81–90 of 129 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taxis are readily available, but the price after hours is why people don't take them. I doubt waymo will be able to bypass taxi pricing.
Can you elaborate for those less informed? Is there a higher fare after the trains stop?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate for those less informed? Is there a higher fare after the trains stop?
There are late night fees, and taxis in general are 3-10x expensive relative to trains. Trains in Japan cease operations during nights, and last stops of trains move progressively towards core Tokyo to position vehicles for morning operations. This means you can't just stay at the table until stations close and catch the very last one, but people have varying time limits for train rides home. So binge drinking train…
Where I'm from, where the rail services when they stop for the night, have _some_ replacement — you might need to wait 30 minutes for a bus, and then ride it along the U-Bahn tracks and the trip will take 45 minutes instead of 15; but there is _a_ way to get home before the trains resume.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>* They stop on the side of roads and streets whenever they feel like it without worrying about blocking the traffic. To be fair, that's also true of pedestrians in this country.
True. It doesn't help that most streets don't have sidewalks and you are forced to walk on the road. And even when there are sidewalks, people ignore them...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are late night fees, and taxis in general are 3-10x expensive relative to trains. Trains in Japan cease operations during nights, and last stops of trains move progressively towards core Tokyo to position vehicles for morning operations. This means you can't just stay at the table until stations close and catch the very last one, but people have varying time limits for train rides home. So binge drinking train…
One thing to add, which is the thing that surprised me: not only the trains stop; _there are no replacement bus services_. Where I'm from, where the rail services when they stop for the night, have _some_ replacement — you might need to wait 30 minutes for a bus, and then ride it along the U-Bahn tracks and the trip will take 45 minutes instead of 15; but there is _a_ way to get home before the trains resume.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the killer feature for this will be if it's readily available at night, for reasonable prices. I love living here, but the "do we go home or stay out all night?" decision at ~23:30 when out sucks. If I could get across town for ~3000 JPY at 2AM without having to wait 50 minutes for a cab around Shinjuku, I'd be ecstatic.
Taxis are readily available, but the price after hours is why people don't take them. I doubt waymo will be able to bypass taxi pricing.
This will be interesting. As an aging nondriver living in Yokohama, I’ve been both hoping that self-driving cars become available here before I develop mobility issues and wondering how feasible they will be. Since I don’t drive, I don’t have a sense of what the roads here are like from the vehicle’s perspective. But many of the streets, including in the neighborhood where I live [1], are narrow, have no sidewalks, a…
Watch: How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0
Individual autonomous cars will solve all transportation issues. What's that? Trains? Trams? Efficient urban fabric? Things that Tokyo, gasp, already has? Bull. /s.
There are about 50,000 taxis in Tokyo. What are they doing there?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing to add, which is the thing that surprised me: not only the trains stop; _there are no replacement bus services_. Where I'm from, where the rail services when they stop for the night, have _some_ replacement — you might need to wait 30 minutes for a bus, and then ride it along the U-Bahn tracks and the trip will take 45 minutes instead of 15; but there is _a_ way to get home before the trains resume.
Even in the US, every major city has overnight bus services. I live in Seattle and have taken the half hourly to hourly bus home at 3am before. It's wild to me that Tokyo has none.
Just coming home is difficult.
This will be interesting. As an aging nondriver living in Yokohama, I’ve been both hoping that self-driving cars become available here before I develop mobility issues and wondering how feasible they will be. Since I don’t drive, I don’t have a sense of what the roads here are like from the vehicle’s perspective. But many of the streets, including in the neighborhood where I live [1], are narrow, have no sidewalks, a…
Don't fall on the trap of self-driving cars will make our lives better. They won't. Building cities for people first is what will improve our lives. Watch: How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0
My house is on the side of a steep hill. If in a few years—I am now 67–I become unable to walk up that hill, the only way I will be able to go anywhere is by calling a taxi. (No one in my family here knows how to drive.) Because of demographic trends, there is a shortage of human taxi drivers now and that shortage is likely to get worse. If I do become significantly less mobile five or ten years from now, I will be able to keep living in my home only if self-driving taxis are available.
So for me, in that very likely scenario, self-driving cars would make my life better. In Japan, there are millions of people in similar situations to mine.