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Waymo in Portland

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Re: Waymo in Portland

#361

Post by catlover76 »

jdprgm wrote: post #138
catlover76 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Isn't Amtrak that, but just geographically-scoped? Isn't Caltrain workable? Subways also function fine in NYC, DC, Boston, and even LA (to be clear, I don't think the other poster is correct that having trains would satisfy the desire of the guy who wants a self-driving Rivian. I consider his want/need there to be fundamentally different)

It's comically (and extremely variably) priced. A trip from DC to NYC and back would be ~$25 in electric costs with a typical electric car versus Amtrak could easily be $300+ though possibly as cheap as $50 if you are flexible to awful hours like depart at 4:30am or something.

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Re: Waymo in Portland

#362

Post by rtpg »

dmix wrote: post #288
meowkit wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> California spent 15yrs trying to build a high speed train and failed.

It has to be said: even in Japan train projects are multi decade projects.

Is Cali HSR stopped? I can imagine it being slow but I wonder if it's 10x slower or "merely" 3x slower.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#363

Post by 9x39 »

svnt wrote: post #273
tristor wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. But the golden question is, do what? The authorities don't care. Rules and laws are rarely enforced, and when they are enforced they're done so unevenly. If you decide to take matters into your own hands, it's much more likely that you will be punished by the law than the person you were correcting. So, what do you expect people to do?

My point is that in established cultures there are expectations around how these situations are handled, and what you expect people to do is specific to the culture. A single disapproving grandmother can put a stop to it. That is why it breaks down — once it is discarded in a melting pot the cultural expectations are unclear and it seems you’re at least initially dependent on the state or mob dynamics.

>A single disapproving grandmother can put a stop to it.

I think you have to go further upstream socially - there are people that should not be free, but are. Public transit has not just loud talking or music on phones, but the mentally deranged, babbling, even actively drug using population walking a knife's edge between erratic and aggressive behavior. From my POV it's so far past a stern stare on the US west coast that the suggestion comes across comical.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#364

Post by floxy »

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.

>modern trains. Even some American cities have them.

Which American cities have notable modern train systems? Not Portland, or NYC, or Washington DC.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#365

Post by 9x39 »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #241
charcircuit wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not. Pass a law that continuing to be noisy or disruptive on a bus or train after a warning results in 10 years of prison time with no parole and consistently enforce it. The problem will solve itself without a chicken and egg problem. Problematic people can simply be removed from society to make for a good social environment. Adding more good people is not the only option and in fact only hides the problem inst…

This would involve incarcerating a lot of homeless people, which is expensive, and pro-homeless activists would see it as a human rights abuse and fight it.

Deeply unfortunate, but we're arguably in a lose-lose situation where suffering from the problem has abuses, and yet so does fighting those who profit or benefit from the situation.

There's immense social capital and NGO patronage at work surrounding 'homeless' - and I parse that as mentally ill now, as it's an insult (IMO) to the homeless who are perfectly capable of respecting others and participating in the social contract.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#366

Post by rtpg »

dgacmu wrote: post #337
rootusrootus wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

Yes, but also: The metro area density of Tokyo is 3,000 / km^2 The metro area density of Beijing is 1,747 / km^2 Greater Los Angeles: 208 / km^2

LA proper seems to have a density of 3000/km^2 according to Wikipedia

A perhaps more interesting use case is the utsunomiya light rail. Utsunomiya has a density of around 1200/km^2.

What they ended up doing was building a new tram with exactly one line. The main thing they did was make sure the tram comes frequently, including off peak.

End result is people rely on the tram line and the tram is making good money, being operationally profitable (still gotta pay back construction costs of course).

Utsunomiya is obviously not exactly greater LA, but Utsunomiya has on average 2.25 cars per household[0]. It has traffic issues and people feel the need to own a car. And yet the tram line is finding success because transportation is a local issue, not a global one!

You can solve for transportation issues in crowded areas. Few reasonable people are lamenting that you don't have a train between madison, WI and Chicago every 15 minutes. Many are simply lamenting that even at a local level PT in many places is leaving a lot on the table despite there being chances of success!

Smaller focused PT has proven itself to work time and time again, and compounds on other PT projects in the area.

[0]: https://www.pref.tochigi.lg.jp/english/intro/overview.html

Re: Waymo in Portland

#367

Post by [deleted] »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #260
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. Engineers design a road for 55. Police say make it 40 for $$ and pretext. Public says make it 60. Karen says make it 30. Politician says they don't care as long as Karen stops screeching, the public doesn't hate them and the police doesn't hate them. End result ->45 Refactoring the humans out would only change a couple of the less influential inputs to that equation. It might actually make it way wo…

> Engineers design a road for 55. Not always. I think a lot of time, speed limits are set based on the expected amount of traffic, not the curvature or the road. For example, I-5 in the Portland area south of the OR-217 interchange has extremely gentle curves. You could take them at 100 mph and not risk losing grip. Yet the limit is 55 mph anyways because that area is expected to have considerable traffic, with traff…

[deleted]

Re: Waymo in Portland

#368

Post by DANmode »

whatgoodisaroad wrote: post #85
georgeburdell wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rideshare drivers can speed

once we've refactored humans out of driving, the speed limits can go way up

At minimum increased to what they would be

if driving was a privilege

and not treated as a de facto right,

only withheld as a last-resort due to the curse it can be in the US.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#369

Post by Jblx2 »

Schiendelman wrote: post #349
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?

What makes you say that? I'd only propose them in very high density corridors (or in corridors where building a train would be paired with allowing high density).

A lot of it probably has to do with train advocates seeming like audiophiles extoling the virtues of phonograph records and the like. It seems like they are nostalgic for an 1880s utopia. That's just the vibe I get. I wonder what people in this thread think about The Line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line,_Saudi_Arabia

Re: Waymo in Portland

#370

Post by cindyllm »

DANmode wrote: post #368
whatgoodisaroad wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

once we've refactored humans out of driving, the speed limits can go way up

At minimum increased to what they would be if driving was a privilege and not treated as a de facto right, only withheld as a last-resort due to the curse it can be in the US.

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