alt Hacker News>Yes. I would go as far as ripping out all the local transit (eventually). Self-driving cars have solved the only real problem with cars: people who can't or shouldn't drive (children, elderly, people with disabilities, etc.)
One other problem with cars is that not everybody can afford one, or really should need to have one in a big city. Even if Waymo were a free or cheap public service, it's still far less efficient and more disruptive than a robust public transit system. When dense cities are walkable and bikable, less people need cars for everything. That's hard to achieve with cars at 40mph everywhere. There's a place for cars but we've only created the problem by having them zoom around every inch of a city at the expense of everything else.
Also, tax the companies, easy. In America we've been manipulated to loathe the ideas of taxes. Taxes are what pays for things that are good for everyone.
> One other problem with cars is that not everybody can afford one
That's incorrect. A typical bus/subway ride costs around $20, about the same amount as a car ride. We just heavily subsidize them, typical farebox recovery rate is around 15%, and that's not considering capital expenses.
Once shared self-driving cars become more common, we can just retarget the subsidies.
> Even if Waymo were a free or cheap public service, it's still far less efficient and more disruptive than a robust public transit system.
Self-driving cars with mild car sharing (2-4 people per car) will be more efficient than transit in almost all scenarios.
> When dense cities are walkable and bikable, less people need cars for everything.
Sigh. My point is that dense cities are now unliveable for the average person.
> or really should need to have one in a big city.
There shouldn't _be_ such cities. Giant metropolises are a failed experiment.
> Also, tax the companies, easy. In America we've been manipulated to loathe the ideas of taxes. Taxes are what pays for things that are good for everyone.
Yes. One good option is to tax the dense office space so that companies are incentivized to do remote work and/or offices in smaller cities.