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Waymo in Portland

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Re: Waymo in Portland

#291

Post by danaw »

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…

try it again while calculating infrastructure and road costs for 262mm uber/lyft rides

Re: Waymo in Portland

#292

Post by soiltype »

angelgonzales wrote: post #198
Silamoth wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least 80% of what you’re describing would be satisfied by trains and buses. It’s wild that Americans are so obsessed with self-driving cars while ignoring public transit that solves most of the problems. It’s reliable, more efficient, better for the environment, and less stressful for you. I’m not saying cars shouldn’t ever exist. The ‘last mile problem’ is a thing, and proper self-driving cars could be good for p…

I’m 99-100% a car user now after living in Portland, Seattle and Los Angeles. Here’s why - I gave up my car for a bike when I lived in Portland, however when people openly smoked fentanyl on the trains the train operators had to stop the train during my morning/afternoon commute for ~15 minutes (this happened often). Also the last straw for me was getting my place broken into and having my bike stolen. Therefore I mo…

Look I don't fault you - Americans drive cars because every alternative is absolute dogshit, I don't disagree. But I can't e realistic about that and not this:

> As for the environmental impact, I agree that trains or busses may sometimes be better for environment

That's like saying gunshots may sometimes be more dangerous than throwing rocks.

> but we’re also approaching a future of self driving electric cars powered by nuclear and fusion plants providing clean energy

Even if this was true (I don't think either change is happening nearly fast enough) car-dependency is directly upstream of numerous other environmental problems, most of which don't disappear even if you take parking out of the mix, such as grounds heat and flooding caused by paved roads, such as obsession with energy- and water-inefficient low-density residential zoning (sprawl), such as particulate pollution from tires, such as ecosystem damage from the need to dump literal tons of salt on icy roads for tires to drive on, such as the emissions of road paving itself... you get the idea.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#293

Post by danaw »

Schiendelman wrote: post #247
blks wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The cost of providing a bus exceeds the cost of operating a car in many cases, like lower population density neighborhoods. It may save the public money to centralize transit on major corridors and then subsidize trips on Waymo in some areas and at some times.

how many people can fit in a bus compared to a car?

Re: Waymo in Portland

#294

Post by danaw »

thereisnospork wrote: post #275
jazzypants wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even five dollars a ride would be twice the price. It's just not comparable.

How many tax dollars go into subsidizing a public transit ride? Varies from place to place but it's not insignificant.

how many tax dollars go to roads and bridges just for cars?

Re: Waymo in Portland

#295

Post by array_key_first »

jonas21 wrote: post #282
insane_dreamer wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Waymo is subsidized. They operate vehicles without paying for the cost of the road, land, or surrounding parking.

That's like owning a train system and not paying for the tracks. Yeah... that's a huge part of it.

There's also indirect subsidies, for example the cost of land and housing. Cars are extremely space inefficient, so they encourage poor urban design that results in huge amounts of land wasted.

Well... the land and property that's left is then inflated in price. You could consider that cost difference as a subsidy to all drivers.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#296

Post by bevr1337 »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #68
Barbing wrote: post #7

Stiff competition for humans, especially drivers outside the top quartile or so. Waymo appears to its passengers to drive much more competently than certainly any sub-average rideshare driver. Although I like jobs for humans, I hope these aren’t all just set on fire because there is promise in reducing fatalities. Want to find a way for offline vehicles that can go 65MPH to remain legal though. Without Flock every bl…

The one feature that Waymo has over other rideshare apps is that the cars presumably actually show up. With all other apps, it feels like 50% of drivers just sit there waiting for you to cancel. I can't rule out that it's a bug with the app not showing updated locations in some cases (I've had an Uber show up even though the web app showed it three traffic lights away), but "actually gets me where I need to go in a t…

Waymo cancels cars when they are unable to get to you in a reasonable time. The service will not resend a car automatically, so the user needs to babysit the app until they’re actually in the car. I’ve seen this twice in the last week. In Phoenix and SF we have preferred ride share or taxi when the car showing up is important, like getting to a medical appointment on time.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#297

Post by coryrc »

array_key_first wrote: post #286
ggreer wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

> in your comment you're excluding road cost

Partially not, as gas taxes cover part of it. I think gas and diesel taxes should cover the full cost of roads, which would help. Still doesn't mean transit should be run so inefficiently.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#298

Post by rootusrootus »

array_key_first wrote: post #286
ggreer wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

> buses and lightrail are significantly more efficient per person than personal vehicles

Assuming the transit is fully utilized and the car is mostly not. And maybe that's a good way to look at it. But in Portland the light rail is often well under capacity, and in that case a carpool likely wins on efficiency.

> the cost of cars also includes the cost of roads, the cost of land under those roads, the cost of parking

Partially. Those roads will have to exist even if we did not have personal cars.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#299

Post by soiltype »

davnicwil wrote: post #91
Silamoth wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least 80% of what you’re describing would be satisfied by trains and buses. It’s wild that Americans are so obsessed with self-driving cars while ignoring public transit that solves most of the problems. It’s reliable, more efficient, better for the environment, and less stressful for you. I’m not saying cars shouldn’t ever exist. The ‘last mile problem’ is a thing, and proper self-driving cars could be good for p…

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…

Cars are not the solution to that. Hooligans and irritating people are just a possibility in literally every social environment, they always have been, and they always will be. Answers to that problem are social - it's a bigger problem in America than Japan, for exmaplem.

Answers which involve removing oneself from society (by entering a private car) are not good answers. And when you factor in the externalities, you're just displacing "I'm upset, possibly even unwell due to sleep lost" onto "we replaced 90% of the local natural environment with pavement and paint it with crushed human beings every single day".

Re: Waymo in Portland

#300

Post by rootusrootus »

danaw wrote: post #294
thereisnospork wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many tax dollars go into subsidizing a public transit ride? Varies from place to place but it's not insignificant.

how many tax dollars go to roads and bridges just for cars?

Varies from place to place but it's not insignificant
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