Instead let’s have more light rail and electric buses please.
As a disabled dude, let’s have both. I can’t make the short trip to my nearby bus stop, this would be taxes that I would never benefit from. But personal cars or services like these, I can make it down my driveway.
It blows my mind how many people, when talking about transportation, just completely forget that not totally-capable people exist. I guess we are all supposed to stay in one place and never go anywhere due to a physical disability.
I’ll happily vote for taxes to enhance public transport, if everyone votes to keep services like these also improving and growing, especially in areas where municipal services are lacking or completely unavailable. Uber and Lyft were my only access to restaurants and groceries for a time. Shit gets expensive, but it’s better than literally having to beg friends to get my groceries every week.
Just don’t forget about those who can’t enjoy the infrastructure.
Does your city not have a service where a small bus goes to your door? Here in Seattle you book a ride to where you need to go the day before and they come and pick you up. Heck, the small town I grew up in (2500 people) in the middle of nowhere had a similar service.
My current one does, but only goes to city limits, which isn’t very useful (my doctors and such, for example, are a city over). My prior one, you had to live within half a mile of a traditional bus stop. I was just out of the ‘service range’, at like 0.65ish miles away.
During COVID lockdowns, when lots of people had to work from home, people who couldn’t work from home were all talking about how much faster it was to get to work and there was hardly any traffic on the roads.
Even if public transport doesn’t benefit someone directly, getting a bunch of other people off the road still will.
there were legal taxis before uber, uber or self driving cars don’t really change anything in that regard
Uber changed things a lot. Uber lets you easily request the ride and track the driver instead of calling for a cab then calling back 45 minutes later to find out where they are and find out they never sent anyone.
Taxis are expensive away from a metro area (or ‘we don’t go that far’ etc), unfortunately, and trying to travel a short distance made them even less economical. U/L was the best way that I could get around without massively tanking my bank account, and still finances were a death sentence in that living situation (living on $600ish a month - housing, utilities, food, medications… - was a recipe for disaster; such is life).
The idea is to improve them for future use, of course they aren’t a current drop-in we’re-done replacement.
I understand you can’t access it as it is now, but ideally we’d have systemic change that would allow you to access public transport. I don’t know what your handicap is, but (other than immune system issues) I don’t see what could be wrong that is impossible for public transport to be built to allow for. Sure, you have to get to it, but that could be made a lot easier if we weren’t in a system designed for cars where everything is a million miles away.
I could be totally wrong. I have no idea of anything about you. I just would prefer a system that helps everyone, which these cars won’t. In particular, impoverished people are going to be even more fucked if we start accepting this as an option for handling disabilities. It doesn’t seem like a good idea.
I turn 31 next month; I’m a stroke ‘survivor’ (kill me) who completely lost the fine motor control of my right arm, hand, leg, foot, toes/fingers, a quarter of my vision in both eyes, ~90% of my nerve response on my right side of my entire body, as well as a few other things. Literally getting down the road to the bus stop 1/8 miles away would take 20 minutes, be immensely difficult and tiring, my pulse would be 130+ the whole time and say if I’m going to go to a store and buy something, I can’t because my one operable hand is holding my cane to keep me stable. I tried, so fucking hard, to continue ‘normal’ life. I despise what has happened to me and the fact that I will never, ever be whole again makes me regret calling help when I realized what was occurring. I live every day in hell, in a prison created by my own stupid body, and it will be like this until my premature death.
It’s the hardest thing in the world to just get to the transportation. I hate that I’m saying it, but it’s absolutely true :(
I’m not saying it’s the best answer - fuck, I’m trying to get back to driving, it has always been a huge part of me, my happiness, my enjoyment of life - but at least it can help people like me until something better comes along.
No shit. If you need to move people just look at where the most people are moved… airports. Every major airport has buses and rail in and out. There’s no reason for cities to be built around individual transport when individuals are rarely transporting more than themselves.
Except for Detroit. That’s because putting in light rail down the middle of the highway that could support it between the airport and Detroit city proper would actually make sense and we don’t like that around here. Also, the Motor City hates bus services. Am I salty? Perhaps.
Oh, you think that’s bad? Check the Texrail map. It’s the light rail line for Fort Worth, Texas.
It’s literally one line that goes from downtown to DFW airport. There’s a planned expansion that will push it slightly further further west to the medical district… in downtown.
And don’t even get me started on the bus line intervals. The one that’s closest to me runs HOURLY. It may as well not even fucking exist, and I think that’s the idea.
It cost nearly $350 million to install a 2-mile-long rapid bus lane on Van Ness Maybe future expansions will be cheaper based on lessons learned, but it’s clear that any infrastructure in SF is tremendously complicated and expensive. Doesn’t mean it’s not worth pursuing!
Creating new public infrastructure in the US can be extremely expensive, but it’s definitely still worth pursuing.
Nearly every in-depth study shows that for every $1 invested, the economic return is somewhere around $4-$5. And on top of that, failing to have adequate public infrastructure can cause serious economic consequences, which are compounded in areas with a lack of affordable housing.
Even though this article is a little old and sponsored by a party with a vested interest on the topic, I think it’s worth a read:
https://www.politico.com/sponsor-content/2018/06/when-public-transit
In my opinion, the problem for the US is convincing people/businesses that it’s worth it. Shifting away from cars and increasing investments in public infrastructure are two fairly unpopular measures right now, despite the actual economic evidence being overwhelming positive.
To me, it’s a solid example of where great leaders are needed to do something temporarily unpopular for the long term benefit of the constituents.
For sure, totally agree. In other countries where I’ve lived, I’ve noticed less selfish blocking of local infrastructure. There are just a lot of selfish people in America, and more pain points they can exploit to throw up roadblocks (both politically and literally)
Troll account that purposefully takes the losing side of debates: https://alexandrite.app/lemmy.world/u/Guru_Insights99@lemm.ee
It is like a bunch of the self-driving companies are trying to kill the tech by making the public turn against them.
I was stoked for them to get here. My entire life between my house and my kid’s school is inundated in self driving cars. I live it. I fucking hate them. And elderly people in Teslas.
I was in SF recently and got stuck behind a self driving car that was trying to turn down a closed street. The street had a police barrier up and it just sat there with its blinker on waiting for the street to open up. Meanwhile, everyone behind it is stuck there waiting for it to make a turn that it would never be able to make.
Eventually, after sitting in traffic for ten minutes, not knowing what was up, cars in front of me started to move around it and then I realized what was going on. I understand why people hate these things.
Anyone have the footage?
I keep looking but can’t find it. I keep just finding people saying the pedestrian was hit by a vehicle with a driver and thrown under a driverless car which spokepeople are saying tried to stop as fast as possible to minimize damages.
If the autonomous car reacted correctly then why wouldn’t they release the video which corroborates this?
They did, I’m sorry that isn’t what the article wanted to show. That is what we call propaganda.
If you find facts thay differ from that let me know.
