Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sheb]

Also, I wonder how they will handle vandalism. Is bad enough with the bike-sharing program here, can you imagine the trouble when you have cars fitted with 150,000$ worth of electronic equipment?

[GlyphGryph]

I wonder about the costs though. How much will it go down with mass use?

Well, I would imagine that it's going to come out of the gate significantly cheaper for those people who need a car but don't use it terribly often, like myself.

You know what? I think this would result in just the opposite. Lots of people avoid public transport because using it costs more more money than driving, hands down, even if they aren't well off. Why bother, when you already need to use a car for all those situations public transport doesn't easily cover (and never, ever will)? Right now, Taxis are just too damn expensive... owning a car is literally the cheapest transportation option for many people, and if they own a car they aren't going to dump another thousand dollars a year into the subway because it's a stupid waste of money, especially since public transport is miserable, complex, and time consuming for things that are scheduled everyday occurences.

But if you can get where you're going, when you need to, affordably, quickly, and effectively, such that the prospect of only not having a car is no longer a detriment, I can honestly only see use of and investment in public transit actually increasing, as its value becomes obvious.

Without an effective taxi system, relying on public transit is an incredibly risky proposal that many people wisely choose to just opt of. An effective taxi system supports public transit, making it a real option to seriously consider for more people. A cheap taxi system means more support for public transit, because you have more people able to function without owning a car and making that public transit worthless.

[i2amroy]

-snip-

The problem is that in many younger american cities there are no real city centers, so it's pointless to try to build public transportation because there's nowhere to build it to or from. Older cities like you find on the East coast (such as Washington DC) or newer cities that are planned with public transportation in mind work because they have distinct city centers, meaning you can easily put connections down and have them work for a sizable percentage of the population. This is then amplified by the fact that many of them are relatively dense and small.

Compare this with places like Pheonix or L.A., that grow by virtue of just continuing to ring the city with more and more suburban areas. In a situation like that there's no easily defined spot where you can drop a public transportation route and have it work. Instead of having a city with high population density and easily defined places to go to and from, you end up with a city of 500 sq miles with work, fun, and living all mixed up, compounded by the fact that people are so much more spread out (Many suburban-type cities have population densities well under half of DC's, despite having more population by number). It's just not possible to lay down any sort of effective public transportation in a situation that distributed.

[LordBucket]

Also, I wonder how they will handle vandalism. Is bad enough with the bike-sharing program here,
can you imagine the trouble when you have cars fitted with 150,000$ worth of electronic equipment?

Passenger compartments will be recorded, presumably. Which won't stop people from wearing ninja masks when they ride, but remember that they'll know who you are when you summon the vehicle.

[Sheb]

I wonder about the costs though. How much will it go down with mass use?

Well, I would imagine that it's going to come out of the gate significantly cheaper for those people who need a car but don't use it terribly often, like myself.

You don't actually need robotic cars for that though. Several cities already got car-sharing services, much like the bike scheme in New York (for you americans). Several of my friends already stopped using their car for that.

[Putnam]

Also, I wonder how they will handle vandalism. Is bad enough with the bike-sharing program here, can you imagine the trouble when you have cars fitted with 150,000$ worth of electronic equipment?

What, you don't think Google is going to have ridiculous amounts of surveillance on these things?

[Frumple]

What, you don't think Google is going to have ridiculous amounts of surveillance on these things?

Oh non-existent lord, bless me with a twin so that I may steal their identity and use it to troll google's robotaxis.

[Xantalos]

I really hope the internet doesn't figure out how to hijack the taxis.

Oh what am I saying of course they're going to hijack the taxis, it's the internet.

[GlyphGryph]

You don't actually need robotic cars for that though. Several cities already got car-sharing services, much like the bike scheme in New York (for you americans). Several of my friends already stopped using their car for that.

Car-sharing services are a thing, for sure, but they are by no means a replacement for taxi services or cars for at least a significant remaining chunk of the population, since they are (at least every one I've experience has been, at least) still node-based. And it's generally not cheap, either. Sure, they are convenient, and probably do enough for a limited portion of the population to drop the car, but for others they can't really replace what google is offering here.

Example: I, and almost everyone I know, at some point wants to visit their family. I, like almost everyone I know (in the US) have family that do not live a convenient place, and instead live in a place that will never be a feasible alternative for public transport. They are maybe half an hour drive away from the most optimistic presumptions of a public transport "hub". With the current car share program, even if there is a hub, I end up paying for a car for the entire time - upwards of six hours, sometimes multiple days - and this is after paying for public transport to get me to that hub.

In the case of automated cars, I'd only be paying for the vehicle for a third that time worst case, and far less in the best case, and the time savings would also be significant. And I wouldn't have to drive, meaning I'd actually end up paying less in time costs for the trip than I would owning a car.

Finally, the car sharing services are only worth anything if you live near a node or have another way to get to a node - if I did, I could easily visit my relatives, but they would still need their own car to visit me (there's a reason many of them own a car just to drive it to the subway, and then take the subway around the city).

The benefit of the autotaxies is that every car is, in and of itself, a node. I guess it's mostly a matter of degree rather than kind (it sort of fills the same niche as the car share thing, it's just a lot more versatile and powerful), but for my relatives, a car sharing service will never be able to service them, but autotaxis could. Technically regular taxis can, but the cost would be astronomical, and it's cheaper for them just to own a car.

[MorleyDev]

As someone who dislikes the idea of being in control of a giant speeding metal box of death, but trust other people (somewhat) to drive, but occasionally has times when I just want to get somewhere I can't reasonably walk, and also has those times when I just really don't want to acknowledge other human beings share this planet with me, and could trust an automated system to do the driving...well, I like this idea. In the future cars may go the way of horses, which nowadays are mostly kept in stables near places that are fun and also safer to ride horses, and be mostly kept at a garage near a race track where it's fun to drive a car and also safer.

Oh non-existent lord, bless me with a twin so that I may steal their identity and use it to troll google's robotaxis.

O' lord, bless this thy Google Car...

[Fniff]

This is the cynical part of me talking, but I bet there's going to be some massively annoying part of this that they aren't advertising. Not "secretly monitors where you go constantly and sends it directly to the NSA" bad, since that would be bad for your publicity nowadays, but I'm thinking more mundanely annoying. Like, on a compete guess, it doesn't let you keep food and drink in the car. Because of crumbs and stains. Worse, if it doesn't go that route, there is going to be crumbs and stains everywhere. And I bet there is going to be those kind of stains in it.

Plus, I live in Ireland, so basically anything like this passes me by. Even though all sorts of technological companies set up shop in Dublin cos of the low taxes, try finding decent internet anywhere outside of a major city.

[mainiac]

You know what? I think this would result in just the opposite. Lots of people avoid public transport because using it costs more more money than driving, hands down, even if they aren't well off.

Crossing the city end to end is about six dollars.  That is crossing a city at peak hours.  Gasoline along costs as much as that if you are talking peak hour traffic.  And then of course there is the cost of the vehicle itself, parking, taxes for roads.

Compare this with places like Pheonix or L.A., that grow by virtue of just continuing to ring the city with more and more suburban areas. In a situation like that there's no easily defined spot where you can drop a public transportation route and have it work.

The 300k+ daily riders on the LA metro system would probably disagree with you on that point.

I was incorrect before when I said that it never ceases to amaze me how Americans will avoid building public transport systems.  It never ceases to amaze me the lengths Americans will go to avoid understanding public transport systems.

[GlyphGryph]

Crossing the city end to end is about six hours.  That is crossing a city at peak hours.  Gasoline along costs as much as that if you are talking peak hour traffic.  And then of course there is the cost of the vehicle itself, parking, taxes for roads.

I have no idea what this this is supposed to mean, or how its supposed to relate to my comment, and no idea what you are talking about.

I was incorrect before when I said that it never ceases to amaze me how Americans will avoid building public transport systems.  It never ceases to amaze me the lengths Americans will go to avoid understanding public transport systems.

Or maybe it's that you just don't understand the needs of people that aren't you? It's not like Americans are the only people in the world who have made decisions that it's more practical (allows me to do the things I need/want to do) and economical (allows me to do them cheaper than the alternative) to own a car than not.

The 300k+ daily riders on the LA metro system would probably disagree with you on that point.

< 10% of the city finds the LA metro convenient enough to use. Yay. Again, though I'm not sure what your comment has to do with the one you're responding to.

[Arcvasti]

This is awesome. Although I think that robotic public transit would work better personally.

[IronyOwl]

Living in the future is weird.

In fact, apparently google is looking into making it a free service to users who are willing to watch ads during their trip, and/or are being transported to places of business by getting those businesses to pay for the taxi service in anticipation of purchases being made:

And terrible.

Compare this with places like Pheonix or L.A., that grow by virtue of just continuing to ring the city with more and more suburban areas. In a situation like that there's no easily defined spot where you can drop a public transportation route and have it work.

The 300k+ daily riders on the LA metro system would probably disagree with you on that point.

Couldn't find (reliable sources for) the direct numbers, but apparently LA tends to have 80-90,000 automobile-related injuries a year. Assuming everyone suffers an injury once every five years of daily driving, that gives at least 400,000 cars. Assuming ten years and the upper limit, that's 900,000, or three times as many people as benefit from that form of public transportation. It only gets worse the more reasonable you get.

Alternatively, the 2010 census places the population of LA at 3,792,621. 300k+ is well under 10% of that, so clearly other people are getting their movement from somewhere else.

I was incorrect before when I said that it never ceases to amaze me how Americans will avoid building public transport systems.  It never ceases to amaze me the lengths Americans will go to avoid understanding public transport systems.

Maybe you should have a conversation instead of doing this thing.