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Driverless cars were the future but now the truth is out: they’re on the road to nowhere
(www.theguardian.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Funny how, if we had weight and trip class segregated traffic infrastructure, walkable cities, car-free areas, etc. Then we would probably already have several successful self-driving taxi companies. As indeed, a point A to point B exclusive use highway would definitely be cheaper for mid and low density traffic areas than trains. But since everyone insists travel to be from front door to front door, then the transport network is just too complex and dangerous for the machines to deal with.
When it is wet and cold outside and you have a week's groceries for the family, nobody wants to walk for awhile with all that crap in the cold, then get into a public transit system, then walk even further at the destination, again having to hold all their crap in the wet and cold. Is the transit system going to let one wheel a cart into it? Because I can't hold the week's groceries for my family with just my arms in a single trip.
You don't have to get a week's worth of groceries when you don't live in a car-first dystopia.
You walk five minutes to the store, spend 5-10 minutes grabbing stuff, then walk back with like a single bag. You shouldn't even need to get on public transit for basics like groceries, but even if you do a single bag isn't a problem.
How many people live a 5 minute walk from a grocery store? I think the closest one to me is about 5 miles away in a city of 250k+. That'd be like a 4 hour round trip walk on average.
That's part of what we want to change. I live a 3 min walk from the grocery store and it's fucking glorious. Better designed cities are better for everyone.
My main problem with this line of thinking is that our cities already exist as they are, and it would take Herculean effort from the government, citizens, and companies in order to raze and rebuild them in a more ideal way.
My city passed mixed use zoning to tackle exactly this years ago and nothing has changed.
Where do you live that has grocery so far apart? Are you actually in the city or like a suburb of it?
I'm in Brooklyn. I can't speak to all of Brooklyn but this neighborhood has a population of 100k from Wikipedia. Where my friend used to live wikipedia says is about 120k, and they had good walkable options.
I live on the west coast where cities aren't as dense as the boroughs of NYC or most eastern states.
Ah. Yeah, that's one of the reasons I don't want to live there. Too sprawled out.