I am not saying to get rid of cars altogether. I am saying that it would be better (and cheaper) for everyone if we took all those resources being out into "autonomous vehicles" and developed public transit first. Reduce the amount of yearly trips that are done by car. Provide alternatives.
The important thing about Japan or Europe is not "they don't have cars", but "people make 3-4x less trips by car compared with the alternative modes of transportation". If you want to have safer roads (in a way that doesn't give even more power to tech companies) the best way to do it is by simply reducing the amount of trips taken.
Waymo has raised about $11bn [1]. That is at best 4 miles of New York subway [2]. It's a third of a train between Bakersfield and Merced [3].
These things aren't competing. To the extent we can compare them on capital efficiency, it's not a good look for American public transit.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/28/business/waymo-investment...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-02-24/cityla...
[3] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-21/high-spe...
Bakersfield to Merced is 171 miles of intercity high-speed rail. It's unclear to me why Californians need to make such trips with any significant frequency, and it's certainly not what I'd normally think of as "public transit".
22 years ago in Toronto, the Sheppard line (3.4 mi, underground) was built for less than $1b CAD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_4_Sheppard). From what I can tell, costs in NYC are mainly a NYC problem.
https://www.transitchicago.com/ctas-36-billion-red-line-exte...
It may be an American problem but it’s certainly not just NYC. But of course most of Waymos market is American as well.
(The REM in Montreal - https://www.cdpqinfra.com/en/projects/rem - is doing much better than that, despite going over budget and being delayed quite a bit.)
You seem to be comparing an actual, private tech project to what you wished public transit looked like, not what it actually looks like.
Public transit is awesome, but construction costs in the anglophone world are bananas (https://transitcosts.com/).
Because they’re both between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
> and it's certainly not what I'd normally think of as "public transit".
If not trains between cities what do you consider public transit?
This explains exactly nothing to me. There are many cities between Toronto and Montreal (the two largest CMAs in Canada, and about 88% of that driving distance) and I can't imagine why anyone would regularly travel between those two, either. Nor can I imagine why someone would make regular trips between Belleville and Ottawa (very close to the Bakersfield-Merced distance, and two of the larger cities in between).
>If not trains between cities what do you consider public transit?
Subways, light rail, streetcars and buses, all operating within a city. And, yes, trains operating within a CMA. (GO Transit trains from Toronto can get you as far as Kitchener, but as far as I know it's a vastly less popular route than the main Lakeshore lines. From Hamilton to Oshawa is definitely not solid built-up area, but it's pretty dense.)
I can't understand why this would be non-obvious. Maybe there's a cultural difference. Are Americans really so dedicated to urban sprawl that residents of a metropolis with an 7- or even 8-digit population might still require regular intercity travel to go about their lives?
What, you think Waymo will be able to weasel out of road tax or drive without roads?
Not relevant when we’re comparing project costs. OP argued we should devote self-driving resources to public transit. I’m arguing that’s nonsense.
> roads are still public infrastructure that has to be paid for and maintained
Sure. But that isn’t a new funding commitment. Cancelling Waymo won’t reduce our road costs.
Yes, because it would allow moving people more cost-effectively (among other things) - which is measured per person per unit distance traveled. (I'm not OP, but nothing in this discussion is even remotely new for transit advocates like myself.)
> To the extent we can compare them on capital efficiency
We can not. This logic is stupid. This logic will take you to the idea that the best thing to do is to get everyone a helicopter because helipads are cheap to build and it costs zero dollars to "build roads in the sky".
Yeah, you are right. These things are not competing. Yes, you are also right that proper infrastructure (re)development in North America will take a lot more money than what Big Tech has invested in self-driving cars.
The upsetting part is to see even supposedly smart people buying into the idea that American Exceptionalism is a real thing, and that you can keep holding on to the hope to find a shortcut away of your problems. Self-driving cars or not, the US is still going to be an expensive, inefficient country that can boast about its amazing economy, yet most people living there are at third-world country levels of development.
For fuck’s sake, the world’s largest rail system and navigable waterways say hello.
I’ve advocated for public transit. But it’s turning into zealotry when an $11bn project showing actual gains is turned into a soapbox for decrying a pet project.
Until then, the whole thing is nothing but a Trojan horse to let encroach themselves even more into another aspect of our lives.
Also:
> world’s largest rail system
The world's largest freight rail system.
