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Comment by rglullis | Hacker News Reader

Nice strawman.

I am not saying to get rid of cars altogether. I am saying that it would be better (and cheaper) for everyone if we took all those resources being out into "autonomous vehicles" and developed public transit first. Reduce the amount of yearly trips that are done by car. Provide alternatives.

The important thing about Japan or Europe is not "they don't have cars", but "people make 3-4x less trips by car compared with the alternative modes of transportation". If you want to have safer roads (in a way that doesn't give even more power to tech companies) the best way to do it is by simply reducing the amount of trips taken.

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> if we took all those resources being out into "autonomous vehicles" and developed public transit first

Waymo has raised about $11bn [1]. That is at best 4 miles of New York subway [2]. It's a third of a train between Bakersfield and Merced [3].

These things aren't competing. To the extent we can compare them on capital efficiency, it's not a good look for American public transit.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/28/business/waymo-investment...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-02-24/cityla...

[3] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-21/high-spe...

Try using a unit per person. It starts to look much less rosy for Waymo and also do not forget roads are still public infrastructure that has to be paid for and maintained.

What, you think Waymo will be able to weasel out of road tax or drive without roads?

> Try using a unit per person

Not relevant when we’re comparing project costs. OP argued we should devote self-driving resources to public transit. I’m arguing that’s nonsense.

> roads are still public infrastructure that has to be paid for and maintained

Sure. But that isn’t a new funding commitment. Cancelling Waymo won’t reduce our road costs.

>OP argued we should devote self-driving resources to public transit.

Yes, because it would allow moving people more cost-effectively (among other things) - which is measured per person per unit distance traveled. (I'm not OP, but nothing in this discussion is even remotely new for transit advocates like myself.)

> because it would allow moving people more cost-effectively (among other things)

Add last-mile and model for the real American population distribution. Not an imagined America where everyone lives on Manhattan.

Not all miles travelled are equal. In value, urgency or desirability and thus price willing to be paid. Complaining about self driving cars is asinine. The scales are wrong. The problems are wrong. The places are wrong.

> nothing in this discussion is even remotely new for transit advocates like myself

I mean, exactly. We’re urbanising without commensurate increases in public transit. Deployment or use. Perhaps that hints at a change being in order.

>Add last-mile and model for the real American population distribution. Not an imagined America where everyone lives on Manhattan.

Last I checked, Waymo also operates exclusively in urban areas.

> Waymo also operates exclusively in urban areas

There is no proximate future where public transit makes sense in Wyoming. There are multiple where self-driving cars do.

Self-driving cars are public transit depending on the terms of use; but I assume we're really talking about mass transit here.

When I was in Germany 25 years ago, a district of about 25k people (less than 1k per square mile) had multiple bus routes (4 IIRC) connecting the main town to other settlements, running through farmland. It was not unduly expensive and the locals certainly seemed to think it made sense. Children would take it to school in lieu of a dedicated school-owned service.

There's a light rail system in Rennes, France (city population about 225k; metro about 750k - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rennes) that's longer than the PATH system in the NYC area and almost as well used (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems).

Even Iceland has public buses, both local and inter-city (https://www.straeto.is/en).

You are starting to seem dishonest when you resort to outliers and present them as the baseline.

> To the extent we can compare them on capital efficiency

We can not. This logic is stupid. This logic will take you to the idea that the best thing to do is to get everyone a helicopter because helipads are cheap to build and it costs zero dollars to "build roads in the sky".

Yeah, you are right. These things are not competing. Yes, you are also right that proper infrastructure (re)development in North America will take a lot more money than what Big Tech has invested in self-driving cars.

The upsetting part is to see even supposedly smart people buying into the idea that American Exceptionalism is a real thing, and that you can keep holding on to the hope to find a shortcut away of your problems. Self-driving cars or not, the US is still going to be an expensive, inefficient country that can boast about its amazing economy, yet most people living there are at third-world country levels of development.

> Self-driving cars or not, the US is still going to be an expensive, inefficient country that can boast about its amazing economy, yet most people living there are at third-world country levels of development

For fuck’s sake, the world’s largest rail system and navigable waterways say hello.

I’ve advocated for public transit. But it’s turning into zealotry when an $11bn project showing actual gains is turned into a soapbox for decrying a pet project.

If Waymo/Google/Alphabet really cares about people's safety and this is nothing but a pet project where the amount raised ($11bn) in 15 years is ~3% of their whole revenue in 2023, they wouldn't mind open sourcing their whole system, including for other commercial ventures.

Until then, the whole thing is nothing but a Trojan horse to let encroach themselves even more into another aspect of our lives.

Also:

> world’s largest rail system

The world's largest freight rail system.

> they wouldn't mind open sourcing their whole system, including for other commercial ventures

You seem to just not like that this is done by Google. (Or by any private entity.) That is fine. I, like, hate this one restaurant in New York. But be honest about your motivations and check your biases.

This isn’t self-driving cars vs public transit debate because there isn’t one. If Google were funding a leg of passenger rail I suspect you’d be similarly incensed.

> world's largest freight rail system

The world’s largest rail system, period. It’s also the largest freight rail system. But passenger and freight are types of rail systems.

This is not a matter of who is doing it, but (a) why and (b) second-order effects.

> If Google were funding a leg of passenger rail I suspect you’d be similarly incensed.

It depends on (a) why and (b) second-order effects.

Are they doing it, e.g, because they want to build a new campus in a lower-cost-of-living area, and they want to make the idea of living in Tuscaloosa, AL more palatable by having it connected to Atlanta, GA with train service that does not take 6(!!!!) hours as Amtrak currently does? Amazing, go Google!

Oh, they want to make it so that everyone can use it at reasonable prices, but Google employees can do it for free and get priority boarding? Fine, if that's what it takes to get private enterprises investing in infrastructure, I'm okay with it.

Oh, they want to do it because they are going to use it as a test-bed for some revolutionary transportation technology that they pinky-promise will eventually work as some Futurama-style tube network where anyone can go door-to-door as fast as possible? And they are offering the whole thing for free (or heavily subsidized) for everyone that enrolls in their beta program? Then please Google go fuck itself, because we all know how this is just bait.

> The world’s largest rail system, period.

I despise this way of arguing. Laying down x length of rail track is not a difficult problem whatsoever. Such a crude metric is entirely insufficient to back up an argument about how great American railways supposedly are.

What's the ticket cost for the passengers compared to other countries? Average train delay? Cancellation rate? Speed? Death rate? The argument is not looking so hot anymore, right? Then stop it with the irrelevant statistics of rail track length.

> Laying down x length of rail track is not a difficult problem whatsoever

First by track and third by tonnage (after China and Russia).

>Laying down x length of rail track is not a difficult problem whatsoever.

It actually is. Japan's new maglev shinkansen line is stalling because they can't get land rights to lay rail through.[1]

An even more blasphemous example is California's high speed rail project which never accomplishes anything, but I'm pretty sure that also suffers from a severe case of legalized money laundering.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen#Shiz...

>That is at best 4 miles of New York subway [2]. It's a third of a train between Bakersfield and Merced [3].

Bakersfield to Merced is 171 miles of intercity high-speed rail. It's unclear to me why Californians need to make such trips with any significant frequency, and it's certainly not what I'd normally think of as "public transit".

22 years ago in Toronto, the Sheppard line (3.4 mi, underground) was built for less than $1b CAD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_4_Sheppard). From what I can tell, costs in NYC are mainly a NYC problem.

Chicago is extending an existing above ground train line along an existing freeway (no right of way issues, not a subway, etc) 5.6 miles. It’s four stops and a new rail yard. 3.6B.

https://www.transitchicago.com/ctas-36-billion-red-line-exte...

It may be an American problem but it’s certainly not just NYC. But of course most of Waymos market is American as well.

Something may have changed more recently. The first stage of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT line in Toronto looks like it will come in at around (converting currency and distances) 9B for 12 miles. Locals generally don't seem to think this represents a success. (Despite being light rail, about 2/3 of this first stage will run underground.)

(The REM in Montreal - https://www.cdpqinfra.com/en/projects/rem - is doing much better than that, despite going over budget and being delayed quite a bit.)

But the Bakersfield/Merced HSR line is an actual project, estimated at over $30B (it makes no sense independently but is part of LA-to-SF).

You seem to be comparing an actual, private tech project to what you wished public transit looked like, not what it actually looks like.

Public transit is awesome, but construction costs in the anglophone world are bananas (https://transitcosts.com/).

The Sheppard line is real. It was constructed about 20 years ago. I have used it.

> It's unclear to me why Californians need to make such trips with any significant frequency,

Because they’re both between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

> and it's certainly not what I'd normally think of as "public transit".

If not trains between cities what do you consider public transit?

>Because they’re both between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

This explains exactly nothing to me. There are many cities between Toronto and Montreal (the two largest CMAs in Canada, and about 88% of that driving distance) and I can't imagine why anyone would regularly travel between those two, either. Nor can I imagine why someone would make regular trips between Belleville and Ottawa (very close to the Bakersfield-Merced distance, and two of the larger cities in between).

>If not trains between cities what do you consider public transit?

Subways, light rail, streetcars and buses, all operating within a city. And, yes, trains operating within a CMA. (GO Transit trains from Toronto can get you as far as Kitchener, but as far as I know it's a vastly less popular route than the main Lakeshore lines. From Hamilton to Oshawa is definitely not solid built-up area, but it's pretty dense.)

I can't understand why this would be non-obvious. Maybe there's a cultural difference. Are Americans really so dedicated to urban sprawl that residents of a metropolis with an 7- or even 8-digit population might still require regular intercity travel to go about their lives?

> can't understand why this would be non-obvious. Maybe there's a cultural difference

Yes. Many Americans take it for granted that we have quick access to a variety of cities and landscapes. (Particularly on the coasts.)

Keep in mind that America is about a third richer, on a GDP per capita basis, than Canada. Even with stark income inequality, that produces a large disposable-income gap. Add to that the population gap and you have about the population of Canada travelling intercity many times a year.

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