Comment by BarryMilo 2 days ago
Imagine this for a whole neighborhood! Maybe it'd be more efficient for the transport to come at regular intervals though. And while we're at it, let's pick up other people along the way, you'll need a bigger vehicle though, perhaps bus-sized...
Half-jokes aside, if you don't own it, you'll end up paying more to the robotaxi company than you would have paid to own the car. This is all but guaranteed based on all SaaS services so far.
Mass transit is a capacity multiplier. If 35 people are headed in the same direction compare that with the infrastructure needed to handle 35 cars. Road capacity, parking capacity, car dealerships, gas stations, repair shops, insurance, car loans.
Believe it or not, in some cities that have near grid-lock rush-hour traffic - there's between 50-100%+ as many people traveling by bus as by car.
If all of those people switch to cars, you end up with it taking an hour to travel 1 mile by car.
It's almost as if they have busses for a reason.
First, these cities should be fixed by removing the traffic magnets. It's far past the point where we used the old obsolete ideology of trying to supply as much traffic capacity as possible.
But anyway, your statement is actually not true anywhere in the US except NYC. Even in Chicago, removing ALL the local transit and switching to 6-seater minivans will eliminate all the traffic issues.
> if you don't own it, you'll end up paying more to the robotaxi company than you would have paid to own the car
Maybe for you, I already don't own it and have not found that to be true. I pretty much order an uber whenever I don't feel like riding my bike or the bus, and that costs <$300 most months. Less than the average used car payment in the US before you even consider insurance, fuel, storage, maintenance, etc.
I also rent a car now and then for weekend trips, that also is a few hundred bucks at most.
I would be surprised if robotaxis were more expensive long term.
> Maybe it'd be more efficient for the transport to come at regular intervals though
Efficient for who, is the problem
Focusing only on price, renting a beafy shared "cloud" computer is cheaper than buying one and changing every 5 years. It's not always an issue for idle hardware.
Cars are mostly idle and could be cheaper if shared. But why make them significantly cheaper when you can match the price and extract more profits?
Cars and personal computers have advantages over shared resources that often make them worth the cost. If you want your transport/compute in busy times you may find limitations. (ever got on the train and had to stand because there are no seats? Every had to wait for your compute job to start because they are all busy? Both of these have happened to me).
I ran the numbers, and for most non-braindead cities something like a fleet of 6-seater minivans will easily replace all of local transit.
And with just 6 people the overhead if an imperfect route and additional stops will be measured in minutes.
And of course, it's pretty easy to imagine an option to pay a bit more for a fully personal route.
This exists in a way -- I'd wager every city has a commercial service that will shuttle you to, say, the airport. They're not cheap, however.
Yep. And it's indeed a good model for this mode of transportation. And they ARE cheap.
For example, in Seattle I can get a shared airport shuttle for $40 with the pick-up/drop-off at my front door. And this is a fully private ADA-compliant commercial service, with a healthy profit margin, not a rideshare that offloads vehicle costs onto the driver. And a self-driving van can be even cheaper than that, since it doesn't need a driver.
Meanwhile, transit also costs around $40 per trip and takes at least 1 hour more. And before you tell me: "no way, the transit ticket is only $2.5", the TRUE cost of a transit ride in Seattle is more than $20. It's just that we're subsidizing most of it.
So you can see why transit unions are worrying about self-driving. It'll kill transit completely.
you made too many false assumptions if you came up with those routes. Experts have run real numbers including looking at what happens in the real world. https://humantransit.org/category/microtransit - (as I write this you need to scroll to the second article to find the useful rebuttal of your idea)
> Cars are mostly idle and could be cheaper if shared. But why make them significantly cheaper when you can match the price and extract more profits?
Yeah, this would rely on robust competition.
This only works in neighborhoods that are veritable city blocks, with buildings several stories tall standing close by. Not something like northern Houston, TX; it barely works for places like Palo Alto, CA. You cannot run buses on every lane, at a reasonable distance from every house.
The point of a car is takes you door to door. There's no expectation to walk three blocks from a stop; many US places are not intended for waking anyway. Consider heavy bags from grocery shopping, or similar.
Public transit works in proper cities, those that became cities before the advent of the car, and were not kept in the shape of large suburban sprawls by zoning. Most US cities only qualify in their downtowns.
Elsewhere, rented / hailed self-driving cars would be best. First of all, fewer of them would be needed.