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Comment by MegaButts | Hacker News Reader

Self-driving cars are cool but I'd rather have good public transit. These vehicles clearly have utility beyond just public transit, but I'd rather they be an edge case rather than considered a main solution. So yeah, from my perspective the problem is being focused on profits instead of trying to solve the real problem with solutions that have already existed for decades.

If you zoom out a bit, your argument would be more-or-less the same when regular automobiles were replacing the functioning transit systems in the USA, specifically in LA.

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I've never really understood this "improve public transit instead of autonomous vehicles" argument. They're two entirely distinct funding sources. Nothing is preventing us from improving public transit except the same things that always have.

It's an argument that we should fund public transit more. What's hard to understand?

Obviously funding public transit is good, but people usually phrase funding arguments as zero sum tradeoffs. You wouldn't write "bookstores are cool, but I'd rather have public transit", because there's no trade-off there. I'm assuming the OP actually meant something by writing their post the way they did.

People funding autonomous driving will obviously lobby against increased funding for public transit and they will also fund demonizing public transit.

Look at Musk and Vegas. The vast majority of mass transportation in Vegas should be handled by actual public transit, most likely high speed rail from LA and light rail along the Strip to downtown Vegas and a few other places.

Instead Vegas has a silly monorail, a few buses that don't even get dedicated bus lanes on 8+ lane stroads and something stupid like, dunno, 20 daily flights from LA. Plus Musk setting up tunnels or hyperloops or other stupidities.

As a counter to your one example:

I've worked on autonomous vehicles for 16 years and my largest philanthropic effort is improving public transit. The common theme is being really interested in transportation and wanting it to work well for people.

Cruise was also the top funder of one San Francisco's recent MUNI funding ballot propositions (which just barely failed). You can certainly have a cynical take on that, but they still did it.

Musk doesn't need autonomous vehicles to derail public transit. Hyperloop predated FSD, to use your example. Moreover, the objection applies equally to taxis and Uber/Lyft.

It's also not an actionable objection. Let's say we go and ban autonomous vehicles. Why wouldn't the same billionaires simply continue lobbying against public transit improvements and for the repeal of the ban? They have the money to do both.

We haven't failed to invest sufficiently in public transit for 50+ years solely because of billionaire lobbying. That's not the blocker.

It seemed to me to always have been a goalpost relocation. The talking point wasn't even a fringe view beforehand and if anything would be taken as an obvious diversion from those who are big-oil aligned. Instead it was first seen when electrification of transit was achieved by capitalism.

The watermelons simply couldn't accept that, it went against their article of faith that capitalism is responsible for all of the world's problems and could not provide any solutions. IF there is one thing that makes them the most angry it is solving problems without going to their preferred political alignment. So they all downloaded their latest talking points and reprogrammed themselves and declared that electric car's only purpose is to save the auto industry in spite of 48% of global transport carbon emissions coming from cars and vans.

> Self-driving cars are cool but I'd rather have good public transit.

Last mile is a PITA in the US. It is difficult to take the train from San Diego northward if you don't get there at 7AM because the parking will fill up.

At some point, Waymo can cross over into replacing a personal car for the last mile task. Right now, it's a bit expensive: $20/ride 2 ride/day 5 days/week * 50 weeks = $10,000 per year. Purchasing your own car still makes more sense. If that were $1,000 per year? No brainer--I'd dump my car in a heartbeat.

> Self-driving cars are cool but I'd rather have good public transit

False dichotomy.

Good public transport would be self driving cars as a feeder network to mass transit once the self driving tech is cheap enough.

It could only work well as work habits change to stop having peak hours (peak usage for low-utilization self-driving cars doesn't seem likely to be economical).

Even in cities with good public transit, it will not take me home at 3 AM, with possibly few exceptions like New York.

Even in cities with good public transit, it will not take me home at 3 AM, with possibly few exceptions like cities that have good public transit.

For many of us "good public transit" would make zero difference in our daily lives in the US. We just don't live somewhere that there will realistically be a bus stop or train stop within easy walking distance. I'm not even a long drive from a train station but it's absolutely unworkable as transportation for most purposes aside from going into the big city 9-5.

We probably went wrong when we decided to maximize money versus maximizing happiness.

We badly need to move beyond GDP and to at least IHDI, if not something even better.

I can't buy food or pay my mortgage with happiness.

I didn't say it was easy. And I'm not talking about individual action. Governments should incentivize and force different things. Conceptually simple example: construction projects should require sustainability and aesthetics reviews, including, for example, use of better materials and green and walkable spaces. For example I find the butt ugly and cheap American solutions for sidewalks (I think continuously poured concrete cut into slabs with circular saws) much worse than the European ones (paving stones, often natural stone). The US is the richer country and it frequently looks cheaper and poorer.

Beauty matters.

What a terrible idea. I don't want my government to "force" things. Nor should idiot government bureaucrats have any authority over something as subjective as aesthetics.

Paving stones are terrible for skates, and not great for running either. Poured concrete is much smoother. And it's not cut with circular saws so I have no idea what you're referring to there.

Poured asphalt, then.

And it doesn't hurt to plant more trees. American cities, especially in the South, seem to be utterly allergic to trees. Which makes even less sense in hot climates.

Or huge billboards. Lack of general greenery and hedges to block noise. Stroads. I could go on an on. The average built environment in US cities and suburbs is awful and again, cheap.

Whatever sensible measure you can imagine, it’s most likely very strongly correlated with gdp

At some point they diverge, otherwise we wouldn't have Karnataka and the US sitting where they are for HDI rankings.

When I moved from country where I had to use public transit to a country where I could drive, my happiness (re transportation) increased by a large amount.

I am not sure how this relates to the whole "public transit vs cars" argument though.

Where was this place where you could not drive? I don't know of any such place.

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