Robotaxis as public transit? Waymo thinks so | Hacker News Reader

Robotaxis as public transit? Waymo thinks so

theverge.com

The title is less specific than it should be. Waymo is seeking to provide "micro transit." That's used to transport small numbers of people for medical, educational etc. needs.

Or we can just do rail and stop the insanity. For all the money we spend as a society trying to do anything but the right thing, we could have an incredible rail network and see the benefits from that instead of watching companies waste money trying to solve a problem we don’t need to solve.

There's no sensible rail options for a lot of the US. Putting aside the vast suburbs and exurbs (which can and sometimes do make use of rail), much of this country lives in thousands of small towns, many of them isolated and economically insignificant. And they tend to have aging populations who need transit options. Rail will never solve transportation for that population, but robotaxis can.

> Rail will never solve transportation for that population, but robotaxis can.

How do elderly Europeans or Japanese do it?

I’m not really following how a robotaxi is going to go pick up grandpa who has a tough time getting in and out of a car. And if they lived closer to society than they’d be able to live closer to their physician(s) or home health aids which cost a fortune, partially because they have to spend so much money and time driving to these rural locations. Believe me, I know first hand. Even when there’s a human present it’s not easy. This isn’t a question of transportation method, it’s a question of proximity to healthcare which rural Americans are losing and will continue to lose precisely because we can’t afford to support them.

Most Americans don’t live in tiny towns, they live in cities and suburbs. I’m not entertaining the idea we need to optimize for those folks living in the middle of nowhere instead of the rest of us. If they want to live far away then they can, but that’s their decision to make and I’m not going to see my own quality of life diminished because they want a robotaxi to come pick them up in the middle of nowhere to take them an hour drive away to a university hospital in a city to get treatment. Live closer to where you work or what your needs are and lay off my tax dollars.

These specific financial and social miscalculations are the reason the USA is so fucked up. We keep doing dumb stuff like suggesting we can't have rail, trams, or street cars in cities because some random old people exist in tiny towns. Seriously?

How about instead of the aging population of 3 in Raymond, Ohio getting robot taxis (that they can’t afford to pay for by the way, the government will have to pay for those rides) we support the aging population of 300 in a city neighborhood instead?

You’re talking about the distribution of towns and cities as something that we need to accommodate, but we don’t. Instead we need to focus on accommodating most people, not legal jurisdictions. This will lower costs and increase economic vibrancy, improve social cohesion, and health too.

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