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Waymo in Portland

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Re: Waymo in Portland

#321

Post by anvuong »

xnx wrote: post #160
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…

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.

All they can do is to install more needle disposal bins and putting more narcan kit in the restrooms. I hate the direction Portland and more generally Oregon is going so much. It's always tax tax tax while everything is getting worse. Kotek needs to go.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#322

Post by rootusrootus »

skyyler wrote: post #312
dmix wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I wonder what's different between these English speaking countries you mention failing to build out rail transit, and places like Japan and China that have built fabulous rail networks.

Japan is a fairly unique case, and probably does not share much with China aside from being in the same region. Japan is geographically well suited to serving a large portion of the population with one long line with a few branches. That's a convenient advantage.

China just doesn't have to worry about environmentalists or anyone else locally trying to stand in the way, they just bulldoze them and build.

China also has much lower labor costs, and even Japan is a good bit cheaper (than the US, at the least)

Re: Waymo in Portland

#323

Post by Karrot_Kream »

xnx wrote: post #167
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amtrak started out as a holding company for private passenger rail companies that went bankrupt. It's never had a static amount of funding (until the Biden admin, Amtrak had to renegotiate its budget regularly) and many of its stations are just pet projects for rural Congress reps who want to give their district a way to leave their area, so Amtrak runs many trains at a loss. Building new rail projects in the US is v…

> Brightline in Florida was able to get around this buy working in an existing highway ROW. And will probably go bankrupt this year: https://www.wlrn.org/business/2026-01-23/brightline-business...

Oof their debt is now considered junk bonds huh. They missed some loan interest payments? Yeah not looking good...

Re: Waymo in Portland

#324

Post by anvuong »

doug_durham wrote: post #252
lotsofpulp wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cuts were exacerbated by state Republicans getting a proposed payroll tax repeal onto the ballot next month; An alternative view of this is the majority of voters are expected to reject a tax increase in the upcoming elections, in a state that elects a supermajority of Democrat legislators. https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Referendum_120,_Increase_to_G...

They aren't rejecting a tax increase. They are voting to give themselves a pay raise at the expense of infrastructure.

Do you live in Oregon? The recent vote was about rejecting the proposed payroll tax increase, which was massively unpopular. The vote was so overwhelming that Kotek attempted to yank that clause, so it can be tried another day.

People here keep asking why do tax payer needs to pay for incompetent politicians' mistakes. Then when Oregonians did something, the same people blamed them. Are you people high?

Re: Waymo in Portland

#325

Post by jaccola »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #285
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 reall…

How is the revenue recurring? They offer a subscription?

Re: Waymo in Portland

#326

Post by anvuong »

nickvec wrote: post #35
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…

Waymo undoubtedly drives better than your average rideshare driver - I have taken dozens of Waymos in SF and the experience is unmatched. Also no chance of being harassed by the driver, which is a big plus.

This. Also Waymo can be surprisingly aggressive in SF, lane cutting and speeding up when yellow light is on and whatnot. It really feels like being driven by an emotionless highly competent driver, which is exactly what I want. The only gripe I have with it is about dropping off, I can't tell it to move forward a couple of feet to avoid a puddle or to make it easier for me to unload the luggage ...

Re: Waymo in Portland

#327

Post by lelandbatey »

Silamoth wrote: post #62
boc wrote: post #4

I've determined that my ultimate dream car would be something like a Rivian but with Waymo tech, so I can drive it manually when I want/need (snowstorms, off-road), but I can also let it drive me across the country at night while I camp in the back. Would absolutely change the way we move across the US, especially if you have hobbies that involve a lot of gear and equipment.

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…

The sad truth is the USA spends ~$150B/year building and maintaining it's road network (to say nothing of the inflation-adjusted costs that went into its initial roll-out). Source: The US Fed tracks it directly - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TLHWYCONS

That's a $41/month subscription every citizen's paying no matter what. When we're pulling cash on that volume from everyone's pockets to build lavish infrastructure literally up to people's doors (vastly more road square footage than housing+school square footage combined), of course folks are going to say "nothing compares" -- because nothing does compare. Which stinks (imagine if we'd focused a century of spending on rail at rates like that; damn), but it is what we have at the moment.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#328

Post by troupo »

rootusrootus wrote: post #298
array_key_first wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Assuming the transit is fully utilized and the car is mostly not.

The car is mostly not.

> But in Portland the light rail is often well under capacity,

Haven't looked deeply into it, but looking at how the US plans and designs its public transport, I'm surprised anyone was using it at all.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#329

Post by anvuong »

tristanj wrote: post #305
ggreer wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even when just looking at marginal costs, I doubt Waymo is half that of a human driven vehicle. If we assume a robotaxi lasts 200k miles before being retired, then the cost of the vehicle alone ($75k) is 37.5 cents per mile. If a vehicle drives 200 miles a day, that's $5 of electricity (250Wh/mile x 10 cents/kWh), maybe $15 of labor to clean, and the space to park it near downtown ($3/day). That's another 12 cents pe…

Those are some good points. Waymo & self-driving cars only makes sense in markets where the cost of paying a human driver is much higher than the amortized cost of operating a self-driving vehicle. As an extreme example, in Bangladesh a driver will work for ~$0.25/hour. Self-driving cars don't make economical sense there, the additional cost of making a vehicle self-driving never pays off vs having a dedicated driver…

I believe sooner or later Waymo will start selling their tech package to car companies, who in turn will pass the cost on to customers either as a huge mark up or subscription services. I don't believe Waymo can survive on self-driving taxi alone, the hardware cost is too much to go global.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#330

Post by anvuong »

tristanj wrote: post #165
mmooss wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Waymo doesn't have this cost, so it's effectively ~$25/hr cheaper to operate than Uber/Lyft. Waymo has other costs, such as engineering driverless operation.

Engineering costs are capital/fixed costs, they're paid once to develop the technology and don't scale with the number of trips. Operating costs (which is what I'm discussing here) are what it actually costs to run each ride. Waymo's marginal cost per trip doesn't include a chunk of some engineer's salary. Once there are enough trips, the fixed engineering costs are spread across more and more trips, exponentially tr…

But then Uber/Lyft total cost doesn't need to account for the vehicles.
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