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Comment by mihaic | Hacker News Reader

I'm dreading a bit a future where the skies are swarming with flying taxis. Every urban view is guaranteed to be ruined long-term if this "takes off".

Still, maybe it would be ok to have this trade-off to solve traffic.

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Are Americans ready to give up everything rather than admit that dismantling public transit/street-cars/rail and creating zoning restrictions for giant single housing-only residential areas was a bad idea and will cripple traffic for generations?

Autonomous cars do not solve traffic. Flying taxis will not solve traffic. Traffic is solved by abandoning the strange ideal of private cars/pick-up trucks with a single person inside.

Shared housing and shared transit has become gridlocked, initially because of industry forces and propaganda. But today, I think it remains for other reasons: Americans are scared of strangers (sometimes rightfully so) and public spaces are often depressing.

The interesting exception is commercial air travel, which to me embodies the worst parts of shared transit, yet is not considered socialist and dangerous here in the US.

Yes, I agree that a smooth transition will be unlikely if not impossible. It's not clear how to escape the spiral.

Zoning restrictions are a red herring. Even cities with liberal or nonexistent ones (Houston) have traffic issues, and even the most adamant anti-zoning activists rarely want to raise their kids next to a gas station or a liquor store.

It's the downtown-suburb hub-spoke city model, where everyone ends up on the road at the same time driving in the same direction.

Look at some cities designed from scratch with cars in mind like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvine,_California The office complexes are decentralized, surrounded by shopping plazas, parks and schools which are then encircled by apartments, then semi-detached residences, and finally detached single family houses. Everyone with a job at one of the office parks can live closer to their specific job without affecting the traffic patterns of the other neighborhoods.

Even though it's very car-centric (with I-5 and 405 going through it), has next to zero public transport, is home to a regional airport, Irvine consistently ranks in the top 10 places for living / retiring / growing up / bringing up kids / park access metrics.

Where I live every supermarket and every kiosk is a liquor store and people raise their kids just fine.

And here government have monopoly on hard stuff. And people are happy to live closer to their stores... I have never heard anyone anywhere to say they don't want to live next to one. Though generally they are next to super and hypermarkets.

Now that I think about it more, New York City made a pretty smart decision a long time ago to ban rooftop helipads.

There used to be a shuttle helicopter service from the roof of a tall office building near Grand Central station, to nearby airports, which was shut down after a helicopter tipped over on its side, throwing blades over the edge and killed five people.

https://gothamist.com/news/in-1977-five-were-killed-in-helic...

Interesting. Superman the Movie was filmed at the same time as this. I wonder if the helicopter scene (where Superman first goes public and saves Lois Lane) was influenced by this? Or maybe it was just putting to screen a pre-existing fear.

Don't worry, your AR goggles will filter out whatever elements you don't like in a given scene. Personally I think it would probably look pretty cool so I'll leave them in.

Can the AR goggles make other people pretty? That would improve my quality of life.

I mean, even now, all the real time filters on Tiktok and Instagram are already capable of giving a no lag experience. When the more powerful AIs get stuffed into handheld devices, I expect them to paint the world however you want.

Apple is in prime position to do this btw. Their hardware is uniquely suited to AI stuff and now that they have officially step into the AR business, it is probably going to be strange.

Won't take long for Shallow Hal to become reality!

Individual transport will never "solve traffic".

I'm not arguing with you, I mostly believe the same. There are many cities though where public transport is such a foreign concept, that partial solutions will have to be a stepping stone for something better later.

I'm more worried about risks of these falling from sky or making emergency landings all over the place. Specially in 10 or 20 years when maintenance goes south... Or someone hacks one for their own fun use.

in your view, is our view of the night sky ruined by commercial airline flights overhead?

Commercial airline flights are packed with 100s of people and fly very high. Flying taxis are for n < 4 (likely n=1) people and fly low. That's like comparing bus networks with private cars.

Yes, and I want all those container ships out of the ocean too because they are ruining beach bathing. /s

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