[javagram]

Aren’t robotaxis public transport? They’re a personal rapid transport (PRT) system that uses existing infrastructure (the roads), rather than requiring expensive railways be built throughout every neighborhood.

There’s a light rail project going on near where I live that’s going to have taken near a decade and several billion dollars to complete. “just” scaling up such systems to run throughout suburbs is economically and politically infeasible.

[ChatGTP]

Good question, do these companies pay for the heavy usage they are incurring on publicly funded roads?

[squarepizza]

> heavy usage

And, with the weight of EVs, even heavier.

[ChatGTP]

I honestly think, cars in general will need either new Tyre technology, learn to hover or we need to get them off the road in favor of something which doesn't spew microplastics all over the place. It's good we have battery powered cars, but we haven't solved tire and break dust.

[bluGill]

Maybe, but PRT is not mass transit and not useful in general. They might be safer then human controlled cars (this remains to be seen), but they have all the other disadvantages. They still need to park someplace (most are only going to be used during rush hours). They still take up road space for only a couple people meaning a lot of traffic and we need to build a lot of roads. They still pollute (and may be worse if they get programed to drive out to free parking in the suburbs).

[preommr]

This is such a bad faith argument.

The scale of buses make them much worse in terms of cost-effectiveness and therefore environment safety. Instead of spending overhead on specialized equipment, it's much better to mass produce similar typed vehicles that are easier to maintain and service and put that money towards environment measures.

Also, when you factor in things like the carbon cost of the driver that is needed for the bus, the fact that buses still operate on a schedule and not on demand (therefore leading to an entire bus with a capacity for 40 people being occupied by one or two), and that on average they're much more expensive to transition to more eco-friendly advancements, I would say busses are way worse than a fully functional sdc environment.

People envision sdcs as taxis with robots, but it would mean so much more. You could have better and safer bike lanes, slower lanes with with lower speed vehicles that cost ~1k for < 1 mile travel increasing the chances people go and visit nearby businesses. And all of it with the efficiency of a factory instead of the bureaucracy of most transit systems where it takes millions to add the bare minimum of services.

[bluGill]

A bus with just 5 people on is already better for the environment than putting those people in cars (1-2 per car), and quickly gets more cost effective. You need a lot less buses than cars to transport the same amount of people.

> Also, when you factor in things like the carbon cost of the driver that is needed for the bus, the fact that buses still operate on a schedule and not on demand (therefore leading to an entire bus with a capacity for 40 people being occupied by one or two), and that on average they're much more expensive to transition to more eco-friendly advancements, I would say busses are way worse than a fully functional sdc environment.

This paragraph is completely false.

There is no reason you cannot have a self driving bus and thus no driver at all.

While a bus on a fixed route will be empty at the end of the route, even in the not very dense suburbs they have a lot more people on it.

A fixed route is an advantage: you can depend on it! You know where it will be at any time and you can plan. Shared flexible routes cannot work - People need to know they will get to where they are going on time and a shared flexible ride must randomly detour to pickup/drop off someone else and then you miss your schedule.

> You could have better and safer bike lanes, slower lanes with with lower speed vehicles that cost ~1k for < 1 mile travel increasing the chances people go and visit nearby businesses

I have no idea what you are saying. People have places to go. They want to get there fast, not slow. People already can bike or walk to close places - that they often drive anyway is proof that speed is important. Your argument is completely in bad faith.

Don't just take my word for it. https://humantransit.org/2019/08/what-is-microtransit-for.ht... https://humantransit.org/2011/03/how-universal-is-transits-g... is from a real expert in the field that explains why you are wrong starting from fundamentals that do not change.