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Comment by throwawaysea | Hacker News Reader

Let’s not forget the benefits side. I feel like these days the urbanist crowd and (activist-minded) academia love to disproportionately focus on the negatives, while downplaying or outright ignoring the numerous positives of a car. For me, the convenience of fast point to point transport on my own schedule simply can’t be beat. In all but the largest cities (which are simply overbuilt), nothing else comes close, and you can get a lot more done in any given day with a car. Transit and slow modes like walking or biking simply limit choice and use up more time, and there is no getting around that. And then of course there’s the benefit of being able to carry cargo and people and being shielded from weather.

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The reason the urbanists and others focus on the negatives is that when an individual chooses to use a car in an urban environment they claim benefits for themselves, but impose costs on others who do not have a choice in the matter. Pollution, congestion, the loss of amenity caused by making urban areas more hostile for walking or cycling, loss of efficiency for bus routes caught in traffic that could otherwise move large numbers of people at speed; these are all costs paid for by people who do not choose or cannot afford to drive.

I think the only solution is to charge for road use on a per-mile basis and at a price that varies according to demand, as well as pricing on-street parking at a level that reflects local land values.

>you can get a lot more done in any given day with a car.

Yep. But the cost of personal ownership is unnecessarily high when most cars sit around unused most of the day and all-night. At a high cost to the environment.

And in-city mass-transit doesn't have to sit still. If the Cruise robotaxi concept (being tried out in SF now) works out, mass-transit could do likewise. That'd get cheaper faster than personal EVs will. Ten cars or one bus?

In addition, its a myth that private cars are less energy efficient and are less environmentally friendly per passange mile than mass transit. In fact, there are only two mass transit systems in the US more efficient (in cost, energy and carbon) than driving the average American car. And none are even close to being as efficient as driving a Prius.

https://theicct.org/planes-trains-and-automobiles-counting-c... https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa-615.pd...

Also, no one has ever gotten covid, measles, influenza, the common cold or tuberculosis communting alone to work in their car.

Not to mention that passenger miles are substantially more efficient in cars - You drive (almost, given the amount I get turned around) directly on the shortest route to your destination, while a large percentage of mass transit system rides involve a transfer. Probably not a 10x, probably not even a 2x, but I did the numbers on my commute that was nearly-straight and still found I was going 20% farther to reach my destination by mass transit, because the time-efficient route required going backwards.

I don't think your sources support your claim -- but it's complicated. The first link: https://theicct.org/planes-trains-and-automobiles-counting-c... has a graph showing that bus achieves ~150 passenger miles / gallon gasoline equivalent, compared to amtrack, plane, and car all at ~50 +/- 10 miles / gallon gasoline equivalent. Bus is 3 times more efficient than the average car by that measure -- but it really depends what kind of bus loading they assumed. The second link: https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa-615.pd... is mostly arguing that trains should not be built _in the US_ for environmental/efficiency reasons. One strand of the argument is that building rail is less flexible and takes away ridership from the more efficient bus mode. I think this is the passage you were trying to quote:

> Two commuter-rail systems —New Jersey Transit and the Northern Indiana Commuter District—are the only transit systems that use less energy per passenger mile than a Toyota Prius. All other commuter-rail lines, except for the SEPTA system in Philadelphia, use less energy than the average passenger auto.

Quite the contradiction to "none are even close to being as efficient as driving a Prius".

> Bus is 3 times more efficient than the average car by that measure -- but it really depends what kind of bus loading they assumed.

Where I live, I've rarely seen a bus with more than 5 people inside.

There is a good DOT map showing average transit bus occupancy by US state that confirms your observation. The lowest average occupancy is in Wyoming at 3.9, the highest is in New Jersey at 15.6. It's a PDF so you need to scroll down page 12 to see the map:

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/tables/occupancyf...

So yeah, we can see why mass transit is overwhelminly less efficient than private car when on average a bus with 90 seats is only hauling around 7 people.

I think the tesla "summon" (and probably the corollary I think should be "banish") would make a personal car even better.

summon car, go to front door get in... drive to destination... get out at front door and "banish" car (to parking space)

Except your 'drive to destination' step fails to include 'stand still in traffic jam because there's a line of Tesla's taking up road space transiting to and from their parking space.'

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