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Waymo in Dallas

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Re: Waymo in Dallas

#511
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?

I can't find the original document anymore but when I read it there were a lot of inconsistencies in the comparisons,

this reddit thread has excerpts from the report and some comments explaining why the comparison was fraught

https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/1v1qiz0/waymo_has...

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#512

As someone who works in commercial real estate, involved in about $300M of housing development, some of it affordable, i will say without any doubt that driverless cars are a very effective affordable housing policy that is not being considered or discussed by anyone. Any public dollar that gets contributed to housing, basically adds a 50% cost factor and assume whatever it is used for will take 2-3x as long to deliv…

I hope it's sarcasm?

How about if autonomous cars would be bigger, so from same apartment block people could ride-share to same office downtown?

What if those cars would be on rails - imagine how simpler the autonomous part would be? Lower friction and fuel costs savings will be a bonus.

/s on my part obviously.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#513
post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the public transport solution involved policies like taxing the existing suburbs in a way that ensures a break-even on infrastructure upkeep and operating costs so that the people who live in them aren't unfairly pushing costs onto other people in society? We could go a step further and tax automobiles in such a way that they covers the negative externalizes that their use results in so that again, the users…

From a municipal finance perspective, most Dallas-Fort Worth suburban municipalities are far and away outperforming urban Dallas (the City of Dallas proper). That's not opinion, you can see the finances as they are all public. Ask the LLM of your choice to make research easy. I'm not really sure where people get this idea that suburbs are drowning in liabilities where dense american urban centers are overflowing with…

I think you're sort of missing my point.

After decades of ignored negative externalities from unchecked suburban growth and car-culture are coming to an end. As populations decline and temperatures increase places like Dallas and the wealthy suburbs around it that you mention will have less and less relevance.

There isn't going to be a future where the citizens of suburban Dallas are enjoying Starbucks coffee in single-serving cups delivered to them in Waymo vehicles. It isn't viable to just paper over unsustainable nature of these places with self driving cars and ignore urban environments and mass public transit as the comment that started this thread suggested.

The only places that are going to survive what is coming are ones that are dense, well managed, and sustainable.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure , this is gonna kill driver jobs and/or lower their wages due to the increased competition. The upside is cheaper mobility for everyone - in general tech like this should have a deflationary effect (We're still not seeing this enough). Think robots building an entire city in months/couple of years instead of a decade, that would cheapen housing dramatically. We're obviously not there yet.

>The upside is cheaper mobility for everyone Why should Google leave money on the table? They will raise the price until it's just below what people are already paying.

Not an expert but in general that's usually not how tech works. It generally gets commodified and cheaper : TVs, mobile phones, computers etc etc. They're either becoming cheaper or you get a way better product for the same price (think of today's TVs that make the 80s tvs look like something from the middle ages). Yes Google in the initial decade will possibly have a big head start but in the end Tesla and a bunch of Chinese names will also run robo taxis in the U.S. So my take: efficiency and competition should bring prices down in a non broken economy.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to you as a person and your ideas presented, this is one of the most car-brained posts I've ever read. > it's way more efficient than building $100 billion in transit that will take 200 years to build. What is efficient about a $13 highway widening project in Houston or the $24 billion (inflation-adjusted) and 15 years it cost to bury a highway in Boston? (It's not even much of a new highway, it's just u…

Because a transit method that follows a fixed route, on a schedule, is inherently worse than an on demand one; unless you can separate the traffic.

But I don't get the Waymo "solution" in this thread.

Genuinely and not trolling.

Where I live we have non-autonomous car-sharing (that I barely use). Patterns are always the same in the morning all cars go from suburbs/"sleeping" districts to downtown. In the evening all cars go from downtown back to outskirts.

My point is - I don't see any improvement by Waymo here apart from marginal efficiency gains. Every morning in city outskirts/suburbs at the same time a lot of people go downtown that refuse to ride-share (hence autonomous taxi, not a bus/tram/metro), every evening - the opposite happens.

If 80% of white collar workers go to office at 9AM and rent all Waymos - then if I go from suburb at 9.30AM , there are no Waymos in my area, I will need to wait until they come back from downtown until 10-11AM.

Where's the efficiency? Everyone is going to same locality at the same time and demand private chariot. Everybody needs to get a private Waymo - same as private car.

With american car-brain being prelevant - I don't believe those suburbanites will gladly give away their private cars to Waymo subscription instead.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#516
post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They mean the rewards. You can get some % cash back with no annual fee. Effectively my credit card costs me nothing, comes from the same bank as my checking and savings, and gives me cash back.

I know what they mean, the “rewards” are not free

Credit cards are an interest-free loan of 1-2 months. That’s literally free money.

The rewards are also free to me in the sense that the merchant pays them. If the merchant has priced them in, then the rewards aren’t free, but using cash is throwing away something I’m still paying for.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to you as a person and your ideas presented, this is one of the most car-brained posts I've ever read. > it's way more efficient than building $100 billion in transit that will take 200 years to build. What is efficient about a $13 highway widening project in Houston or the $24 billion (inflation-adjusted) and 15 years it cost to bury a highway in Boston? (It's not even much of a new highway, it's just u…

the simple fact of the matter is the Waymo is a better public transport solution for Dallas than the bus. The bus doesn't work very well in endless cul-de-sac suburbia, and that's what the Dallas/Fort Worth area (and indeed most of America) is. Like, you have to understand that most of Dallas isn't even commuting into downtown Dallas every day to work. They are just commuting to other suburbs and then back to their s…

No, it's not. It's a car for hire. Problems created by car-dependency will not be solved by adding more/cheaper cars.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#518
post #496
post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is a bus not fit for endless culdesac suburbia where people are commuting between the suburbs instead of to the downtown? I really don't get it. Pretty much everywhere outside of US buses work no matter the city layout. Just add some stops and run some buses.

Your entire view point is framed incorrectly. The problem isn’t can a bus solve the problem, it’s the majority of people don’t want to endure the hassle of riding the bus.

ok... Why the majority of people don't want to endure the hassle of riding the bus?

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#519
post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. I promise you that a bus can get through winding narrow loops just fine. All medieval old towns are like that. 2. You either create loops or hubs where people transfer. The hub can be just a regular bus stop where lines meet. 3. Looking up the density of Dallas suburbs I can tell you that buses can work well in far less dense places. 4. The math doesn't add up, if you can get somewhere by car in 20 - 30mins drivin…

Just scale your small bus further down and you get a cybercab/waymo. It gets full easily but its routes are fully customizable and you never have to change lines and it runs at all hours with no wait. Ohh and its actually way cheaper to run per passenger mile. IMO shared, electric, autonomous AVs are the best solution for mass transit for 90% of the routes

Lots of single user "busses" cause dramatically lower road wear and microplastics than a many user bus. Those scale with axle weight to the third and fourth powers respectively.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to you as a person and your ideas presented, this is one of the most car-brained posts I've ever read. > it's way more efficient than building $100 billion in transit that will take 200 years to build. What is efficient about a $13 highway widening project in Houston or the $24 billion (inflation-adjusted) and 15 years it cost to bury a highway in Boston? (It's not even much of a new highway, it's just u…

the simple fact of the matter is the Waymo is a better public transport solution for Dallas than the bus. The bus doesn't work very well in endless cul-de-sac suburbia, and that's what the Dallas/Fort Worth area (and indeed most of America) is. Like, you have to understand that most of Dallas isn't even commuting into downtown Dallas every day to work. They are just commuting to other suburbs and then back to their s…

"If I had asked the customers what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse." Henry Ford, about the resistance to a paradigm change.
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