Hacker News Reader

Comment by joshuaheard | Hacker News Reader

It's simple. Cars are better than mass transit. A car is a personal on-demand door-to-door transportation system. Mass transit is a shared, fixed schedule, partial mode transportation. It's ironic that their answer to the failed mass transit system is more mass transit.

I see the future of transportation in autonomous electric or fuel cell automobiles, either publicly owned, privately owned, or corporate owned (ie Uber), probably of mix of all three.

View on HN

It's not that simple.

Cars are better than mass transit in a low population density place. In a high population density place like Manhattan you wouldn't be able to get enough cars to fit on the streets if everyone was in a car. If you used buses you might make it work but not cars.

So you're right about Denver but you made too much of a blanket statement.

Agreed, but Denver is not as dense as Manhattan. You also have to take into account that autonomous electric cars will be much smaller than regular cars (see the Google Gumdrop autonomous car), and traffic can flow at a much higher rate, since they don't need a following distance for human reaction times.

that's not necessarily true, people will still like their large cars. Gas cars aren't big because they run on gas, because motorcycles run on gas and are very small. Also the cars would have to be smaller than motorcycles for them to reach the density of a bus at which point they will cease to be comfortable.

People get large cars so they can drive around in large cars and use 1/5th the available space every other month. I don't think it's related to technology at all.

OP means "better" in the subjective sense. They're more comfortable, more convenient and faster. It takes a very large degree of external difficulty (traffic, parking) to tip the scales enough in favor of mass transit to make the latter desirable for most people who can afford a private vehicle.

The reason the majority of people in cities favor investing in mass transit is in the hope that other people use it so they can continue to drive and enjoy less traffic and more parking.

When I'm in Berlin or London, I much prefer the mass transit to dealing with a car. It's faster, more convenient, and I don't have to deal with parking or the stress of traffic.

Now imagine when autonomous cars take away the parking and traffic stress.

In ten years I don't expect there to be many place I'm going to bother taking a train in. Tokyo's are good enough, but that's a high bar.

Uber already spoils me too much to want to take the subway on Manhattan (crossing the river is a different story).

I don't think we should assume autonomous cars will reduce traffic stress. http://www.businessinsider.com/self-driving-cars-traffic-con...

I used to live in NYC, and I miss enormously (among other things) the connivence of the NYC subway. I've taken many times more Lyfts in the past few months than I did in years in NYC (including taxis).

What difference does it make that traffic and parking are “external?” They are still always factors in many places.

A data point countering your assumptions - I sold my car because I don’t like driving. I want transit to be good so I can use it.

Some people don't like hamburgers. That isn't a data point against McDonald's being successful.

Sure, but McDonalds being successful doesn’t mean most people like McDonalds. Lots of people, sure, but lots don’t.

> The reason the majority of people in cities favor investing in mass transit is in the hope that other people use it so they can continue to drive and enjoy less traffic and more parking.

This might describe you, but I would be extremely surprised if it actually described a majority of people... Especially in cities with high ridership (NYC, for example)...

In NYC (Manhattan, specifically), the external costs associated with driving (bridge/tunnel fees, parking) are so expensive that it prices out a large fraction of the population. That doesn't mean that driving a car wouldn't be subjectively more pleasant for them than the subway.

You're missing the point of what I said.

I only said that you were wrong in your assumption about people's motivations in supporting mass transit. If you're in a city (especially in one with high ridership, like I said) mass transit expansion can be hugely impactful and not because you'll ever be able to drive a car...

Obviously there are many additional costs associated with driving in NYC...

Denver driver/transit-er here. Cars aren’t automatically better than transit in many cases.

The rail is nearly as fast and much less hassle along the I-25 corridor, which is why I take it. My route is probably the most optimal of course as I both live and work near a light rail station.

I’ve commuted from south Denver to Boulder and that is about 30 minutes longer using Public Transit, but that’s largely due to transfer waits.

Transit systems absolutely need to compete against auto transport options.

But transit systems can potentially blow away ride sharing or autonomous autos if they are truly fast and convenient. If you build express tracks so that transit trains do not need to stop at every station and use truly fast train technology (+100mph) - there is no way autonomous autos could compete on long enough trips.

Of course this costs money - so build it where the density supports it. Plan your cities so that you build sufficient density.

Just to explore this further, the distance from 1 Market, San Francisco to Apple Campus, Cupertino - is about 44 miles.

Using a car, the commute time via Highway 101 leaving SF at 8AM is about 1 to 2 hours.

Using a train going 60mph should get you there in 44 minutes. During rush hours this beats driving and is about the same or slower than a car traveling at or above the speed limit (65mph).

With a train going 100mph that travel time goes down to 26 minutes

150mph (capable by Amtrak Acela in US) travel time: 17 minutes

200mph (capable by ICE in Germany, Shinkansen aka bullet train in Japan, TGV France, etc.) travel time: 13 minutes!

And there are faster travel times out there. What about hyperloop?

With a fast well designed transit system, autonomous autos and ride sharing can not compete on the full trip in terms of time. However ride sharing would be great getting people to/from stations.

Cars are only better in cities designed and planned with them in mind, but now Denver and many other growing cities are feeling the pain that cars and roads simply do not scale. Retrofitting transit is much more expensive with the existing infrastructure and massive sprawl that would not have existed in the first place.

And it's hard to argue that cities should be designed for cars - longer commutes, more accidents, more pollution, worse pedestrian experience...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com