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437 points Vinnl | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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philipallstar ◴[] No.43985073[source]
The increased speeds are excellent for those who can afford the toll. This is a universal benefit of toll roads for those people.
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bryanlarsen ◴[] No.43985179[source]
And the investments in public transit and bike paths are excellent for those who can't. Such unalloyed win-wins are hard to find.
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lokar ◴[] No.43985193[source]
I lived in Manhattan, and was very well paid. I did not own a car, and loved it. This would have been great for me as well.
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timewizard ◴[] No.43989879[source]
Did you have children or did you live alone?
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epistasis ◴[] No.43989923[source]
As someone with children, I can not imagine the bliss of living in Manhattan and being able to do things without needing a car.

Car-centric urban planning is hell with kids. You have to load them up into the car for any small trip. You can't walk or bike anywhere because cars make it so dangerous.

My only regret about living in the US is this car hellscape that is so hard to avoid. It's mandated by law, not chosen by the market.

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seanmcdirmid ◴[] No.43990307[source]
You can live in an urban neighborhood and only use your car a few times a week (mostly on weekends and for yearly kid doctor visits). Its not just Manhattan, Seattle supports this as well (well, you still "need" a car, but you can get away with not driving it very often). You need to be strategic about where you live (e.g. buying the house 7 minutes away from your kid's K-8 and 10 minutes away from his future 9-12, with grocery stores and dentists nearby).
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echelon ◴[] No.43990807[source]
Self-driving cars are going to turn America's car-centric "hellscape" into a superpower with untold second order benefits.

Everything will be connected and commutable, especially the suburbs. Automated, on-demand delivery will become a part of everyday life.

Instead of busses and semis, we'll have small pods for smaller cargo and small parties. Highways will turn into logistics corridors, and we'll route people and goods seamlessly.

All the clamor for trains and rail will go away when our roads become an even superior version of that. Private commuting to any destination, large homes with lots of land, same day delivery of everything.

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1. jcranmer ◴[] No.43991708[source]
Self-driving cars are the magic pixie dust of transportation planning, brought out to justify noninvestment in public transit.

As a mode of transportation, self-driving cars already exist--they're basically a taxicab service, the main difference being that some people hope that self-driving might magically make the cost of providing a taxi service cheaper.

> Instead of busses and semis, we'll have small pods for smaller cargo and small parties. Highways will turn into logistics corridors, and we'll route people and goods seamlessly.

"Lots of small things going point-to-point" is a much more difficult problem to route, especially at high throughput, than "bundle things into large containers that get broken apart near their destination." In the space of transit, your idea is known as Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), and PRT systems have invariably underwhelmed every time they've been built, as they struggle to live up to their promise.

Rail transit is incredibly efficient at moving large numbers of people--a metro line can easily move a dozen lanes of highway traffic--and there is nothing that you can do to roads to make them approach that level of efficiency, in part because the routing problems are insurmountable.