The Suburban Solution

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The Suburban Solution

The Oldest Man: Jul 28, 2003

Rekinom posted:

Having said all that, I've lived for years in Japan and they manage to have a good mix of urbanization and family-centric areas. As discussed before, zoning has a lot to do with it. But then again, the Japanese are generally more group-conscientious about that sort of thing. Americans have a bad habit of "gently caress you got mine", where families look out for themselves and gently caress over young single people, and vice versa. I don't think we'll ever have a decent solution in this country.

Japan has very lax zoning that is all controlled by their central government. Almost all of their city land area is zoned for multi-use and there is gently caress-all that the local government can do about it since the zones are prescribed centrally.

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The Oldest Man: Jul 28, 2003

FCKGW posted:

People don't seem to be able to grasp that removing the driver from a vehicle does not fundamentally change how transit works.

Removing the driver from a car doesn't make less people take cars.
Removing the driver from a bus doesn't change how the bus operates.

Having a world with autonomous vehicles means that car ownership may go down, parking needs may change and MAYBE you can squeeze cars in tighter on the roads to alleviate congestion a bit. It's still the same amount of people in cars and busses, burning the same amount of fuel. That doesn't change.

Yeah it does, because you no longer have to pay a shitload of unionized public sector employees to have a bus service. I'm about to blow everyone's mind: self-driving is good for public transit because it plays on transit's strengths (professionally maintained and regularly replaced fleet vehicles that do a ton of miles) while nearly eliminating public transit's biggest problem (you need a lot of expensive operators). Eliminating those labor costs (and the pension liabilities of future drivers) makes public transit expansion something you can do much faster, cheaper, and without the threat that the entire system will collapse in a recession.

It's less good for Uber because Uber's maximally efficient business model is contractor serfs who buy the cars for them and they already have that. They're investing into automated cars because they want to survive the next ten years, not because it'll be a better business than what they already have.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2016 08:55

The Oldest Man: Jul 28, 2003

twodot posted:

Do you have evidence this is true? I can think of a lot people you need to employ that aren't drivers (fare enforcement, mechanics, administrators), and a lot of marginal expenses that aren't employees (maintenance, parking space, energy) that makes me think driver salary and benefits aren't particulary large obstacles to expansion.

Can't speak to everyone's mass transit issues but it's literally The Problem for King Country Metro: http://mynorthwest.com/362881/king-county-metro-needs-more-drivers/

# ¿ Dec 17, 2016 03:28

The Oldest Man: Jul 28, 2003

Badger of Basra posted:

That article seems to say that the problem is they don't have enough drivers, rather than that the ones they do have are a huge drain on their budget.

Inflexible expensive labor forces become a bottleneck during budget squeezes. The two things are intrinsically connected.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2016 04:12

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