Sneak Peek: Wed July 31, 2024
Added 2024-07-31 11:57:11 +0000 UTCToday is part one of my trip to the Valley of the Sun. I just had WAY too much to say about Phoenix, so you get Tempe (featuring my tour of the Culdesac car-free/car-lite development) in a couple weeks.
I cover all kinds of stuff in today's video that I thought was just fascinating, and I never quite know what's going to be of the most general interest to people, but my suspicion is it'll be the section on Waymo, the self-driving ridehail vehicles that operate all over a wide swath of the metro area. My thoughts are in the video, so I won't spoil them here, but it does get to my question (actually a whole tree of questions) for you all today, which is: have you tried Waymo yet? (I believe they're operating in the Bay Area too.) Or any kind of self-driving car?
There's a broader discussion to be had about whether these are a useful, scalable transportation solution for urban environments, but the piece I focus on in the video is really, are they better or worse than human-operated automobiles. There really are lots of ways to approach this question, so what I'd like to know is: whether you've experienced an autonomous vehicle or not, what are your thoughts on the technology in July (almost August) 2024? Do you trust it enough to use it? Would you avoid them on principle? Do they have a place in a modern urban transportation system? Whatever angle you want to take on this topic, I'm interested in hearing.
Happy Wednesday!
Comments
I think I've featured rainbow crosswalks in other videos...St Pete and Houston for sure just because they're in red states and I like the statement it makes in those places in particular. Do you need a dedicated video on rainbow crosswalk best practices??
Ray Delahanty
2024-08-05 23:14:07 +0000 UTCWhen I take a rideshare if Waymo is an option I prefer Waymo. Why? Mostly because I cycle much more than I use rideshare and every time I've cycled a Waymo has let me take the lane while it's a crapshoot whether a non-Waymo is gonna buzz past me going 15 over because they have to overtake the cyclist or whether they're gonna merge into my lane and crowd me out so they can take a right. A lot of the frustration around Waymo (I see in my advocacy circles at least) seems to be more about general progressive frustration over large companies. But my experience as a cyclist in front of Waymos has won me over.
meff
2024-08-05 06:01:12 +0000 UTCI hate to admit similarities between San Diego and Phoenix but I noticed in the video that Phoenix has the same sorta failed attempt at a rainbow crosswalk that we have. Our city traffic engineers claimed it was impossible to get rid of the standard white stripes in the crosswalk and that it would be unsafe because drivers wouldn't recognize it as a crosswalk, even though we have plenty of examples of artistic colorful crosswalk designs in other cities across the country. They would not budge on the white stripes and so we're left with crosswalks that look more like the Candyland game board than a pride rainbow haha.
Monica de la Cruz
2024-08-03 21:42:28 +0000 UTC
