I love this approach. It would be great to have 100s of these on more or less predefined trajectories, but without a set schedule. Just press a button and one shows up a few minutes later, perhaps with already some passengers going similar routes. It could help anchor urban development, something a pure self driving car would not too, and the absence of a set schedule removes the biggest drawback of public transportation. They can also just use existing roads, no need to construct a separate track. I hope these things would help introduce affordable public transportation in many US cities, and actually be useful and practical.
> the absence of a set schedule removes the biggest drawback of public transportation.
I'm wagering that most everyone who thinks this way is mentally comparing against their most familiar American city. In Germany and Switzerland (and probably others), the trains and buses run on a schedule, and if a train is more than about 30 seconds late, you'll see the locals starting to anxiously cross-check their watches with each other.
When you can plan down to the minute, using public transport becomes much more convenient and efficient (This is easier with trains than buses, though the buses do stop and wait at stops until it's time for them to proceed).
Alternatively, if it's like Singapore, and you are on a common route, and the busses are basically coming by every 2-3 minutes, you don't even bother planning - you just show up and in a minute or two get on whatever bus is going your way.
It's good enough, that I don't even bother to hurry across the street when I see my bus pulling up to a stop, because I know another one will be right behind it fairly soon.
My one non-negotiable requirement when finding a place to live in Singapore (Well, two after Air Conditioner) - isn't an oven, or hot water in the kitchen, or even my own washroom - but I won't live more than 15 minutes walk away from a major bus route or MRT station. The government is working hard to make that a reality for the entire population.
> the absence of a set schedule removes the biggest drawback of public transportation
I’d argue that having no schedule is even worse.
With a set schedule, I can just go to the stop, wait a minute, and a bus will come – most lines are running every 5 or 10 minutes anyway (or 15 to 20min in the suburbs).
With this, the situation would get a lot worse, I’d have higher waiting times, less of a guarantee that one would come (what if there’s not enough demand?), etc.
With an uber like indicator of wait time, it seems like it would be tolerable. If a bus is guaranteed to show up in 20 minutes, i can make use of those 20 minutes.
Fundamentally though, it's a density/diffusion problem. Having enough rides available in the right spots is tough. Especially when, say 10% of riders go way off in the sticks, with no need for pickups out there. You want a nice random distribution of rider routes, but really, people go east in the morning, and west in the evening (for example), so a lot of capacity is unused just getting back to where demand is.
tricky tricky problem. schedules and defined routes are part of the solution, for sure.
And many cities already have on-demand busses (mine calls them ALiTa or "Anruflinientaxi", pretty much meaning "taxi that operate as bus line on demand via calling a phone number".
But an especially important part, as you mentioned, is knowing for sure when the next bus will come – even without looking at the display – so you can plan for that, and use that time.
This is one area I've been rather happy with using HERE Maps for, I put in my destination and my desired arrival time and the vast majority of the time I get a workable route on public transit that has only failed me a handful of times (I've always allotted myself extra time to avoid human error, so the few times it's been wrong I've still gotten to my destination with time to spare). Even Muni (which most locals seem to complain about) didn't give me many troubles, but my local municipality is junk for public transit so maybe I'm way more lenient than most.
In Moscow all buses are equipped with GPS/GLONASS trackers and there is an app, Yandex.Transport, that shows you where all the buses are. It is hard to keep a precise schedule in traffic, but with the app you always know how far away the next bus is.
This is a pretty awesome solution that ensures the numbers actually are useful, and that everyone can easily understand them (without having to look at a map and find where the route is).
>> the absence of a set schedule removes the biggest drawback of public transportation
>With a set schedule, I can just go to the stop, wait a minute, and a bus will come – most lines are running every 5 or 10 minutes anyway (or 15 to 20min in the suburbs).
Your European is showing... ;)
In Canada and the US, except some core routes in the urban centre of major cities, you will never see 5 to 10 minute frequency. I feel like this lack of schedule would have far more benefit for North American commuters.
Indeed. And it’s a good thing that for those people we now have the technology to improve things.
But considering what Uber tried to do, I’m pretty sure it will happen again that people try to force US concepts on European cities, and people here get angry because they lose products and services they like, and get worse alternatives.
Which is also a case whenever Google buys a startup and turns a "globally available" service into an "available everywhere – in the US" service.
No, but they tried to eliminate their competition with unfair business practices (predatory pricing, for example, driving without insurance, etc).
The result was that, without them being banned from doing that, they'd have been able to provide a cheaper product, which, for the average customer would not have been better, but long-term, would have reduced the quality of service.
That's the whole point of predatory pricing: first, you are so cheap that all competition dies off, then you increase the prices above what it was before you entered the market, then, if new competition appears, you buy them up or sue them until they're bankrupt.
Any customer will use the cheaper service, cause it is cheaper — but they also lose a lot of benefits over longer terms.
Has Uber actually raised the prices anywhere? Or by "happen again", you're not talking about anything that has actually happened, but that you assume it will happen?
I’m talking about Germany – but the driver’s insurance will not pay if the driver is driving for-profit (which he does in that case) and uber will not pay if the driver has no passenger on board.
And your own health insurance will refuse to pay, too, because the driver is responsible.
The result is that either the pedestrian, or the driver, will end up bankrupt.
The tech is neat and I'm sure this is just the beginning of these kinds of driverless vehicles. Dubai even has driverless cars on the road.
What's really scary is that all signs point to the end of the blue collar workforce being near. Drones to do construction, to operate the trains, planes and automobiles, so that us and our cargo get where they need to go. What's the plan for replacing work after this new era arrives?
Futurists popularized that we would have robot servants for generations and it's becoming true. They didn't popularize the notion that 1% of the population would own all the robots.
> What's the plan for replacing work after this new era arrives?
Who cares? Anybody sees a problem with automating away so many jobs that unemployment rises to 50% and beyond? Unemployment is not a problem. It's how we deal with it that is. You just can't expect everyone to work when machines do all the work.
So… how about we all work less? What about a 4 days work-week, or even 3? How about automating so much work that voluntary community service becomes enough?
We need to think about it soon, because the current model is not pretty: just let the jobless starve, and lock them up (or out) when they start to demand jobs or (gasp!) money. And if things get ugly, send the army bots. "Shoot on sight" is pretty easy to automate, if you don't care to discriminate.
> hey didn't popularize the notion that 1% of the population would own all the robots.
The heart of the problem, really. To this, I see only one solution: abolishing lucrative property, communist scare crow be dammed.
> You just can't expect everyone to work when machines do all the work.
Wrong. When those unemployed people won't be able to buy anything produced by the robots because they don't have money, there is only one option left: If people want to work, they still can. They can work for themselves! They can use technology that is still available to aid them in their work to earn a living. A small patch of land could feed many. Unemployed people could team up to form collectives and grow their own food, install solar panels and other energy generation devices, barter with other humans for skilled services. Basically we can still do everything we can do today, but robots will also offer stuff at low price.
If people are driven to the point where they can't even work to save themselves from poverty, not even if they work for themselves directly, then we will have a revolution on our hands. That could happen if wealth becomes even more concentrated at the top, and this usually happens when there are technological leaps that bring temporary advantages (monopoly) to a company.
I don't really think working 3-4 hours for a majority of population will ever become a reality. The biggest expense the working class have is usually rent/mortgage.
If everyone makes good money then the prices are guaranteed to go up. This is the biggest flaw that I also find with guaranteed basic income. At the end it will always sucked slowly up with those who own the land.
Thing is, land is expensive in cities, because everyone must live there. If you're free to move to anywhere you want without losing your income, suddenly the city landlords are competing with vast amounts of very cheap land.
(Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the Land monopoly, but I don't think it's a real threat to UBI)
This will only happen if we keep up with the current insanity that is corporate capitalism. There must be other ways. We could freeze prices for instance.
If we don't find a solution, inequality will rise until we get a violent revolution, or a police state to keep the poor in check. I think neither of these outcomes is much better than the "communism" we got in the USSR.
When I ask my peers (mid-twenties) about the concept of basic income they freak out at the concept of people not working. Unfortunately it's going to take a few more generations to understand we need to rethink the next steps of someone entering adulthood.
It doesn't help that capitalism is so ingrained in our culture. Go to good school, get a worthwhile degree to make yourself a valuable commodity (don't ever pretend you aren't a commodity, that's all labor is) and if you're lucky you will live a good life. The thought of not having to WORK, to be BETTER than the competition just doesn't make sense to a lot of people. While I just made a comment on reddit not more than an hour ago that humans are a naturally cooperative species, ultimately our base instincts are still to compete for resources to rise above our peers (even if we may help our own in the process).
It's going to take a lot of social training to make people comfortable with the fact that we are rapidly approaching a post-scarcity world where the traditional model of growth-fueled capitalism falls apart (and it will happen, Earth can only sustain so many humans at a time).
It doesn't help that capitalism is so ingrained in our culture.
On the contrary, capitalism is all about owning and deploying capital (including assets like robots) to produce an income beyond one's own labor. UBI is essentially a plan to eliminate the working class, turning everyone into capitalists :)
They're arguably right to freak out. It takes a certain kind of life experience to think about, build, and maintain the systems we rely on to provide the necessities of life. It's probably not a great idea to destroy our society's ability to create adults without some kind of replacement path.
As an aside, I'm tentatively in support of basic income. This is one of the two major points that I worry about, along with rent-seeking behavior. The tl;dr of that argument is the mechanization of agriculture has already freed up tons of man-hours of labor, and the end result of that was systematic reaction that made living in a developed country approximately as expensive as poor people can afford if they work as hard as they have been.
> Who cares? Anybody sees a problem with automating away so many jobs that unemployment rises to 50% and beyond? Unemployment is not a problem. It's how we deal with it that is. You just can't expect everyone to work when machines do all the work.
It's amazing how some humans seem to have a complete lack of understanding of human nature.
Imagine a world in which 50% of people worked, and the other half lived on basic welfare income. How do you think the 50% that worked would feel about the other half? Do you think perhaps they might feel used? Do you think they might feel like slave labor? Do you think they might feel like the other half was taking advantage of them? Do you think they might be resentful of their earnings being taken away and given to people who don't work?
How are things going right now when people have this idea that there's a 99:1 division in society? How do you think people would get along with a 50:50 hard division? Can you imagine a better setup for societal unrest and class warfare? Can you imagine a society in which half the population thinks they're entitled to have the other half work to support them?
It'd be like a modern-day version of slavery, setting society up for a civil war. Communism used "the workers!" as one of its foundational elements--now imagine a world in which "the workers" are legally half of the population, and they decide they're tired of being taken advantage of, and they decide to assert themselves and their rights, go on strike, refuse to work, even revolt. And imagine the other half of the population, which thinks they're entitled to be supported by the other half, decides to assert themselves and demand what they think they're entitled to (if they're still capable of doing anything besides sitting in their VR headsets).
This is not wild imagination, this is history and human nature applied to your ideas, their logical conclusion.
> I see only one solution: abolishing lucrative property
Want to have a nice house with a yard to raise your family in? Nope. Panelák for you.
Want to work hard, save up, and buy a little cabin on the lake for your retirement? Nope. Too lucrative.
> communist scare crow be dammed.
Approximately one hundred million people (100,000,000 people) have been killed by Communist regimes.
But we're better humans now, right? We'll get it right this time. Just need to put the right people in charge and everything will be fine. Communism doesn't always turn corrupt, I mean, just look at the present-day Communist regimes of China, Cuba, and North Korea. Those governments aren't corrupt or evil, and their citizens are free, healthy, and happy. Nothing to be afraid of. Damn the scarecrows, full speed ahead!
First, massive unemployment is coming. There is less and less need for work, there is no escaping it. In the extreme, voluntary work will be enough. That is, nobody really works, except the few that want to contribute. Or perhaps the majority would contribute a couple hours per week.
So that's the ideal case. Now what about the transition, where there is too much work to rely on volunteering alone, yet too little for everyone to work full time?
One easy solution is to reduce the length of the work-week. Starting with 4 days (32 hours) right now would be a start. Later 3 days. Then 2. (Now that's an average: one could concentrate those work days on the summer or winter when it makes sense.)
Imagine a world in which 50% of people worked, and the other half lived on basic welfare income. How do you think the 50% that worked would feel about the other half?
The point is that people would choose whether to work or not. Everyone would have that choice - live on a basic, low income, or top it up by working. If you've chosen to work then it's unlikely you'll resent those who choose not to.
Furthermore, even if that wasn't the case, think about the number of people who hate their jobs and resent going to work now. Getting that down to 50% of people hating their job would be an improvement.
You're not thinking logically or rationally. Money does not grow on trees. Economies only work when people do. Taxes come from people working and spending (except property tax, which comes from simply existing). Without enough people working, there would not be sufficient taxes to support the people who are not working.
For example, look at Social Security: as the population ages, fewer people are working while more people are receiving. Of course, the Fed can literally create money with the press of a key on a keyboard, but eventually that bubble bursts and takes the economy with it.
And all of this is subordinate to human nature, because that rules over everything we do. And basic human nature shows that people fare better and are happier and healthier when they are able to provide for themselves. People are also lazy and will mostly take the path of least resistance. Put those two issues together with a world in which people don't have to work, and you have a recipe for disaster.
If your desire for a UBI is driven by compassion, then it is misguided, because it would not be good for people who are healthy and able to support themselves. For people who are disabled, that's a different story, but that wouldn't be a UBI.
I'm sure lots of people would appreciate not having to work 3 jobs up to 60h/week. Scaling back to max 30-35 hours like in more progressive countries sounds interesting. c.f. Michael Moore's "where to invade next" (I usually don't like his style, but I liked that movie)
A few countries are in talks about converting most types of social benefits into a flat garanteed minimum revenue (which is then taxed). Countries considering this include Canada and a few EU countries (Switzerland are probably the most advanced in this discussion).
Instead of racing to the bottom, competing for bad jobs, we should level the playing field and give people more options in order to adapt to this new economy. Although I guess it's obvious by now that I'm Canadian :)
Was Star Trek TNG an example of futuristic communism? It seems all real world attempts at communism were simultaneously founded as dictatorships, and Picard didn't seem like a dictator. I guess the post-scarcity world is a bit difficult to imagine.
The Volokh Conspiracy post, "How Federal is Star Trek's Federation?", is probably the best thing I've read on Trek's political economy. It describes something rather more authoritarian ...
...there's a fan theory that Star Trek and Blake's 7 are both depictions of the same universe, portraying the same Federation; it's just that Star Trek is pro-government propaganda, while Blake's 7 is resistance propaganda (on a much lower budget). Neither one, of course, tells the whole story...
Star Trek's form of government (TNG and after) was an example of "capitalism bad something something magical post-scarcity fairy juice." Fans have since put much, much more effort into theorizing about its actual nature than the writers ever did.
Doctors and developers I imagine will be the next to go after the bus and taxi drivers, each hospital will have just a few doctors overseeing machines and we will all program ourselves out of work building interpreters anybody can give voice commands to build custom software.
> In a software controlled world I tend to believe the developers will go last won't they?
A "software controlled world" seems to imply a constant need for development, but it will only need developers for as long as software can't do the necessary development itself. I can come up with reasons why this might be unlikely, but I don't see any of them following from whether the world is "software controlled".
Isn't there a constant need for development after all? Look at how fast the world is changing throughout time, new features and requirements are needed. Software doing the all necessary development and also adjusting itself to keep up with time without human involvement implies an AI similar to the ones in Terminator 2 movie and the world didn't look very good there :)
My point was not that there is no reason to believe developers will continue to be necessary, just that they do not seem to flow from "a software controlled world."
Regarding Terminator 2, I enjoyed the movie but be careful about treating fiction as evidence.
I can't find any more recent news, or mentions on the Sion public transport site, so my guess is they are still in testing and their planned rollout in "spring 2016" has been delayed.
This strikes me as an interesting approach that could maybe be generalized by a company like Uber.
We know some of the biggest problems with self-driving cars are:
- Needing extremely precise, up to date maps
- Inclement weather / conditions
Which suggests to me that if you chose a particular city, mapped it out extensively, and then only allowed these cars on the road during good weather conditions...you could deploy these things much, much more rapidly
And of course since consumers wouldn't buy a car that they can't use much of the time or take outside the city limits, the natural use-case of this is as an on-demand taxi service, like Uber or Lyft.
Never thought that I would learn something about my small school town on HN !
It's true that you can go almost everywhere on foot in a reasonable amount of time but some interesting places (for example pond where you can do BBC and drink) are remote and walking one hour just to get there sucks. Ordering a bus to get you and your friends there would be perfect
On a separated, fixed guideway it's not too difficult to have an autonomous systems. Airports, metros, and even "personal people movers" like in Morgantown all work without a driver on board. As you said, moving to the chaos that is a street is a different story.
There are getting to be many little systems of slow autonomous short buses.[1] These will probably be all over campuses big enough to have shuttle buses soon.
This may be the first way autonomous driving is deployed. Little buses go to destinations nearby, or take you to a station for larger and faster transit. Most trips would be very short, 1 km or so. The big advantage of driverless is that many little buses don't cost more per seat than a few big ones. A city bus costs $300K to $500K for a 50-seat bus. If somebody can build an 8 passenger autonomous bus for $75K, that's a win all by itself.
