Technology

Does your city not have a service where a small bus goes to your door? Here in Seattle you book a ride to where you need to go the day before and they come and pick you up. Heck, the small town I grew up in (2500 people) in the middle of nowhere had a similar service.

there were legal taxis before uber, uber or self driving cars don't really change anything in that regard

During COVID lockdowns, when lots of people had to work from home, people who couldn't work from home were all talking about how much faster it was to get to work and there was hardly any traffic on the roads.

Even if public transport doesn't benefit someone directly, getting a bunch of other people off the road still will.

I understand you can't access it as it is now, but ideally we'd have systemic change that would allow you to access public transport. I don't know what your handicap is, but (other than immune system issues) I don't see what could be wrong that is impossible for public transport to be built to allow for. Sure, you have to get to it, but that could be made a lot easier if we weren't in a system designed for cars where everything is a million miles away.

I could be totally wrong. I have no idea of anything about you. I just would prefer a system that helps everyone, which these cars won't. In particular, impoverished people are going to be even more fucked if we start accepting this as an option for handling disabilities. It doesn't seem like a good idea.

Yes, this is an underappreciated angle. Ridesharing bridges the gap for many people excluded by other forms of transit. My mom has limited mobility and ridesharing has really helped her.

Except for Detroit. That's because putting in light rail down the middle of the highway that could support it between the airport and Detroit city proper would actually make sense and we don't like that around here. Also, the Motor City hates bus services. Am I salty? Perhaps.

Creating new public infrastructure in the US can be extremely expensive, but it’s definitely still worth pursuing.

Nearly every in-depth study shows that for every $1 invested, the economic return is somewhere around $4-$5. And on top of that, failing to have adequate public infrastructure can cause serious economic consequences, which are compounded in areas with a lack of affordable housing.

Even though this article is a little old and sponsored by a party with a vested interest on the topic, I think it’s worth a read:

https://www.politico.com/sponsor-content/2018/06/when-public-transit

In my opinion, the problem for the US is convincing people/businesses that it’s worth it. Shifting away from cars and increasing investments in public infrastructure are two fairly unpopular measures right now, despite the actual economic evidence being overwhelming positive.

To me, it’s a solid example of where great leaders are needed to do something temporarily unpopular for the long term benefit of the constituents.

Yeah public engineering projects are crazy expensive. Roads included. I’m not saying this stuff will be cheap, just that not doing it is causing pretty awful problems

There's a good solution here: walkable, mixed use neighborhoods.

Self driving cars are just going to make traffic worse, by increasing people's tolerance to traffic.

If the autonomous car reacted correctly then why wouldn't they release the video which corroborates this?

It proceeded without incident but I couldn’t help feeling nervous to trust that its lidar saw me and it interpreted me as a human.

I can't say I view an average driver with any more trust though.