> everyone with sense avoids the whole thing

Or the majority of the residents of New York City on their daily commute? I like to think I have sense, and I happily use public transport most days. I prefer it to sitting in traffic, isolated in a car. At least I can read a book. If you work too hard to insulate yourself from the world, the spaces you'll feel comfortable in will get more and more narrow. I think that's a bad thing.

NYC people uses it because the alternatives are either slower or much more expensive. I'm sure they'd rather use a waymo if it was as fast and cheap as the subway.

Using Lyft, Uber, or Waymo in San Francisco is slow, especially during peak times. To go across town in NYC by train, it would take 5-10 times as long to go that same distance in SF by car. If you have to cross a bridge or tunnel, it's going to be even longer during peak times.

That's the whole problem. Car transportation simply doesn't scale, so there will never be an option to use waymo that's as fast and cheap as the subway. It's worth calling out that an efficient train system is vital to keeping car traffic moving quickly, because once everyone is in a car, it's gridlock.

I think the point is doubting whether it is ever possible for Waymo to ever be as fast or cheap as public transport in NYC.

The cost of avoiding public transport in NYC is massive compared to most cities...

Living there, without the means to avoid public transport is something I would also consider insane.

> some deaf mouth breather

I quite agree with the overall point but can we leave this kind of discourse on X, please? It doesn't add much, it just feels caustic for effect and engagement farming.

Price helps a whole lot, I think more than you give it credit for. Driving is also an active thing, this also helps.

We also police driving behaviour, in a way that nobody does for public behaviour.

And no matter what I don't have to hear or smell other drivers.

The vast majority of the anti-social behavior on public transit not relevant in automobiles because (1) you can't turnstile jump the gas tank, (2) an automobile is effectively very expensive set of headphones, and (3) you can inhale whatever you want in your vehicle and your neighbor doesn't have to breath it.

Automobiles are a wildly inefficient and expensive form of transportation in urban areas. At the same time, we ought to be willing to ask why a significant amount of our urban population still prefers to pay all that extra money to sit in traffic.

I think they have a point. But the anti-social behaviors in a car on the road are mostly a different set of anti social behaviors than you’d see on a bus or train. But they certainly exist.

Oh, no doubt that people can be anti-social on the road. My only point is that anti-social behavior on the road is different in kind.