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Comment by sheepscreek | Hacker News Reader

Probably cause modern logistics, especially last mile logistics, is dependent on trucks/delivery vans/etc. So even though folks in a local area might like to walk around, their groceries won’t make it to the stores and packages won’t get to their homes without a robust road network.

I think Bacerlona hits a good compromise. The city has the concept of a superblock, which is a few city blocks grouped into one calm zone. Most car traffic stays on the streets around the outside, the perimeter of the superblock. Inside, driving is restricted and only at low speeds where allowed, so people and bikes get the space. So deliveries and residents can still but only slowly.

That’s far from the only example - many cities in Asia follow a similar model.

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> their groceries won’t make it to the stores and packages won’t get to their homes without a robust road network.

A road network isn't the only solution. In the early 20th century, for example, there was a separate narrow-gauge tunnel network beneath Chicago dedicated to freight. Deliveries were made directly to businesses via subbasements or elevator shafts. The network had stations at rail and ship terminals for accepting freight arriving from outside the city. At its height in 1929, the network had 150 locomotives pulling 10 to 15 cars per train.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company

This is neat but also seems like an insane solution to the problem of “I don’t like seeing service trucks”. How many such tunnels and elevators would it take to supply the buildings in a typical city’s downtown area?

And what else could we do with that investment?

I wonder how many people such an automated freight system would kill per year, compared to cars in the same cities. Once we have some numbers, you would probably reconsider the use of "insane" there.

The context here is not cars but delivery trucks.

The tunnels in question also did not transport pedestrians and were essentially focused on coal delivery and ash removal.

Sure, let's restrict statistics to any automobile used to transport merchandise. What do you think, ready to imagine such a comparison?

Sure. In 2022, 672 pedestrians were killed by large trucks. How many of those do you believe happened in say New York City? And how many of those do you think you could eliminate with this hypothetical tunnel system? And how much will this hypothetical tunnel system cost?

New York has about 300 pedestrian deaths total from all vehicles every year. So my guesstimate is that if you eliminated all of the trucks from New York City, you might save 50 lives a year, max. I would also guesstimate that it would probably cost well north of $50 billion to create this tunnel system to connect all of the major buildings in New York City. So we’re looking at about $1 billion per life saved. I bet you could save more than one life per billion if you put that money somewhere more useful.

> What do you think, ready to imagine such a comparison?

What are you intending to accomplish with your snarky and condescending tone?

it is not possible to eliminate the risk from the absolute requirement to move heavy bulk stuff, through and in citys. roads need work, big things break and fail ,wherever they are, new stuff gets built, again, precisly, wherever, it gets built. civil engineering is completly mature,and wildly boreing,and will dry your eyes out. much of the cannon is millenia old, with fuck all room to "inovate" and what works in one place, is a total fail somewhere else. what is more is that the ancient world is littered with the ruins of civilisations and citys, that did fail, and in every case part or all of that failure was to overextend, undermaintain, there infrastructure, or worse, jump to some new flashy thing that then fails, spectacularly. having walked through those ruins, and marvled at there engineering and planning of infrastructure, and also become a keen reader of all things civil or infrastructure engineerin, and also aircraft engineering, where the most important concept is up front, "failure mode", I have no respect for sudden ideas, and approve of what China has done to prohibit un educated comentary on infrastructure development and implimentation. "influencer engineering" by way of "saftey"

Nitpick: it is one life per year for the billion invested. Which after the typical metro infrastructure lifespan of a century is actually viable because the cost for a working-age US life in medical and other contexts is probably around the $10mn ballpark.

(Assuming financing happens cheaply by the federal state rather than via PPP grift; and assuming that $50bn is the number, which in NYC is an underestimate by a factor of at least five…)

That’s a really good point. This is all very back-of-the-envelope, but if the total cost per life saved were 10 million it gets into the ballpark of sane.

But as you noted this 50 billion is likely a major underestimate (for comparison the recently built SR-99 tunnel in Seattle cost 1 billion per linear mile and connects to approximately zero buildings via elevators). NYC covers 300 square miles and estimates are that there are upwards of a million buildings across 120k city blocks.

I would argue the ammount of space in cities wasted on cars and their infrastructure is totally insane.

And again, the conversation here is about delivery trucks, not cars.

Eliminating cars doesn’t eliminate the need for infrastructure for moving goods.

> Eliminating cars doesn’t eliminate the need for infrastructure for moving goods.

Burying other last mile utilities that waste less land was not insane when real estate was a fraction as valuable as now and engineering technology was worse.

I wonder how many miles of fiber would have been laid if fiber required a tunnel big enough to drive a delivery truck through.

You bring up an interesting point for the US to have a first world level of fiber to the home it needs to require diesel.

When I see bad faith arguments like this I earnestly worry that maybe sometimes I do the same and just don’t recognize it.

Did you read my comment about the cost of laying fiber being far different from the cost of digging truck-sized tunnels and make a conscious choice to pretend I was making a nonsense argument about diesel-powered fiber, or did you construct this strawman without realizing it?

I don't think you are trying to look at it rationally but simply in terms of priors where sprawl has cost an immense amount of resources. A tunnel where 2 pallets can cross is not much larger than a sewer, fits bellow a pedestrian/emergency vehicle system and is more valuable than a larger tunnel because it can never be DoT approved.

they are no longer needed though with last mile delivery robots being introduced that can use the same elevator and stairs as humans

Have we already forgotten that a self-driving uber ran over a pedestrian a few years ago or that Tesla’s autopilot has caused multiple crashes?

I’m not optimistic that a bunch of robots sharing stairs with pedestrians is going to work out great.

Which robots?

Check out the recent moves on Atlas.

https://youtu.be/I44_zbEwz_w?si=sFS5XUhNtwEz_ebH

How much will those robots cost? How many will we be able to make within the next 30 years?

How will they be autonomous considering bipedal operation in random environments is MUCH, MUCH harder that full self driving for cars on public roads? And that's just moving around, we're talking about actual judgement to do a human job that requires reasoning and practical skills.

Jetson type robots are a pipe dream at this point. I don't expect to have a robot maid within my lifetime.

Let's be realistic and not plan society today around scifi fantasies, please.

We're probably lacking 80% of the basic science needed for autonomous robot maids.

Right. My comment wasn't about maids from the Jetsons. General purpose robots are not soon. But for more specific tasks we've come very far in the last decade.

Warehouse automation is a reality today. Package delivery is also, just not broadly across the US. But it is very much happening right now.

Specifically my comment was about package delivery, which appears to be around the corner for most major cities, and already in place in several major cities around the world.

For indoor delivery, you don't really need Atlas. A 4 wheeled "full self drive" can fairly easily navigate cubicles and press elevator buttons. It's really not that crazy, and doesn't require any reasoning whatsoever. Basic preprogrammed pathfinding borrowed from any modern video game works fine for this. I don't think you need any advanced AI, let alone AGI.

Going up random stairs is not the same thing, though.

Also perhaps worth mentioning in Chicago is Lower Wacker Drive.

It's a split-level street, more-or-less with local traffic on the surface and with through traffic at the subterranean level. It's a quick way to get through the area.

And beneath parts of that that is an road I've heard referred to as Lower Lower Wacker. This is almost entirely the realm of delivery and service vehicles (except for a time in fairly recent years when those darned kids were using it for drag racing at night).

It's all crazy-expensive to build anything like underground local delivery rail and underground roadways.

(But the stuff at the surface is crazy-expensive, too, and often can't be expanded horizontally without demolition of the very buildings that it seeks to benefit.

But expanding down? Sometimes, yeah -- that can happen.)

Smaller trucks. Japan makes due with one-lane alleys. (Not one in each direction. One. Deliveries and vehicular traffic are so uncommon, and the tightness of the space so inconducive to speeding, that it's safe for trucks and cars to go down them in whichever direction they need to.)

Makes do not due. A common error that seems to be increasing.

Probably meant "make do", as in, able to manage with limited means available.

Yes. That’s exactly what I said.

What you said exactly is "makes", not "make".

It is the do that is wrong not the makes. He makes do. He made do. He can make do. All correct. Makes do is not.

London is edging in that direction with the introduction of "low traffic neighbourhoods". Basically this involves preventing vehicles using them as a through route, by limiting some connections to only emergency vehicles. The problem is that it's also annoying for residents as it means the allowed entry/exit routes aren't necessarily in the direction you need to go. Does Barcelona have a smarter method?

Isn’t the presumption that residents walk/bike/transit far more often than drive?

There is still pushback. I live in Toronto and when central businesses are canvassed about streetscape changes they overwhelmingly are against removing parking, access for cars, etc. They assume that 90% of their customers drive to them, but it turns out that it is closer to 10% for most of them.

That's unevenly distributed. Lots of people in London do walk or use public transport, but you still need many delivery drivers, tradespeople, etc and it doesn't make sense for them all to live outside the city. And people who don't usually drive occasionally need to use a vehicle, and then it's more stressful because you aren't used to having to know where the vehicular entrances are. It's too simplistic to just make provision for the majority and assume that it doesn't matter what the second order effects are.

> and then it's more stressful because you aren't used to having to know where the vehicular entrances are

“I rarely drive and so I am stressed when I do” is not an issue that needs to be solved.

So if you make it safe and pleasant for everybody who doesn't need a truck as part of their job, then the remaining roads are available for the small minority that "must" use them.

But maybe rethink whether they "need" to and whether said vehicles must live in dense residential neighborhoods.

https://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/window-washers-...

https://www.velove.se/

In the most central (and expensive) parts of London - “Zone 1”, where all the famous landmarks are - that is indeed a safe assumption.

But go to a less central area, like Hendon and you’re still very much within London, but every street is lined on both sides with parked cars.

My city has been making efforts to stymie traffic flow to encourage less driving. I almost never drive but it's still annoying as crap when what used to be a 20 min drive is now 40+ because of how slow the first/last mile is now.

When I'm not driving I do enjoy it, so I understand that it's a tradeoff and I can't have it both ways. That doesn't make me not irritated when behind the wheel though.

LTNs and pedestrianised areas are great for criminals on illegal high-powered e-bikes. Purpose-built getaway routes.

I'm not that convinced pedestrianised areas make it easier for them. At least you can spot the thieves if bikes are not supposed to be there.

lol. People will try to paint anything they don’t like as bad because criminals can also use it.

It’s about actively blocking police and other emergency vehicles while allowing a new class of problem vehicles, illegal e-motorbikes, to pass unimpeded.

As a motorist, the war on cars (and milking of motorists for tax revenue) would be less infuriating if we didn’t have the rising broad-daylight lawlessness of illegal e-bikes and scooters doing 30mph+ with no pedaling, no tax, and no insurance. Often with corporate branding in the form of Deliveroo or Just Eat bags. Sometimes balaclava-clad and engaging in dodgier activities.

(Would be in favour of regulating and policing these bikes and scooters rather than outright prohibition, but the UK government chooses to stick to prohibition and very inconsistent policing)

Sorry, this doesn’t make any sense. If the problem were that criminals have high powered e-bikes, the obvious answer would be to give high powered e-bikes to the police.

What you’re actually griping about isn’t criminals using e-bikes as getaway vehicles, but the presence of these unsafe e-bikes at all. You’re basically saying “how come I can’t drive my unsafe machine but they can drive theirs?” And yeah, I don’t want people zipping by at 30mph on scooters either, but the problem isn’t that the cars are gone.

Reminds me of the one bizzare rationalization in California claiming high speed stops will somehow bring burglaries. I am not sure what blend of NIMBYism, racism, classism, or xenophobia came up with that.

Last mile delivery can be done with large cargo ebikes capable of carrying up to 250-500kg.

Trucks or delivery vans should only be allowed on roads farther apart than 1-2km, with some exceptions (supermarkets, regular markets, etc).

We have all the technical tools needed, this is about political will.

I live in Vancouver, and we have plenty of both roads and bike lanes. Its not hard to fit a bike lane that's usually 1/4th the width of a lane onto a road or allow bikes to share with cars on smaller roads. We have trucks and vans and lots of deliveries too. The reason most cities are oriented around cars is because we designed them that way and it's difficult to change - there's no logistical constraint, its just politics and cost.

I lived in Vancouver for many years, and it’s an outlier in terms of ease of bike lane installation. The city is quite new, and as it grew in the 50s and 60s the roads were designed for a future with more cars than there are now in the city. That means that there’s super wide boulevards and streets everywhere. Cities that were designed for horses and carts barely have room for cars as it is, so there’s almost no room for anything else next to them.

it takes surprisingly few trucks to keep stores stocked. most of the trucks you see driving around are either delivering packages or hauling bulk cargo that used to go by rail

> Probably cause modern logistics, especially last mile logistics, is dependent on trucks/delivery vans/etc. So even though folks in a local area might like to walk around, their groceries won’t make it to the stores and packages won’t get to their homes without a robust road network.

Totally. Banning automobiles is usually a bad idea, especially for residential zones. Years ago, I remember seeing a presentation about redeveloping a bad public housing block that was built in the 1960s with no auto-access (the assumption being poor people don't have cars), but it turns out that it meant they couldn't even get pizza.

>the assumption being poor people don't have cars

Some number of the people at the time likely noticed the lapse and thought to themselves "good, this will make it inconvenient for them to get a car that lets them easily get far from their designated area on a whim" so they kept their mouths shut.

At least in New York City and outside the U.S., I regularly see pizzas being delivered frequently by bicycle, moped, and motorcycle. I also see deliveries being done with small trucks (Kei style) and vans that fit in alleyways.

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