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Comment by cyberax | Hacker News Reader

> They are stripped of the independence of move, because they can not drive a car

Self-driving cars will solve that with this decade.

We have something similar to self driving cars. Taxis and other public transport! Sprawl means that a taxi just waiting around the corner isn't gonna make money. That leaves uber and similar apps which are expensive. Reducing sprawl makes it possible to find a taxi a short walk away from your home. I was able to commute to school myself using public transport because those roads were busy enough that I had to wait just 5 mins in front of my house for one to come. That wouldn't have been possible if I lived in a suburbia.

> We have something similar to self driving cars. Taxis and other public transport!

No we don't. Taxis are not a solution because they are INCREDIBLY dirty. You might as well be riding on train-cars worth of coal.

And public transit is worse, because it's inevitably slow and inflexible.

Edit: taxis are expensive not because they are cars, but because they need dedicated drivers. And here in the US even taxi drivers earn a somewhat liveable salary, and as a result they have a huge carbon footprint. But if you're OK with semi-slave labor, then it can work, agreed.

By taxis, I don't mean Uber drivers. We have auto-rickshaws here. They go from any point in the city to any point (so you have the flexibility of private vehicles) but they mostly follow common routes and they pick up and drop off people anywhere along the way. So they end up more efficient since they are nearly always at full capacity rather than your SUV that's burning more fuel carrying itself than any people and stuff inside it.

Public transit is excellent when you design for it. It can be fast and flexible. The problem is when the implementation is half hearted. Transit systems are things that become better with scale. The more you invest in them, they better they get.

And now the time has come to speak about economic part of sprawl and self-driving cars (let's assume they will happen soon)

When you say that "they are trying to push people into dense cities". One should read as "I want the govt to continue subsidizing construction of roads and suburbs.". Because can you really afford that lifestyle without making the ends meet, if you will have to fully pay for all of that?

And will you be able to easily afford a self-driving car, if that will ever come to existence?

And don't you think that you will fully own your self-driving car with open-source firmware running onboard? Most likely you won't. Think more of a subscription-based self-driving feature, which will have unpredictable pricing, and mandatory always-online. Do you really want that "freedom"?

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