Comment on A crowd destroyed a driverless Waymo car in San Francisco
barsoap@lemm.ee 11 months agoLA urban area is a bit more dense (2888pop/km^2^) than Hamburg (2506) your objection is completely nonsensical: Having more space between cities doesn’t mean that your cities must suck. The difference is that one is a couple of high rises and then endless car-dependent single-home sprawl, while the other is almost entirely stuff that’s illegal to build in the US. Changing building codes to allow such uses wouldn’t just solve their housing crisis, it would also densen up suburbia to allow for rail-based public transport. Plop down stations, zone a radius around them as medium density, also make sure have a grocery store, doctor’s practice, daycare, cafe and restaurant there, crucially no car parking – but make space for cargo bikes so that suburbanites within the catchment area but outside of walking distance can use all that infrastructure. You won’t recognise the city in 10 years, it’d totally transform, very much for the better.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Bruh, it takes ~10 years to plan and build a single major infrastructure project in America. Again, the timelines you’re talking about are nonsensical. Yes, building out transit and reorienting communities like that is the ultimate solution, but the idea that that will happen so much and so extensively that we’ll have no need for autonomous cars in even 20 years is absolutely absurd and detached from reality.
barsoap@lemm.ee 11 months ago
That kind of stuff is already happening and often on much shorter time-frames.
Salt Lake city went from rough political discussions in the early 90s, starting at literally zero, with practically no prior art in the US, and finished its first tram line in 1999, a year ahead of schedule of two-year construction, it’s since been expanded a lot. If you bring on experts who know their stuff (probably from abroad because you can’t really study public transit in the US, universities haven’t caught up yet) you can get the first wheels on the track in 2-3 years, thereabouts. In those 20 years you’re talking about Salt Lake City built a network spanning most of the valley.
One crucial mistake they didn’t do is trying to re-invent the wheel: They invited European experts, ultimately had Stadler build the trams which they’re doing in Salt Lake City (some parts still come from Switzerland) and now they’ve got a new industry in town, building e.g. FLIRTs for TexRail.
That’s probably all news to you, presumably because the techbro scene isn’t interested in things actually moving forward, what you’re interested in is jerking off to gadgetry.
So, gain: Please tell me how you’re going to make it so that burger flippers can afford those autonomous cars within 20 years.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
No, I have youtube as well, it doesn’t make you a genius.
Lol. I’m interested in reducing our millions of road deaths in whatever way possible. You’re interested in jerking yourself off in the fuck cars subreddit.
It’s “let’s not be dumbasses and trash autonomous cars on the off chance your public transit paradise doesn’t materialize”.
They literally can through a taxi service that splits the costs amongst users, called Waymo. Car shares also already exist. The cost of sensors and computers will also come down both through mass manufacturing and technological improvements (like solid state lidar).
Honestly, let’s make a bet and check back in 20 years, does your public transit paradise exist or maybe just maybe, the actual political and infrastructure realities of the US mean that cars still exist?
barsoap@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Those services are necessarily more expensive than the likes of trams, that much is simple physics. Also, you’re going to get the burger flipper fired if you make them rely on waymo, to wit, all those waymos blocking traffic because they don’t know how to continue on, having come across something unforeseen. What if there’s a game in town and our flipper needs to get to work but can’t afford the rush pricing waymo introduces because unlike public transport, their prices aren’t regulated and the hedge funds owning waymo would never accept a situation in which they can get less than 20% ROI on every single vehicle they put out there. While getting subsidised by tax payer money in the form of the streets they’re using.
Why are you so insistent on rubber on asphalt over steel on steel? Automation is much easier and further along on tracks. Why such a fanboy for private capital over the freedom of a municipality to come together and solve a problem in a cheap and affordable way?
Also please don’t tell me that 10-lane highways are easier to cross for pedestrians when the cars are autonomous.