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Comment on Waymo says its self-driving taxis will take customers on freeways for the first time

There wouldn’t be a need for an autonomous car to go on a freeway if we had decent intermodal public transit.

Just have cars like these patrolling the suburbs and picking people up for light/commuter rail, then a hub where you could get within a block of anywhere with no more than one transfer.

High Speed rail if you need to get to another urban center from there.

That’s the dream, at least.

Nobody wants to use public transit, because it’s starved dry. Nobody wants to invest in public transit, because nobody uses it. Everyone just drives, because everyone has cars. Everyone has cars because public transit is terrible.

But I do long for the day that this could pick me up and take me to the bus station/commuter rail stop.

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AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
E-bikes and E-trikes would be able to get you to the nearest station just as easily for most people, if there was proper infrastructure. I have an E-bike, and basically use that and the trolly/ Amtrak to get around in Southern California. It’s not perfect, but it works, and I can actually do stuff while I am commuting.

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- JasonDJ@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Nobody wants to ride bikes because everyone in the cars are too dangerous to be sharing the road with.
  
  Nobody wants to put in protected bike lanes because everybody drives.
  
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  - sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    Nobody wants to put in protected bike lanes because everybody drives.
    
    If you build it, they will come. The Netherlands used to be very car dependent until the government put in a massive effort to build out bike infrastructure, and now it’s the bike capital of the world. Here are a few things they changed to make it happen:
    
    eliminate routes through cities to push cars to go around on the highways instead of driving through the city center
    
    design traffic calming into roads - raised intersections, narrow roads, bollards to force cars to not travel in a straight line around residential areas, etc
    
    improve arterial mass transit, and build bike and pedestrian infrastructure to get to them
    
    Once the cars started moving outside the city center, cycling and transit became became much more practical, but it all started by making driving less convenient so other modes of transportation became more attractive.
    
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