[danssig]

>For whatever reason, Americans are locked in to thinking that cities should be designed for cars

I think it's the abundance of ground. The last time I was in the states I realized that the entire shopping street in my city could fit in an american mall parking lot. What a tremendous waste of space, but it's cheaper than going up like is done in Europe.

>Invest in public transit infrastructure

Personally I think public transit is a stepping stone. It's not a workable final solution. It doesn't go anywhere anyone wants to go, it goes close to where a lot of people want to go. It doesn't know when we want to go so it just picks times and forces us into buckets.

A proper solution would be that "public transport" consisted of a network of self-driving cars that you can schedule on the internet to come pick you up and drop you where you need to go. We wouldn't need parking places because the cars never stop. We'd have the convenience of not having to drive.

[jeza]

> It doesn't go anywhere anyone wants to go, it goes close to where a lot of people want to go. It doesn't know when we want to go so it just picks times and forces us into buckets.

That's why you run a network of high frequency services (every 10 minutes or better). You turn up at a stop and wait on average 5 minutes, I think most people can tolerate that. If it doesn't go where you're going then you transfer, again waiting an average time of 5 minutes. That's convenient and you don't have to drive either.

> A proper solution would be that "public transport" consisted of a network of self-driving cars that you can schedule on the internet to come pick you up and drop you where you need to go.

Would still create congestion on busy routes and I suspect a huge number of these cars would be needed purely to cater for demand for about 2 hours of the day.

[danssig]

>That's why you run a network of high frequency services (every 10 minutes or better). You turn up at a stop and wait on average 5 minutes

Except that isn't realistic for everywhere. Even in a pretty densely populated country there will be areas that just can't justify that high frequency.

>again waiting an average time of 5 minutes. That's convenient and you don't have to drive either.

I'm living in a country that has, imo, the best public transport in the world. Even in remote areas a bus or train will be there once an hour. Normally it's 30 minutes in smaller towns and 10-15 or less as you go up. The issue is the connections. 5 minutes here, 15 minutes there. You don't have to travel very far before public transit is taking double the time it takes to go by car. I really hate driving, I feel like it's throwing my time in the trash. The issue is, as a programmer, I'm more productive in 2 solid hours than I am in four 1 hour periods.

>Would still create congestion on busy routes

Congestion shouldn't be any issue at all if everything is computer controlled. When you try to schedule at a certain time the computer can already say that you'll be picked up 10 minutes later and arrive 10 minutes later. Most congestion is caused by stupid things human drivers are doing. Get rid of human drivers and driving suddenly becomes vastly safer.

>and I suspect a huge number of these cars would be needed purely to cater for demand for about 2 hours of the day.

This could be but that would mean that, say, 80% of all public pool cars would be sitting in a central parking lot most of the day. How is that worse than now with 100% of cars sitting idle most of the day? Plus in many places every family will have 2 or more cars.