51–60 of 134 posts
Wasn’t the point of taxi medallions to limit traffic in the first place?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This already exists in the form of a gas tax and road use taxes (registration). NIMBYs get in the way of building the lanes that already have demand and funding. Extending it further really just ends up as a restriction on the movements of the poor.
I think the parent poster is talking about fees that are proportional to congestion, to disincentivize driving during rush hour.
All it does is force the poor to sit in traffic while some lanes are reserved for people to whom $12 is inconsequential.
I fail to see how applying this same logic to an entire road makes it any better.
Wasn’t the point of taxi medallions to limit traffic in the first place?
Medallions were the answer to the race to the bottom that occurred (too many taxis, not enough fares, shady behavior from the taxis)--just like we are seeing again.
Everybody seems to forget that laws that exist are there because there was a reason.
The fact that medallions became perverted into entrenched monopolies was a problem that should have been solved rather than just throwing them out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah what you luddite. You seem more concerned about maintaining artificial jobs and stifling progress to “prevent people getting rich off of it”. Having a 100% automated driving system will fix traffic. It will be better for the environment. It will give us back more time in our day.
The problem of "but my pointless job!" Always has the second part missing, which is "the economy is down a payng job and the displaced family still needs food on the table". If the government offered to meet people's basic needs in these situations (no, the current unemployment system is not sufficient), I bet the complaints would stop. Hell, I bet the Luddites from back in the day wouldn't have minded the technologi…
They weren’t anti-tech. They were workers who saw the first industrialization destroying their safe well paying jobs at home that gave them autonomy and replaced it with them having to be generic low paid cogs in a very dangerous factory they had to commute to with no say over their working conditions.
They wanted a say over their destiny. Some autonomy. A share of the benefits that came with technology instead of all the downsides with 100% of the upside going to the rich owners.
Any of that sound familiar to things workers complain about today?
From the podcast 99% Invisible: Blood in the Machine
Uber Pool was so cheap it increased overall city travel: For every mile of personal driving it removed, it added 2.6 miles of people who otherwise would have taken another mode of transportation. Seems logical. So, why not automate the bus system and automatically introduce routes where demand is? Such a system would ensure that people can quickly get where they are going, not add vehicles to the busy parts of the sy…
All of the automation of bus routes involved is simple computation and I don't see AI having anything fundamentally new to add to the solution. You don't need to actually solve traveling salesman or something to add value to the bus system.
I say "credibly" because you really want the system to work almost perfectly right out of the gate. Otherwise passengers will shun it because the very baseline requirement of a transport system is to reliably get people where they wanted to go.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah what you luddite. You seem more concerned about maintaining artificial jobs and stifling progress to “prevent people getting rich off of it”. Having a 100% automated driving system will fix traffic. It will be better for the environment. It will give us back more time in our day.
> Having a 100% automated driving system will fix traffic. How? If we replace every car driven by an individual with a car driven by machine… you’re left with the same number of cars. Just as much traffic. Still need all the roads. And parking lots unless the cars drive more to avoid parking. Better for the environment? I don’t see it. Every car taken off the road (including EVs!) is less polluting. Less fuel. Less m…
If all vehicles - not just cars - were driven by machines and connected to a network then there are many optimisations that they could be doing. For example you could get rid of traffic lights, yielding rules, even lanes. Cars could travel much faster if they didn’t have to worry about reaction times.
For example cars could go through intersections at full speed or close to it, timing it so they passed between each other. Cars could actually merge onto freeways and change lanes at full speed without some jerk trying to block them. You wouldn’t have slow drivers in the fast lane.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This already exists in the form of a gas tax and road use taxes (registration). NIMBYs get in the way of building the lanes that already have demand and funding. Extending it further really just ends up as a restriction on the movements of the poor.
I think the parent poster is talking about fees that are proportional to congestion, to disincentivize driving during rush hour.
Tolls for entering/leaving the city at certain times (or outright bans for some percentage of cars per day) is more effective.
The solution for too much traffic is well known and independent of robotaxis. "Road Pricing" means that vehicles pay for driving on congested roads. The price is set so that road supply and demand match, and traffic flows optimally. It also gives the road owner an income for providing important roads.
Do you know of any good implementations of this system?
The solution for too much traffic is well known and independent of robotaxis. "Road Pricing" means that vehicles pay for driving on congested roads. The price is set so that road supply and demand match, and traffic flows optimally. It also gives the road owner an income for providing important roads.
This already exists in the form of a gas tax and road use taxes (registration). NIMBYs get in the way of building the lanes that already have demand and funding. Extending it further really just ends up as a restriction on the movements of the poor.
Neither of these target congestion directly, but road use in general. As a result, they usually fail to do much to slow down driving (since the goal is basically just to fund roads).
>NIMBYs get in the way of building the lanes that already have demand and funding.
Why shouldn't somebody oppose yet more noise, pollution, and traffic in their neighbourhood? That something has externalities on the people around it is a good reason to oppose it.
>Extending it further really just ends up as a restriction on the movements of the poor.
The poorest are in many ways already relegated to using transit, which in most US cities is woefully inadequate for getting around. Effort to make transit more viable can only make these people better off.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess if fossil fuel companies can do it with CO2 why not Uber and congestion, sure just sign all us up to pay for the externalities.
They’re already doing that. They don’t want to pay for the parking on the robotaxis, or move them further away when not in use, so they just drive in circles taking up space and making traffic worse without even carrying anyone. Who said having 90+ square feet of pavement to haul an average of around one person was a waste? Now we have the tech to average less than one! (Edit: sq ft corrected, was off by 10x)
I really expected them to wait for a little more secure of a political position before they started doing exactly the thing that proves that they're entirely out for themselves and don't give a damn about improving traffic or city life.