Taxis are public transport.

The sort of public transport you're talking about isn't a substitute, since it doesn't go everywhere, and never will.

So, dogma aside, automated taxis are the actual solution and, with a bit of imagination, can provide the kind of public transport that is both efficient and environmentally friendly, and that goes everywhere.

Literally nothing about autonomous vehicles stops cities from improving public transit. BART predates Cruise by like 50 years, and it took them most of that time to get the noise below 100dB and add mobile payment support. Maybe in another 50 years we'll be able to get to all the cities with >100k people in the bay on it, if we're lucky.

> Literally nothing about autonomous vehicles stops cities from improving public transit.

What do you mean by 'literally' here? Seems like these ride-sharing companies do have impact on public transit.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-24/do-uber-a...

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2018/07/25/uber-and-lyft-are-ove...

Public transit in almost every US city is terrible. It isn't hard to see why someone with means would rather call an Uber than wait 15 minutes for the next bus to show up. Public transit can certainly be improved while Uber exists, just look towards many major international cities for examples.

Neither Uber nor Lyft is "a bunch of sensors stuffed into a single car", to quote the comment I was replying to. But even counting them, public transit seems to be doing fine in Europe, Asia, and NYC despite the existence of ride-share services. Ride sharing services don't impose additional right of way constraints either because they're just private vehicles.

I guess I just don't understand why you'd say they prevent cities from improving public transit.

if the amount of human and financial capital invested in ridesharing and autonomous vehicles was instead invested in mass transit in the US, nyc wouldn't be the only city in the nation where not owning a car is a (legitimate, long term) option without sacrifices

I seriously doubt that. The amount of money that has been invested in autonomous driving is low tens of billions. It's the same order of magnitude as the cost of extending BART to SJ.

That's a good project, but it's just one. It would take vastly more money to actually make public transit great in the US, especially in many cities at once. I think the amount that has been privately invested in self-driving cars seems small in comparison.

>Literally nothing about autonomous vehicles stops cities from improving public transit

Except the emphasis, funding, infrastructure, etc. being placed on autonomous vehicles instead of the latter.

Governments in the USA spend a ton of money on roads. If they could be convinced to spend some of it on buses, I think those bus companies could make a profit.

They'd have to use some sort of marketing trickery to obfuscate the fact that they were buses, because buses carry an undeserved stigma in the USA. But I think Silicon Valley is generally pretty good at repackaging old ideas to seem new.

As private vehicles increase in size and weight, the costs of road maintenance for private vehicles will continue to increase. As fuel/electricity costs increase, private vehicle ownership will continue to get more expensive. So the rewards for implementing this would only get better.

In some places trains are better than buses. Unfortunately in the USA the costs of private car ownership are mostly borne by local governments. So I think in the short term it will mostly have to be buses.

Everyone will not live in urban centers and there will never be public transportation to every possible destination.

You can always change to another line.

I included that in my statement.

> public transit is the answer

To which question? Surely not to "how do i get from home to work as fast as possible without stepping in the rain?" nor to "how do i take my family, two coolers, and a kayak camping for a weekend?"

How do you think a significant chunk of people outside of US live? Commute in public transit within city limits, go camping in your car… The problem in NA, we planned public transit so bad that it is very inconvenient to do anything. The second it becomes a better choice than driving, it’ll be used even more.

Like it’s a no-brainer for me to ever drive while i’m within the city limits of Vancouver, but for hikes and camping, it’s the obvious choice. Same with metro areas of European cities. I won’t even bring Asian cities as example, because it’s cheating.

Chicken and egg problem in terms of investment and public perception though. Inability to build large scale infrastructure also makes it impossible.

> Commute in public transit within city limits

How does that address my rain question? Cause i'd rather be dry than virtue signal (YMMV)

Raincoats are much cheaper than cars.

It is just… rain? I’m very confused if I’ll be honest. Your jacket gets wet, or you carry an umbrella so you stay dry? It rains 7-8 months of the year here, I genuinely never thought of it as a reason to drive so might be the wrong person to answer. As long as I’m not drenched (never happens unless i’m out for a rainy run on purpose), who cares the jacket will dry once I get in.

I've heard "some people use their 2 ton car as a rain jacket" and thought it was urbanist hyperbole, but here you are.

To the question "what is one of the windmills posters on Hacker News love to tilt at, as if everyone in the world lives in a downtown apartment?"

The kayak can be rented on the other end of your train journey.

That really depends on where you're going. Maybe you want to go to a different lake, or spot on a long river, than the train or bus line goes. Maybe your skill level or body benefit from a specific kayak you own. I think this kind of all or nothing perspective, that seems to presume that _no trips_ should involve a private vehicle are not constructive. (I say this as someone who does not own or regularly drive a car.)

But _most_ trips probably aren't to go kayaking, and I think it's worthy to consider what a shared transit system that could support a meaningfully larger fraction of trips would look like.

Wish for 100% convenience is one of core causes of climate change.

No offense, but it isn't hard to look up how people live in cities and countries with good transit infrastructure. A good starting place might be Netherlands (biking infrastructure coupled with buses and trains) or Switzerland (massive rail network). Here is a wiki page with more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_share

But cruise is developing self driving “public transit vehicles” as well.

I’d rather have fleets of various sized vehicles that can travel on any road than spend billions and years of disruption extending rail by a few blocks (as is currently happening in my city)

Why should venture capital be relevant to a non-commercial money-losing venture?

I'd say it's relevant as the investment in for-profit transit-as-tech companies has coincided with the chronic under-funding of public transit. Focusing on the US here, but if public transit was accepted as a public good, and the populace accepted that funding things for the public good was an acceptable use of government funds, then these companies wouldn't be as sound of an investment for VCs.

I agree: The solution is to change government spending so that public goods are sufficient to render other options moot.

But the VC investment didn't cause the underinvestment of infrastructure. Rather, they stepped in to fill the void with other viable options when government initiatives failed to materialize. Example: where's my high-speed rail?!

If I recall correctly, a certain South African entrepreneur who overstayed his visa pitched a vacuum-based transport system which he provably knew will not work at critical funding stages of high-speed rail projects in California.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Definitely agree with the solution - but unfortunately the transit-as-tech organizations (as well as auto manufacturers, the oil industry, real estate, etc.) also lobby to ensure that funding remains low and infrastructure decays or that costs/time become prohibitively high for infrastructure expansion.

It's definitely one of those things where the goal is clear but the changes necessary to get there are complex.

unsure if you've been around VCs but they certainly are involved in non-commercial money-losing ventures