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Waymo in Portland

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Re: Waymo in Portland

#371

Post by Jblx2 »

rtpg wrote: post #362
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

> 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.

I wonder if California high speed rail will ever surpass quadcopter personal vehicles in passenger miles per year. I know which way I'd bet for the year 2040.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#372

Post by cucumber3732842 »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #343
soiltype wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 powere…

These also don't disappear if you replace privately-owned cars with buses and trains. You need paved roads to put buses on and track to put trains on, and they emit particulate pollution as well unless they're also electrified which is a similar problem to electrifying cars. Low-density residential sprawl is mostly water-inefficient because it allows people to have the ability to have a garden that they water, you do…

>Low-density residential sprawl is mostly water-inefficient

Which is more or less a non-issue east of the Missouri river

Re: Waymo in Portland

#373

Post by Schiendelman »

floxy wrote: post #364
soiltype wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's hard to say "system", but Seattle's just opened our second line, and we've got a couple in design as well.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#374

Post by Der_Einzige »

troupo wrote: post #331
davidgay wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an extremely simplistic view. For instance, the US moves more of its freight (by percentage) than all western European countries except Switzerland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag...

Passengers are not freight. And freight is one of the reasons US railways suck for passengers.

Freight is better. Passengers don’t belong on trains.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#375

Post by Schiendelman »

Jblx2 wrote: post #369
Schiendelman wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's understandable, but I think the mass transit crowd is pretty different. I think you may need to meet more transit advocates!

Re: Waymo in Portland

#376

Post by xnx »

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…

Train-advocates being against self-driving cars will be recognized as being equivalent to environmentalists being against nuclear power. Fortunately, I don't expect train-advocates as being nearly as successful. Once someone has tried Waymo, there's no going back to the old ways.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#377

Post by nunez »

TheAlchemist wrote: post #334
nunez wrote: post #304

I've got to retract some shade I've thrown at Waymo when discussing Tesla FSD in the past. Like others, my biggest objection with it was their approach to scaling. Tesla aimed for the vision-only general solution with FSD, while Waymo held strong to its LIDAR-first geofence strategy. I held this opinion before using Waymo, as it wasn't available in my city (Houston, TX). I've used it several times after being invited…

It's good to hear that more people are realizing that Tesla is nowhere near where they claim to be. For anobody observing it from the sidelines, it was obvious for the past 3 years at least, that Tesla will not achieve real unsupervised FSD with HW3, and now it's also obvious it will not be wiht HW4. It's also obvious they are very well aware of those facts, despite lying to investors and customers for the past 10 ye…

I stanned for them so hard. Oh well; live and learn. It's still the best autonomous driving system that you can buy, though now that Hyundai onlined their Waymo production line, needing a car might be a thing of the past in a few years.

Maybe that's why they pivoted so hard into Optimus (at the cost of their auto division).

Re: Waymo in Portland

#378

Post by xnx »

array_key_first wrote: post #306
rootusrootus wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Right, the reason it might be underutilized is if you're bad at designing cities for it. Which the US is, so it is. We design cities for cars, which results in the cities spreading out further and further, which makes transit less desirable and more expensive. Other countries don't have this problem to this degree, because they don't design their cities exclusively for cars. Also, I don't think most roads would need…

> is if you're bad at designing cities for it

Consider that the transportation system might not be the best fit if it requires designing the rest of the world differently and against preferences (large, detached, single-family homes with a yard).

Re: Waymo in Portland

#379

Post by [deleted] »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #180
starkparker wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in August, the bus line that serves my neighborhood completely goes away, and the next closest bus line with stops 2 miles away will end weekday service after 6:30 p.m. and weekend service altogether. I don't give a fuck if it's free, if it's inaccessible. I'm not crossing SE Foster on a rainy evening to catch a bus that won't take me home afterward.

The bus system would almost certainly be better if it did cost a somewhat-significant amount of money, because one of the biggest problems with public transit in the US is marginalized people getting on public transit and acting in ways that are unpleasant and disruptive to everyone else using it (think about a homeless drug addict passing out on the bus while splayed across several seats; or a schizophrenic screamin…

[deleted]

Re: Waymo in Portland

#380

Post by nunez »

Schiendelman wrote: post #347
nunez wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bus Rapid Transit is another option that could be amazing (while being much cheaper to implement), but it falls short for the same reason as trains: they require dedicated infrastructure that complicates driving, and complicating driving is political suicide.

One of the things I found when advocating for transit was that BRT cost savings in the US almost always come from reducing quality at stations, which loses public support faster than you save money. I found that voters are usually willing to spend far more on trains than on BRT, in excess of any savings.

Wow; that's surprising.
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