> Self-driving cars or not, the US is still going to be an expensive, inefficient country that can boast about its amazing economy, yet most people living there are at third-world country levels of development
For fuck’s sake, the world’s largest rail system and navigable waterways say hello.
I’ve advocated for public transit. But it’s turning into zealotry when an $11bn project showing actual gains is turned into a soapbox for decrying a pet project.
If Waymo/Google/Alphabet really cares about people's safety and this is nothing but a pet project where the amount raised ($11bn) in 15 years is ~3% of their whole revenue in 2023, they wouldn't mind open sourcing their whole system, including for other commercial ventures.
Until then, the whole thing is nothing but a Trojan horse to let encroach themselves even more into another aspect of our lives.
> they wouldn't mind open sourcing their whole system, including for other commercial ventures
You seem to just not like that this is done by Google. (Or by any private entity.) That is fine. I, like, hate this one restaurant in New York. But be honest about your motivations and check your biases.
This isn’t self-driving cars vs public transit debate because there isn’t one. If Google were funding a leg of passenger rail I suspect you’d be similarly incensed.
> world's largest freight rail system
The world’s largest rail system, period. It’s also the largest freight rail system. But passenger and freight are types of rail systems.
I despise this way of arguing. Laying down x length of rail track is not a difficult problem whatsoever. Such a crude metric is entirely insufficient to back up an argument about how great American railways supposedly are.
What's the ticket cost for the passengers compared to other countries? Average train delay? Cancellation rate? Speed? Death rate? The argument is not looking so hot anymore, right? Then stop it with the irrelevant statistics of rail track length.
>Laying down x length of rail track is not a difficult problem whatsoever.
It actually is. Japan's new maglev shinkansen line is stalling because they can't get land rights to lay rail through.[1]
An even more blasphemous example is California's high speed rail project which never accomplishes anything, but I'm pretty sure that also suffers from a severe case of legalized money laundering.
This is not a matter of who is doing it, but (a) why and (b) second-order effects.
> If Google were funding a leg of passenger rail I suspect you’d be similarly incensed.
It depends on (a) why and (b) second-order effects.
Are they doing it, e.g, because they want to build a new campus in a lower-cost-of-living area, and they want to make the idea of living in Tuscaloosa, AL more palatable by having it connected to Atlanta, GA with train service that does not take 6(!!!!) hours as Amtrak currently does? Amazing, go Google!
Oh, they want to make it so that everyone can use it at reasonable prices, but Google employees can do it for free and get priority boarding? Fine, if that's what it takes to get private enterprises investing in infrastructure, I'm okay with it.
Oh, they want to do it because they are going to use it as a test-bed for some revolutionary transportation technology that they pinky-promise will eventually work as some Futurama-style tube network where anyone can go door-to-door as fast as possible? And they are offering the whole thing for free (or heavily subsidized) for everyone that enrolls in their beta program? Then please Google go fuck itself, because we all know how this is just bait.
For fuck’s sake, the world’s largest rail system and navigable waterways say hello.
I’ve advocated for public transit. But it’s turning into zealotry when an $11bn project showing actual gains is turned into a soapbox for decrying a pet project.