Hacker News Reader

Comment by kayoone | Hacker News Reader

I am all for safer roads, less city car traffic, but in the end it is the perspective of people living in the city who can commute by train or bike. Lots of people live outside of cities though and commute. For many a car is the only way to get to work in a reasonable amount of time. I'm actually more concerned about the pollution and i'd rather bet on electric and self driving cars to solve both of these issues. Getting rid of many parked cars would free up so much space. I hope this happens while I am still working though.

View on HN

It's pretty much the American concept of Suburbia that makes it hard to use public transport if you don't live in a city (or even if you live in a lot of cities, it seems).

Most European and Asian (specifically Japanese) cities have very good connectivity from the outskirts into the city centers.

Granted, it can be complicated and time consuming to connect from outskirt to outskirt. This is no reason, however, to throw away well working public systems of connectivity for some pipe dream, which still uses much too much resources for the density of a city.

It would really be good if the remaining cars were substancially smaller though. Driving an SUV into the city is not ok and does not provide significant increases in utility for the one doing it compared to a small car.

So build parking spaces at the outskirts and have people switch to public transport or bikes to enter the city proper. Or just extend the rail lines to the outskirts and have people commute by rail all the way.

Why self-driving cars would help reduce pollution (or traffic)? People who can't drive will start using those cars, so probably there will be more, not less cars on the roads.

My thinking would be more efficient driving.

Why not small (ish) self-driving buses that run very regularly (you shouldn't wait more than 10 mins for one) that people can hop-on hop-off. Networked so that you can get from one side of the city to the next in no more than 3 hops.

Big enough also to takes prams/buggies/bicycles/luggage/large shopping items, so that people can also get to do many of the normal things they would do with their day and still use public transport.

I wonder what the economics of this look like.

A bus averaging 20mph running 24/7/365 puts 175,000 miles on it yearly. Ignoring fuel costs, that's a lot of wear & tear on the moving parts. How many passenger miles per day do you need to get out of the bus for it to be economical?

Realistically, no city bus fleet is going to average 20 mph, 24 hours a day. Perhaps 1/4 to 1/2 of that, even with 24-hour autonomous operation.

It’s likely the electric drivetrains in modern buses will last longer than their diesel predecessors, while reducing maintenance costs.

Like the Marshrutka in ex-Soviet countries, or the Dolmus in Turkey? I found them to be very convenient and also very cheap. Not sure they would be happy to fit a pram in, though.

Really self driving cars won’t be much difference than how pervasive taxi use is in countries where labor is cheap, except traffic will be much more optimized.

Uber and Lyft are the mechanical Turk version of self driving cars. They cause congestion.

Self driving cars will be a godsend to congested cities, maybe not in America where there won’t enough political will to ban manual driven cars in mega cities, but definitely in Asia, and especially in China.

I haven’t seen anything like Beijing or Manila since moving to LA and then Seattle, America has first world traffic problems only.

- They could park somewhere else, underground, or just be always in use (for shared cars). This alone would cut space usage in half for typical streets with parking on both sides

- Near-perfect safety would reduce the need for structural safety. That could cut size and weight drastically

- Coordination might allow more efficient use of roads, obviating the need for multiple lanes, allowing cars to travel bumper-to-bumper, drastically increase throughput on intersections

The suburbs are a problem. We badly need to re-urbanize and live more closely together so that public transit works better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com