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Waymo in Portland

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Re: Waymo in Portland

#281

Post by fsckboy »

starkparker wrote: post #162
ptero wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cuts were exacerbated by state Republicans getting a proposed payroll tax repeal onto the ballot next month Sorry to nitpick, but why is the next month's ballot (and in general the issues that have not been voted on yet) affecting current service?

> A scheduled increase to Oregon’s transportation taxes, including those that help fund TriMet, is on hold after an effort to repeal the hike secured enough signatures to send the issue to the ballot next month. from the Oregonian article I linked The service changes take affect in August, in large part because they can no longer expect the funding for them to exist by then. > “The agency’s current position is that t…

>The service changes take affect in August, in large part because they can no longer expect the funding for them to exist by then.

I think a more plausible reason is, "withdraw the services now to get people who want that spending and that service irritated, and therefore more likely to get out and vote for it". Keeping service in place till the vote might supress the vote through complacency.

I'm not passing a value judgement on this top-down pressure on the electorate, governments should in theory be neutral and uphold current law, but governments are populated by politicians, and politicians who advocated this still want to advocate it and give it its best electoral chance. In a like "up is down" sense, people who favor cutting this government expenditure should favor the early cuts, they save money... of course, they don't, just sayin.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#282

Post by jonas21 »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #264
starkparker wrote: post #127

For context, this is coming in as TriMet is laying off staff, reducing service frequency, eliminating bus lines, and cutting parts of light rail routes due to a $300M budget shortfall. The cuts were exacerbated by state Republicans getting a proposed payroll tax repeal onto the ballot next month; TriMet relies heavily on payroll taxes that are deeply unpopular among the self-employed and small business owners, so the…

> Waymo shows up with a convenient solution to both problems. That's absurd. Waymo exacerbates the problem. It doesn't provide public transport. You get unlimited travel for $100/month on Trimet. You think Waymo is going to cost anything close to that?

> You get unlimited travel for $100/month on Trimet.

Only because the government is subsidizing 90% of TriMet's operating costs.

It might be interesting to see what sort of system Waymo could build with a similar subsidy... but that's never going to happen.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#283

Post by meowkit »

Jblx2 wrote: post #268
Schiendelman wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent ten years in the trenches of American urban design policy. The best we could do was lose very slightly less quickly . It's not changing. Trains are great, we should build more, and we probably should replace a lot of bus routes by subsidizing rides on Waymo and its ilk. It'll be cheaper and provide better service.

>Trains are great I wonder how much that sentiment is that based on steampunk and 1880's nostalgia?

Yesh go to literally any other industrialized part of the world and see how ** backwards the US is on trains

I’ve become quite radicalized on trains after visiting Japan and Switzerland myself.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#284

Post by dzhiurgis »

sheept wrote: post #186
xnx wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Portland is really forward-thinking, they would be smart to use this opportunity to jump to the next stage of public transport by focusing on flexible bus routes and Waymo/rideshare subsidies for the poor and disabled.

Self driving cars aren't the next stage of public transport; they're a bandaid solution to American urban design. They're still cars, so they still contribute to traffic and increased pavement wear, and I cannot imagine they'd be cheaper at scale than buses for storage/maintenance/cleaning.

> increased pavement wear

That's buses. Even more with electric buses. They are insanely subsidized by public. Robot taxis are vastly cheaper for everyone.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#285

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

josefresco wrote: post #67

I wonder how long Google will continue to subsidize this at a substantial loss? Estimated $30–40 billion spent in the last decade that only really pays off if they dominate the market.

Waymo now generates more than $350M in annual recurring revenue, says https://ideas.darden.virginia.edu/waymo-fully-autonomous-fut..., and quotes $130-150k per car.

So one year of revenue buys ~2500 cars at those prices, which is roughly the size of their fleet (~3000 according to Wikipedia). It seems plausible that newer cars will be cheaper as designs get optimized, economies of scale hit and what used to be really expensive cutting-edge hardware becomes commoditized and goes down in cost over time.

They certainly also need support including contractors that assist cars that get need human input, maintenance etc. and the electricity for the cars isn't free either, but just based on these numbers, it sounds like they are likely close to being profitable if you ignore R&D.

If you assume $10 a ride, and a car giving 3 rides an hour for 12 hours a day, that's $360 in revenue per car per day, close to the $320 you'd get from $350M/3000/365. That means each car pays for itself in about a year (ignoring all other costs, of course).

Based on this and the assumption that cars last for more than 2 years, I'd guess that Waymo is only "unprofitable" (not sure how this works in accounting terms) due to ongoing R&D and expansions and there really isn't much more to "subsidize".

Re: Waymo in Portland

#286

Post by array_key_first »

ggreer wrote: post #274
blks wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo is an expensive taxi service, not a solution to public transport.

In 2025, TriMet had 262 million passenger miles at a system cost of $812 million, for a cost of $3.09 per passenger mile.[1] Fares covered 7.8% of their costs. The other 92.2% came from payroll taxes and federal grants. For comparison, a Lyft or Uber in the same area would cost you $1-2 per mile. Obviously it's not feasible for all 200k daily riders to take Uber/Lyft, and the Uber/Lyft cost doesn't include externalit…

This is an implementation problem, not a problem with the underlying concept.

Public transit like buses and lightrail are significantly more efficient per person than personal vehicles. This is because they can transport many more people for the same amount of space and energy. They also typically run on set tracks, which yields more efficiency gains.

The US is really, really bad at doing public transit. It doesn't help that everything is car centric, which makes public transit much harder.

For example, in your comment you're excluding road cost, but you're including the full system cost of transit. That's a car centric side effect, e.g. we take roads for granted. But the cost of cars also includes the cost of roads, the cost of land under those roads, the cost of parking, etc.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#287

Post by [deleted] »

svnt wrote: post #96
davnicwil wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate what you're saying and am a big fan of long distance train and bus journeys myself and have done a lot of both, sleeping and not. But one huge factor that you have to contend with is the randomness of the tragedy of the commons problem on public transport / shared transport. A train journey can be blissful to sleep on right until a loud group gets on and sits across from you and there's no seats availabl…

It is a chicken and egg problem. As long as the majority of people who would maintain the social environment are avoiding the social environment, the healthy consensus/operating regime can never emerge.

[deleted]

Re: Waymo in Portland

#288

Post by dmix »

meowkit wrote: post #283
Jblx2 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Trains are great I wonder how much that sentiment is that based on steampunk and 1880's nostalgia?

Yesh go to literally any other industrialized part of the world and see how ** backwards the US is on trains I’ve become quite radicalized on trains after visiting Japan and Switzerland myself.

Not like the US didn't try. California spent 15yrs trying to build a high speed train and failed. Canada has been talking about building trains forever too and it usually goes nowhere because the budgets explode like every major infrastructure project these days.

UK spent $100M just to deal with bats in a single train tunnel, which is representative of the issue https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wryxyljglo

Re: Waymo in Portland

#289

Post by dzhiurgis »

soiltype wrote: post #279
Jblx2 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Trains are great I wonder how much that sentiment is that based on steampunk and 1880's nostalgia?

None. Why would you think that? My guess is you're an American living nowhere near an urban rail system but I thought most people here would at least be passing familiar with modern trains. Even some American cities have them.

Why the ad hominem?

I've lived and travelled in a ton of places. Trains in low density cities are simply not working well enough. I now prefer to live in exurb and drive everywhere. It's so good.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#290

Post by array_key_first »

Jblx2 wrote: post #268
Schiendelman wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent ten years in the trenches of American urban design policy. The best we could do was lose very slightly less quickly . It's not changing. Trains are great, we should build more, and we probably should replace a lot of bus routes by subsidizing rides on Waymo and its ilk. It'll be cheaper and provide better service.

>Trains are great I wonder how much that sentiment is that based on steampunk and 1880's nostalgia?

Also just like... looking at a train and noticing it can carry a ton more people than a car, has no concept of traffic, and can theoretically go as fast as possible.
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