> - Consistently [...] clean [...]
I don't expect this to hold true once Waymo become generally available, alas.
I don't expect this to hold true once Waymo become generally available, alas.
We'll see how Waymo handles it! It will definitely be Waymo's problem to solve, though.
> Many of our riders choose Waymo for the clean and consistent vehicle we offer. To ensure every rider gets this experience, we’ll be applying a vehicle cleaning fee for riders who leave a mess behind in the vehicle, such as vomit, excessive trash, and smoking odors.
> For those that self-report their mess during their ride (not including smoking), the fee will be $50. For issues that go unreported, we’ll charge riders $100 for the first violation and increase the fee for subsequent violations. Repeat trash and smoking related violations may also impact your account standing.
Its like living with 4 roommates, but one of them leaves their shit everywhere. It could make the whole place look unkept for everyone else.
And because we generally don't want to pick up after other peoples shit/mess things may be left trashy for a long time before anything gets cleaned.
A much larger percentage of people will add trash to an already trashed environment.
Compare that to other car sharing options (e.g. Zipcar, where cars are usually a mess, but there's no way to keep users accountable).
I think theres a stigma against reporting drivers so most people don't, but then that leaves the people who don't care about these policies to continue giving people bad experiences.
More cynically, there are simply too many people that won't take care of "public" property. If every 3rd rider (exaggerated for rhetorical purposes) trashes the car, it's gonna be dirty no matter what.
Like others said: the second they have run drivers out, the cars will stop getting cleaned obsessively because you won't have a choice.
Same thing that happened when Lyft and Uber when they ran the taxi industry out of business.
Same thing that happened when Zipcar was established. Cars went from being spotless and well maintained to damaged, dirty, and half the dash being lit up.
I will have a choice. I will choose one of the competitors.
> Same thing that happened when Lyft and Uber when they ran the taxi industry out of business
There's still a taxicab industry in San Francisco. It became better after competing with Lyft and Uber.
The time spent travelling out of service, in cleaning, and back into service are all lost opportunities. Hopefully you can clean a very large number of cars in a very short period of time.
The cars may be standard. The messes, obviously, will not be.
The win they do have, that I did not consider is, they have cameras _in_ the car. So visible cleanliness is something they can manually check before and after the rid and schedule for service if required; however, it currently seems that this requires the vehicle to go to the larger centralized maintenance facility, which I guessing takes quit a bit more time than the auxiliary charge only lots.
Not trying to be super pessimistic, but mixing distributed autonomous operations with centralized manual service, especially in an urban environment, seems fraught with novel challenges.
B. If the car is reaching the point it needs cleaning without an acute mess, it can go to the centralized location next time it needs a charge.
C. They can also elect to have people at the charging centers at off-hours to clean a subset of cars, to reduce the amount of B you need to do.
The overall point being way more efficient to clean than an Uber.
The driverless cars can also, well, drive themselves to a cleaning center during the night-time when it won't affect the income generation.
Another interesting possible feature is to redesign cars to be more easily cleanable. Driverless cars can dispense with the central console, steering wheel and pedals, with simple hard plastic covered in detachable covering. Even the seats can be made detachable.
They can. My local state operated ferry plays an announcement on every ride that if you harass the staff, they will issue a no trespass order banning you from the service for 60 days. Violating the order is criminal tresspassing.
Of course, enforcement isn't easy, and confronting passengers to issue the orders isn't easy, and both can contribute to confusion and delay. It's a little easier to do on a ferry vs a bus because there's more staff.
If you're looking for easy clean surfaces, you could go for police car backseats. Not very comfortable from the looks of them, but very amenable to cleaning.
I might believe that for ferries, they have personnel for that.
Our local bus drivers were told that fentanyl fumes are not harmful, and that asking the state to do anything about junkies smoking _on_ _the_ _bus_ is systemic racism or something.
In New York right now. Subway stations are dinghy. But the cars themselves are fine. Hop on the Metro-North or LIRR and they're on par with European cleanliness standards. (If not behavioural.)
European trains are far cleaner.
Privately operated public transport (e.g. jitneys and ferries) frequently are when positioned at a premium, as Waymo is.