Where I live this will cause what would be a 15 minute car ride into 1.5 hours of hopping on different busses and then walking 1/2 mile to your destination on either end. I don't have a problem with effective public transportation but outside of major population centers like Manhattan, I haven't seen one that really works all that well here in the US.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Well, that's the thing you could have it if you invested all the money that currently goes into highways. The amount of money is always limited (everybody hates taxes for a reason), so building large quantities of both is impossible.

Roads are always going to cost more in the end, but they're easier to build incrementally. Boiling the frog situation.

Even if policy of your local government changes (which is at least a little up to you) you will still have to suffer the current situation and keep driving for a while before a better system is built. But that's no reason to throw good money after the bad.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

It wouldn't be a 15 minutes car ride once the traffic jams start. The point of public transport is not to completely replace cars, but to provide an alternative for people. A good public transport system will cover most destinations so people won't have to worry like you do about reaching your destination. By doing so, it will reduce cars on the road which will also benefit the people who do need to drive to where they want to go.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Eventually it will be robotic cars doing the last mile on systems like that. Most trips will still be in individual cars or maybe minivan size things, but people who are following very popular shared paths will be asked to step into a bus. When it’s all roboticized, we won’t need stations for that though. Cars will be able to match bus speed and passengers can step from A to B while the whole thing’s in motion.

Next time on Beyond 2000, we’ll talk about decentralized DNS