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Comment by wizzwizz4 | Hacker News Reader

Considering the resources spent on Tesla's “self-driving” systems… if you used that money on public transport, how many lives could you (improve and) save by reducing the number of cars on the road? (My guess: you could build a massive amount of public transport on a local scale, but not much on a global scale, so you'd probably only save a several dozen lives and significantly improve a few tens of thousands.)

Factoring in that bad drivers start being really negligent when there cars are “self-driving”, I'm not certain this will save more lives than the opportunity cost. But if it's mostly used by good drivers, and bad drivers get off the road, it could be huge.

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Tesla has spent about $8.5B on R&D in the past decade. Of course, not all of that was spent on FSD, but let's assume it was.

Let's also assume our hypothetical public transport is built in San Francisco. San Francisco recently spent $1.5B on a 1.7 mile subway line. It will also take a decade from when work begun to its opening next year.

That works out to be a 9.7 mile subway that opens in 2032.

You can't conflate overall R&D development with manufacturing and construction costs, that's a fallacy. I don't know what the exact numbers are but Tesla has definitely invested well over $100b in their supercharger networks, manufacturing facilities, and even cost per car and it will still be far less of a public good affecting far less less people directly and indirectly than a reasonable public transport network.

Public transportation in the US will never replace the automobile. There is simply too much infrastructure to replace and not enough GDP. It's a fine solution for SF, Chicago, and NYC, but not the rest of the country.

Illinois used to have electric rail connecting every podunk town for a nickel. It was called the "interurban" and was scrapped for the war effort in the 1940s. The reason half the towns (that now require cars) even exist is because the train had to stop for fuel and water. Not enough GDP is a pretty sad state of affairs for the richest nation on earth.

The last routes actually closed in 1956 and 1958 - none closed in the 1940s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Terminal_Railroad

Thanks for the correction, I must be misremembering a second hand story.

I found lots of photos from the 50s trying to find more info

https://www.cera-chicago.org/Blog/3315468

US urban sprawl is costing so much GDP it is not even funny. And i don't understand why they don't invest in septic and would rather install a full sewer system for less than 200 people.

that is quite the hopeful view. The High Speed CA rail is now projected as a 100$ billion project. With nothing to show for it.

We will never get massive public transport, no matter how much money is spent. That is the harsh reality

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