Hacker News Reader

Comment by 13thLetter | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps people will decide that the flexibility and comfort of private vehicles, especially in a context like the one described where they create much less noise and pollution, is worth them taking up a little more space.

It's easy to fall into the trap of deciding that buses/bicycles are somehow morally better (or worse) than private cars. This is not so -- we should dispassionately judge the tradeoffs instead, ideally with an eye towards allowing individual people to make the choices that fit their needs best.

View on HN

Electric cars still cost energy (i.e. coal and associated emissions) and private vehicle ownership costs space. If space is at a premium, then your parking space makes the city a little less livable for everyone else. If your power source isn't wind, solar, or nuclear, your emissions are just a few miles outside the city instead of in your tailpipe.

And perhaps the ability to go wherever you want, whenever you want, in comfort, as opposed to having to wait for a bus or ride a bicycle in the snow, is worth more to the people in the aggregate than a little extra space saved by not parking cars. You're assuming everyone has the same preferences that you do.

(And anyway, since we're talking autonomous vehicles here, you could park them together in central locations and then even the space argument mostly goes away.)

Well This is more an ethical problem. Yes, I agree I much rather sit in my car and go wherever I want. But the amoubt of energy required to do this (producing, operating and disposing of the car, and maintaining streets, managing accidents etc.) seems out of proportion, and can't possibly the right of every living person on a planet with 8-10 billion people. And you just have to look at European cities to see that transit can be the more convenient option when space for streets is limited. E.g. i'm living close to a soccer stadium that has no parking lot. Hard to imagine in the US. But the city is criss-crossed wirh subway lines, and it ishence often the fastest way to get to a destination. Then the argument for cars breaks down.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com