What is stopping the city from buying and operating driverless cars? Their money is just as good and I'm sure the companies selling the cars would be happy to sell to them. Oh, the only thing stopping them are "activists" who demand inferior solutions to transit.
The public transit network is "there" in some places, and kind of works. If you happen to live near a stop and your schedule allows you enough time to wait for a bus / train to arrive, then sure. If you don't live in one of those places then you're SOL. Good luck waiting for the city to add a new train line. It took NYC over 100 years to build the second avenue line...
Meanwhile the infrastructure for cars is there, and actually does work and goes from point-to-point from almost every single residence / place of business in the entire country.
> What's stopping the city from buying and operating driverless cars?
Cost and inefficiency? The city should invest in and expand access to efficient public transit, not spend money on expensive multi-ton vehicles that can move one fare at a time. The solution to "some people live far from bus stops" should first be "local government adds more bus stops", not "local government spends billions on small cars."
There is no way that a city could have enough bus stops and routes to service most sprawling American cities. This is especially true when you consider that a sizable portion of the population wouldn’t be caught dead on a bus. Building more routes and stops might work in dense cities but is not a one size fits all solution.
> a sizable portion of the population wouldn’t be caught dead on a bus.
Yep that’s another part of the problem. Easy answer is for official to through their hands up and make way for more individual cars rather than addressing the root problem and do the hard work of making public transit attractive.
I’m in Switzerland at the moment for example, a large chunk of people don’t own cars, you can go by train and bus everywhere (literally, I can go across the country on one ticket, go to ski by train, or to the top of mountains by train and mountain trains), and the bus isn’t the social stigma it is in the US.
There is no reason why the Us can’t get their act together and do the same thing other than lack of will to do so. Instead, you have multilevel 12 lanes freeway monstrosities and insane traffic.
Spoken like someone that lives in a high-density area. Switzerland is 223 per Km2 while the US is 37 per Km2. In the EU, only Finland, Sweden, Latvia, and Estonia have a lower population density. There average across the EU is 109.56 per Km2. GB is 280 per Km2.
Solutions to transportation in the US need to factor in the density and account for the low-density areas as well. Politically, those low-density regions are, IME, the ones most likely to fight against changes that would move towards mass-transit because they feel like they are being ignored.
Beyond that, SDVs and Mass-transit aren't at opposition. Busses can and should be SDVs as well. As mentioned by another poster, small handicap-accessible SDVs that do point-to-point transport are _better_ than mass-transit. If vehicular mass is a concern, with ubiquitous SDV integration into an urban transit system you can and should design purpose-built transporters with lower mass. With central EV charging and remote power generation you are already moving the pollution point to a smaller number of locations that are easier to optimize and monitor.
Really, these people seem to be saying "We don't like this, so you shouldn't be allowed to do it" and then they use flimsy excuses as justification. That makes them just like all the other people that want to force their world-view on me. Maybe instead of doing that they could spend all of that energy on moving the needle on the core issues that are possible in the short term and will make a difference, like moving to green renewables for power generation.
Sorry if this seems overly cranky, but it's frustrating to see people that think interfering with SDV operation is a 'good thing' in any way, shape, or form.
It could be done well. It would require some people with a better plan than "let's put cones on driverless cars hurr durr durr".
That doesn't seem forthcoming, though.
There's also no reason you can't have both. Private companies testing driverless cars are not preventing the city from building other public transit.
These are not serious people. Sure, when they’re contacted by a reporter they can say some nice-sounding things like “we want better public transit“, but they aren’t actually doing anything that could reasonably be expected to result in that happening. All they’re doing is juvenile petty vandalism.
They’re getting a discussion around these issues started at the very least, like in this thread. Aside from their methods and whether a particular individual agrees with them or not, it doesn’t do nothing at all. Awareness and discussion is a necessary step.
The public transit network is "there" in some places, and kind of works. If you happen to live near a stop and your schedule allows you enough time to wait for a bus / train to arrive, then sure. If you don't live in one of those places then you're SOL. Good luck waiting for the city to add a new train line. It took NYC over 100 years to build the second avenue line...
Meanwhile the infrastructure for cars is there, and actually does work and goes from point-to-point from almost every single residence / place of business in the entire country.