Instead let's have more light rail and electric buses please.
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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As a disabled dude, let's have both. I can't make the short trip to my nearby bus stop, this would be taxes that I would never benefit from. But personal cars or services like these, I can make it down my driveway.
It blows my mind how many people, when talking about transportation, just completely forget that not totally-capable people exist. I guess we are all supposed to stay in one place and never go anywhere due to a physical disability.
I'll happily vote for taxes to enhance public transport, if everyone votes to keep services like these also improving and growing, especially in areas where municipal services are lacking or completely unavailable. Uber and Lyft were my only access to restaurants and groceries for a time. Shit gets expensive, but it's better than literally having to beg friends to get my groceries every week.
Just don't forget about those who can't enjoy the infrastructure.
Does your city not have a service where a small bus goes to your door? Here in Seattle you book a ride to where you need to go the day before and they come and pick you up. Heck, the small town I grew up in (2500 people) in the middle of nowhere had a similar service.
My current one does, but only goes to city limits, which isn't very useful (my doctors and such, for example, are a city over). My prior one, you had to live within half a mile of a traditional bus stop. I was just out of the 'service range', at like 0.65ish miles away.
That sucks. The service here is done by the county so it's pretty easy to get where you need to go. Or if you do not feel like booking a day in advance, they also have shuttle service to the light rail although that is less geared towards people with disabilities so it might not work for everyone.
Hopefully your region gets their heads out of their asses and starts providing basic services for people who need it.
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there were legal taxis before uber, uber or self driving cars don't really change anything in that regard
Uber changed things a lot. Uber lets you easily request the ride and track the driver instead of calling for a cab then calling back 45 minutes later to find out where they are and find out they never sent anyone.
Uber changed things a lot.
technology changed things a lot, not uber. i don't really have detailed knowledge of us market, but where i am normal taxi services are using them as well, that's not really something created by uber. the only innovation uber brought to the field is that the technology allowed them to organize taxi service in really shady way (aka "the gig economy")
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During COVID lockdowns, when lots of people had to work from home, people who couldn't work from home were all talking about how much faster it was to get to work and there was hardly any traffic on the roads.
Even if public transport doesn't benefit someone directly, getting a bunch of other people off the road still will.
Yeah, definitely. But the idea that 'only if it benefits me' really irked me, like 'why can't everyone just take public transportation' like it's just easy-peasy for everyone, guaranteed.
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I understand you can't access it as it is now, but ideally we'd have systemic change that would allow you to access public transport. I don't know what your handicap is, but (other than immune system issues) I don't see what could be wrong that is impossible for public transport to be built to allow for. Sure, you have to get to it, but that could be made a lot easier if we weren't in a system designed for cars where everything is a million miles away.
I could be totally wrong. I have no idea of anything about you. I just would prefer a system that helps everyone, which these cars won't. In particular, impoverished people are going to be even more fucked if we start accepting this as an option for handling disabilities. It doesn't seem like a good idea.
I turn 31 next month; I'm a stroke 'survivor' (kill me) who completely lost the fine motor control of my right arm, hand, leg, foot, toes/fingers, a quarter of my vision in both eyes, ~90% of my nerve response on my right side of my entire body, as well as a few other things. Literally getting down the road to the bus stop 1/8 miles away would take 20 minutes, be immensely difficult and tiring, my pulse would be 130+ the whole time and say if I'm going to go to a store and buy something, I can't because my one operable hand is holding my cane to keep me stable. I tried, so fucking hard, to continue 'normal' life. I despise what has happened to me and the fact that I will never, ever be whole again makes me regret calling help when I realized what was occurring. I live every day in hell, in a prison created by my own stupid body, and it will be like this until my premature death.
It's the hardest thing in the world to just get to the transportation. I hate that I'm saying it, but it's absolutely true :(
I'm not saying it's the best answer - fuck, I'm trying to get back to driving, it has always been a huge part of me, my happiness, my enjoyment of life - but at least it can help people like me until something better comes along.
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Yes, this is an underappreciated angle. Ridesharing bridges the gap for many people excluded by other forms of transit. My mom has limited mobility and ridesharing has really helped her.
It cost nearly $350 million to install a 2-mile-long rapid bus lane on Van Ness Maybe future expansions will be cheaper based on lessons learned, but it's clear that any infrastructure in SF is tremendously complicated and expensive. Doesn't mean it's not worth pursuing!
Creating new public infrastructure in the US can be extremely expensive, but it’s definitely still worth pursuing.
Nearly every in-depth study shows that for every $1 invested, the economic return is somewhere around $4-$5. And on top of that, failing to have adequate public infrastructure can cause serious economic consequences, which are compounded in areas with a lack of affordable housing.
Even though this article is a little old and sponsored by a party with a vested interest on the topic, I think it’s worth a read:
https://www.politico.com/sponsor-content/2018/06/when-public-transit
In my opinion, the problem for the US is convincing people/businesses that it’s worth it. Shifting away from cars and increasing investments in public infrastructure are two fairly unpopular measures right now, despite the actual economic evidence being overwhelming positive.
To me, it’s a solid example of where great leaders are needed to do something temporarily unpopular for the long term benefit of the constituents.
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Yeah public engineering projects are crazy expensive. Roads included. I’m not saying this stuff will be cheap, just that not doing it is causing pretty awful problems
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It is like a bunch of the self-driving companies are trying to kill the tech by making the public turn against them.
Nah, it's just that the "fail fast" process doesn't work or more accurately isn't acceptable for critical life-or-death systems.
I was stoked for them to get here. My entire life between my house and my kid's school is inundated in self driving cars. I live it. I fucking hate them. And elderly people in Teslas.
There's a good solution here: walkable, mixed use neighborhoods.
Self driving cars are just going to make traffic worse, by increasing people's tolerance to traffic.
Who would do that
I was in SF recently and got stuck behind a self driving car that was trying to turn down a closed street. The street had a police barrier up and it just sat there with its blinker on waiting for the street to open up. Meanwhile, everyone behind it is stuck there waiting for it to make a turn that it would never be able to make.
Eventually, after sitting in traffic for ten minutes, not knowing what was up, cars in front of me started to move around it and then I realized what was going on. I understand why people hate these things.
To be fair, I had a similar thing happen a human driver the other day. Except there was no barricade...they just wouldn't turn. They finally made the left turn on the fourth yellow lol.
Anyone have the footage?
They Streisand Effect'ed the fuck out of themselves
I keep looking but can't find it. I keep just finding people saying the pedestrian was hit by a vehicle with a driver and thrown under a driverless car which spokepeople are saying tried to stop as fast as possible to minimize damages.
If the autonomous car reacted correctly then why wouldn't they release the video which corroborates this?
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It takes a lot to make Tesla look bad in comparison.
Are we sure Tesla hasn't done this too? Sounds like something they'd do.
I'm confident they have failed similarly.
I live in the Bay Area and mostly ignored these developments because I primarily stick to East Bay. But as my new job has me going to SF on a semi-regular basis, I can’t help but be mildly afraid of getting taken out by an AV. Gdi.
Yesterday I saw a couple, including a Waymo that passed a few feet away as I got in my car. It proceeded without incident but I couldn't help feeling nervous to trust that its lidar saw me and it interpreted me as a human.
It proceeded without incident but I couldn’t help feeling nervous to trust that its lidar saw me and it interpreted me as a human.
I can't say I view an average driver with any more trust though.
Yes, if anything it helps expose that we rely too much on cars as a society. That being said, I can make eye contact with a driver, judge their attention more effectively. I do hope driverless tech eventually improves but am concerned about the responsibility of some of the companies currently in the lead of developing the technology.
Ofc, you can still make eye contact with someone and have them then say "oh my god, I didn't see you there!" because there were spacing out/wandering in their mind.
I would guess the autonomous vehicle is safer then the hit & run driver who threw the pedestrian under that AV.
Perhaps, but withholding footage is not a good look. Good thing the police never withholds foota… oh
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