People always say this, but

a) even countries known for good transit like Japan still have a ton of cars for various things, and

b) there's no getting around that the money going into self-driving cars vs public transit isn't something that can really be swapped. It's coming from a different place for a different reason.

We absolutely could invest into more trains even with the SDC money flowing anyway, it's not like the SDC money is blocking it. We collectively choose not to do this, and it's not Waymo's fault.

Public transit doesn't really go that far, when you talk about the last mile it's pretty limited.

But I do like what you're going with that and maybe we could have public autonomous car infrastructure that we all share. And just one large global team working on awesome autonomous vehicles. That could be little pod type vehicles for one person and bigger ones as needed. Cuz the road system is pretty broad and amazing right now.

The problem with transit systems is that they aren't designed for competition. They're costly to make, have few builder companies to choose from (who all know the game very well and go over budget as a tactic), and extremely difficult to overhaul/retrofit when more efficient tech becomes available.

They're great for short distance travel in densely populated areas, but outside of that I doubt they'd hold up in long-term cost and efficiency vs autonomous electric cars for long.

As for parking, a fully autonomous car service would allow a car to come to you and pick you up. So it wouldn't need to park near where you are.

Autonomous cars are pretty space and energy efficient if they act as public transportation. Cars spend something like 95% of their life parked. If AVs replace personal ownership, that's a HUGE reduction in the number of cars in existence. The future looks like a lot less parking lots and 8 lane suburban stroads.

It does. About the same amount of money was spent in funding for Waymo as funding SFMTA over the period Waymo has existed. So in SF we are putting in as much money on public transit as Alphabet et al. is on Waymo and we both have the results we have.

>If I could get around by bus, light rail, bike, and all of the wasted city space devoted to parking could be turned into more housing and amenities, that would be great.

I guess it depends on where we're talking about. The majority of the US is not inside a city. So just diverting all resources into public transportation is only serving the metros.

If we're talking about a small country then sure.

Small self-driving busses would do exactly what you want. The cost of increasing bus service is overwhelmingly the cost of bus drivers. If the busses could drive themselves, cities could afford to deploy a lot more busses, especially smaller busses, running much more often.

As for light rail, in the US, light rail projects can typically cost hundreds of millions of dollars per mile. The NYC 2nd Avenue subway expansion cost billions of dollars per mile.

And, if you want people to stop wasting city space on parking, self-driving taxis are exactly the right solution.

We can have both. The resources aren't coming from the same bucket. Public transportation must be built by the local government, and is subject to that local government's ability to execute. In contrast, Self driving cars are largely siphoning resources from for-profit companies.

I live in the west side of San Francisco, and we may get a subway station by 2050 if we're exceptionally lucky. I'd rather have self-driving cars this decade, please.

>all of the resources that are going into autonomous cars was instead going into proper public transit infrastructure.

They need not be separated. This is the entire point of the Cybercab and the Cybervan: Get self-driving cars, vans, etc. with the one job of moving people around. They only park to recharge or repair.

Public transit is too often a jobs program

> I'd much rather all of the resources that are going into autonomous cars was instead going into proper public transit infrastructure.

Solving the last mile problem also helps solve the public transit problem.

The issue in the US is that the current population configuration does not have single population points connecting to single employment points like back in the days of the mills or the factories. As such, public transit becomes difficult.

For example, the train in Southern California is hampered by the fact that you need huge parking lots and cars at the transit stops. If you can take an autonomous vehicle at either end, that evaporates and a LOT more people can now make use of the train effectively.

AVs and public transportation are not comparable. The cumulative lifetime investment in Waymo would not fund even half a year of capital expenses for the New York MTA, for example.

Cybercab is more efficient per rider mile than most public transit systems.