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Comment by ec109685 | Hacker News Reader

In addition to condos next to transit, California should be fixing roads, so people can move further from their job.

I know it’s unpopular nimby opinion but hoping people in these homes won’t be driving cars is misguided. Give them parking, fix roads for further commute and let people live where they want.

Save money by reducing regulations on elevator size, allow for single egress buildings and ensure we aren’t kowtowing to labor too much.

Future Waymo like technology makes driving your own car even less stressful and furthers the gap between public transit and cars.

“ California Senate Bill (SB) 79 reduces or eliminates parking minimums for new residential developments located near Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) stops”

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More roads just does not scale. Look at LA. Look at San Francisco. More capacity isn’t just going to magically appear.

Waymo is only going to increase overall utilization by reducing the marginal cost of running a car. They aren’t magic traffic-solving devices, they are traffic-adding like DoorDash and Uber have been.

It doesn't matter what you think scales.

If you don't design infrastructure based on what people want, they are going to do it anyway. And things will be extremely chaotic.

No amount of fees, fines, etc will change that.

If you design infrastructure based on what you think people want instead of what actually produces good outcomes, you end up with gridlock.

Travel some time. Take a look at what’s happened in Paris over the last several years. See what’s happened in Utrecht and Amsterdam. These are far from the only examples.

The zeitgeist of what produces good outcomes tends to change somewhat fast. This is the line of thought that led the US to tear down railways, city center train stations, and built freeways through the middle of cities. They thought they were planning for good outcomes too.

I have traveled all over the world, and have lived in Amsterdam for half a year. I like that model sure, but doesn't change the fact that Americans want suburban sprawl. You should move to where you like though.

Dense neighbourhoods are very expensive in the US as well, so it seems like there is a big market for that type of housing.

> furthers the gap between public transit and cars.

It doesn't have to. If Waymo (and other autonomous taxis) were clever -- and maybe they are -- they would spend their lobbing money on high speed trains and then capture the "last mile" market.

Some years ago I was riding with a friend north on the 15 (San Diego, after a decade+ absences) and my noticeable wtf face prompted a "yeah, they built a freeway in the center of the freeway". It's an abomination. When I was there, I-15 was generally for the longer drives. My friends that lived in Temecula/North County etc would spend hours of their life driving (or slowly rolling) into SD for school/work/play.

A high speed train would have fit where they put the supplemental freeway. Now there is no more room to expand once they need more capacity; extra trains or cars could be added to a train to solve the same thing and placed along the freeway there is minimal to no neighborhood inconvenience. Then companies like waymo can take people to their final destination.

People who pay a premium to live in a condo close to transit will almost certainly have vastly lower VMT than people who live in a SFH in a non-walkable area. Do they need more roads than the handful of houses that condo building replaced? Sure, so I can't disagree with you there. But they're all going to have massive underground garages, so a spot per unit on average is probably plenty.

People who want to live in less dense houses farther from the city can already do that!

The commutes end up being awful.

Yes! That's the tradeoff and the market prices it in.

Or fix transportation and you don’t have an awful commute! Everybody wins.

How can one fix car transportation? More lanes?

Robotaxis are good, but everyone owning a driverless car is bad.

Imagine you get to your destination, there’s no parking (or no free parking), so you tell your car to just circle the block while you’re inside. You spend an hour there at the tanning salon, and the car has just been circling, using the street as a parking lot and creating congestion. What happens when everyone does that?

I’m a big proponent of driverless cars, but we will need laws that ban individual private ownership. We’re going to have to experience the tragedy of the commons first because people really won’t want to give up their cars.

This is only a problem if the energy to drive around for an hour is cheaper than the cost to park for an hour, which it isn't.

I paid $40 to park for 3 hours in Boston yesterday. I could drive around the city at an average speed of 10-15 miles per hour for under $3 in gas per hour.

Private driverless cars will surely be a thing in the future because people will want them and be willing to pay for them. I sure would buy a Waymo style car if I could. I think it would be cool if they could drop you off at your destination and then circle around until it finds parking.

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