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Waymo in Portland

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Re: Waymo in Portland

#431

Post by dzhiurgis »

nunez wrote: post #307
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?

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.

BRT is mostly "you get what you pay for" - cheaper at a cost of lower capacity. Given relatively low density of US cities - that might be the right tool tho.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#432

Post by Schiendelman »

Jblx2 wrote: post #407
Schiendelman wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And am I the only one who thinks the concept of a "transit advocate" is a bit odd? I mean, yes, there are people whose career is to make transportation work/better. And they should continue to do so. Were there non-Bell-Telephone-employees that were telephone advocates back in the 1940s? Airline advocates convincing people to fly? Car phone/cell phone brick/flip phone/smart phone advocates?

Transit is public, so it requires advocacy, just like any other oplicy issue!

Re: Waymo in Portland

#433

Post by presto8 »

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…

> Public transit like buses and lightrail are significantly more efficient per person than personal vehicles.

I would be interested to see a study on that. I see many buses driving around with zero or one passengers on them. If a bus is full, the efficiency would be off the charts. But for a city like Portland, that only happens during commute times. The rest of the time, the buses are driving around empty.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#434

Post by dzhiurgis »

soiltype wrote: post #422
0xffff2 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ad hominem: appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect [0] Pretty much by definition, yes. 0: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ad%20hominem

I mean I wasn't making any rhetorical argument. That part of the comment was just me musing.

Muse this - train is a tool, just like a car, bus, bike, plane, drone or rollerblades.

Repeating "trains" in every transport context is unproductive. Each mode of transport requires certain density. Most US cities just don't have it. It's that simple.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#435

Post by righthand »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #170
QuercusMax wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is to get MORE people onto the trains, not fewer.

Has it been shown that screaming drugged out homeless riders avoid the presence of crowds? Is there any physical mechanism where having more people on the trains leads to Daniel-Penny-like suppression of drugged out homeless riders? Or does "getting more people onto the trains" just mean removing their options until they are forced to ignore the drugged out homeless riders? As a solution, "get MORE people onto the tr…

Why are you advocating people murder mentally ill people? Daniel Penny is a murderer and violent criminal piece of shit. Why are you advocating for violence? You are a sick person. Please stop commenting.

> As a solution, "get MORE people onto the trains" seems less optimal than "get fewer drugged out homeless riders onto the trains".

You dont have to do one thing. It’s not an either or. You’re statements are coming off as mentally ill and illogical. Should we send Daniel Penny after you?

Re: Waymo in Portland

#436

Post by decimalenough »

nunez wrote: post #377
TheAlchemist wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Emphasis on "can buy", because Chinese competitors like BYD's "God's Eye" (I presume it sounds better in the original Chinese) aren't available outside China.

https://www.drive.com.au/news/byd-launches-driver-assistance...

Can't vouch for its quality since it's notoriously difficult to get reliable safety data on Chinese self-driving, but I'm reasonably sure these are the first widely available consumer vehicles with LIDAR, which is already a massive improvement on Tesla's myopic camera-only insistence.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#437

Post by wskinner »

GeneralMayhem wrote: post #428
xnx wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Waymo get subsidies? If I ride in Waymo, does that mean I get subsidies?

> by simple virtue of being a car State and local governments spend a truly obscene amount of money building and repairing roads, and set aside a nauseating amount of publicly owned land to serve as roads, street parking, and parking lots. Those of us who don't frequently drive get some benefit from the roads, sure, because of the efficiencies of shops needing deliveries and whatnot, but not anything close to proport…

Road wear and tear increases as the fourth power of axle load. Are you counting the spending on bus stops, bus parking, dedicated bus lanes, and more on the other side of the ledger?

Re: Waymo in Portland

#438

Post by GeneralMayhem »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #430
bbor wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, it is genuinely convenient that Waymo doesn't rely on an unpopular payroll tax for funding while the bus system does To be fair, it gets far more subsidies from the government in general by simple virtue of being a car, they're just A) longterm and thus assumed and B) less visible in general. So I'd say the connection between transit and controversial taxes is arbitrary, really--I'll grant you "convenient", but…

Road maintenance isn't a subsidy, it's a collective good that buses also benefit from along with many other types of human transport. This is separate from the cost to the government of running a bus system, which is exactly what large numbers of people really don't want to pay an additonal tax for and are therefore voting against.

If you only wanted to run buses, you would not build nearly as many roads as we do.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#439

Post by senordevnyc »

charcircuit wrote: post #224
svnt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

I honestly find it horrifying that you think stripping a person of their freedom and dignity for ten years is a reasonable penalty for being “noisy” on a train.

I’d much rather be around the noisy-but-relatively-harmless person than someone with so little regard for their fellow man.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#440

Post by n8cpdx »

hackable_sand wrote: post #421
n8cpdx wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard people in the kitchen at work whining about the loss of Lloyd center (dead mall) which is set to be replaced by 5,000 housing units.

But you didn't join the conversation, just listened from a distance and made assumptions?

I was busy. What is the assumption I’m accused of making?
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