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Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

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Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#281

Post by seanmcdirmid »

stonogo wrote: post #247
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Street side parking is fine It’s a massive subsidy that takes up space. If you have the space to move it and still permit e.g. delivery trucks from blocking the road, great. Many cities don’t have that space and yet cede it to parking.

Nothing's stopping you from charging for street parking. If it's a subsidy, that's a political decision, not an inherent flaw in street parking.

Charging for street parking is a good step, but American neighborhoods still don’t have great transit and most people still have cars even if they are living in a house/apartment without parking. We aren’t like Japan where car owners have to prove that they have ample parking for their cars.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#282

Post by geor9e »

As a bicyclist who hates cars, I'm totally fine with this. I've been riding alongside Waymos in San Francisco for seven years now, and they are the most polite and protective drivers ever. If I'm merging into traffic and I can get in front of a Waymo, it's the best feeling in the world. Waymo will see you from any direction with lasers and always yield to you. It's better they block the whole bike lane momentarily so I can pass them on the left, rather than have their passenger surprise swing their door into the bike lane.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#283

Post by tmtvl »

rafabulsing wrote: post #261
throw_a_grenade wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that when car drivers decide the rules are nonsensical it's bad, but when bicycle drivers decide the rules (that, please note, apply to everyone on the street, car or not), it's somehow A-ok?

How come that when people handling uranium decide the rules are nonsensical it's bad, but when people handling bananas decide the rules (that, please note, apply to everyone with radioactive materials), it's somehow A-ok?

When I go to buy banana I always bring my Geiger counter. I also aways get kicked out of the supermarket, I wonder what they're trying to cover up...

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#284

Post by valicord »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #203
valicord wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've quoted the rules which forbid parking and driving in the bike lane and then went on to confidently make up the part about stopping and dropping people off.

In UK highway terminology, you're "driving" in the bike lane if your vehicle enters it.

If that was the case they wouldn't need to forbid "parking" since it would not be possible to "park" without "driving" first.

It's explicitly legal for cabs to drop off passengers cycle lanes in London https://haveyoursay.tfl.gov.uk/walking-and-cycling-changes-o...

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#285

Post by bastawhiz »

This is kind of silly. If you can pull over "into" a bike lane, it's a half assed bike lane. Bike lanes should be protected. If you can't, as a city, put any physical barrier between cars and bikes at all, you're really not doing anything to benefit cyclists. Splashing some green paint on a strip of road is just an excuse to pat yourself on the back and call yourself a "bike-friendly city".

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#286

Post by fc417fc802 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #278
spankalee wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delivery drivers should find parking. They should be fined heavily for parking in traffic, including bike lanes.

That’s not even close to how dense cities work. Even if you have street parking, it’s often saturated, this is like saying delivery drivers should just deliver in the middle of the night or something. Or really should go with small delivery drones.

I'd actually agree that they ought to deliver in the middle of the night but indeed that's just not how the world currently works. Far worse than bike lanes I've regularly seen large box trucks driven up onto particularly wide stretches of sidewalk in areas with skyscrapers. Law enforcement doesn't seem to care, presumably because how else are they supposed to get packages to where they need to be?

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#287

Post by II2II »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #83

As a cyclist and a driver it’s not immediately apparent which Waymo behavior I prefer for passenger dropoffs/pickups. While it’s annoying in the moment to pedal around a parked car, I’m fine with it. However, having a Waymo dropping off clear of the bike lane sounds good, until the exiting passenger accidentally doors a cyclist who isn’t prepared for that possibility. I suppose I’d rather suffer the inconvenience of…

> While it’s annoying in the moment to pedal around a parked car, I’m fine with it.

Personally, I'm fine with it too. Problem is, a lot of motorists are not fine with that. Whether I get stuck on the road because the bike lane is curb separated or because there is an excessive number of cars parked in the bike lane, motorists start screaming at me. A few months back, I had one aggressively pass me. I checked to ensure the road was clear before entering it, the only way they could have passed me in that manner is if they accelerated (i.e. they created an issue out of something that shouldn't have impacted them).

The sense of entitlement of some motorists is dangerous. They are willing to behave in a manner that puts people's lives at risk.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#288

Post by JumpCrisscross »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #268
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> last I checked actual autonomy was still stuck in the perpetual R&D phase I know plenty of people in Phoenix for whom it’s their main mode of transport. When I’m there or in San Francisco, it’s certainly mine. (And now, increasingly, in Miami, too.) Waymo is here and it’s real and it’s so much better than Uber or taxis.

Sure, there's a very gradual, strictly limited, tightly controlled rollout. It's certainly not to the point where anyone would realistically design a city center around it. There's perhaps a small handful of companies globally that are currently prototyping the technology in a process that's shaping up to take a decade or longer to play out. Even once things reach that point reworking an existing place would be a mas…

> not to the point where anyone would realistically design a city center around it

Sure. Neither is Phoenix's light-rail system, for the most part. These things take time to play out and gain buy-in.

Americans take about 34 million public-transit trips a day [1]. Assuming 25 rides per day, that's about 1.4 million self-driving cars to rival public transport's impact. Waymo has "about 3,000 robotaxis deployed nationwide" [2]. Doubling fleet size annually–Waymos and non-Waymos, though currently they have no peers–would get us to parity in less than 10 years. (A more-realistic 35% growth rate puts us around 20 years.)

The point of that excercise is to say that within 10 to 20 years, less time e.g. California's HSR or New York's Second Avenue Subway took to get online, we could see as many trips in AVs in America as we do on public transit of all types. That's close enough to start looking ahead to.

[1] https://www.apta.com/news-research/about-the-industry/public...

[2] https://www.axios.com/local/san-diego/2026/03/30/waymo-speed...

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#289

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

ghaff wrote: post #48
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the US and bike lanes are not shared lanes for turning or stopping where I live.

If you're making a right-hand turn in the US as a driver and there's a protected bike lane you're crossing through that lane to turn. And, when I sit outside in the summer at one of my usual restaurants with sidewalk seating, there are any number of horrifying combinations of bicycles, ebikes, escooters, and things that look like electric motorcycles routinely blowing through the red light at the adjacent intersectio…

You cross through the intersection. You don't treat it like an extra lane to pass traffic on the left which some drivers like to do when there is sufficient space or no curb.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#290

Post by Jensson »

nvr219 wrote: post #37
amelius wrote: post #30

To what extent is the data of these driverless vehicle companies available to external researchers?

I’m pretty sure to zero extent.

> I’m pretty sure to zero extent.

There is a lot, waymo gives out a bunch of data.

https://waymo.com/open/

You can see people testing it in videos like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNwCDacDE2g

Google gives out a massive amount of data from many of their parts for free, so not sure why you would think they wouldn't do so here. They don't give out all of it but large parts, they are very research friendly.

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