As someone who lives in the Bay Area we already have trains, and they're literally past the point of bankruptcy because they (1) don't actually charge enough maintain the variable cost of operations, (2) don't actually make people pay at all, and (3) don't actually enforce any quality of life concerns short of breaking up literal fights. All of this creates negative synergies that pushes a huge, mostly silent segment of the potential ridership away from these systems.

So many people advocate for public transit, but are unwilling to deal with the current market tradeoffs and decisions people are making on the ground. As long as that keeps happening, expect modes of transit -- like Waymo -- that deliver the level of service that they promise to keep exceeding expectations.

I've spent my entire adult life advocating for transportation alternatives, and at every turn in America, the vast majority of other transit advocates just expect people to be okay with anti-social behavior going completely unenforced, and expecting "good citizens" to keep paying when the expected value for any rational person is to engage in freeloading. Then they point to "enforcing the fare box" as a tradeoff between money to collect vs cost of enforcement, when the actually tradeoff is the signalling to every anti-social actor in the system that they can do whatever they want without any consequences.

I currently only see a future in bike-share, because it's the only system that actually delivers on what it promises.

Trains need well behaved people, otherwise they are shit.

I don't want to hear tiktok or full volume soap operas blasting at some deaf mouth breather.

I don't want to be near loud chewing of smelly leftovers.

I don't want to be begged for money, or interact with high or psychotic people.

The current culture doesn't allow enforcement of social behaviour: so public transport will always be a miserable containment vessel for the least functional, and everyone with sense avoids the whole thing.

No matter what, people are going to still use cars because they are an absolute advantage over public transportation for certain use cases. It is better that the existing status quo is improved to reduce death rates, than hope for a much larger scale change in infrastructure (when we have already seen that attempts at infrastructure overhaul in the US, like high-speed rail, is just an infinitely deep money pit)

Even though the train system in Japan is 10x better than the US as a whole, the per-capita vehicle ownership rate in Japan is not much lower than the US (779 per 1000 vs 670 per 1000). It would be a pipe dream for American trains/subways to be as good as Japan, but even a change that significant would lead to a vehicle ownership share reduced by only about 13%.

Isn't a vehicle that goes from anywhere to anywhere on your own schedule, safely, privately, cleanly, and without billions in subsidies better?

Me too but given our extensive car brain culture, Waymo is an amazing step to getting less drivers & cars off the road, and to further cement future generations not ever needing to drive or own cars

Ski lifts man, ski lifts all over the city

I think future generations will resent us for bureaucratizing our way out of the California HSR.