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Waymo in Portland

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Re: Waymo in Portland

#451

Post by GeneralMayhem »

wskinner wrote: post #437
GeneralMayhem wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

In FY25, according to their budget [1], TriMet - the Portland public transit authority - spent $19M on bus services.

In that same budget, PDOT spent $56M on streets, signs and streetlights, before you even consider the $242M spent on "asset management" - which appears to generally be capital improvements; i.e., rebuilding roads [2, page 509].

I don't care what fraction of that wear and tear is due to buses, it's not remotely close. And in any case, by the same fourth-power law, private 18-wheelers do astronomically more damage than buses.

And yes, PDOT makes revenue back from some of those things, so it's not all straight from the city general fund, but it doesn't matter in any practical way. They don't have revenues broken down as far as I'd like on that budget - there's one big $89M line item for "charges for services", which appears to include parking meters as well as tram fare - but the vast majority of their budget still comes from taxes plus "intergovernmental" sources (aka state and federal money, aka taxes).

[1] https://www.gpmetro.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2025-Oper... [2] https://www.portland.gov/budget/documents/fy-2025-26-city-po...

Re: Waymo in Portland

#452

Post by adrianmonk »

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 scenario is a cross-country trip in an electric car. What actual, specific advantage does a train or bus offer in this scenario? What problem does it solve better?

It's an electric car, so carbon emissions are low.

Most of the route will be in rural areas in the middle of the night, so the impact on traffic will be minimal.

As for the cost to build and maintain the roads, they are already needed so rural areas are accessible. Wear and tear on roads and bridges isn't much of an issue since heavy vehicles like trucks cause massively disproportionate damage[1]. (A bus might actually be worse than the equivalent number of cars in this respect.)

---

[1] See https://blog.ucs.org/dave-cooke/trucks-cause-the-lions-share... . Some studies show that damage varies with the fourth power of axle weight.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#453

Post by Jblx2 »

Schiendelman wrote: post #432
Jblx2 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Were there man-on-the-street grass roots 1950s advocates that were instrumental for getting the interstate highway system built? Suburban expansion advocates? Do you really only need an advocate to convince people to like something that they otherwise currently dislike?

Re: Waymo in Portland

#454

Post by fragmede »

nostrademons wrote: post #253
ssl-3 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect. We'll just build the cars with parts that seldom fail. And we'll make them very strong, so that the only risk from hitting a deer or even a cow is a splash of gore. That should help eliminate the need to turn. A loud horn and flashing lights will do pretty well for any errant humans that cross the path. We can even reduce rolling resistance by using steel wheels instead of rubber, and we can make the road a…

I already made this joke up-thread: > You might even call such an arrangement a "train" Joking aside, though, the big issue with trains is last-mile. The road network covers a lot more land than the rail network does, and can reach places that trains can't. And this seems to be inherent to the physics of it, driven (hah) by cars ability to turn where trains cannot. Mass transit enthusiasts love to gloss over the very…

> "Well everybody should just live next to the train station." The world doesn't work like that.

The world as a whole, and particularly the US, maybe not, but it does actually work in urbanized dense cities.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#455

Post by filoleg »

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?

I cannot speak for every state ever, but I remember that roads in WA were mostly funded by gas/diesel taxes + vehicle registration fees.

Which is also why WA state has been charging an additional significant car registration fee on EVs (on top of the usual annual registration costs), since EVs don't contribute to this normally through gas/diesel taxes.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#456

Post by fragmede »

Jblx2 wrote: post #453
Schiendelman wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Were there man-on-the-street grass roots 1950s advocates that were instrumental for getting the interstate highway system built? Suburban expansion advocates? Do you really only need an advocate to convince people to like something that they otherwise currently dislike?

No, just car and oil company executives lobbying politicians.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#457

Post by fragmede »

troupo wrote: post #332
llbbdd wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is a very big, very spread out place. I'm not sure which country has trains that take you directly to your front door.

There are lots of potential high-traffic corridors, and the US is still incapable of serving them.

The Brightline in Florida exists, as does the Acela on the East Coast. These things are entirely possible in the US, we just don't seem to want them enough.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#458

Post by jrflo »

strictnein wrote: post #34
jrflo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're currently testing in Minneapolis and plan to launch in the next year to the public, so they seem to think they can crack tough winters

I really hope we're able to get them without the city council messing things up. The way they reacted to the news at first, you'd think Minneapolis was the first city to ever have autonomous vehicles. That, mixed with a heavy dose of "What about the buggy whip makers??"

Considering Minneapolis city council tried to ban Uber and Lyft entirely I have a strong feeling they’ll mess it up…

Re: Waymo in Portland

#459

Post by lelandbatey »

xnx wrote: post #400
lelandbatey wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 infrastructu…

Seems like a bargain by comparison! Chicago is about to spend $1 billion/mile to extend an above-ground train line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Line_Extension

The USA is riding on 100 years of the benefits of scale and economic investment. If the USA was investing $150B a year into building passenger rail, we would not be paying $1B/mile for "new" and "trailblazing" rail projects. If we had to build much of the highway infra we built 75 years ago, but do it now, we'd be paying similar $1B/mile prices for the highways.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#460

Post by hnav »

xnx wrote: post #381
danaw wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because roads are a shared resource used by everyone (even non car owners) Uber/Lyft's portion is small and covered by taxes they already pay.

The point is that the cost of the road infrastructure isn't accounted for, not to mention the externality of having a half a million cars on the road to move 750k people. Rideshare is slipstreaming in the subsidized flow of cars.
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