Bay Area 2050: The BART Metro Map
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We discussed that just a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11996355
Cancel HSR and use the money toward funding transit that people would actually use!
Seems like with the speed of ferries, this would be a very long ride to SF and wouldn't be practical except for a very small number of people vs just taking Caltrain (which, as mentioned, is allegedly getting electrified soon-ish, with faster service).
http://www.treehugger.com/cars/amount-of-space-required-to-t...
It's painful that it needs to be explained.
You seem to think that bicycles and/or busses in an urban setting under ideal weather conditions are the answer to all transportation questions.
Unfortunately in the real world bicycles fail to protect against inclement weather (and are nearly unusable in winter time in some climates); can leave their passengers sweaty, wet, or dirty; have limited cargo capacity; and are not as useful for those with long commutes. So while they are a great solution for some situations, they are not ideal for others.
Busses have great bandwidth and do not have to be parked or stored by passengers, but are not efficient fuel and space unless they have enough passengers. Busses (and trains) often run empty or nearly so. They are less convenient than bicycles and cars in terms of pickup and drop off locations.
Autonomous electric cars could be made of various sizes (including as small as a bicycle) for various cargo and passenger loads, could pick up and drop off passengers anywhere, would not necessarily have to be parked (or would have to be parked for shorter periods than private cars), would protect against inclement weather, and might be safer for passenger and pedestrian alike than individual cyclists or bus drivers.
http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/bicycle-culture/copenhagen...
The answer is that it's partly cultural, and partly incentives. But you can go ahead and keep enforcing the cultural bias against bikes if you prefer.
>>>>>>> I'm not sure why you think cheap enough electric self driving cars can't be public transport.
This is the context in which my post was placed. I'm not sure why you've chosen to limit the scope to the Bay Area. The poster I was arguing with was claiming that space is the deciding factor and the hands-down-answered-long-ago-reason why electric cars have no place whatever in public transportation.
Unless you are arguing that people should commute by bicycle in Minnesota winters, we're not really arguing here.
As for the bay area, I was making the point that even in one of the most optimal set of conditions in the country we still ignore biking which works well in other countries because we seem to be culturally blind. Instead we pursue techno-fantasy when we should really just be buying everyone a $300 bike and putting bike lanes everywhere.
We should also build subways and trains and use buses and all the other things, but we can't even seem to get anyone to take bicycles seriously.
1: https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/03/05/san-francisco-bay-area-...
Weather is not a problem with a raincoat, rain pants, and the right attitude :) I always reach the office dry. Admittedly, my commute is fairly short by US standards (5km / 15 minutes), but that's not atypical for cities in Germany. Winters are no problem with the right tyres, as bike paths are cleared of snow by the city.
As for luggage: Panniers are awesome. I have 30 year old Ortlieb bags (see https://www.ortlieb.com/en/Back-Roller%20City/ for the modern version), 40 litres of cargo volume right there. That's enough for my weekly grocery shopping and you still have space on the luggage rack for a basket or whatever.
Oh, and to your last point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSZPNwZex9s - like that? ;)
I'm aghast at how hostile I feel some of the responses have been. I am for multiple forms of transit, and I think public electric have a place that other forms don't quite fill. I think the Google self-driving bicycle (which is awesome) is a strong argument in favor of electric cars having such a place. Just imagine a vehicle roughly the size of a bike, but enclosed instead. :)
But the "cars" could be many shapes and sizes, intended for different passenger and cargo loads.
The Google self driving bicycle was an April fool's joke, and if today was April 1st then I'd assume your argument was, too. Ubiquitous self-driving electric vehicles for all are an absurd techno-fantasy. When such vehicles become reality, they'll be a luxury product for a niche clientele of high earners (like SV engineers) for quite a while. Even when they reach a mass market, they won't be for all. They'll be a nice replacement for taxis, sure. But what about people who can't afford to regularly take a taxi today? There is no way that they could ever come close to the price of a bicycle. Most students here ride used bikes, most of which probably cost around $100. How do you suggest they afford such vehicles for their daily commute to university?
You're suggesting a solution that might work in Silicon Valley in a few years as a panacea. Bicycles work in lots of places around the world today, and have for decades.
The poster I originally responded to said electric cars have no place in public transportation because of space issues. I merely objected to that by pointing out that other means of transportation do not cover all bases, to which I received a bunch of nonsense saying "but they work in these conditions". Well, yes, they do, but they don't work in others, like Minnesota winters.
Taxis should make it obvious that, yes, there is a place for these vehicles.
Electric cars as a panacea? That wasn't anything I ever argued. In fact, outside downtown Minneapolis, I think autonomous vehicles would have a very difficult time in Minnesota winters as well. But I suspect, once autonomous vehicles hit the road, it's going to be a lot more ubiquitous than you think.
I do have to mirror the parent posters sentiment, people really need to start paying attention to fundamentals. In an optimal efficient future (which of course won't happen) there would essentially be no car ownership. A car is a huge compromise (which is why people like them) that can't go particularly fast (because of drag at speed and kinetic energy in a crash), is over-engineered at lower speeds and have low bandwidth (especially in urban environments).
Of course having cheap fully autonomous cars (without steering, that can go anywhere) is still more likely decades than years away.
http://www.china.org.cn/business/2016-05/30/content_38560697...
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/national/Maglev-on-trial-run-in...
A smooth quiet ride at 60 mph through NYC, San Francisco, or Los Angeles seems like a great way to travel.
Cars take more space, but not nearly as much more space as that picture tries to imply. It shows a single bus with full capacity, but one car per passenger. If it treated cars equally with buses, there would be significantly fewer cars, smaller cars, or many more busses.
You can have a smooth, 60 mph ride through San Francisco, or you can have enough stops and capacity to serve the entire city. You won't have both. I've heard promises of rail for 40 years and maglev for 20. I think they can be very useful, but they won't serve all the needs of an entire city, much less an entire metropolitan area.
Cars and future car analogs will probably always be necessary, and a public system which uses them could be very helpful and both save and free up a lot of space. But this is about a lot more than just space.