[dangus]

Or, how about this, connect them together and put them on rails to reduce friction.

You could even run them separate from the street with raised platforms for accessibility and sometimes even run them underground.

We could call this something like “underway” or “steel beam connect-o-cars”

[dzhiurgis]

> put them on rails to reduce friction

Good luck climbing hills. A lot of systems like these moved away from rails onto rubber tires.

Rapid bus is probably best combination. Yes it will never match the throughput of rail, but it's vastly cheaper.

[maximilianthe1]

Have you seen hills in NYC or (most of) other major cities? Also, the solition is deeper stations under hills & escalators.

[dzhiurgis]

So solution is to make from 3x more expensive to 5x more expensive?

And don't get me wrong, some places in US (with extreme density) should do this. Personally it's not the places where I'd ever want to live ever again lol.

[rangestransform]

deep stations have a significant impact on travel times, it takes well over 5 minutes to surface from the deepest stations in Barcelona

[dangus]

Trains can have rubber tires (Paris metro)

[rcpt]

That's so unbelievably difficult it might as well be impossible. It's easier to teach cars to drive themselves than it is to build transit. Ridiculous I know.

[rayiner]

No, individualized point to point travel is better. I just got back from Tokyo and Taipei, which have transit systems better than any European country. And it was still faster to Uber everywhere.

[dangus]

And how much did that cost? You can get around Tokyo on the subway system for $5 for an entire day, and it's a profitable system that largely does not rely on taxpayer subsidy.

And how fast would it be if Tokyo and Taipei's trains weren't handling 80% and 40% of trips, respectively?

If you reduce Tokyo's 80% trip usage rate down to 5% like many American cities, that means for every other car on the road in Tokyo you'd now see 5 cars instead. How's that Uber ride looking now?

[amanaplanacanal]

Only because most people were taking the train. If everybody was taking a car you would be at a stand still.

[rayiner]

Only if you build the city like Tokyo instead of like Dallas. Average commute in Tokyo is 45 minutes to an hour one way: https://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/2014/08/05/231455. Average commute time in Dallas is 26 minutes one way: https://dallas.culturemap.com/news/city-life/dallas-suburb-s...

I’m not aware of any transit-oriented city where average commute times are as low in absolute terms as in sprawling, car-dependent American cities. You just don’t like the aesthetics of that approach. I don’t either. But it’s an aesthetic critique at bottom.

[lmm]

> Average commute in Tokyo is 45 minutes to an hour one way: https://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/2014/08/05/231455. Average commute time in Dallas is 26 minutes one way: https://dallas.culturemap.com/news/city-life/dallas-suburb-s...

People in Tokyo will accept a longer commute for the sake of a better job or housing or both, because the commute is less miserable (and also because employers pay commute costs).

> I’m not aware of any transit-oriented city where average commute times are as low in absolute terms as in sprawling, car-dependent American cities.

Transit-oriented cities provide access to more jobs within a fixed range like 30 minutes even for car commuters. https://www.nature.com/articles/s42949-021-00020-2/figures/4 . People in Dallas having shorter commutes isn't a sign that Dallas is built better, it's a sign that people in Dallas are avoiding switching to otherwise better jobs because it would make their commutes worse.

[rayiner]

From your article: “The automobile provides better access than transit in all cities we compared, except in Shanghai, China, where automobile reaches about 90% of the jobs reachable by transit at 30 min.”

[lmm]

Yes, that's what a tragedy of the commons looks like. An individual in a given city will have a shorter commute by car. But the more people who are using cars, the worse everyone's commute gets.

[Mawr]

Tokyo has a population of some 14 million. Dallas is about 1.3 million. Did you pick cities with populations exactly 10x apart on purpose or something?

Got any real stats?

[rayiner]

So what? Why do you need one city with 13 million people when the US has the land area to build 10 cities with 1.3 million people?

[amanaplanacanal]

Because that's where people individually want to live. Cities are getting bigger, rural areas and small towns are depopulating.

[lmm]

It's a tragedy of the commons. For an individual, private car is faster, but the resulting traffic ultimately makes things slower for everyone. Public transit in Tokyo is faster than private cars in car-oriented cities.

[rayiner]

That’s not true. Public transit in Tokyo is slower than driving in Dallas or LA. Average one-way commute in LA is just over 30 minutes: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B080ACS006037. For Tokyo it’s 45-60 minutes based on sources I’ve seen online.

[lmm]

As I said on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46214609 , that statistic doesn't mean what you think it does. The article I linked doesn't have figures for Tokyo but it has Shanghai which is comparable; there are around 4x as many jobs within 30 minutes by transit in Shanghai as by car in LA, while the population is only 1.5x bigger.

[Mawr]

If speed is your only concern, why not hire a helicopter? Oh, because cost is also a concern so we can't just look at what's "faster"? Rats.

[defrost]

Why hire a helicopter when one can just be bought outright?

https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/mining...

Permitting can be a bitch though: https://www.afr.com/property/residential/rinehart-s-loses-bi...

so there's a reason not to.

[rangestransform]

this is the west, we can afford to spend more marginally on transportation to:

- have a financial and physical barrier between the riffraff and paying customers

- spend less total money (for real, the cost of second ave subway alone is about 1/3 the market cap of waymo)

- sit down in comfort with door-to-door air conditioning

- go faster

wheverever the density justifies, autonomy will make "dollar van"-style minibuses financially viable too, since unionized drivers have made full-sized buses a money pit

[uolmir]

Everywhere? This is a crazy thing to claim. I was also recently in Japan and I never took a car anywhere. I'm sure there are particular routes that are badly served but come on.

[dzhiurgis]

I've been few times to Japan. Limiting yourself to rail gets boring very quick.

Also if you travel (aka kinda pressed for time), esp. with larger group (aka family) a lot of time cars are cheaper and faster and more practical option.

[rayiner]

Everywhere. I was staying right next to Tokyo Station, too. I went from a meeting in Roppongi Hills to a bookstore in Jimbocho. Apple Maps says 31 minutes by train and 24 minutes by Uber.

And I was traveling alone this time. Last year when I went with my wife and three kids the differential was even more extreme. I’m convinced public transit is a major reason for the birth rate collapse in east asia.

[dangus]

So you spend like 3-5x more than a train ticket to save 6 minutes?

[Mawr]

> I’m convinced public transit is a major reason for the birth rate collapse in east asia.

Sure thing. Just so we're on the same page, mind backing that up with the obvious basic research? You know, just a simple breakdown of birth rates vs public transit usage across the world. Rudimentary stuff.

[rayiner]

There are studies showing that dense housing is correlated with lower birth rates. https://ifstudies.org/blog/more-crowding-fewer-babies-the-ef.... It’s possible that public transit has a similar effect.

[dangus]

A lot of obviously positive things correlated with lower birth rates, like not having half your kids die before they reach adulthood, being able to treat infections with antibiotics, not needing a crazy amount of labor to keep subsistence farming going.

Birth rate collapse itself is a positive thing, this planet can’t ecologically sustain pre-industrialization birthrates combined with modern medicine and life expectancy. Back in the mid-century there was a lot of academic concern about overpopulation.