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Waymo in Dallas

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Re: Waymo in Dallas

#661

Post by rangestransform »

panick21_ wrote: post #248
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…

> Any public dollar that gets contributed to housing ... in the US > Building housing with no parking is not feasible for 95% of deals. You simply won't get financing Because of completely broken land use, transportation polices, building regulation in the US, they are very feasible in many other parts of the world. > if you could hand to your investors and lender an agreement which provides a car for every 3 units O…

The transit-as-welfare idea that pervades the US precludes keeping trains free of antisocial behaviour forcibly as is done in Asia

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#662

Post by rangestransform »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #287
panick21_ wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any public dollar that gets contributed to housing ... in the US > Building housing with no parking is not feasible for 95% of deals. You simply won't get financing Because of completely broken land use, transportation polices, building regulation in the US, they are very feasible in many other parts of the world. > if you could hand to your investors and lender an agreement which provides a car for every 3 units O…

People don't car share in the US, and don't want to. Building arrangements that would rely on them are mostly illegal anyways. Allowing driverless cars to serve buildings without parking would be a huge step forward for those reasons alone. For what it's worth, it's mostly illegal to build a housing that's the only served by buses too. Last, the US has passed the point where it has the cheap labor and government comp…

The unions will always get in the way of cheap transit construction, see the second ave subway in NYC

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#663

Post by robomartin »

ajmurmann wrote: post #405
robomartin wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do self-driving cars reduce congestion? At what scale? As a non-trivial percentage of road traffic they can reduce congestion in a million different way. For example, predictive and cooperative route planning (you know what the road looks like 0 to N Km ahead and plan accordingly. The other one is one of the most frustrating things humans do while driving: Slow down while going uphill. Where I live, except of a…

> Once over the crest every seems to drive like Max Verstappenit's odd, you'd think they'd all try to be ahead at the apex

I drive track days with some frequency. When I am on the road I have to turn my brain down to slow and just let it happen. To be fair, you can't expect grandma to drive at a high level. What most people talking about congestion and traffic don't stop to think about is that the traffic you get is a function of the lowest common denominator. All you need is one small rock in a stream to disrupt it.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#664

Post by rangestransform »

vel0city wrote: post #413
cyberax wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo is not doing any carpooling optimizations. They're right now a luxury service that is priced above the normal Uber ride prices. This will obviously change in future, once they start a truly mass rollout.

Yeah, all the people who refuse to ride busses to the point they're willing to spend many many thousands of dollars on their own cars are just yearning to carpool in a much more compact vehicle than a bus.

I actually really liked uber pool in the Bay Area, talked to some interesting people

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#665

Post by HDThoreaun »

bluGill wrote: post #644
HDThoreaun wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

Buses don't have to be faster. They need to be as good or better for the trips you take. If it is 15 minutes to drive to work and 25 minutes by bus that is good enough. If you can get all your other errands done on the bus then you can save a ton of money by selling a car. Note that I said sell a single car - nearly everybody in Dallas lives in a "family" situation with more than one car, so you still have a car for…

> If it is 15 minutes to drive to work and 25 minutes by bus that is good enough.

I really think this is completely wrong. You will convince approximately 0 people in Dallas to use a bus if this is what you are offering them.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#666

Post by dinobones »

eagleinparadise wrote: post #294
dinobones wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another idea: The places where people want to live have no land or archaic zoning laws. I wouldn't want to live two hours away, but if I could sleep/work during my commute, and pay $400/month for it, I might do it. My housing costs would be like less than a third of living in the metro where I work. Supercommuting becomes slightly more palatable.

Why should a tax payer in Dallas pay for your [affordable] transportation from the outskirts of Houston or OK to commute to Dallas? tax payer sources needs to be allocated to a project that can be administered, tracked, and iterated on. Plus the public should pay for services servicing more people than less, which your idea services a small population.

Why are you assuming there’s some taxpayer that will pay for my transportation?

I fully intend to pay my transportation costs myself.

It’s not about getting a free ride, it’s about being able to get to work while sleeping, saving money on housing, and pocketing the difference.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#667

Post by joquarky »

Grombobulous wrote: post #427
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…

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…

Coppell (a suburb of Dallas) will not permit public transportation because the residents believe that it would bring in "undesirables".

They also have a highly regarded school system... Turns out that is only the case as long as you don't have any special needs.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#668

Post by bhelkey »

runako wrote: post #43
elianaive wrote: post #23

Keeps on being rolled out in red states while being delayed in blue states, quite unfortunate.

Divide this differently: - states where the major cities commonly have snow for > 3 months - states where the major cities commonly have snow for Inclement weather is likely the differentiator. Blue state California gets Waymo in its biggest cities, which handily do not get much snow. The other Waymo cities are all below the Mason-Dixon Line.

At the start of this year, Waymo had a permit to test eight autonomous vehicles with a safety driver behind the wheel in NYC. The permit expired March 31st [1]. Waymo may no longer test autonomous driving (even with a safety driver) in NYC.

Waymo is not currently testing in NYC for political reasons.

[1] https://www.thecityreporter.nyc/2026/04/06/waymo-driverless-...

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#669

Post by bhelkey »

runako wrote: post #85
xnx wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocked even from testing in NYC. Blocked from DC and Boston. Unfortunately this does have more to do with bad government than bad weather.

Boston, according to Waymo[1], is dependent on the legislature making autonomous vehicles legal. Apparently NY state laws also require a human driver at the wheel. The only surprising thing about this is that other states did not require changes in law. It's Good, Actually, that big companies are (sometimes) bound by the same laws that bind the rest of us. In any case, there are more than 2-3 "blue" states. We can no…

> Apparently NY state laws also require a human driver at the wheel.

Earlier this year, Waymo had a permit to test 8 autonomous vehicles with safety drivers in NYC. The permit was not renewed [1]. Waymo can no longer drive autonomously (even with a safety driver) in NYC.

What changed between when the testing permit was issued and when a renewal of permit was declined? NYC had a political shift in leadership.

[1] https://www.thecityreporter.nyc/2026/04/06/waymo-driverless-...

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#670

Post by DiscourseFan »

bluGill wrote: post #581
DiscourseFan wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok but an autonomous bus, or autonomous vehicles designed to fit different numbers of people, would not be better than a one size fits all bus?

The one size fits all bus would be better. A tiny car cannot share rides without adding big delays to the person already on it. That means you cannot count on getting there on time with a shared ride. The bus has defined delays so you can predict when you will get there and this arrive on time.

If a root is only serving a smaller number of people, why have an entire bus? Busses make sense for thoroughfares, but I often board nearly empty express busses that are only running because of state/city appropriations. If we could modulate form to meet demand precisely, like Uber but for all transit, it would be far quicker and more efficient.
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