[romwell]

Imagine, now, that self-driving combined with Uber pool, so that people who need to get from and to the same destinations at the same time (as is typical for commutes) would be able to share the ride.

Imagine then making those vehicles larger to enable not only a decrease in traffic, but an increase in housing density, local infrastructure in walking distance, and economic growth.

Imagine if we then realized we could charge that elongated car as it's driving if we put electric lines above streets.

Oh, and why not increase rolling efficiency while we're at that, and make the task of self-driving simpler by embedding signaling infrastructure into the road itself.

You just imagined buses, trolley buses, and streetcars respectively.

Which is what makes the most sense, and will continue making the most sense for vehicles that don't sit in your garage most of the time.

There's more to car ownership than being able to get from A to B in principle.

Once you add immediate availability, individual vehicle preferences, having your stuff in the car already, the ability to keep your stuff there once you arrive at your destination, never having to think about small, but normal usage damage (especially if you have kids), or, conversely, having the vehicle just as clean as you want it...

...you will see that garages aren't going anywhere any time soon, self-driving cars or not.

And that we'd be wise to develop actual public transport infrastructure for the people who really do only care about getting from A to B, with some acceptable wait time. It's a win-win for everyone.

My pessimistic prognosis is that the development of the self-driving car will make the taxis slightly cheaper, but instead of paying your Uber driver, you're going to be paying engineers, maintenance, and cleaning staff.

[ljm]

Imagine how different the US would be if it was Big Public Transportation that lobbied to have towns and cities designed around them, rather than the car industry. Walking, cycling, buses, trams, trains, etc. etc. You'd still have cars but they wouldn't be a basic need for survival like they're often treated as, because you can't get anywhere without one.

Because it was basically 100 years ago when the car industry sought to dismantle that infrastructure, and succeeded.

[asdff]

To be fair it wasn't some conspiracy. The reason why people began using the car 100 years ago was that the car was becoming widely available and it was super convenient even in the days when roads were caked in horse manure. Even in the peak of the streetcar era, the private car was the best way around town, and as more people bought more cars, it continued to dominate as the streetcar would be bogged down in traffic just like a bus today. Intercity passenger rail also didn't stand much of a chance against the convenience and speed of the jet age.

[ljm]

There was _a_ conspiracy, or at least Wikipedia refers to it as such: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp....

That is to say, there's enough there to suggest that this wasn't the free market answering solely to consumer demand.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Regardless of whether or not there was a conspiracy, I think the last 100 years of private vehicle ownership in the US have shown that solely due to the convenience, it would have happened anyway.

[ljm]

I don't think that follows, because you have to prove that car ownership would have increased the same way without any intervention by car manufacturers. You're treating it as a foregone conclusion.

If you follow the same 100 year trajectory in other countries, then you will see an uptick in car ownership for sure, and infrastructure adapts to support this (highways/freeways/motorways), but it's not nearly as drastic as it is stateside.

Of course, the US is a large place and even its states are larger than other countries. And it hasn't existed in its modern form for more than a couple of centuries whereas the civil infra on the other continents has been around for at least a full millennium and most likely longer than that (e.g. Roman roads in the UK that would date back well over 1000 years). So the US got the luxury of a blank slate and, well... see what you got from that.

At the same time...car manufacturers had the perfect opportunity to seize so they could sell more cars and thus have civil infrastructure designed around the fact that everyone has a car. If someone at that point in time had more money than Henry Ford they could have dumped it into trams and trains and the landscape would have been significantly changed.

[TMWNN]

>If you follow the same 100 year trajectory in other countries, then you will see an uptick in car ownership for sure, and infrastructure adapts to support this (highways/freeways/motorways), but it's not nearly as drastic as it is stateside.

As the Wikipedia article you cited elsewhere discusses, streetcar systems outside the US went out of business at the same time as those in the US for the same reasons.

[the8472]

A bad equilibrium is still an equilibrium. That is not evidence that there aren't better ones.

[TMWNN]

The article explains why there actually was no conspiracy.[1]

[1] No, kids, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? isn't real history

[romwell]

I mean, is it really a conspiracy if open and unashamed corruption was the modus operandi at the time.

When there's funding for highways but not rails, the results are unsurprising. The benefits of public transit are a positive externality[1][2].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Positive

[2]Real history is way worse

[fallingknife]

The fact that Uber is so popular even though it is more than 10x the price of a bus shows exactly how much people want to ride buses.

[HideousKojima]

An Uber (or personal car) also has the advantage of being able to take an alternate route. I used to work on the west side of Capitol Hill in Seattle and lived on the east side of the hill. Any time something like Hempfest or Pride was going on, it literally became faster to walk home than take the bus. If I was driving I could have taken an alternate route and gotten home in a fairly reasonable amount of time.

[romwell]

Are you kidding me? What buses?

There's no public transport in the US, aside from a few exceptional places like NYC, Seattle, Boston (maybe), and, like, DC.

Uber is so popular because it actually allows you to get from A to B, for some money.

But I love the circular logic of "nobody wants the buses, why fund them" — "you can't get anywhere on a bus, why fund them" — "look how few people ride the bus" etc.

[ASalazarMX]

Imagine calling a self-driving taxi that doesn't know someone puked on the back seat.