5 ms·

And instead of robotaxis, just invest in public transport. AVs exemplify technosolutionism: technology solving a problem caused by a prior technology.

simmonmt 3y ago
My goodness are those "just"s doing a lot of work.
- squarepizza 3y ago
  Less than AVs "just" being a few years away.
pavel_lishin 3y ago
Gadgetbahn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadgetbahn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadgetbahn
soco 3y ago
Waymo is an US company and public transport is not really a thing in the US, so they'd probably struggle to find funding for that. In Switzerland autonomous buses are being tested already since 2016 on different locations as pilot projects: https://www.astra.admin.ch/astra/en/home/topics/intelligente-mobilitaet/pilotversuche/erkenntnisse-aus-pilotversuchen.html https://www.astra.admin.ch/astra/en/home/topics/intelligente...
- aiisjustanif 3y ago
  > Waymo is an US company and public transport is not really a thing in the US, so they'd probably struggle to find funding for that. I think that is the point, we should be doing better by the citizens.
- gpvos 3y ago
  Public transport used to be huge in the US, it was killed by big car, which means it can be revived by other big industry.
javagram 3y ago
Aren’t robotaxis public transport? They’re a personal rapid transport (PRT) system that uses existing infrastructure (the roads), rather than requiring expensive railways be built throughout every neighborhood. There’s a light rail project going on near where I live that’s going to have taken near a decade and several billion dollars to complete. “just” scaling up such systems to run throughout suburbs is economically and politically infeasible.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Maybe, but PRT is not mass transit and not useful in general. They might be safer then human controlled cars (this remains to be seen), but they have all the other disadvantages. They still need to park someplace (most are only going to be used during rush hours). They still take up road space for only a couple people meaning a lot of traffic and we need to build a lot of roads. They still pollute (and may be worse if they get programed to drive out to free parking in the suburbs).
  - preommr 3y ago
    This is such a bad faith argument. The scale of buses make them much worse in terms of cost-effectiveness and therefore environment safety. Instead of spending overhead on specialized equipment, it's much better to mass produce similar typed vehicles that are easier to maintain and service and put that money towards environment measures. Also, when you factor in things like the carbon cost of the driver that is needed for the bus, the fact that buses still operate on a schedule and not on demand (therefore leading to an entire bus with a capacity for 40 people being occupied by one or two), and that on average they're much more expensive to transition to more eco-friendly advancements, I would say busses are way worse than a fully functional sdc environment. People envision sdcs as taxis with robots, but it would mean so much more. You could have better and safer bike lanes, slower lanes with with lower speed vehicles that cost ~1k for < 1 mile travel increasing the chances people go and visit nearby businesses. And all of it with the efficiency of a factory instead of the bureaucracy of most transit systems where it takes millions to add the bare minimum of services.

simmonmt 3y ago

My goodness are those "just"s doing a lot of work.

squarepizza 3y ago
Less than AVs "just" being a few years away.

pavel_lishin 3y ago

Gadgetbahn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadgetbahn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadgetbahn

soco 3y ago

Waymo is an US company and public transport is not really a thing in the US, so they'd probably struggle to find funding for that. In Switzerland autonomous buses are being tested already since 2016 on different locations as pilot projects: https://www.astra.admin.ch/astra/en/home/topics/intelligente-mobilitaet/pilotversuche/erkenntnisse-aus-pilotversuchen.html https://www.astra.admin.ch/astra/en/home/topics/intelligente...

aiisjustanif 3y ago
> Waymo is an US company and public transport is not really a thing in the US, so they'd probably struggle to find funding for that. I think that is the point, we should be doing better by the citizens.
gpvos 3y ago
Public transport used to be huge in the US, it was killed by big car, which means it can be revived by other big industry.

javagram 3y ago

Aren’t robotaxis public transport? They’re a personal rapid transport (PRT) system that uses existing infrastructure (the roads), rather than requiring expensive railways be built throughout every neighborhood. There’s a light rail project going on near where I live that’s going to have taken near a decade and several billion dollars to complete. “just” scaling up such systems to run throughout suburbs is economically and politically infeasible.

bluGill 3y ago
Maybe, but PRT is not mass transit and not useful in general. They might be safer then human controlled cars (this remains to be seen), but they have all the other disadvantages. They still need to park someplace (most are only going to be used during rush hours). They still take up road space for only a couple people meaning a lot of traffic and we need to build a lot of roads. They still pollute (and may be worse if they get programed to drive out to free parking in the suburbs).
- preommr 3y ago
  This is such a bad faith argument. The scale of buses make them much worse in terms of cost-effectiveness and therefore environment safety. Instead of spending overhead on specialized equipment, it's much better to mass produce similar typed vehicles that are easier to maintain and service and put that money towards environment measures. Also, when you factor in things like the carbon cost of the driver that is needed for the bus, the fact that buses still operate on a schedule and not on demand (therefore leading to an entire bus with a capacity for 40 people being occupied by one or two), and that on average they're much more expensive to transition to more eco-friendly advancements, I would say busses are way worse than a fully functional sdc environment. People envision sdcs as taxis with robots, but it would mean so much more. You could have better and safer bike lanes, slower lanes with with lower speed vehicles that cost ~1k for < 1 mile travel increasing the chances people go and visit nearby businesses. And all of it with the efficiency of a factory instead of the bureaucracy of most transit systems where it takes millions to add the bare minimum of services.