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Comment by jmiskovic | Hacker News Reader

As much as I'd like self-driving tech, the price seems too high. High resolution urban area maps of that need constant updating? Built by and controlled by multi-national IT corporations known for no regard for privacy? How about we pour that research and investments into bettering the public transportation? Would be good enough for most people.

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Wouldnt a full self driving solution solve its own problems? I.e self driving cars can perform the task of constantly updating its urban map?

While we differ in execution, this blog is really good at explaining a new form of transport which I'd venture is better than self driving cars:

https://openprtspecs.blogspot.com/2015/02/designing-prt.html...

A massive barrier to this is that people generally seem unhappy with the fact that public transit means they need to sit next to other members of the public. Rightly so, to a degree - our fellow humans can be quite rude or unsightly or dangerous at times, and most of us have probably done some shitty things in public by accident a few times. So if you offer them a pipe-dream of private automated transit instead, that's a lot more appealing than dropping 8 figures on slight improvements to BART or their local buses.

The area I grew up in had a light rail network that was supposed to expand to my community college within 3 years, and in practice it took over 10. One source of delay was that communities rejected the expansion, and one reason among others was a claim that Local Crime would 'ride the rails' to their previously quiet neighborhoods. Sometimes people don't want to share space with their neighbors.

The barrier to expansion is that suburban sprawly cities have been designed around cars, shared transportation under-developed, and wealthy folks are scared of being too close to less wealthy folks, who they think will try and steal their stuff or cough on them.

Relatively rich, conservative suburban folks are going to make choices to disadvantage less-wealthy people (like those that are historically going to need public transport and can't afford a car, or a second at least). It's easy to raise a group of people's outrage through scare rhetoric; that's why we the US has it's current administration. It's also not a good reason to just say "oh well buy more cars".

the failure of public transport in the US is not a good argument against public transport in general due to its large success elsewhere in the world.

We have excellent public transportation where I live (Norway), but after I got kids I needed a car. It's not just about public transportation being a success.

We try to use public transportation as much as possible but sometimes it just isn't possible. I can't carry 4 bags of groceries on a public bus while having two kids in tow after an 8 hour work day.

The focus should be making the cars pollute less not remove them (except in city centres where they do not belong).

Having a bunch of people and things to move around is a good reason for a vehicle, because you're using it. Being a single occupant in a midsized something filling up roads is what folks are generally concerned with first.

Congestion is a big issue and until cars are 0 emissions, putting more on the road will bring more pollution. It will also mean building more roads, which further increases our environmental impact.

Best to both improve that through regulation and industry response, and actively work on expanding multi-modal mass transit options. The goal should still be fewer cars overall along with fantastically desirable other transport options -- we should (in a good way) want you to be disappointed when you have to get in your car instead of taking the mass transit options.

I am 110% in support of public transport expansion and not especially fond of self-driving cars as an alternative, just trying to express why I find people in my area (and industry) tend to prefer self-driving to transit.

It is also way more sexy. And it attracts way more VC money as well. A well run public transport system is a nice thing to have. It can still be optimized, so.

No, it has to do with the fact that public transit is synchronous and personal transit is asynchronous. For me to travel via public transit, I have to follow their schedule, their routes, possibly hop between 5 different buses to get to my destination (work) and then somehow take 3 other buses and a train to pick up my kid, another couple of hops to pick up groceries, then drop my kid off at ball practice, then pick them back up again after running a few other errands. Doing this in a suburban or even moderately dense urban environment via public transit is a giant pain in the ass, if it's even possible at all. There's slippage in time for every stop a bus needs to make and every route change that needs to occur and for every minute spent waiting on a bus or train to arrive. This is why we built up around the automobile in America. It's not that it's pointless and it's not that we hate other people. It's efficient.

While we differ in execution, this blog is really good at explaining a new form of transport which I'd venture is better than self driving cars:

https://openprtspecs.blogspot.com/2015/02/designing-prt.html...

What is it with Americans and their loathing of one another? What is the problem with sitting next to a stranger? Maybe it's time for a spoonful of concrete.

If more wealthy people used public transportation, the percentage of shady people on public transportation would go down.

"shadiness" has nothing to do with wealth. Beyond a point you can't really tell whether someone is wealthy by looking at them on the bus. You can tell whether or not they spend extravagantly on fancy clothes or accessories, but you have no way to know whether the person you're looking at is a millionaire who just believes in dressing casually. You could also be looking at someone who's been unemployed for two weeks and is looking their best because they have a job interview, so they look wealthier than they actually are. And none of that has much to do with whether a person will seem "dangerous" to the average transit rider.

You are right. Sorry for my bad and disrespectful wording.

My point was more about that if the percentage of people who currently use their car to get to work will go by public transportation instead, it will feel less unsafe, since there are many other people around.

Thing is we've had investing money into public transport for a century and things don't change much - London's busses and tubes work much the same as decades ago. Self driving has the promise in the future to massively change things and partly sort the million annual road deaths.

Like I keep a car out in Hertfordshire to get around there because it's the only practical way really in semi rural areas - the busses are rubbish and taxis too expensive. If I could get a £3 driverless electric thing rather than a £20 human driven petrol taxi I'd probably do that and dump the car.

Yep, and if you stick that taxi on a rail hung from lamp posts, then you don't need to worry about batteries, other transport interactions. You can run it straight into warehouses to deliver a pallet load of goods point to point, up the side of buildings eg. Home to 4th floor, run it at 200mph in the open, overnight sleepers for long distances, and if you're rich then pay for some track to your door.

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