Let’s Build a Future Without Cars

Yes, I love high-speed trains, because they're on a track, and while this obviously does not guarantee safety, it certainly makes it feel much safer to me.

Compare to air travel. Even with the meticulous maintenance and regulatory requirements, a significant fraction of the population is scared of flying (to some degree). Driverless cars are better in one aspect (operates at ground level), worse in others (proximity to other vehicles), just different in some ways (computer versus human pilot), and complete unknowns, so far, in others (regulation).

Even if the actual crash/injury/fatality rate of driverless cars is nil, how do you design a 300mph computer-controlled car to not be scary for passengers? I want it to work, as I recognize the advantages, but it seems like the social problems will be even tougher than the technical problems, and I'm definitely not going to be an early adopter.

Roads definitely have subsidies, but according to the document above, much less than urban transit or rail - if people pay the full costs of cars, they should pay the full costs of transit (not your typical $1.50 bus fare). In urban areas like the Bay Area or LA County, car trips are about 80% of commute trips, with transit at 10-15% but local/state transit funding is WAY above 10-15%, with a lot of gas taxes being funneled to transit projects. I believe that first off, we are 'paying' the true costs of cars, as people have voted for a government that pays for highways through income income taxes as well as gas taxes.

You could argue the same way about incentives for public vs. private transportation - people get advantages for buying hybrid cars the same way the public transport is heavily pushed onto cities. I don't think the solution to suburbs is to make them all into cities, or that the solution to cars as they are today is to replace them with public transport - cars have succeeded in capturing a huge % of marketshare so we should learn from their success and improve private transportation rather than trying to change human nature.

My goal is to safely get from Point A to Point B, and I don't want to spend a lot of time waiting around at Point A, or sitting and waiting on the way to Point B.

We have three goals here, in order of importance. Let's call them safety, convenience, and speed.

Taking a bus with a bunch of drunken hooligans doesn't help much with that first, and most important, goal. I want my transportation to be safe, and the high crime rates on public transportation in the US speak for themselves.

Interesting experiences are great. Getting mugged isn't, and while I'm not a prime target (muggers don't usually pick on two-hundred-pound guys that spend a lot of time in the gym), five loud, drunk people in a gang is not the sort of situation I want to be around regularly.

Especially if I'm carrying a $1500 laptop and a $600 smartphone.

Convenience, at least here in SF, is also pretty miserable. I have not once had a bus arrive on-time. The trains are usually on-schedule, but conveniently frequent only during peak hours, and they only cover a small portion of the greater Bay Area. Don't even get me started on CalTrain.

If I want to meet somebody and I need to take a bus, I need to add an extra half-hour window around my journey. If you assume a normal tech-person salary, that lost half-hour makes it cheaper to take a taxi for most journeys.

Speed is good for trains; busses, on the other hand, live at the whim of traffic.

Japan gets all of these right in its major cities. I have never once felt threatened on a train, and delays are few and far between.

The tradeoff they make is in manpower -- station employees are everywhere. We tend to not like hiring lots of people in the US, and so public transit stations might have one or two visible employees, and certainly not visible, uniformed personnel at every platform.

This is why cars are as popular as they are. In SF, if I want to go from Pacific Heights to the Inner Sunset, a journey by bus-and-train pushes about an hour. By car, it's about fifteen minutes.

In my car, I have a stereo, air conditioning, and a clean, comfortable seat. Public transit, on the other hand, is pretty filthy here in SF, and for some odd reason they jack the heat up enough so that I need to do a little striptease whenever I get on a train.

All minor inconveniences, sure, but it adds up quickly, and what do I get in return? I'm late, have lost money in the long run, and arrive more often than not in a worse mood than when I started.

I really want working public transit here in the US, but the way things are going, I don't see that happening for at least another decade.

It is clear that man prefers to travel with privacy or cars would never have succeeded where alternatives exist. The convenience factor is huge too.

I prefer the freedom to go wherever, whenever and without some crazy person screaming at me on some bus or subway somewhere.