want to be with.

All of these are valid factors but when total trip time door-to-door is less than or equivalent to getting your car, driving (including traffic) and finding parking then the benefits are clear.

Similarly with total annual cost of transport. Parking and fuel can come at an high premium sometimes.

Notice - you see this happening a lot in big cities where congestion is best result by public transport.

True. But if your car can be self-driving then you don't need to park it, and if everyone's car is self driving then traffic becomes less of an issue.

Eventually I think public transport becomes obsolete, or else an incredibly expensive and rubbish subsidy for the tiny minority who can't afford cars.

My personal bone to pick with public transport is the absolute Sardine conditions. I would gladly take the metro if it didn't mean being confined to 10 inches of space for > 1 hour surrounded by jostling people. So something like the SkyTran would be very welcome.

I agree with your comment. I lived in Raleigh, NC, USA for a long time (bad public transit) and now live in the Washington DC, USA area. The public transit here is much better and completely changed my view on all of this We actually have a metro and a reliable bus system.

In hong kong 90% of journeys are done using public transport.So the metaphor can be broken.

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