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Comment by f_allwein | Hacker News Reader

How about: We need to shift from individual car ownership to more public transport? Sure it will be great if cars turn electric, but that does not solve issues like crowded streets etc. This would be partly addressed if cars were self driving and shared, i.e. would spend less time standing around unused. Nevertheless, I assume (=don't have data) that public transport would be much more efficient than electric cars in terms of energy/ resource/ space usage.

Maybe in the future, the line between private and public transport will be more blurry, i.e. you take a shared, self driving car to the railway station etc.

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In Norway we have a common expression: "Ja takk, begge deler". When given a choice between two things that are implied mutually exclusive, it means "Yes, I'll take both please".

Maybe that's why we have more EVs per capita than anywhere else, and are still investing heavily in improving public transportation. You can do both.

You can even do electric buses. Oslo just got deliveries of its first ones.

I think we'll start to see many smaller self-driving buses, and that more people will prefer these over driving. I know I would. The only reason I prefer driving to work right now is that I have to switch from bus to train when doing public transportation. I don't get enough time in one vehicle to calm down and read something. If it was more or less direct, I'd prefer it, even if I had to walk a bit longer (I consider that a benefit actually). Buses have dedicated lanes here, so it shouldn't take much more time even with a couple of stops along the way.

But that's the future. There are still millions of personal cars sold, and will be for a long time forward. These needs to be EV. Besides, EVs technology will facilitate the development of these self-driving buses. It's easier and safer for a bus to charge itself, than to fuel itself. It's also easier to test self-driving tech in a large fleet of smaller cars.

A few problems with more public transit. First, public transport is not door-to-door; for my commute atm, public transit would take 2 hours (for a 60 km distance), more if there's a hitch on the way. It'll pretty much always take longer because you're stuck on one or multiple schedules.

The other problem in my country is that the public transit networks are already at maximum capacity - train network in particular is struggling. There's pushes to spread people out more, away from rush hour, but employers and the people themselves have to be okay with that too. But yeah, public transit has a maximum capacity, just like roads do.

And of course in the US, the public transit network is substandard, and getting it up to par will take a huge investment - cities will need to be uplifted, etc. But in the US the problem is more political - there's no business that wants to invest billions in a public transit network. And if a government sets it up people will complain that their tax dollars (all three of them) go to things they don't make use of. It's a cultural issue there. The US - and SF in particular - could be in the forefront of public transit for everyone, but nope, muh government.

Full rant mode engaged: The US is the richest country in the world with some of the richest people in the world, but it's not being invested in basics like access to transportation, health care and education to make quality of life for its inhabitants better.

that escalated, sorry.

I approve of your rant :)

It's clear that buses are vastly more efficient in terms of moving large numbers of people around, and so ride sharing alone (even automated) will just continue to tie up traffic. At a point, uber and lyft will have to introduce buses in order to keep their single-use services attractive. But, as long as there is private ownership, we won't have wide adoption of public transportation.

Everywhere in the world I have traveled, I have noticed that usually 1) public transportation is limited only to a town/city, and 2) private buses to move between cities/provinces are limited by market forces, and thus put a penalty on people living farther from economic drivers. Which forces people in remote areas, who on average make less money, to own cars to get to jobs [which robs them of time and money they could be investing in their future etc].

The only way to change the inequality of people getting to jobs/goods/services is to remove private car ownership and institute nation-wide public transportation, and subsidize the more expensive parts of the network. Not only would this be cheaper overall and more efficient overall, it would raise the GDP, reduce pollution, reduce debt, reduce traffic fatalities, and increase upward mobility.

People think cars give them freedom, but they never think about the societal cost.

> People think cars give them freedom,

They don't just think so, they know it

> but they never think about the societal cost.

There is a "societal cost" attached to everything. Housing, Eating, going to the restroom. Society should evolve to make known improvements to people's lives available to more people and not devolve to a point where most modern amenities are considered too expensive for most people.

That said, pretty much everybody hates public transport everywhere in the world. It's better than nothing of course and in some densely-populated areas it's actually an improvement and faster than using a car (the subway). But given a reasonable choice, people prefer having their own cars, just like they prefer to have their own homes instead of sharing one with dozens of other people. Whatever the "societal cost" may be (what's the cost of individual housing?).

I don't think your perspective is realistic. If you think people make reasonable choices, I have some sad news.

People "prefer" a lot of things. People prefer soda and potato chips and 1000-calorie meals. People prefer to not pay taxes for health care and public education. People prefer to get pregnant and not get married. People prefer to live in suburbs away from inner cities full of people who might be different than them. People prefer not to save money. People prefer to vote along party lines and watch TV news that aligns with their views rather than reality. And they also prefer to drive individual cars which are highly likely to injure or kill them, or own handguns which are also likely to injure or kill them, and yet rant like paranoid lunatics if they have to get on a plane with a guy in a turban.

That being said, I know a lot of people around the world who prefer public transportation. It gives them time to read, to communicate. And like you mentioned, it is faster than commuting by car. It is, of course, also vastly cheaper than owning a car. But it also enables people to make more money by getting better jobs, without having to invest in a car, which is often a significant impediment.

> Society should evolve to make known improvements to people's lives available to more people

I agree! Like public transportation.

> and not devolve to a point where most modern amenities are considered too expensive for most people

Kind of like cars, an amenity which is often needed to get a job, but also ties people up in debt from loans and maintenance costs and insurance costs and registration costs and parking tickets and parking lot fees and traffic tickets, making it harder to make a living.

You're saying cars should be made cheaper, of course, but this is absolutely ridiculous. Since 1967, the cost of a car (adjusted for inflation) has either stayed the same or risen. There is no indicator at all that cars in this market will get cheaper any time soon. Other markets have cheaper cars, either because of regulatory influence, or because they simply produce cars at rates that their people can afford. Which means cheaper cars could be sold here, but manufacturers know they can make more money here.

So - what would a "reasonable" choice be? To go into debt to own a transportation method they don't need? Or to buy an SUV so they can drive to Starbucks and spend $4 on a coffee?

People are idiots, and we should not define the terms of our society based on their whims alone.

I guess we should just let you make all the choices for everyone then, sounds like you're up for it.

> If you think people make reasonable choices, I have some sad news.

They make their own choices. It's not up to us to patronisingly decide what's reasonable for them, as long as what they do isn't destroying society itself.

> And like you mentioned, it is faster than commuting by car.

That's not always the case. I live in a large city (1.9 million people) with one of the best public transport systems of the world and depending on where you live, it's faster by 30-45 mins to drive than to use public transport to some other part of the city,

People like me prefer to have time to use as we please rather than strangers to stare at. So we drive when we save time, or when it's raining or when many people are sick and cough at everyone. Unreasonable?

> an amenity which is often needed to get a job, but also ties people up in debt from loans and maintenance costs and insurance costs and registration costs and parking tickets and parking lot fees and traffic tickets, making it harder to make a living.

So does public transport by costing tax money and therefore putting pressure on governments to increase taxes.

> You're saying cars should be made cheaper, of course, but this is absolutely ridiculous.

Please don't make up stuff.

> There is no indicator at all that cars in this market will get cheaper any time soon.

EV will.

> People are idiots, and we should not define the terms of our society based on their whims alone

Exactly my point, the question is: who's the idiot? The one who forces people to cut down on their lifestyle choices (soon we'll have to go vegan because of the societal, environmental and moral cost of meat, right?) or the one who opts for freedom of choice and technological progress to make more choices sustainable?

We've already forced people to cut down on their lifestyle choices in multiple markets in order to help them stop killing themselves and others. Smoking. Drunk driving. Trans fats. Seat belt laws.

Driving was the 12th leading cause of death, and 7th in terms of number of years of life lost, in 2011. This is a major health concern in the US. Is it worth it to kill 36,000 people a year so that they can have the "freedom" of a particular "lifestyle"? I'm sure those who own cars can rationalize it, but if we were talking about motorcycles they would probably be banned from public streets within a year.

There's certainly good to come from making existing choices less harmful, but in the face of no better choice, and the choice not getting any better in the perceivable future, removing the choice is often a good idea.

Moreover, this lifestyle choice has not only negative health effects, but actually lowers local economic activity, to say nothing of worsening income inequality, upward mobility, and debt. Even if you brought the cost down by half (which would seem incredibly odd to me, as you basically have only one or two providers of some of the essential parts needed, so why would they not charge the prices that the market already bears for these products? case in point: car prices have never gone down) you still have all the other negative aspects of cars - death, parking, traffic, pollution, inequality, etc. EV only solves one of those things. The rest have zero practical solutions.

You can also look at it this way: the technical progress does not stop just because cars are taken off the road. You can still improve batteries for a variety of uses, the existing tech is still documented and can be brought back, and when self-driving cars are stable, you can look at whether they are even necessary for auto-lifestylers with a well-funded national public transportation system. Certainly they wouldn't be needed in the numbers they are today.

> Driving was the 12th leading cause of death, and 7th in terms of number of years of life lost, in 2011

Including buses, right? Or do they never crash?

> Is it worth it to kill 36,000 people a year so that they can have the "freedom" of a particular "lifestyle"?

Yes, because it comes with great utility as well.

You could ask the same questions about smoking (in private), drinking alcohol, lack of exercise, flying in airplanes etc. - are you going to forbid all of these?

> Moreover, this lifestyle choice has not only negative health effects, but actually lowers local economic activity, to say nothing of worsening income inequality, upward mobility, and debt.

Yeah, right.

> the technical progress does not stop just because cars are taken off the road.

If you take away a market, you'll hamper progress.

Most folks are not car-enthusiasts. Lots of us would gladly give up driving. So no, its not worth it to us. The utility is all in the time/cost. So a good public transit network would be a fine replacement for car ownership. Nothing at all like smoking, alcohol et al.

Also, busses. A bus crash favors the bus. There are rarely (compared to cars) any deaths. Its a pure public-health win.

> Including buses, right? Or do they never crash?

Oh, I forgot about all those buses constantly crashing. They account for 0.6% of all traffic accidents.

> Yes, because it comes with great utility as well.

A small portion of drivers need their vehicles for a utilitarian purpose. The vast majority use them simply as personal transportation. It's similar to guns. A very small amount of them are used for a utilitarian purpose, and the rest are owned for fun, yet they kill 33,000 every year. If ownership were limited only for utilitarian purpose, these numbers would go way, way down.

> You could ask the same questions about smoking (in private), drinking alcohol, lack of exercise, flying in airplanes etc. - are you going to forbid all of these?

Flying in airplanes? There is no significant health risk from airplanes. The rest are perfectly fine to do in private. The reasons why cars might be eliminated has nothing to do with private use - it has to do with its impact on the public.

> If you take away a market, you'll hamper progress.

An existing market does not necessarily result in progress. We (the US) had the largest auto market in the world for almost the entire history of automobiles, now second to China. We had not only the technology, but actual electric cars, 130 years ago.

Rough timeline:

The first crude electric car was introduced 185 years ago, around 1832. The first successful American electric car was introduced in 1891, with multiple makes and models produced in 1893.

By 1900, one third of all cars produced in the US were electric.

In 1908, the Model T gas-powered car was introduced, and in 1912, the electric starter. The practicality of this method ends the commercial viability of electric cars by 1920.

In 1966, Congress introduced a bill recommending electric cars to reduce air pollution. In the 70s, an oil crisis sparks massive consumer interest in electric vehicles.

In 1997, 30 years later, Toyota introduced the Prius, a hybrid. Within three years Honda, GM, Ford, Nissan, Chevy, and Toyota all produce ALL-electric vehicles.

Here we are, 20 years later, with a lot of hybrids, and one or two all-electric vehicles, pretty much all of which are too expensive or impractical for widespread adoption.

We have invented electric cars twice. Both times the market did not choose progress.

> We have invented electric cars twice. Both times the market did not choose progress.

Please educate yourself about the history of automobiles and why gasoline powered cars were much more practical and won.

Progress is not whatever fits in your utopia or seems best in hindsight, it's whatever improves the current situation. Pollution was not an issue in the 20's and what seemed best then won on the market. It's not a difficult concept.

>and institute nation-wide public transportation, and subsidize the more expensive parts of the network.

Isn't this how e.g. state owned rail companies work already?

If cars moved to mobility as a service model instead of car ownership people wouldnt care about getting into a small two seater car instead of owning a four seater for the times they do need it. You could probably fit six autonomous smartcars into the road space where one F150 is manually driven so we have lots of space to increase road density.

Whenever I run into an argument for something society-wide like this I do a little though experiment: Imagine the world as the argument suggests - in this case that public transportation is the norm. Now imagine I came to you and said, hey, what would you say to a personal conveyance device? Small and cheap enough to park at your residence, can carry you and all your friends/family/churchmembers/whatever as well as their cargo, and there's an existing, nationwide system (highways) they can use to literally get anywhere in the entire continental US, door-to-door, with the only requirement that you pay a little more.

Virtually everyone would dash off their shitty trains and busses in a moment and hop into cars. Even if you told them it would lead to mass congestion they'd point to people whose job it is to stuff people onto trains when they get too full. If you told them it would lead to pollution they might be swayed, but then if you told them electric cars were basically right on the horizon that would seem like an acceptable trade off.

You are arguing for a world that for most of the US would be considered objectively, demonstrably worse than the status quo. Just because you and your personal social circle lives in urban areas and doesn't need or want cars is virtually irrelevant to the national conversation because you are a tiny fraction of a minority that is not going to get any traction as self-driving and electric vehicles become the norm.

Public transportation in the US has already hit its apogee. Nobody wants it outside of dense urban cores, and the nation is largely not urban cores, nor will it be just because you wish it was.

I am not concerned with wishes, as much as inevitabilities.

Getting a car seems attractive because it gives you control over your movements. But with enough congestion, it becomes unattractive, because now your movements are constricted by the movements of other people on the same highway. Suddenly, taking a train becomes more attractive.

Or spread out, live and work in suburbs. Then you run into the Suburban Ponzi Scheme. The suburbs are becoming less safe, and physically declining, as the bills come due. http://www.businessinsider.com/strong-towns-growth-ponzi-sch...

But there is a middle ground solution between large buses and trains and single occupant vehicles. Here is another thought experiment, stand by a busy road or highway for a few minutes. Notice all the single occupant vehicles and how they are all traveling in the same direction. Now picture if some of those occupants were grouped together in the same vehicle and how much more efficient that would be. Lyft line, for example, works pretty well. Wider adoption would make it work better. It should be noted that the U.S., according to recent census data, is "gradually" shifting back to urban core living.

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