Waymo in Dallas • Hacker News Board

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#631

Post by vel0city » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

Grombobulous wrote: post #618

infecto wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transit going to where. That’s the problem, you could build a new development that is transit oriented but where is it going? The average person in Texas does not want to transfer busses. Your comparison to Netherlands is rough because you are talking about a country that has a fairly mild climate and older cities that generally have density and not much sprawl. I don’t comprehend these examples. Also those cities ar…

I guess I should have expected these talking points to come back after posting a comment like that and I should have headed them off at the pass. If the Netherlands is the size of the Dallas metro area, then why isn't the Dallas metro area like the Netherlands? Dallas-Fort Worth has over 8 million people in it, it's not like it's a drastically smaller population than the Netherlands. This argument of "America has a b…

> If the Netherlands is the size of the Dallas metro area, then why isn't the Dallas metro area like the Netherlands? Dallas-Fort Worth has over 8 million people in it, it's not like it's a drastically smaller population than the Netherlands.

EDIT: Your statement of "its not like its drastically smaller population" is also just not true. 8 is not about the same as 18. I ended up replying thinking they were closer without realizing this as well. So less than half the population on about the same area. Having half the average density before even thinking about how dense the clustering is really makes quite a difference!

Density of where people actually choose to live, which you've already alluded to with the things you're saying. Similar population, similar kind of area. But look at both on a satellite image. One actually has a lot of farmland for that area. Where people actually live its often a good bit denser.

Why is it like that? That's what people have voted for, that's what they've supported. Try actually talking to the people who live there and suggest to them they should live in a zero lot line home or a townhouse with shared walls.

> Why don't people in Dallas want to transfer buses?

I wouldn't mind transferring busses if there was good service. But instead transferring busses around here usually means sitting in the baking hot sun on a concrete bench in >100F heat for a half hour. If the next bus was in like 5 minutes, I probably wouldn't care.

It also often means you're probably taking a very suboptimal route instead of a direct route to the place. So not only do you have an additional wait to change busses, you then also have a much longer path to ride. And you're likely going to end up going a slower average speed, as you're having to stop to pickup/dropoff people along this longer route as opposed to just continuing on. For instance, it'll take me over an hour to go to where the new Dallas Stars arena will be in Plano as I need to make 4-5 bus changes. Its a 15 minute drive although it will probably be way more than that once 20k people try to leave at once.

Now, obviously, busses can change routes. They can get more busses and do more routes. They can get more busses and offer faster service. There's a lot of potential solutions to this. It doesn't have to be that way. But in the end getting people to put more funding into it is pretty challenging.

> if there's a place for me to ride a bike or walk or take a bus/train to my destination, and it feels safe and comfortable, I might just choose that just because it exists.

Its often not very comfortable riding a bicycle in 110F heat index when you've got this air-conditioned box you could ride in sitting in your garage.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#632

Post by vel0city » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

Grombobulous wrote: post #626

vel0city wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is entirely because of the design of Haarlem and its pedestranized city-center Practically all of those towns have had a focus of building walkable/bikeable spaces with dense mini-downtown areas for at least decades if not longer. Its not impossible for this to eventually happen to these already built US suburbs, but a lot of these places were explicitly designed around everyone coming and going by car. A lot…

Hot weather transit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_SJ1NBMrH0 Cold weather transit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKvtnToQyi0 Transit is small towns and suburbs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg I would remind all of us that our built environment is not an inevitability, it is a continuous choice, especially in a rapidly expanding state like Texas. In 1960, 8 million fewer people lived in the Netherla…

If I lived in Singapore I'd absolutely ride and walk most places, as owning a car is extremely expensive. To own a Toyota Corolla, before even thinking about paying for the garage to park it just the taxes and fees, its like $130k. Then you're looking at a few hundred dollars in rent just to store the car.

This might be news to you, but it doesn't cost $130k to drive an old Toyota Camry around in DFW. Every home is pretty much guaranteed to have parking for 1+ cars.

If the average Singaporean could buy a car for $5k, the government mandated their apartment had a parking spot or two, and gas cost $0.79/L you think they'd all still want to be in the heat all the time?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying transit can't possibly work in hot places. But you're needing to convince people to leave a nice comfortable air-conditioned space to willingly go be outside in the heat. Singapore did that by making cars incredibly expensive to own. I can't imagine making a Toyota Corolla cost $130K to be a popular policy in the US.

> I would remind all of us that our built environment is not an inevitability, it is a continuous choice, especially in a rapidly expanding state like Texas.

I 100% agree with this. People are choosing to ride around in air-conditioned boxes instead of being in the heat. People choose to live in these sprawling suburban neighborhoods with zero walkability. People choose to prevent overturning parking minimums, people choose to expand highways and people choose to vote against bonds to build bike infrastructure. That is the choice tons of North Texans are making. I do think their decisions are rather short-sighted and often disagree with them, but those are the choices being made.

> This idea that the Netherlands is special and this magical thing they've done can't be done anywhere else is a weak one in my mind.

I never said this. You're literally making a straw man here. In fact I'm saying the opposite of that. I agree its not impossible. Just a lot harder as people's mindsets are extremely different and the climate is very different.

If I had the weather of a lot of Germany or the Netherlands or UK or Norway I'd probably be outside a good bit more. I really don't mind riding a bike in the cold, exercise warms you up. If I was taxed like Singapore, I'd probably eschew the car.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#633

Post by servo_sausage » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #595

servo_sausage wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens, is your underserved bus has to increase stops per loop for viability. You have areas where leaving the cul-de-sac zone takes 15-20 minutes on foot; so you need a stop or two in the zone. Now you have a short walk to the stop; but if you want this to be a viable alternative, you need some frequency of service. And that means that the routs need to be active across the whole week, not just the hypothetica…

"You have areas where leaving the cul-de-sac zone takes 15-20 minutes on foot…" Holy shit, you have to walk a mile from a cul-de-sac just to get to a street with an intersection? Who the hell designed these streets? (I guess Big Auto?)

Chicken and egg problem. If you start with the assumption that you have a car, they are pretty great. Quiet, no through traffic and can become neighbourly, potentially large blocks. Somewhere to park your car...

Basically trying to retrofit busses to a development built around cars is stupid.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#634

Post by Yizahi » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #568

Yizahi wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't dispute Dallas numbers and I may be wrong. But in general this feels wrong at a first approach. Denser low rise apartment blocks with more commercial square are per inhabitant and fewer expensive infrastructure per inhabitant (road area, length of water/sewers/electricity/data lines, amount of common things like lamp posts, signs, security (police/fire/medical etc.)) just logically should be better financi…

When logic and the observation disagree that means your logic is missing something. Don't double down on flawed logic, figure out where the flaw is. I don't know where your flaws in logic is coming from, but I have seen the numbers enough different places to know there is one someplace.

You are missing one thing. Logic can be faulty AND observation can be faulty just as well (it's just more rare usually). Especially in the financial reporting. I've seen enough to immediately doubt and try to find intentional tricks in any level of financial reporting or analysis. The tools are endless - simple faking, reclassifying specific inflows and outflows to the different time frames or divisions or even separate companies (both fake and real), confusing or obscure terminology is certainly widely deployed, metrics can be fudged from industry standards to some better looking custom ones, companies can "forget" some of their liabilities and debts or even rename them into something unrecognizable.

I'm prepared to be wrong though. The question is, are you?..

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#635

Post by HDThoreaun » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #573

skipkey wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the DFW metroplex is an example of why it's difficult to build decent public transportation - it has a population of about half that of Greater London, covering over 24k square kilometers. Very few people work in the downtown areas. Most people live in a suburb and work in a suburb. I lived in the area for many years. At one point, I lived in a house, basically at Belt Line and highway 75, and worked at an office…

Bad operations is not the fault of transit it is the fault of operations. Making transit serve the poor is a political choice and the result is it didn't serve you. However there is every reason to think good operations with a good budget could serve you well.

No there really is not. The problem is that static routes in low density areas do not work. The reason the transit system has a policy about poor areas is because they know people with cars will never take the bus unless the government makes driving onerous which will never happen.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#636

Post by HDThoreaun » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

zero_k wrote: post #505

eagleinparadise wrote: post #232

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…

Build walkable cities instead. Stop car-brain-rot. Your cities could be beautiful, full of life and children running around and having fun. Walking, cycling, and taking public transport, brings life to a city. It allows random connections and makes you see "the other". It could significantly improve your quality of life. Open up your eyes, there's a whole beautiful world out there.

People who live on Dallas clearly do not want this. Telling them their lifestyle is wrong and if they just open their eyes they will see the folly of their ways accomplishes nothing. If you work with their actual preferences instead of foisting your own into them you will see that there are still ways to make progress such as removing parking restrictions by utilizing self driving cars.

I lived in one of the most walkable neighborhoods in Chicago for 30 years before moving to suburbia with 0 walkability. It is completely untrue that walkability is secretly better than suburbia and those suburbanites don’t know what they’re missing.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#637

Post by bluGill » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

infecto wrote: post #615

bluGill wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody understands their why. They say they don't want to, but what they really mean is service sucks so they can't and assume that means they don't want to. It is regularly proved around the world that when you give good service people suddenly want to ride.

I think that is a pretty broad generalization that lacks cultural differences and regional challenges. There are indeed many whys but one of the core issues in American is the rooted desire to be free by driving a car. It’s kind of similar to how folks argue small cars should be manufactured in the US when in reality most folks don’t want to buy them. You could not efficiently run a bus service in most US cities at a…

> You could not efficiently run a bus service in most US cities at a level of “good service”.

Only because you can never get the political supported needed to get there. If you somehow got the needed support people would start using it and it would turn the US city into a transit city. Note that political support needs to last for at least 5 years, in the real world there is an election every 2 years and so before you can get your bus system working for 5 someone will win an election on "lets stop wasting all that money on the bus system" platform and kill the whole thing.

> Now I absolutely agree you could probably get there with some sort of 10 seat ride share setups that optimizes pickups and dropoffs

We we cannot. you cannot optimize a 10 set ride share that much. They would be even more expensive at that scale. Nobody likes busy ride shares - you have a deadline of when you need to be there and flexible routes mean that some days you are late because the rideshare decided to take a detour to pick up (or drop off) someone else.

> Last mile is an incredibly hard problem in the US. If you have the option to someone to commute by bus with a single transfer or to take their car I think most folks would opt for a car

Because the bus nearly everywhere provides terrible service. Sure some people can take a few trips via bus, but then the car they need for the rest is just sitting around while you still make payments (including taxes and insurance).

> That is why I say it’s not feasible to run a bus service because you would need to get it down to zero transfer and effectively door to door service.

You don't need to get there. You just need to get "close enough". If you give people a situation where they can REASONABLE do nearly everything on transit most will give up the car. However if there is even one semi-regular trip that needs a car they may as well use the car for everything.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#638

Post by bluGill » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

HDThoreaun wrote: post #635

bluGill wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad operations is not the fault of transit it is the fault of operations. Making transit serve the poor is a political choice and the result is it didn't serve you. However there is every reason to think good operations with a good budget could serve you well.

No there really is not. The problem is that static routes in low density areas do not work. The reason the transit system has a policy about poor areas is because they know people with cars will never take the bus unless the government makes driving onerous which will never happen.

Define low density....

In the typical suburb there is enough density for a good static network to work. Note that I said "good", and "network". A suburb cannot support a bus every hour, the service is too bad - but it can support a bus every 10 minutes or better because the service is acceptable. Also: network, not route - the important part is you need to be able to get to all the places you would normally go and that means the entire network matters and the ability to quickly/easially transfer to other routes is critical to success.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#639

Post by HDThoreaun » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

trymas wrote: post #523

amazingamazing wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too much capex

Capex for car infrastructure seemingly is uncapped (and I don’t talk only about USA either). But when it’s non-car transit suddenly it’s too much money, not profitable, nimby, etc. When cars enjoy fuel subsidies , (mostly) free roads and endless expansion. Update: some car brains over the world decided that even bike lanes are an issue. When bike lanes have bigger throughput, costs don’t even make a dent compared to…

Because 99% of Americans use cars. There’s no point spending money on something that only 15% of the population will even consider using, you’ll still have to spend just as much on roads.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#640

Post by HDThoreaun » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #638

HDThoreaun wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No there really is not. The problem is that static routes in low density areas do not work. The reason the transit system has a policy about poor areas is because they know people with cars will never take the bus unless the government makes driving onerous which will never happen.

Define low density.... In the typical suburb there is enough density for a good static network to work. Note that I said "good", and "network". A suburb cannot support a bus every hour, the service is too bad - but it can support a bus every 10 minutes or better because the service is acceptable. Also: network, not route - the important part is you need to be able to get to all the places you would normally go and th…

I really think the issue here is just that you are blinded by your own preferences. Buses will never be faster than cars in Dallas. Literally impossible. So if they’re not faster, and they’re not more convenient, what are the upsides? Well they’re cheaper, but everyone in Dallas already owns a car so that doesn’t matter. They have lower externalities, but that’s not convincing anyone to switch, Dallas residents are republicans. I just really don’t think there’s any realistic way to convince non poor Dallas residents to use a bus no matter what you do, as long as the state is red. And if you only get poor people to use it there will never be enough riders for it to make sense to have enough bus routes/consistency.