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

Waymo in Dallas

waymo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 751 posts

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#371

Post by hibikir »

Guestmodinfo wrote: post #327
m_a_g wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God, I love how Americans will do anything but build public transport

One thing about private car ownership in the US is that it is a VERY BIG country and sparsely populated so who will pay for the public transport connecting every nook and corner because in the US it's so sparsely populated. Even in India I see metro train being very successful in places which are densely populated but in states like Rajasthan which are very big and sparsely populated there public transport is a failu…

It's not a matter of the size of the country, but the density of the metro areas: See Spain, a low density country with high density cities. The US' high suburb, low density metro design is the one thing ruining transit

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#372

Post by tptacek »

xnx wrote: post #69
Zigurd wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier to roll out in places where it seldom snows.

Definitely true, but snow affecting driving conditions is becoming pretty rare in cities like Chicago.

Seems about as common as it ever was? (I'm very bullish on Waymos here).

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#373

Post by ssl-3 »

jakintosh wrote: post #343
ssl-3 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to understand the history, wherein: There was a time when we had all of those things that you mention. But cars quite clearly won; the others lost. Towns and cities then continued to grow. They did this in car-centric ways because that fit the transportation style of the time. And now, it is stuck this way.

> And now, it is stuck this way. Unless this is sarcasm, isn't it kind of strange to decide that history just happened to end in this moment?

Let's talk about trains.

We tore out the light passenger rail lines that once quite commonly connected cities and towns together, and to points within those places. These cities once grew around (and because of) these features, but now it is like like they never even existed.

We can't just put them back where they used to be. The landscape has changed.

In order to do something different, we'd need to have new routes that are built through cities that have been designed for cars for a very long time. That's a quagmire of nightmarish proportions.

Every now and then, someone makes some noise about changing it somewhere -- and almost every single time, it goes nowhere. Where new light rail does get built in a place that had none, the ridership tends to be limited because...sheesh: Folks with jobs and places to go already have cars to use, so they keep using them.

So we have cars, because we need cars. And since we need cars, we might as well use them -- which reinforces the issues. Call it what you will (I'm a fan of "self-perpetuating fallacy"), but that's what we've got.

And yes: It is stuck this way. It'd be fantastic if it weren't this way, but we don't have an undo button.

At this point, we're ~4 score and 7 years too late to preserve what we once had.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#374

Post by ventana »

ssl-3 wrote: post #338
ventana wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debit card works just fine with Waymo, just like with Lyft and Uber.

Is that so? When all I had was debit cards, I couldn't get any of them to work with Lyft or Uber in 2021. I had plenty of money. I had nothing better to do than to try to make it work while I sat outside of that airport on a steamy July day in south Florida. I could not make it happen. There were probably other ways to solve the problem, but I eventually got someone else to send me a car so I could get to where I was…

It is. I do not use credit cards for about 8 years except for having just one credit card for renting cars a few times per year when I travel. I have zero problems paying for Uber, Lyft, hotels, and everything else with my debit cards.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#375

Post by ssl-3 »

financetechbro wrote: post #315
ssl-3 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to understand the history, wherein: There was a time when we had all of those things that you mention. But cars quite clearly won; the others lost. Towns and cities then continued to grow. They did this in car-centric ways because that fit the transportation style of the time. And now, it is stuck this way.

Cars clearly won… or did the car industry use its monopolistic powers to acquire and shut down our train networks while also relentlessly lobbying for more (and permanent) car infrastructure? Also, just because things are one way today, doesn’t mean they can’t be a different way tomorrow. It’s all a what we we make of it and decide to fight for

Both things are true.

Cars won _and_ and it wasn't a fair fight.

This was almost certainly not an isolated incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#376

Post by hibikir »

cyberax wrote: post #348
ajmurmann wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do self-driving cars reduce congestion? Don't they increase it because of empty riders between customers? I'm with you though on getting up parking space in high land value areas

Right now the average car occupancy during the rush hour is ~1.5 persons per car. By increasing that to 3-4 people, you can easily double the effective road capacity. This will completely resolve the congestion in the majority of metro areas, even with induced traffic. No car platooning, flock routing, car trains, or anything similarly exotic is needed. Just mild carpooling. People are not doing that now because it's…

There's significant trouble with routing, delays, and reliability: A self driving car does nothing naturally different that a cheaper Taxi, and you can see the lack of popularity of the carpooling offerings Lyft and Uber had.

Ultimately the argument against lower congestion is even easier. Self driving cars for individuals make traveling less annoying than driving. So what we get is more tolerance for long commutes, and ultimately more miles traveled, with ups congestion. Now Timmy can go to his activities by himself, so mom goes elsewhere. Again, when we make something cheaper, we increase demand.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#377

Post by cyberax »

jakintosh wrote: post #369
cyberax wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now the average car occupancy during the rush hour is ~1.5 persons per car. By increasing that to 3-4 people, you can easily double the effective road capacity. This will completely resolve the congestion in the majority of metro areas, even with induced traffic. No car platooning, flock routing, car trains, or anything similarly exotic is needed. Just mild carpooling. People are not doing that now because it's…

> By increasing that to 3-4 people, you can easily double the effective road capacity Isn't "sharing a vehicle with a stranger" like, the #1 reason why most people who could use transit for a given trip choose not to? Why, when it's a way less efficient—and probably way more expensive per-rider-mile to the govt paying for it—autonomous car going to change that? The issue with cars, self driving or not, is that they f…

> Isn't "sharing a vehicle with a stranger" like, the #1 reason why most people who could use transit for a given trip choose not to?

Partially. Shitty people with zero manners usually end up in low-paying jobs (or in finance), so they tend to concentrate in transit that provides subsidized commutes to them. But the majority of people in transit are normal.

The real reason for not using transit is its slowness. Drop two points on a map of a large city randomly and plot the route between them using cars and transit. Transit will end up on average requiring 3-4x the time by car, even during the rush hour. Of course, people tend to optimize their commutes by choosing the workplace accordingly (this results in a toxic density-misery spiral), so on average transit is not _that_ terrible.

But it totally breaks down when you add more constraints. Like having several kids. Try to plot a route using transit between your workplace, a grocery store, a daycare, and a school. You'll find that it's impossible unless you package everything non-work-related into one spot.

> Why, when it's a way less efficient—and probably way more expensive per-rider-mile to the govt paying for it—autonomous car going to change that?

Transit is WILDLY inefficient. It's amazing how inefficient and polluting it is.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#379

Post by hibikir »

eagleinparadise wrote: post #322
vel0city wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average passenger capacity per mile of a Waymo is 1. Moving the same number of people with fewer passengers per car increases traffic.

You're not factoring in the unused capacity of a regular car parked on the street or in a garage versus being in service of delivering transportation value.. The point of this idea is that housing is expensive to build and one way to significantly reduce that cost is by eliminating parking. Add to the cost of car ownership and the cost of living is substantially higher. Most people still will need a car to get around…

The actual savings are minimal at best, as demand for cars is all about peak, and how the peak travels typically in similar directions. You see this in trains. In downtown SF, you will find trains parked near the stadium all day, because there is no,practical use for them 9p% of the day. Most of the fleet is idle most of the day, and it would not be any better if it's a self driving car. You'd have a much better chance if trips were random, but they absolutely aren't.

The nodes have been calculated and modeled, the gains round to zero. What you get instead is higher demand for moving around in cars, because it's now cheaper and less annoying. Lower prices increase demand, therefore more congestion, not less. This component obliterates said minor savings from earlier in any reasonable model.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#380

Post by twoodfin »

jdlyga wrote: post #378

Dallas is a different animal. But after a Waymo pilot program in New York City, it was found to be more hazardous than human drivers https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e71380706dc865d40a6f...

Sorry, can you point out the section of that document that justifies the “found to be more hazardous” claim?
Post reply on HN