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Waymo in Dallas

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Re: Waymo in Dallas

#731

Post by nunez »

conductr wrote: post #431
nunez wrote: post #362

I'm happy that Waymo's finally lighting up Dallas, but they need to expand its service area quickly for it to be useful there, IMO. Austin, Houston and San Antonio are hub and spoke cities. They are designed with their downtowns as loci for their metros with suburbs sprawling around them concentricly. Waymo gets you to a lot of places within these cities for that reason. Dallas is built around and between Dallas and…

I live just north of the service area in Dallas and cross into it daily, it’s been pretty great to see the traction it seems to be getting here. The service area is a great way to launch. It’s the fashionable part of town, covers most night life for young people, it’s created a buzz and a lot of people will jump onto it just as soon as they widen the service area. I’m sure it’s all a phased thing, Waymo overall has b…

The service area is definitely fashionable! Nonetheless, I do wish that Waymo added Plano to their service area. Between Legacy West, Frisco/Stonebriar, Old Town Plano, Garland and Richardson, this, selfishly, would have been much more accessible for work commutes and, in my opinion, would have seen more ridership from travelers on business. Oh well; maybe soon!

(Somehow we lived in the DFW for five years and hardly spent time there (and not for a lack of trying!), and we went out A LOT. Then again, we were more brewery kind of people, and outside of the Fashion District, most of the breweries in town were (and are) all over the place. While we did live in the HEB, we were happy to drive wherever for a good time. We frequented Deep Ellum sometimes and Bishop Arts less frequently than that, but Dallas wasn't really a draw for us. This is very much unlike Houston, where pretty much everything is in the Inner Loop, and we found ourselves driving there every weekend when we lived in the deep suburbs during our first few years here.)

I definitely agree with your second paragraph. It's a real shame that Dallas has the most robust rail network in the South...and it serves basically no-one at the moment because of its bus network being the Achilles' Heel it is. Like, it's a real shame that the TRE (Trinity Railway Express; proper heavy commuter rail that runs on dedicated track) only services 5900 passengers/day and doesn't run on Sundays. (For contrast, the Long Island Rail Road in NYC services almost 330k riders/day.) Waymo will be a SUPER DUPER useful microtransit option to close the gap.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#732

Post by Zambyte »

xnx wrote: post #696
Zambyte wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would make more sense to make them even bigger, and to have one vehicle service many people. Maybe they could even be linked together for efficiency, and put on rails so the self driving is super reliable.

And make those rails go to any destination, on any schedule.

Yes! Let's build dense, walkable destinations around transit stops with regular service.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#734

Post by porphyra »

klaff wrote: post #711
Fogest wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Referring to the example from the Twitter post you cited, wouldn't the KWh per mile simply be a lot higher because these vehicles are engaging in much less efficient travel overall? City driving itself is often pretty inefficient because of all the stopping and going, and these vehicles likely are driving in a lot of the rush hour traffic and high density areas everyday. Not to mention they probably idle around a lot…

Depending on conditions, heat or AC can consume up to 5 or 6 kW in extreme weather and a small fraction of that in milder conditions. The most efficient speed of an EV is hard to pin down. If all fixed loads could be turned off, it would be most efficient at the slowest possible speed but with HVAC and compute loads present, the most efficient speed is around where the aerodynamic load is equal to the fixed load. Tha…

Weather can be arbitrarily extreme, but:

1. My whole house AC only consumes 3 kW when the outside is really hot, like 36 degrees C, and I seriously doubt that car AC can consume 5 or 6 kW

2. With hotter weather, the density of air also decreases and air resistance is reduced. This partially offsets the need for extra cooling (of both the occupants and the battery), so range is only perhaps impacted by 5-10%.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#735

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

yreg wrote: post #483
missedthecue wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Buses were indeed the logical solution before Waymo/etc. Now, they are just a modern version of horse carriages. Dirty, slow, smelly and insecure.

The faster you get out of the bus, the faster you liberate grandma and kids from a fall, being mugged, or from freezing to death while waiting, and instead you promote an active lifestyle.

Waymo-like transport is incredibly liberating for low middle class parents, that cannot be trust their young kids to ride a bus alone and take time off blue collar work to take their kids to X practice.

Plus, they are much cheaper and safer to operate long term

Buses are a solution today, but only for upper class americans & soccer moms, who don't realize the issues that low income or limited fixed income seniors face in their everyday life.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#736

Post by senkora »

xnx wrote: post #692
senkora wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally saw a Waymo in NYC on June 26th at 14th St and 8th Avenue, so they’ve done some recent testing at least.

It's still legal for Waymo to manually drive them around for mapping.

That could definitely be it. I didn’t get a clear view of the driver’s seat, so I don’t know whether or not the driver was manually controlling it.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#737

Post by Grombobulous »

infecto wrote: post #629
Grombobulous wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You keep drawing on this random anecdotes. Singapore is nothing like DFW. The best solution is progress that people will use. People are not going to walk around in the hot Texas sun across miles of frontage roads and nobody is going to rebuild the city to look like Singapore.

While I accept what you're saying about rebuilding an entire city, I also think what you're saying is effectively "there's nothing we can do."

There's a huge gulf between doing absolutely nothing and accepting the status quo and refusing to change at all.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#738

Post by Grombobulous »

vel0city wrote: post #631
Grombobulous wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wit…

> I wouldn't mind transferring busses if there was good service.

Literally what I'm advocating for is good service.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#740

Post by FromHoiPolloi »

bluGill wrote: post #567
FromHoiPolloi wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because most buses have terrible service and people are confusing the service with the vehicle. Where buses get good service they get used. When the bus is once per hour nobody uses it except those who have no other option and those are people who likely have 'issues'. Those people exist in every city but they a rarely seen anywhere else because they are a tiny minority of all people unless you look for a place they…

Oh I fully agree. One thing that (I think) is being overlooked is that when some people switch from cars to public transit, the congestion eases. One doesn't have to make everyone switch to buses/light rails. Just enough for everyone to benefit.
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