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Why Autonomous Cars Will NEVER Replace Transit
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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Cars are not more convenient simply because of a lack of transit options. This is a massive misconception. Even in Japan (Osaka) where I lived with some of the best transit infrastructure in the world it was still less convenient than driving for everything except commuting. No matter how frequently bus or train services exist, there will be a need for connections, for carrying bags, and for dealing with others that do not exist in a dedicated personal vehicle.
As for Sex, it isn't adults who own a home that are the primary group banging in the back of cars. It's teenagers and young adults who need more privacy than their home options allow for. You've missed the point here that a car is a private(ish) space that people use for non-driving related tasks.
Long distance travel even with trains doesn't make sense either. Even if there was a train from where I live to the town my in-laws live in, it would still take longer and be more hassle (see luggage) than driving. It's also not cheap. The bullet trains I took multiple times in Japan (again, pretty much the best transit system country in existence) were hundreds of dollars per ticket to go 500 kilometers. For a family, hopping in the car and driving is going to be a hundred dollars in gas and that's it. Trains are great for high capacity links, but again we lack the density to make these viable even if we ripped out all of the cars. There's probably only a few hundred people a day going from my City to the City where my in-laws live, even hourly service would only see a handful of people per entire train.
Shop every day using a bus... now you're just getting silly. I live in a rural area, by bus it takes 15 minutes to get to the store, even if my bus was 2 minutes frequency, I'd still be spending an hour a day doing the shopping. Nobody has time for that shit unless it's literally a 4 minute walk from your house.
The peak commuting problem is a lot bigger than you think, finding drivers willing to split shifts is very unlikely unless you pay them FAR more than they currently make. Suggesting they do maintenance/cleaning during the day is hilariously out of touch with what busses need in terms of maintenance and cleaning.
Autonomous vehicles do have problems, no doubt, the question is whether they're a better choice for the situation at hand.
The question was "what is the minimum density for viable transit"
The dirty economic answer is 106 houses per mi^2.
Other arguments for and against transit are valid in their own right, but obviously require analysis based on individual situations. I don't have the modeling capacity to cover every house everywhere.
Cars don't cost "some money in gas" that's an incremental cost. They cost $8,700 per year to the individual, about $14,000 to the state, plus uncaptured medical, climate, and social costs.
My baseline point isn't that we can magic cars away tomorrow, my point is that "too rural to transit" means actual rural, not suburban, even the least dense.
Also, your culture may need to reconsider priorities if teenagers aren't able to fuck safely in their home, and require and insecure third place, increasing risks.
The economic answer doesn't account for individual experience and desires. It would be economically efficient to remove meat from everyone's diet and make them vegetarian. Massive cost, land, and emissions savings. It's simply not something people want.
Even Japan hasn't given up cars despite the incredible transit system, they have around 590 cars per 1000 people, the US is at around 800 per 1000 people. Even if you only look at Tokyo, it's 300 per 1000 people (comparable to New York)
As for the sex thing, it's not a safety problem, it's a privacy problem. Japan solves this issues with dedicated sex hotels (called Love Hotels) that can be rented by the hour and have extra privacy provisions for coming and going.
I want to see car use reduced, but I'm not walking 100 meters to the bus stop, for a 15 minute bus ride to the nearest train station, for a 20 minute train ride to the city, for another 10 minute bus ride to my work place, with a 5 minute wait on each of those for the transfers. I can drive there in 50 minutes even in rush hour traffic, and it's only 35 minutes when things are clear. Luckily I only commute 1 day a week.
For my situation, a personal autonomous vehicle is the superior option. Or even perhaps a neighborhood dedicated taxi for the commute in, supporting 2-3 people's commute based on time and destination.
In your case this issue is that transit takes twice as long as driving. That sounds like a transit design failure.
I'm aware that transit has challenges in rural areas, but that's a small portion of transit.
The primary point I'm trying (and clearly failing) to get across, is that the North American lie that suburbs arent dense enough to have any transit. As we seem to be agreeing, a large share of somewhere even as low as 6 acres houses can work. Therefore that "standard" 1/4 acre lots that are all over the bloody place are more than dense enough for transit.
There also dense enough for businesses too, but that another argument.
It sounds like a road issue to me. There's only one road the to local village from my house. One road between my village and the nearby city, and my work isn't on that direct line. Nothing can be done about any of those short of a personal bus line just for my house, which is normally called a taxi.
I live in an area with only slightly larger than quarter acre lots, less than a half acre each.
So your neighborhood is somewhere in the 1200-2500 houses / mi^2 ? But it's a ~15 min drive to the village for any shopping? Perhaps a lack of goods and services for your neighborhood is the more important issue.
I'm also not clear on how the train from the village to the city is slower than driving. Is it just a very slow train?
Edit: US units are confusing, my initial density figures were way off. 640 acres to a mi^2
My neighbourhood is on a lake, so while the properties are small, they only exist as a strip along the water and a block out from that. We are surrounded by mountains which make building further difficult.
I think there's around 2000 people around the whole lake, and it takes 15 minutes to drive from top to bottom.
I live on the other side of a mountain from the city, the train we had (it doesn't run anymore) was definitely slower than cars. It also would have to stop multiple times once it got to the suburbs of the city to pick up or drop off people.
In that case, yes, it sounds like a small autonomous fleet from the central point, with a light rail to the city would be a good solution.
My in-laws have a similar chokepoint. Living on an island all traffic is bottlenecked though a single ferry (now reduced capacity due to widening vehicles).
Bus/tram to the neighboring town and city from the ferry would cover 90% of non-farming/work traffic, and avoid needing to wait up to 4 crossings to get across. An small autonomous fleet would achieve the same effect on island.