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Comment by m_eiman | Hacker News Reader

Self-driving cars are the necessary but not sufficient condition to solve traffic problems. Start with that and remove 1-person-1-car model [0]

There's no need to have self-driving cars to stop 1p1c. We've already got mass transit… Switch to semi-fullly seated buses and you've reduced the number of vehicles by a factor of 40.

Besides, since everyone starts work at the same time self-driving cars will have minimal effect on the number of cars on the roads at rush hour as long as there's only one occupant per car.

Much cheaper solutions than developing and constructing an entire new vehicle fleet would be to force multiple occupants per vehicle, and to have people start work over a wider time span.

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IMO, even simpler than that would be to stop subsidising parking: raise parking fees, eliminate free road parking, force companies to charge for parking (this part may not be feasible, special land taxes on parking lots?). Whether or not you'd need special exemptions for businesses (deliveries, plumbers, etc.), I'm not sure.

People can feel free to drive around to their hearts' content, they just won't be able to stop and get out of their cars! ;)

Example of the problem with mass transit : http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/masstransit.htm

1) Money: generally speaking, depending on the number of passengers mass transit is a little cheaper (1 person), about the same (2 pers) or much more expensive (a family of 4-5) than public transport.

If you take into account that home -> work -> shopping -> home with public transport turns into home -> city center -> other city center -> work -> city center -> shopping -> city center -> other city center -> home ... The point is that there are many kinds of trips where the routes taken by public transport cause it to be more expensive than a car.

In the cities where I've worked, mass transit (2x bus + train) was only 20-30% cheaper than a car and only if you lived out in the suburbs and worked in the city. The other way around (living in city, working a bit out of the city), mass transit was more expensive than the car. Living in city, working in city, a fold-up bike was far more convenient.

2) Time: mass transit doesn't go where I live, and doesn't leave/arrive when I need to leave/arrive. Furthermore, it's regularly non-operative when I need it. This limits what I can do (I stayed late, we ordered in pizza, then hang out with a friend ... oops it's 22h30 ... no more buses to my place until 6 am. Yes it only happened to me maybe 5 times over a decade but fuck that shit)

3) Baggage limits: when using mass transit I can carry 25 kilograms. If I don't care about comfort of myself and other passengers, maybe 40-50 is possible. I don't imagine I will be able to do that anymore when I turn 60. If I have my kids with me, 20 kg is pushing it, and if I'm either slightly ill or ... I can barely take anything at all.

When I go shopping, I buy for the week at least (by far the least bothersome way to do shopping imho, a lot faster, and also 30% or so cheaper) I come home with 30-40 kilograms usually. Can't use public transport for that.

This is ignoring that a lot of things can't be reasonably/safely transported using public transport, like DIY building supplies (ladder, long bars, 2 by 4s, ...). This includes anything heavy or above a certain very restrictive size limit.

4) Comfort. I don't even get why they bother with 1st class on trains. Let's not pretend that even 1st class has 1/10th the comfort of a car. Commuter trains are torture.

Mass transit is usable as a commute solution. It cannot reasonably replace a car. We need to fix transport and mass transport as it currently exists is not the answer.

> The other way around (living in city, working a bit out of the city), mass transit was more expensive than the car.

Do you mean the monthly cost of transit pass/fares was more than monthly cost of parking + gas + insurance + car payments + maintenance?

Our monthly numbers are

Transit passes for a family of four: 250-450 USD

or one very cheap car used for commute: 300-600 USD + public transport

or bicycles + public tranport: 150-300 USD a cargo bike being the most expensive part of that.

I commute 2*50 min daily on bicycle since 2013.

To be fair it's actually 2*30 min nowdays, I just say 50 min because that's what how long the commute was with the car and also how long it took me to bike when I started.

Are those transit passes just covering commutes ? Or are they the closest thing public transport has to a car (global access to all routes) ?

Might want to include overt taxpayer subsidies in the former, plus any allowance for access to a car in those cases where mass transit doesn't cut it. It's kind of like including the capital/expense cost of the necessary standby fossil plants in the costs of "green energy" system.

Mass transit is usable as a commute solution. It cannot reasonably replace a car.

It can't replace all uses of a car. But what causes rush hour traffic isn't that you sometimes want to go shopping, or that you sometimes stay late at a friend - it's that too many people take the car all the time, and all the way.

By making mass transit the default and a car the exception, we'd be a long way towards a solution.

    "is a little cheaper (1 person), about the same (2 pers) ..."

Living in any city with a decent transit infrastructure (I know, that isn't by any means all the medium-large cities in north america) this calculation really isn't realistic.

It's more like owning a car is 4-8x as expensive as transit (only), so your break even is more like the 3-4 people. The calculation changes a little bit if you live in the suburbs, but it is still more expensive than most people realize to maintain a car (mostly people do this calculation wrong by ignoring depreciation and incidental costs, even financing)

For what it is worth, in the downtown area I live in, average monthly parking rates are about the same cost as unlimited transit usage....

This doesn't speak to your other points, and I totally get why people want to own cars, but they should be realistic about the choices.

In several cities I've lived in, it is entirely possible to a) not own a car b) have unlimited transit pass plus c) take a cab back from groceries every weekend plus d) rent a car or trunk whenever you need it on a weekend -- and still end up a couple thousand dollars ahead (or more) at the end of the year. And that's assuming a cheap car. Sure, it doesn't apply to everyone's situations but it's also not terribly unusual.

It's just like taxis now though. In Beijing, around 10-20% people go to work by taxi, and it can be a bit difficult to find one during the rush hours. I don't see how self driving cars change that at all. It's a luxury option for those of us who would otherwise buy private cars and don't want to be smashed in on the subway (for 50 Kuai vs. 5 Kuai).

and increased my hatred of my commute by about the same amount. I don't want to be crammed into an uncomfortable seat feeling sick because the bus is lurching around while the stranger next to me tries to fall asleep on my shoulder. oh and it takes longer.

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