Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Study: carpooling apps could reduce traffic 3x in NYC

csail.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 187 posts

Re: Study: carpooling apps could reduce traffic 3x in NYC

#101

Post by madgar »

usrusr wrote: post #53
chillingeffect wrote: post #8

This is great news, until we look at the open space and say, "Wow! Now we can fit so many more commuters on these streets." Nature abhors a vacuum. Not to denigrate the science, I respect the math greatly. It's just that NYC culture is about trying to cram the most things in one place. Few open resources like Central Park remain so very long.

But nature seems to just not abhor the "vacuum" left in cars filled with just a single rider hard enough to fill that. This is about finding a lower bound for the vehicles needed to fulfill demand with multi-occupancy. What I would find even more interesting is if they used the same simulation to determine the number of cars required to fulfill that demand without multi-occupancy, but with the same level of dispatch…

> But nature seems to just not abhor the "vacuum" left in cars filled with just a single rider hard enough to fill that.

I'm not sure exactly what this sentence is supposed to mean, but I assure you as an NYC outer-borough resident, if you created a traffic vacuum in manhattan I would be driving there filling the vacuum by the end of the day.

Re: Study: carpooling apps could reduce traffic 3x in NYC

#102

Post by dpark »

awjr wrote: post #66
source99 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the academic research I have read (Check out Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes) shows the exact opposite to be true. Our diets accounts for dramatically much higher cause of obesity than our environment and specifically cars.

I'm just going to point at the Netherlands their obesity rate of 10%. They have designed in an hour or more of exercise per day into just getting around. In the UK some cities have stats where people are known to just do 20 minutes of walking exercise per year.

> In the UK some cities have stats where people are known to just do 20 minutes of walking exercise per year.

No way that's correct unless the U.K. has cities full of bedridden people. 20 minutes of walking is 3.3 seconds per day. You need a catheter or a wheelchair to walk that little.

Re: Study: carpooling apps could reduce traffic 3x in NYC

#103

Post by beachstartup »

BlackjackCF wrote: post #89
awjr wrote: post #58

I find the focus on congestion within the transport space to be perplexing. I'm guessing it is to do with the visibility of congestion. Waze recently did a survey and identified the Netherlands as the best place to drive ( https://www.waze.com/driverindex ). The Netherlands is also the only western country with a negative obesity trend expected to hit 8% by 2030, currently at 10% vs the UK's 25%. The USA I believe is…

Unfortunately, it's not an easy problem to solve. I live in LA and I have to drive to work because there's just not simply a viable alternative to where I have to commute to (West Adams area to West Hollywood.) The bike lanes across LA are spotty at best and there's a good chance you're going to get hit/brushed by a car because the closer you get to Beverly Hills/West Hollywood, the more impatient/asshole-ish drivers…

surely there's a bus that goes straight up fairfax?

edit: looks like the 217 bus goes up fairfax and into west hollywood. why not take that?

Re: Study: carpooling apps could reduce traffic 3x in NYC

#104

Post by Retric »

bogomipz wrote: post #95
Retric wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To qualify for "Rent Control" the apartments must be occupied since July 1, 1971 so that 1.2% is effectively 100% retired people. Further 1,030,000 units are "Rent Stabilized". However, "Rent Stabilized" is really just another type of Rent Controlled with different rules. PS: From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_control_in_New_York Non-regulated 2011: 39.1%.

That 1.2% figure for the number of rent controlled apartments in 2014 equates to 27K apartments. I was responding to the OP's claim was that New York City was "heavily subsidizing" retired people. Lets say that those 27K apartments have two occupants - the reality is probably less. so that is 54K people out of population of 8.1 million. The percentage of people that rent in NYC is ~ 70%(see link below) or 5.6 million…

The retired population in NYC is not 5.6 million. Further, these are older buildings which are not being replaced in part from rent control. So, the 'Gap' is wider than just 27,000 missing apartments.

In any case there still is a highly subsidized subset of the overall retired population that is part of the problem.

Re: Study: carpooling apps could reduce traffic 3x in NYC

#105

Post by sotojuan »

guessmyname wrote: post #56
CodeSheikh wrote: post #37

New York City includes Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and Staten Island as well. Misleading title and perhaps incomplete study if footprint of cabs is not included from those remaining boroughs in this study. If you live in Manhattan, then you don't use cabs as much within Manhattan because subways cover Manhattan pretty well and travel times in cabs are hellish comparing to subway commute. You often use cabs when you commu…

I didn't know how big New York City was until I went from Central Park (North side) to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden... walking... never again!

It's funny because back home in Texas I'd drive that distance (in miles) regularly to do stuff with friends and think nothing of it.

Take a taxi from Harlem to the Botanical Gardens when there's no traffic (so never, or at 3-4am), you'll be surprised how fast you get there.

It's crazy how much longer the same distance feels when you can't just drive straight there with little to medium traffic!

Re: Study: carpooling apps could reduce traffic 3x in NYC

#106

Post by sotojuan »

dmix wrote: post #22
jcfrei wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so fast though. Comparing Paris to LA isn't quite fair. Paris is about six times denser than LA and therefore creating a competitive public transportation network is quite a bit cheaper there.

And LA was built largely with cars in mind, with sprawling suburbs and big highways splicing the city, was it not?

That's a fairly recentish development (40s-50s). See Who Framed Roger Rabbit? :-)

Re: Study: carpooling apps could reduce traffic 3x in NYC

#107

Post by sotojuan »

ergothus wrote: post #80
chongli wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Americans don't have a cultural aversion to using world class public transit when in a place like Tokyo. They have a cultural aversion to altering their cities in the radical ways that'd be necessary to build a functional public transit. They call this NIMBY.

A lot of Americans (in my anecdotal experience) have a very negative view of public transit. It's what you take when you are too poor or desperate to have a car. Chicken/egg, that's how it ends up, particularly in smaller metro areas (not your major cities, but cities). I currently live in Seattle, and when I met guests and said we'd be taking the bus to my house (which involved a walk of about a block in good weathe…

I see this attitude even in NYC itself. A lot of people dislike the idea of taking the bus (even though it costs the same as the subway) for some reason.

Re: Study: carpooling apps could reduce traffic 3x in NYC

#108

Post by Retric »

madgar wrote: post #96
Retric wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To qualify for "Rent Control" the apartments must be occupied since July 1, 1971 so that 1.2% is effectively 100% retired people. Further 1,030,000 units are "Rent Stabilized". However, "Rent Stabilized" is really just another type of Rent Controlled with different rules. PS: From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_control_in_New_York Non-regulated 2011: 39.1%.

> Further 1,030,000 units are "Rent Stabilized". However, "Rent Stabilized" is really just another type of Rent Controlled with different rules. Rent Stabilization has very little to do with retired individuals, unsurprising given its broad scope. How is your comment relevant?

The rent controlled apartments called "Rent Controlled" are just one part of the problem. As these people needed to rent their apartment starting in 1971 those 27,000 apartments are rented by retired people. Which generally don't do daily commutes but do reduce density making other peoples commutes longer.

The much larger rent controlled group aka "Rent Stabilized" includes plenty of retired people, but also many working people who are discouraged from moving due to their below market price rent and the difficulty in finding new apartments. The working fraction of that much larger group creates congestion issues from these longer commutes, while the retired people reduce effective density.

TLDR; I am making more than one argument for why each type of rent control is part of the problem.

Re: Study: carpooling apps could reduce traffic 3x in NYC

#109

Post by rhino369 »

99_00 wrote: post #34

In India I experienced low tech ride sharing. You stand at an intersection and a three wheeler asks you where you're going. You get in, and the driver heads to a major intersection near your destination. Along the way he asks other people standing at intersections if they are going his way, and if they are they pile in. The more people he stuffs into his three wheeler the more money he makes per trip. It was an unple…

Washington DC has a more formal (but still unoffical) version of this called slug lines. http://slug-lines.com/

You stand in a line and people pick you up. But in DC it's free because the purpose is the ability to use HOV lanes/roads.

Re: Study: carpooling apps could reduce traffic 3x in NYC

#110

Post by mojowo11 »

danesparza wrote: post #43
99_00 wrote: post #34

In India I experienced low tech ride sharing. You stand at an intersection and a three wheeler asks you where you're going. You get in, and the driver heads to a major intersection near your destination. Along the way he asks other people standing at intersections if they are going his way, and if they are they pile in. The more people he stuffs into his three wheeler the more money he makes per trip. It was an unple…

+1 for 'it was an unpleasant ride'. I think that's the biggest friction point many ride sharing apps face.

Riding in an Uber Pool has always been perfectly pleasant for me. Quiet and awkward in some cases, but not unpleasant. Some basic restrictions about not cramming people into the vehicle like it's a clown car should alleviate most concerns about unpleasantness, I'd think.
Post reply on HN