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Comment by concordDance | Hacker News Reader

> The only problem that self-driving cars will ever solve is where to put VC money in a zero interest rate world. We've had freight trains and mass transit for centuries.

They solve stress from a 30 minute daily commute.

Public transport is never door to door and there are always changeovers and cancellations, while self driving cars on demand can be door to door and is far less dependant on whether there's a labour dispute or leaves on the tracks.

They save thousands of hours per person over a working life.

(Also, before you comment: remote work doesn't suit everyone or every job and being able to work in a job that doesn't have to be within a few miles of your home and your partner's job is a huge flexibility, efficiency and career boost)

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In my walkable neighborhood you know how this problem is solved?

The same way it was solved for centuries, high foot traffic incentivized a small grocer to pop up within walking distance. People in the neighborhood generally take jobs in the neighborhood, because there is high foot traffic, so there are jobs. Even doctors and nurses can get in on that, because it’s dense enough that a hospital is easy walking or biking distance, and their jobs are 100% not remote-friendly.

Let's say I work in reinsurance. How many reinsurance companies do you think are within walking distance?

It's an odd fact of life that as countries get more developed the people in them more heavily specialise. This is one of the reasons cities have much higher wealth production per capita than towns.

If everyone is very unspecialized (e.g. "general practitioner" rather than "expert in non-hodgkins limphomas") then walking and biking could work okay, there should be a couple of jobs in range (having alternative employment options is vital for healthy employee-employer relations). But that's just not how an advanced global economy works.

Somehow most developed countries around the world have figured out how to design cities around walking, public transit and cycling, but it's an insurmountable problem in the US?

It's not magic, folks, just look at how it is done elsewhere. Yes, that includes places with "real winters".

Uh, I live in the UK. Public transport is only good when compared to cars in 5mph traffic in roads not designed for that many cars.

Say I live in Benson and want to get to the Oxford Science Park for work. Do I go for a walk and two busses at 1 hour or do I drive for 12 minutes?

The majority of people do not choose to live in one town and commute to work to a different one that doesn't have a good transit connection with the first.

The solution sure isn't providing even more infrastructure to the method of transport that is least efficient (passengers/hr, ongoing cost, space wasted for parking), most polluting (particulate, noise) and most dangerous to others (injuries per Km travelled).

People constantly defend cars based on how convenient it is for the person driving them without taking into consideration how their choice affects everybody outside their car. This method of transport is unique in the magnitude of its externalities compared to the alternatives.

> Public transport is never door to door and there are always changeovers and cancellations, while self driving cars on demand can be door to door and is far less dependant on whether there's a labour dispute or leaves on the tracks.

My city's automated metro comes every 90 seconds at rush hour, and every 3 minutes the rest of the day. The commute from my old neighborhood was 25 minutes including walking, and now that I moved to the suburbs I added a 10 minute bus ride to get to the station.

My parents recently gave me their old car, and it's fun to have it for weekend adventures. (I'm not an anti-car extremist!) But for commuting to work it isn't much better to be sitting in traffic while the train zips past.

This infrastructure wasn't all that expensive to build and your city could have it too. The only special requirement to make it succeed is to rezone the areas around stations for high density housing, so they'll have lots of built-in demand.

Zoning reform is a necessity but it won't resolve infrastructure problems extending to transport so quickly. Climate change (exacerbated through growing emissions) is a near-term problem.

That's fine and dandy, but that will still produce the core problem - increased traffic... which would make your 30min commute, a 2 hour commute. And "build more roads" has been proven to not ease traffic at all.

Meanwhile, even with issues with public transit - a 30 minute commute is still on average a 30 minute commute.

> whether there's a labour dispute

Crazy thought: if they strike and you can't get to work then don't go but put pressure on those who are at fault for the strike: stingy businesses.

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