NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

Re:NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF by jeffbee on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @09:05AM (#37222137)

I don't see why it needs to be on-demand. Why can't it be a Zoox-sized vehicle that simply goes up and down the street and arrives every minute? If there was a tiny bus that came down every street every minute, not only would that amount to almost zero traffic, it would also be the most brilliant transit service ever deployed. You wouldn't need the app, or even route planning. You only need the driving tech.

This applies best to central cities with a grid layout of course, but that describes San Francisco well enough.

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Re:NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF by mcny on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @12:10PM (#37224764)

I love this idea. The previous idea had a fatal flaw, you need enough buses that people don't have to wait too long. How many buses is that? I have no idea. However, if you're just going up and down a street, it is now a much easier problem.

For a fictional Manhattan, New York, just for a thought experiment if we assume spherical cows for a minute, lets say there are twelve straight avenues with dedicated lanes. Let's assume each avenue is 13.5 miles long. It takes 40.5 minutes to drive this at 20 miles per hour. That's 81 minutes for a full circle. So if you need a car every minute, that's only 81 cars, right? Does that mean you could service this entire fictional city with just 81*12 or 972 cars?

Something feels wrong though. Like it feels this is too inexpensive, too good to be true. Just my gut reaction. Thoughts?

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Re:NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF by jeffbee on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @12:17PM (#37224873)

I don't think you are missing anything. People who stop and do the math are likely to be surprised by the incredible cost of the existing private car traffic system that we tolerate. Every reasonable option is dramatically cheaper.

People may quibble with the constants in that model. Even after eliminating competing private passenger traffic, a hop on/hop off local bus is probably not going to average 20 MPH. It would probably be more like 5-10 MPH.

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