aitorbk t1_iwbvdls wrote on November 14, 2022 at 2:24 PM

Reply to comment by rodchenko in Waymo’s driverless taxis keep making incremental progress, while others flounder by AdmiralKurita

Public transport cannot be good for most people It can be adequate at most.

It can even be demonstrated mathematically for a specific city, but in short: They go from where you don't live to where you don't want to go. Lost time, energy and investment to different degrees. They have to constantly stop and start. They require massive amounts of infrastructure, and space, unless it is a subway. Trains require stations, rights of way... And buses effectively occupy a ton of road space as they constantly stop and block a lane for up to a minute. Even if 30 seconds, assuming a 30kmh or 20 mph zone, that is 250m plus bus length plus safe space. Or like more than 25 cars. The frequency has to be 5 min max for a service to be acceptable, but then you get plenty of empty space on off peak. Buses get bunched together on peak traffic.

Most of my life I could beat the public service using either my car or my bicycle. Sometimes even walking. And not just in time, also in cost, and the car is a subsidy to the government in Europe. Moving people around in electric cars would be way way more efficient in energy than most electric trains or buses, not to speak of diesel ones. But there would be a space problem in the center of large cities, as they would not be able to accept so many cars. That is the main benefit of subways, they move a lot of people,and can use tunnels, plus onboarding and outboarding is so much faster.

A solution to that is mixed working from home for those who can, and mixed used districts. Having residential, office and retail districts is a misuse of land, space and resources in general. Mixed use is walkable, human, and way more useful. I am not saying that you should live 20 meters from a refinery, but you could have an office building in front, and your building could have a supermarket at street level.

I love trains, but there is a reason they are expensive to build, operate, and use. They are inefficient in many cases to move people. In some cases, they are great.

Kinexity t1_iwd300v wrote on November 14, 2022 at 7:19 PM

There should limits to how much bullshit you can put in one comment.

>It can even be demonstrated mathematically for a specific city, but in short: They go from where you don't live to where you don't want to go.

You can switch between many routes on PT
That's not how PT works. It starts where people leave and goes through areas that people want to reach. That's by definition. If it's not like this where you live than local gov fucked up your PT

>Lost time, energy and investment to different degrees. They have to constantly stop and start. They require massive amounts of infrastructure, and space, unless it is a subway. Trains require stations, rights of way... And buses effectively occupy a ton of road space as they constantly stop and block a lane for up to a minute. Even if 30 seconds, assuming a 30kmh or 20 mph zone, that is 250m plus bus length plus safe space. Or like more than 25 cars. The frequency has to be 5 min max for a service to be acceptable, but then you get plenty of empty space on off peak.

And roads for cars take no space? Are they built and maintained for free? And you go max speed all the time? One bus takes the area of ~5 cars while taking in the amount of people that would otherwise occupy dozens of cars. You seem to be unfamiliar with the idea of a bus bay so your whole "bus blocks my lane" goes to trash not even mentioning that if people chose the bus they wouldn't be stuck in traffic. Acceptable frequency of service is 30 minutes not 5 and any higher frequency should be demand based. Frequency can vary throught the day.

>Most of my life I could beat the public service using either my car or my bicycle. Sometimes even walking. And not just in time, also in cost, and the car is a subsidy to the government in Europe. Moving people around in electric cars would be way way more efficient in energy than most electric trains or buses, not to speak of diesel ones. But there would be a space problem in the center of large cities, as they would not be able to accept so many cars. That is the main benefit of subways, they move a lot of people,and can use tunnels, plus onboarding and outboarding is so much faster.

Source: You made it the fuck up. Cars are neither space efficient nor energy efficient nor resource efficient. Trains and buses are efficient because they are big and bicycles because they are light and small. Cars are a huge costs to every government. The main benefit of subways is that they are trains which have frequent stops while being grade separated.

>I love trains, but there is a reason they are expensive to build, operate, and use.

Trains are expensive because they are big and operate for way longer while being produced in lower amount and with tighter tolerances. They are cheaper to operate than car infrastructure and are easily cheaper to use.

aitorbk t1_iwd9ftv wrote on November 14, 2022 at 8:01 PM

You obviously don't like it. But think twice about it. 1.Can you switch routes? Of course. But the cost in time (and sometimes money) is big. Also the route tends to not be direct to your destination and require to go to the center. 2.It is very rare that you leave close to the pt and work close to the same.line of pt. I am lucky enough, but only because I work in the center and live near many bus line stops.

Roads take plenty of space. But a bus does not occupy the same.space as 5 cars because buses stop constantly at bus stops and either block a lane or require merging and plenty of free road space for a bus stop with stop space (way worse for the service btw). If it requires stop space that is about three bus lengths per stop, and about 30 seconds travel time as it blocks the lane.

The main benefit of the bus is that it does not need to park at the destination, and serves people who don't own a car, have no parking space, are disabled. Etc etc.

30.minutes.frequency. No, I would really not suffer that Plenty of yt channels now with city planners, or studies about that. Some say 5, some say 10. My personal experience is 5 is great, 10 will leave with. More, I would find another way of going if possible, but that is just me. A headway of 10 minutes or less is preferred for a service to be considered reliable.

Energy efficiency: I did not make that up. A full bus es efficient,a full european car is also efficient. And can be more efficient than the bus. A modern euro VI diesel medium car sits five and uses 5l/100km or 47Mpg If we go electric (and we should, both buses and cars) then energy efficiency goes 2.x higher as a rule.of thumb. But Tesla and some others are more like 3.5 to 4x as efficient for other reasons that would make this too long.

You say cars are a huge cost. I am guessing you live in the US. Here in europe we have way less km of road per car, way less parking, and about 60 to 65% of the fuel is taxes, plus plenty of other taxes on cars. So in Europe, as a norm, the cars are a money grab scheme for the government, not in the US. But cars are not space efficient because they spend most of their useful.life parked, or i the case of taxis, unoccupied and moving, even worse.

Subways: I disagree. European subways, underground, do not destroy the city and provide great service. By no demolishing the buildings like 50s and 60s highways did, you get out of the station and you are on a walkable human place. Are they energy efficient? Subways.. some are, some not. The cost to build, maintain, man, ventilate, cool, etc are inmense. Tends to be bigger than the proportional cost of cars and roads, but provide amazing capacity to move people even if less energy efficient. Look at the cost per mile/km per passenger of the london tube.. extremely vost inefficient, but worth it because otherwise london would simply not work.

Trains are not cheaper to operate. Poor countries in general hardly operate them and that is because of cost. It is cheaper for a couple to go by car, paying 60% tax on fuel on toll roads for 450km roads that have a huge margin than to pay a couple of train tickets, that the government is paying a big part of. Ii can be more.convenient, and in the case of high speed train, simply better for.many cases, but not cheaper.

As in efficiency.. well, the train needs a right of way, transformers, etc etc. Plus not all seats are occupied in both the car and the train.

A german ICE does 19 to 33Kwh per km, a Tesla 16Kwh per 100Km. The ice seats 600, potentially say 400 in it, and 2 on the tesla (of 5 possible). So for a trip the ICE wins if we don't count the energy costs of the train employees, train stations,etc.

Me, I go on my bike, the human body is quite inefficient so an electric bike is actually less polluting than me (and I eat calories made.of food, quite energy intensive), but I don't pollute.in the city or occupy much space or pollute with sound. But I don't think mass transit is perfect or the best thing ever..I had to use it many years.. and sadly, many times it sucks, particularly in large cities.

To visit my brother, 90 minutes on the subway, 100 or more.on bus, 45 on bike,20 on car.

I can give you the toute in pm if you want.

Where he lives now would be even worse, but I no longer live in Spain.