[unshavedyak]

I can't wait till those are generally available. I'd go out more if i could have a nice night and not have to deal with coming home later. Hell i live about 1.5h from Seattle and i never go because it's just awful (to me) dealing with cars there. If i could get a cab all the way there and back? Oh man, amazing. Or even park and ride would be nice. Cities seem so much more approachable to me if i don't need to drive them. It's a me-issue, for sure, but still.

[runarberg]

If feel like Seattle needs an all day and weekend Sounder service, more than it needs self driving robo-taxis. 1.5 hours away you might be at the edge or beyond Sounder reach so this may not help you much unless you get a local bus to your closest station, but you can probably still just drive to your closest station and not having to have to deal with driving in the city.

If the Sounder would run like the ferries do (say every hour until like 8PM and then a couple more trips before midnight) it would really take the hassle of going to the city for much more people than robo-taxis ever could.

[Symbiote]

I am staring aghast with European eyes at a city of 4 million people where the commuter rail doesn't run outside peak hours. How do you get home if you go out for a couple of drinks with colleagues, or stay late for a call?

You shouldn't be asking for a couple of trains between 8pm and midnight. They should be every half hour, or more! Midnight until 6am on Saturday and Sunday could be every hour or two.

(I live in Copenhagen, half the population of Seattle. Commuter trains run every 20 minutes from 5-24h, every 10 6-18, all night on Friday and Saturday nights. Other trains also run, and the metro is 24/7.)

[coryrc]

We taxpayers already spend >$30 per person-trip for the Sounder. It currently doesn't connect well to transit on either end (most users drive to it), and half the city is fighting to make sure it doesn't connect directly with the new "light rail" station. Also our light rail is longer end-to-end than the Paris metro and half the stations are on the freeway with massive parking garage and no pedestrian amenities. Riding transit in the Seattle area is insulting and demeaning.

I've ridden the train in Copenhagen. The stops are near things! Stores and parks! Apartments and hotels! Shopping malls! Like, actually right there! There's a few stops like that in Seattle, but they're also the ones with junkies nodding off, con men "looking for some gas money", and other anti-social behavior.

[Zigurd]

We sabotage our transit. The Rail Runner doesn't go all the way to terminals at ABQ. That's insane! Were the Santa Fe airport people against it? What gives?

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

In the wee hours catching a train and bus to get home is kind of annoying in Malmö. Mainly the buses basically stop running more than once an hour between 1-5am.

Most US towns are basically uber/taxis only at that time. I live in Austin where you could theoretically be one of the lucky 1% of the population that both lives near a train station and wants to go somewhere near where that train station is. Even then you can’t use the train past something like 11pm on weekends. Capmetro’s hours are a pretty decent source of consternation for us here

[Symbiote]

Malmö is a fifth of the size of Copenhagen, or a tenth of Seattle. Once an hour at night isn't so bad for a city that size, isn't it? The trains to Copenhagen run all night, so I can get home...

[TaylorAlexander]

I feel this way too, having gone down the online rabbit hole of urbanist content. We don’t need cheaper Ubers, we need trains!

[prmoustache]

Even before talking about traina, you'd need to get rids of the suburbs and the clear separation of housing and commercial stuff.

There is so much thing to undo and people are so overly sensitive of the value of their property it is nearly impossible or would take centuries to fix.

[jeffreygoesto]

One war will do. Ask Europe.

[Symbiote]

WW2 was a negative step for many of the cities affected, as it gave them the chance to test the new "car" thing.

[shiroiuma]

Trains are very expensive to build and maintain, so they only work if your city has enough density to support them with sufficient ridership. America really screwed itself by building cities for cars instead of people, and it's hard to change this at this point, especially when every effort at making cities there more walkable and dense is met with fierce opposition.

[TaylorAlexander]

America has loads of cities and metro areas with way more density than European cities with effective rail systems. You’re right that it’s hard to change due to historical choices, but it may still be worthwhile to transition as soon as possible rather than continue down the wrong path.

[fallingknife]

Do we actually? European cities that I have been to all have zones with nothing but apartment buildings in dense urban configuration that go on for miles. I've never seen something like that in the states outside of NYC.

[runarberg]

I think the main problem with the Sounder is not a lack of density (Seattle and Tacoma are both plenty dense; also both the rail corridor and the rolling stock already exist; only missing expensive part is the crew) but rather it is on a very congested freight corridor (particularly the north part to Everett) owned partly by the freight company. So it is hard for Sound Transit to negotiate more usage of the corridor for increased frequency.

[concordDance]

Dunno where you are, but trains suck arse here in the UK. Its half the price to fly to Edinburgh than to take a train and my wife recently took a stressful (delays and cancellations and missed connections) two and a half hour train ride that would have taken an hour.

Honestly I think busses are far superior due to not having so many dependencies.

[thevillagechief]

I would have thought this was hyperbole had I not experienced this living in Kent years ago. It's in fact worse. It was twice as expensive to take a train from Canterbury to Stansted than it was to fly from Stansted to Glasgow. Still, having experienced public transport in the UK (the Underground is everything) and everywhere else, the US car culture is the worst. It keeps poor people poor. Your car breaks down, your license gets suspended you cannot go to work. And the acres of parking tarmac filled with cars that are stationary 95% of the time. It's so ugly and such a waste of resources. I happened to live and work along one of the few routes in my city where I could get the bus to work when I first moved to the US. People at work thought I was too poor to afford a car, it was always funny to explain that public transport is the norm in most of the rest of the world.

[dontlaugh]

Trains are much worse in the UK than on the continent, for sure. Especially when it comes to price.

[seanmcdirmid]

Ya, nothing in the states is set up for that outside of maybe NYC. We just grew our urban planning post war based on cars. It is absolute insanity. Seattle is even considered one of the better cities for public transit.

[blincoln]

The Sounder is a heavy rail train on rails that are shared with other trains (e.g. freight). It runs about 7 times per day in one direction and about 10 times per day in the other. There's no reason to run additional trains on that line, because taking it depends almost entirely on finding an empty space in parking garages that are full by about 6AM.

The Seattle area has a newer, dedicated light rail system (Link) that runs every 5-10 minutes from about 5AM to about 1:00AM. The stations are located much more conveniently and frequently, because they were placed based on where a commuter train should stop, not trying to piggyback on existing freight lines. There still isn't as much parking as there should be, but at least the stations are placed so that more than a tiny handful of people can get there without driving and parking.

[runarberg]

I’m not so sure about that. The North line connects to Edmonds which is a major ferry terminal used by a fairly large number of people on the Kitsap peninsula, Port Townsend etc. plus another ferry terminal on Mukilteo for Whitby island. These are major connections which are unusable in the 4 trains a day frequency (Sounder only runs 2 trips and Amtrak Cascade the other 2; latter does not stop at Mukilteo). The link is good and all that but it won’t reach Everett for another 20 years and it won’t connect with the ferries either.

The South direction is a little better (and is improving even further with more Cascade runs on the horizon) but it is the same story. For example, Pyuallup and Sumner are both decent sized towns wit centrally located station, which won’t get light rail and the 1 line won’t reach Tacoma until 2035 at least. There is also a decent transit center at Lakewood, however I would argue it should probably be better to run the 620 all the way to Tacoma, from where Olympia people could jump onto a Sounder or light rail.

[runarberg]

I agree. I actually live a bit closer to Seattle then OP, only 40 min on bus + boat (add 20 outside of commuter hour for a second bus). The Sounder doesn’t actually run anywhere near me, (well I could take the 118 south to the Tahlequah ferry terminal, 10 min boat to Point Defiance, a Pearce transit bus to Tacoma, and ride the Sounder from there; which urbanists call the “long way”). so this doesn’t affect me personally.

But you are absolutely right, Tacoma and Everett are 3rd and 4th largest cities in the state and are in the same metro area as Seattle. The north line is actually worse, only 2 trains a day (plus 2 Amtrak Cascade trains) even though there is major Ferry terminal connection at Edmonds (and a smaller but significant at Mukilteo). The Sounder service is dismal and needs to be improved (thankfully we are getting more service on the Amtrak Cascades which runs the same corridor but goes all the way to Portland and Vancouver BC. but not nearly enough)

That said, the bulk of the population in the Seattle metro area is serviced with the Link light rail. They are almost done with an extension east to Bellevue (turns out building rail on a floating bridge is hard) and eventually it will reach both Tacoma and Everett. Then they will get the frequency they deserve.

As for me, how do I get home. My ferries actually run all night (although with up to 3 hour gaps in the middle of the night) and frequently enough. If there isn’t a bus on the island, I usually just call my partner and she picks me up at the terminal, sometimes I also meet someone I know in the ferry.

The funny bit is that I actually immigrated here from Europe, and my tiny European island in the North Atlantic actually has way worse public transit system as Seattle. So for me this is a huge improvement. I’m actually going home to visit and am planning to see a friend of my play at a concert it a town 40 min from the capital, but there are no buses, so I actually have to call my mom to pick me up when the concerts are done.

[seanmcdirmid]

I live in Ballard, so the sounder goes right by me. We (my kid and I) even watch it go by sometime. Nowhere near to get on, though, so I’ve actually never been on one before. It would be a cool way to link Ballard to downtown Seattle by rail before 2040.

[Symbiote]

Faroes? I visited during Covid, so there was no need to try staying out late.

But the population of the whole country is 1/100 of Seattle. Buses in some place during the day, and taxis at other times, is proportionate to what's available in Copenhagen.

I grew up in a small village in England. Choices for a night out were staying over at a friend's house (much preferable) or splitting the £15 taxi between several teenagers, which was a decent price as far as our parents were concerned. (Or walking for two hours and keeping the money, don't tell mum.)

[runarberg]

> Faroes?

Not quite that tiny. Iceland. The public transit system inside the capital area is decent (probably better then Spokane’s despite being similar of size) but after midnight it is really nothing, and on the weekends the frequency gets kind of bad (not North America level bad though). However ones you go outside of the capital area the system really sucks. Despite receiving over a million tourists which more then justifies an airport train, there is only a bus every couple of hours to the airport and adjacent towns (with a pathetic shelter).

[brewdad]

While we’re at it, could we get at least one late night/overnight Amtrak Cascades train? I’d go to a lot more Mariners or Kraken games if it didn’t mean choosing between the hassle of driving and parking or needing a hotel room after the game. If sports aren’t your thing substitute any activity that goes beyond 6pm.

[fhub]

The current ride pricing feels about 10-20% less than an Uber in SF - but I haven't really checked properly. So don't expect the rideshare product (Waymo One) to be a super cheap option.

[gmassman]

This morning my coworkers rode in together in a Waymo. One told me it was $16 while an Uber would have been $35.

[fhub]

From my personal experience they are priced cheaper for all rides. But rarely that much cheaper - perhaps a surge time?

The variable that differs is time to pickup. I've found Waymo is generally pretty good for me in off-peak times - perhaps on average 2-3 minutes further away on average. But I have got the odd "20 minutes away" and I then just order an Uber.

But I will always pick a Waymo over an Uber if they are the same distance away. I love playing my own music and just being in my own world without another human to consider. It is truly a relaxing commute.

[KKKKkkkk1]

> But I will always pick a Waymo over an Uber if they are the same distance away. I love playing my own music and just being in my own world without another human to consider. It is truly a relaxing commute.

Not to ruin your commute, do you know if there are interior-facing cameras monitoring the passengers?

[n2d4]

Per Google, there are cameras inside the car: https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9190819?hl=en

[amelius]

For how long are the recordings stored?

[nemothekid]

Are you able to play music on the car speakers from your phone? The process on iPhone seems very awkward (talking to google assistant instead of just selecting a song).

[fhub]

I do it the awkward way too. But I typical play an artist that I loved two decades ago and crank the volume. So "My music" wasn't the best way to describe it. More music that is just for me. I don't find their inbuilt music channels you can play from the center console to be that good. There is lots of UX things that could be done with music that wouldn't be hard.

[willsmith72]

isn't that just because the waymos are still funded by VCs? an uber might've been the same 10 years ago, but now they've achieved world domination it's time to make a profit

[semiquaver]

Waymo is fully owned by a public company. Economically they are indistinguishable from Uber (other than having a huge ad profit center to subsidize them). What VCs are you referring to?

[svachalek]

It's still in the R&D phase though. It's not out there to make a profit like Uber or Lyft.

[xnx]

Waymo is definitely in the phase where they want to form a positive impression on all fronts: safety, convenience, price. Once widespread, it's possible that they'll charge more than Uber because of the extra privacy and safety in a Waymo ride.

[Zigurd]

Uber was trying the "there can be only one" approach of operating at a loss to squeeze out competitors on both sides of their business model. The pandemic and other factors disrupted that plan. So now they are scrambling for profit while not having being configured for it.

[belltaco]

I read that Waymo is losing 2 to 3 billion dollars a year.

[tanseydavid]

Uber lost $9.1B in 2022.

https://fourweekmba.com/uber-losses-by-year/

[raylad]

Last time I checked (in SF), Uber was $16.70 for a ride I wanted to take and Waymo was $25.40.

All things being equal (or anywhere near equal), I'll pay the human driver rather than the bot.

[selestify]

Funny, I’d choose the opposite.

[raylad]

Why, you don't like people and prefer paying big companies?

[superfrank]

Don't forget no pressure to tip your Waymo

[morelisp]

There will be. "Donate $1 to Waymo's autonomous safety research fund?"

[b112]

No, it will be the United Way. Or to help give poor children blankets.

And it will be offered, when Waymo's onboard AI detects you're on a date, verbally, so the date can hear.

So even if you give to charites in a meaningful way, you'll end up doing it again or look crass and be embarrassed. And as with many of these "at the till" charity collections, there is a fee given to the collector.

Who will be Google! Plus, not only do they get to track your co-riders, eg who you associate with, and where you go, and even all conversation in the car (anonymized, of course), now they get to track your charitable predilections, by offering choice.

[mattsan]

Ok so say hypothetically they have the balls to record conversations in your car. Wouldn't they already be recording from your pocket?

(I know it's sarcasm and you're spot on about the charities lmao)

[b112]

I wonder though.

You own the phone. And they mostly get in trouble for lying about the things they record on phone, not for doing it.

But they own the car. And is it illegal for a cabbie to listen, and then tell their boss a stock tip, or that the Jones are buying a new house?

To add distance, they could real time listen in car, process locally, and only upload highlights as tags/text, so no recording. They could also process live, and then offer services in ride, eg "notice your hair is shaggy, Google Maps says this is a good barber!", and of course if you want that referral, as a barber, Google Maps you pay.

Google can't help itself. It is like a kleptomaniac, it knows it shouldn't, but for those voices in its head(managers), do it.. do it! You know you want to, you need to, you should!

Oh it's so shiny oh god...

And it relents, turning all pure dreams into ashes.

Waymo will be the ultimate platform to know even more about you, and to monetize it further.

[nedrylandJP]

"It's just going to ask you a question"

[perryizgr8]

In the long term, prices will be determined by what the market will bear. It will be irrelevant if Waymo is cheaper to operate because they don't have to pay a driver. And if Waymo is the only game in town, as it seems to be far ahead of everyone else, expect only a minor discount over the regular human driven cab.

[j1elo]

Just curious about prices there. How much would a cab, Uber, or Waymo cost for a trip that takes 1.5h to do?

To me (European) that would cost a fortune... probably doing that distance for a night out would be something to do by local train or bus service.

[unshavedyak]

I took an Uber to/from Seattle Airport, but that was like 7 years ago back when they were in undercutting price mode lol. Iirc it was in the $80 range (per trip).

Well worth it to me because i dislike traffic and parking that much. However i bet i could find a park and ride that's easy and save myself a decent chunk. .. not sure how to find a _safe_ park and ride, though.. heh.

Autonomous rides would be great for me though as they represent stability. Getting a driver was always a mixed bag. Would they be creepy? Talk a lot? Drive poorly? etcetc. Down in Florida i had one break the law several times and in general drive like a maniac. I don't take that many ubers/etc, but the ones i have have really felt like a mixed bag. A dice roll on all the variables, more bad than good.

[bhelkey]

Does Uber not fill this need today?

[unshavedyak]

No, at least not for me. As my other comment[1] mentions, there's enough friction with ubers that it's not an enjoyable experience. I'll use them in a pinch, but i avoid them if possible.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38012649