Portland gets very occasional snow. But they'll probably just shut the Waymos down along with everything else that shuts when there's snow and ice.
jrflo · 2026-04-28 18:50:21 UTC
They're currently testing in Minneapolis and plan to launch in the next year to the public, so they seem to think they can crack tough winters
strictnein · 2026-04-28 18:59:18 UTC
I really hope we're able to get them without the city council messing things up. The way they reacted to the news at first, you'd think Minneapolis was the first city to ever have autonomous vehicles. That, mixed with a heavy dose of "What about the buggy whip makers??"
vjvjvjvjghv · 2026-04-28 19:17:38 UTC
Wow. That will be a tough one. Driving on dry and even wet roads is quite predictable but snow is a completely different game.
derwiki · 2026-04-28 18:51:14 UTC
They’ve been testing in Truckee, CA for years
grogenaut · 2026-04-28 18:54:37 UTC
portland gets snow
lern_too_spel · 2026-04-28 18:55:37 UTC
They're in Detroit, Denver, Minneapolis, and D.C.
Sleaker · 2026-04-28 18:57:44 UTC
We do get ice and snow in Portland, along with flooding and landslides. No, it's not the same as Midwest, but we do get a few days every other year or so that you just don't drive out in. The black ice around a couple curvy sections of i-5 are notoriously bad at night in winters. (Terwilliger)
rootusrootus · 2026-04-28 20:59:21 UTC
I have lived in the midwest, as well as Portland. It is good that Portland only occasionally gets ice, because in like-for-like conditions it is way more dangerous than the midwest. Primarily because of hills. I found driving in snow & ice in the midwest to be mostly a non-event, even on inadequate tires.
whoodle · 2026-04-28 18:54:00 UTC
They’re being tested in Philly right now too
xnx · 2026-04-28 18:58:36 UTC
Multiple factors: market viability, climate compatibility, capacity, and definitely regulatory factors. Currently DC, NYC, Boston and Chicago are all being slowed down by anti-Waymo groups like Uber drivers and public-transit lobbyists.
bojan · 2026-04-28 19:15:04 UTC
Waymo is a sort of public transit. It's just an vastly more inefficient than any other form of public transit, but an order of magnitude more efficient than private passenger cars.
smilekzs · 2026-04-28 19:21:45 UTC
Or, more neutrally, a different tradeoff point between mass transit and personal cars.
xnx · 2026-04-28 20:03:29 UTC
> Waymo is a sort of public transit.
Definitely, and at no cost to taxpayers.
> It's just an vastly more inefficient than any other form of public transit
Waymo is less efficient in the narrow case of transporting hundreds of people between two specific points at a specific time, but more efficient for almost every other case.
If Waymo had dedicated right-of-way in the same way trains do, it would be more efficient.
pavon · 2026-04-28 21:31:26 UTC
Depends on your definition of efficiency. Any ride service will drive more miles thus resulting in more congestion and more energy use than personal vehicles, because in addition to driving from point A1 to B1, they have to drive from B1 to A2. They get closer with density but never match. They will also always be more expensive to operate per mile because you need to cover the cost of the driver (human or machine).
The flip side is drastically fewer parking spaces needed, most of which can be located outside of the city core. And decreased costs due to fewer accidents.
starkparker · 2026-04-28 19:29:41 UTC
If it's the latter then Portland makes little sense. There are no regulations allowing it and the bill to enable it is still in motion at the state level (and not a slam dunk).
> Hannah Schafer, communications director for the Portland Bureau of Transportation, said Waymo is welcome to map out the city streets.
> “All they’re doing right now is basically taking pictures. Taking pictures in the right of way, anyone is allowed to do that. That’s not something that we regulate,” Schafer said.
> However, she said the city would regulate the testing and driving of autonomous cars.
> “No one can drive driverless vehicles in Portland without a permit,” Schafer said. “That is not allowed.”
...
> Portland fought vigorously with Uber over the terms of its local arrival a decade ago and a battle is already brewing over Waymo. Portland council member Mitch Green staked out his opposition in January, telling constituents on Bluesky, “You should know I don’t support that.”
...
> Oregon legislators considered a bill earlier this year that would have set statewide rules for self-driving cars, and would have prohibited local governments from imposing blanket prohibitions on autonomous vehicles. The bill died in committee following opposition from local governments.
boc · 2026-04-28 18:44:36 UTC
I've determined that my ultimate dream car would be something like a Rivian but with Waymo tech, so I can drive it manually when I want/need (snowstorms, off-road), but I can also let it drive me across the country at night while I camp in the back. Would absolutely change the way we move across the US, especially if you have hobbies that involve a lot of gear and equipment.
quux · 2026-04-28 18:46:22 UTC
That's kind of a beautiful vision
ge96 · 2026-04-28 18:48:19 UTC
That would be something being asleep and waking up to a car crash
ticulatedspline · 2026-04-28 18:50:10 UTC
reminds me of an old joke:
"When I go I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming and afraid like the passengers in his car"
Polizeiposaune · 2026-04-28 19:11:29 UTC
The version I've heard a bunch of times had him as a bus driver..
BenjiWiebe · 2026-04-28 19:30:46 UTC
The version I've heard: When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep like Grandpa; not like Grandma, who died screaming "Look out for that car!"
derwiki · 2026-04-28 18:50:28 UTC
Snowstorms are probably when I’d most want self driving. Back in February driving from Tahoe to SF, they closed the road, not because of conditions, but because too many impatient drivers spun out. I trust Waymo to go the recommended speed and not get impatient.
walrus01 · 2026-04-28 19:00:09 UTC
In a Canadian context, on a two lane highway, sometimes doing the absolutely safe/totally cautious speed in a moderate snowstorm will result in a very large collection of vehicles behind you, with angry drivers. In particular if the persons collecting behind you are some combination of not very risk averse, commute on the same road every day, and are very confident in themselves because they have dedicated winter purpose studded snow/ice tires on.
Even if you also have good winter tires on, if your level of "caution" could be best measured as normal to high, sometimes it's a judgment call on when you want to pull off to the shoulder for 45 seconds to let a bunch of vehicles behind you pass. I'm not sure this is something any automated driver has been configured for. Or just generally to deal with driving when the road condition could best be described as "two only partially visible ruts in the snow where the tires of previous vehicles have driven, with snow in the centre".
Same thing in somewhere with a climate like upper Michigan or in Maine.
smilekzs · 2026-04-28 19:07:56 UTC
Turnouts exist. Unfortunately, head-of-line-blockers are very commonly already overwhelmed by the task of keeping tab of their own vehicle; would be a far stretch to expect them to simultaneously stay aware of traffic situations, spot the turnouts ahead, and then take the turnout.
rottencupcakes · 2026-04-28 19:04:01 UTC
I drove up there in the AM Thursday, Feb 18th, during the snowstorm, about an hour before they closed the pass for the rest of the day.
You couldn't see anything. As soon as there wasn't a car 20 yards in front of you, it was a complete whiteout. Ice built up on the wiper as quickly as you could possibly reach out of your window and clear it. Radar would probably be nice, but I don't think it'd be enough to keep driving. The cameras and lidar would be an absolute wreck.
I'm sure we'll get there eventually, but that is really the final frontier for AI driving I think. Waymos aren't even allowed to drive in a snowstorm right now. I suspect that you'll be dealing with Caltrans closing the pass for the rest of your life.
pj_mukh · 2026-04-28 19:28:37 UTC
Snowy/Ice-y driving? Check out all this Canadian work!
Fair point, and I know it was bad on Thu. I was traveling back on Monday and, other than avoiding the impatient drivers, conditions were fine.
radiorental · 2026-04-28 19:09:07 UTC
Its not always about speed, This winter I was on interstate 93 in a 4WD with winter tyres. I was doing 25-35mph because the roads weren't treated. I still spun out, like many others. The road was an ice rink.
Humans and Control System Models need feedback to operate, and worse still... when any input into the vehicle's controls produce zero results, you will spin out.
My concern with a model in these conditions is that it wouldn't recoginize the fact that other cars were in the ditch and that it should probably slow down
SR2Z · 2026-04-28 19:15:24 UTC
When it comes to controlling the wheels to prevent sliding and slipping, the AV control system is unbeatable. The ABS and traction control on a regular car has to cope with whatever control inputs the driver has made; on an AV, the computer models the grip limits of the wheel and plans a trajectory to not exceed them. It's not just for snow but also for changing pavement surfaces and the rain.
The main limitation is still sensors in the snow, but it seems to not be that big of a deal to build sensor packages that are better at seeing in the snow than a human is.
cucumber3732842 · 2026-04-28 21:02:31 UTC
This is the "works in a textbook" take.
Being able to plot a series of inputs that can more efficiently use available traction than a human doesn't prevent you from blundering your way into a dumb situation where the laws of physics dictate that the only possible outcomes are various flavors of bad ones.
It's not clear how often the software will chose poorly and need to brute force its way out with traction/handling. The fact that they seem to be hedging against this by putting the hardware on particularly performant cars indicates it must happen enough to matter or be rare but bad enough to matter when it does happen.
Waymo will probably also rack up a ton of technically not at fault accidents by being obtuse in traffic since there's when there's snow there's a lot less margin for the "two people trying to pass each other in a hallway" type missteps that behavior tends to create.
nico · 2026-04-28 19:12:59 UTC
After skiing in Utah, I wonder why the driving conditions around Tahoe get so bad. In comparison, for most places around Salt Lake/Park City, you never need chains or 4-wheel drive.
walrus01 · 2026-04-28 19:17:35 UTC
Utah snow at its elevations and climate is more dry and fluffy. Tahoe snow or similar when the temperature is only marginally below freezing is more likely to be wet, slushy. Same thing as snow/ice buildup on the mountain passes over the Cascades in WA when the temperature is hovering just below zero C.
drusepth · 2026-04-28 19:17:57 UTC
The entire city shuts down and loses their mind with just a millimeter or two of snow here. Last time we got 0.25 of an inch there were ~9 accidents within a 2-mile span on the highway in the morning, and we just ended up shutting the highway down for the day.
I love Waymo in other cities, but it'd be especially helpful here during the 1 day every other year that we actually get any snow ... if we ever get snow here again.
xnx · 2026-04-28 18:52:45 UTC
Yes. The longer-term possible second-order effects are going to be wild. Easier t o get to wilderness? Awesome!, but also crowding like you've never seen (but maybe also more small parks because there will be a glut of unused parking).
nostrademons · 2026-04-28 19:54:45 UTC
I don't see why one of those second-order effects wouldn't be the death of car ownership, with everyone using a rideshare service instead. Hell, that's the business model for Waymo and almost everyone other than Tesla in the autonomous-vehicle industry. It just doesn't make sense to own your own vehicle, use it for ~2 hours/day, and have to worry about parking/storing/fueling/maintaining it when you could have a service do all of that for you. Plus self-driving cars fix several issues with human rideshares, eg. you can drive it out to the boonies without worrying about how it's going to get back; you don't need to worry about getting assaulted by the robot driver; when they wait for you you only need to pay the opportunity cost of another ride rather than the opportunity cost of the driver's time. It's feasible to take a Waymo out to a state park, though you wouldn't usually do that with an Uber.
The second-order effects of that could be pretty wild. If people stopped owning their own cars, we wouldn't need houses with garages and driveways. It'd favor dense development with loading zones rather than parking spaces. It'd also be a big boon for EV adoption since the cars are all owned by one corporate owner and all go home to a centralized depot to charge at night rather than needing to retrofit EV chargers onto everyone's living situation. (Indeed, Waymo runs an all-electric fleet.). There'd be a premium on very reliable powertrains, since the cars might easily put 60-70K miles/year on them instead of the 10-15K that is typical of passenger vehicles. I dunno why Waymo went with Jaguar instead of Toyota, but perhaps "EV" is the explanation. Cars would wear out in 3-5 years instead of lasting for 15-20, and so you'd always have the latest hardware and technology on the car.
All the money we spend on traffic enforcement would become pointless, with audits of the software becoming a more effective use of dollars instead. But that blows a hole in many small local PD's budgets, many of which use speeding and parking tickets to raise revenue. Municipalities would likely find themselves powerless at regulating Big Self-Driving Rideshares.
The third-order effects are interesting as well. Once all cars on the road are self-driving, why not have them draft each other and physically link up to improve power efficiency and safety? You might even call such an arrangement a "train", blurring the line between road and rail transportation. But then, if you've got docking and linkage mechanisms, why not put the boundary between the electronics & powertrain and the passenger compartment, like the Rivian "skateboard" platform? You could return to private ownership of the passenger compartment - where, after all, some people like to store all their junk - and then have the rideshare own only the means of locomotion. Then you could extend this to other forms of locomotion like elevators, airplanes and ferries, so that your passenger compartment could just drop down an elevator shoot, onto a waiting self-driving car, which links up with others to become a train, takes you to the airport where you're loaded onto a plane without ever having to board, and then your pod deplanes and a self-driving car takes you straight to your hotel, where you now have transportation to wherever you want to go.
The future looks an awful lot like intermodal containers for people.
xnx · 2026-04-28 20:22:59 UTC
> The future looks an awful lot like intermodal containers for people.
Love this concept.
As self-driving vehicles become a larger share of road use, roads can be more efficiently designed just for them: no speed limit, just 2 strips of pavement for the tires, no signage or striping, etc.
ssl-3 · 2026-04-28 20:44:04 UTC
Perfect.
We'll just build the cars with parts that seldom fail. And we'll make them very strong, so that the only risk from hitting a deer or even a cow is a splash of gore.
That should help eliminate the need to turn. A loud horn and flashing lights will do pretty well for any errant humans that cross the path.
We can even reduce rolling resistance by using steel wheels instead of rubber, and we can make the road a surface of continuous steel for durability.
We can even hitch the cars together so they can't collide with eachother and they can collectively share the propulsion load. (Maybe even with automatic micro payments, so a car with low battery can pay the others to help it along.)
What would we call this thing?
throwaway-blaze · 2026-04-28 20:53:18 UTC
if you can also figure out how to have the cars automatically detach and park themselves in the owners' driveway, you're on to something.
nostrademons · 2026-04-28 21:25:07 UTC
I already made this joke up-thread:
> You might even call such an arrangement a "train"
Joking aside, though, the big issue with trains is last-mile. The road network covers a lot more land than the rail network does, and can reach places that trains can't. And this seems to be inherent to the physics of it, driven (hah) by cars ability to turn where trains cannot.
Mass transit enthusiasts love to gloss over the very real convenience issues that mass transit has, saying "Well everybody should just live next to the train station." The world doesn't work like that. Hence why I think a hybrid system of dockable autonomous vehicles that can be linked up into a train in high-throughput thoroughfares gives you the best of all worlds.
NitpickLawyer · 2026-04-28 19:06:05 UTC
> something like a Rivian but with Waymo tech
So a Tesla?
smilekzs · 2026-04-28 19:16:12 UTC
Off-roading aspirations and 3rd row legroom (S1) seem to be major differentiators from Rivian.
As for autonomy, Waymos have LIDARs which at least provides more redundancy.
I see these as different design tradeoffs so no judgment implied.
guywithahat · 2026-04-28 19:48:37 UTC
I, independently, made almost exactly the same comment before seeing yours lol. I already do 20+ hour cross-country trips in my Y without a break to sleep, which is only possible because I'm not meaningfully fatigued driving. it's still technically supervised but I think that's beyond the point OP is making
rootusrootus · 2026-04-28 20:43:04 UTC
> I already do 20+ hour cross-country trips in my Y without a break to sleep
Always feels a little weird to read a comment that is plausibly going to end up being referenced in a future news article.
Silamoth · 2026-04-28 19:11:21 UTC
At least 80% of what you’re describing would be satisfied by trains and buses. It’s wild that Americans are so obsessed with self-driving cars while ignoring public transit that solves most of the problems. It’s reliable, more efficient, better for the environment, and less stressful for you.
I’m not saying cars shouldn’t ever exist. The ‘last mile problem’ is a thing, and proper self-driving cars could be good for part of that (especially after a train and bus if you have lots of stuff). But you want to sleep in a vehicle with lots of storage space while driving across the country? That’s called a train. Nothing new needed.
pryanbeng · 2026-04-28 19:16:35 UTC
Its the ultra independence mindset. I don't think trains work for the commenter you talked to.
I want to move on my schedule and convenience, I don't want to have to warp my day to day around someone else's departure schedule.
Lammy · 2026-04-28 19:32:32 UTC
> Its the ultra independence mindset.
And there's nothing wrong with it! I take detours on road trips all the time following “Historic <thing> →” signs or just because I see something interesting in the distance and want to go check it out. On a train journey I'd just have to watch them pass by.
aketchum · 2026-04-28 19:17:19 UTC
there are effectively no passenger trains in America and effectively no political will to expand them. Busses take multiple times as long for the same trip compared to a car. This doesnt even get into the anti-social behavior present on both. Given these facts, it is not wild at all to prefer cars (self driving or not) vs alternate transportation methods
mmooss · 2026-04-28 19:41:13 UTC
> Busses take multiple times as long for the same trip compared to a car.
Buses can be slower, but I don't even know of a 2x difference. For longer trips they can travel 24/7. And overall they are more efficient because you can do other things instead of driving.
> This doesnt even get into the anti-social behavior present on both
I don't have a problem on buses and trains. I have more problem with other drivers when I drive. Your comment is, ironically, antisocial.
rootusrootus · 2026-04-28 20:35:13 UTC
> For longer trips they can travel 24/7
That sounds like hell. Bus seats are just as tight as coach class airline seats, and unlike trains there isn't even an option to pay exorbitant pricing for a sleeper compartment.
saalweachter · 2026-04-28 21:04:06 UTC
Napaway briefly offered ticketed intercity service on busses with 18 sleeper pods, but has (temporarily) discontinued it in favor of focusing on charter service.
linkregister · 2026-04-28 19:44:48 UTC
MARTA (Atlanta regional transit) heavy rail average daily ridership is 80,000 people [1].
Unfortunately, until something big happens in the US, autonomous vehicles will be more accessible to working class americans than good and reliable mass transit, especially outside of major population centers.
nebula8804 · 2026-04-28 20:32:35 UTC
Its a trojan horse on the way to make car ownership impossible to a large swath of Americans.
sumeno · 2026-04-28 19:20:52 UTC
You're right, but in the US a government providing any sort of public service is an immediate target for the right (and an unfortunately significant portion of the "left"). We insist on paying more for less rather than ever allowing a poor person to benefit in a way they don't "deserve". So public transit hardly exists or is woefully inadequate in most places.
davnicwil · 2026-04-28 19:23:02 UTC
I appreciate what you're saying and am a big fan of long distance train and bus journeys myself and have done a lot of both, sleeping and not.
But one huge factor that you have to contend with is the randomness of the tragedy of the commons problem on public transport / shared transport. A train journey can be blissful to sleep on right until a loud group gets on and sits across from you and there's no seats available to move.
I think this is something that can't be overlooked, especially if you're talking about something like a short trip where if you don't sleep well en route, quite a large proportion of the trip time is going to be affected. Having a private vehicle where you can guarantee control of your environment is a really huge plus.
svnt · 2026-04-28 19:27:09 UTC
It is a chicken and egg problem. As long as the majority of people who would maintain the social environment are avoiding the social environment, the healthy consensus/operating regime can never emerge.
davnicwil · 2026-04-28 19:35:15 UTC
In my experience the majority consensus is to maintain a quiet, generally polite environment on trains and buses.
But that's precisely the problem, it only takes a very tiny minority to change this. If one group, one person sometimes, in a carriage of 50 people decides to go against this, then that's that. It's not even particularly common, but it happens, it's random, and so it's just something that must be contended with.
svnt · 2026-04-28 19:55:33 UTC
I think that is the case if the majority has or exercises little to no effective social power to enforce the norm.
The majority consensus is to desire a peaceful environment but do nothing when it is violated.
tristor · 2026-04-28 19:58:37 UTC
Correct. But the golden question is, do what? The authorities don't care. Rules and laws are rarely enforced, and when they are enforced they're done so unevenly. If you decide to take matters into your own hands, it's much more likely that you will be punished by the law than the person you were correcting. So, what do you expect people to do?
svnt · 2026-04-28 21:46:04 UTC
My point is that in established cultures there are expectations around how these situations are handled, and what you expect people to do is specific to the culture. A single disapproving grandmother can put a stop to it.
That is why it breaks down — once it is discarded in a melting pot the cultural expectations are unclear and it seems you’re at least initially dependent on the state or mob dynamics.
charcircuit · 2026-04-28 20:54:00 UTC
It's not. Pass a law that continuing to be noisy or disruptive on a bus or train after a warning results in 10 years of prison time with no parole and consistently enforce it. The problem will solve itself without a chicken and egg problem. Problematic people can simply be removed from society to make for a good social environment. Adding more good people is not the only option and in fact only hides the problem instead of solving it.
JuniperMesos · 2026-04-28 21:14:08 UTC
This would involve incarcerating a lot of homeless people, which is expensive, and pro-homeless activists would see it as a human rights abuse and fight it.
soiltype · 2026-04-28 22:27:57 UTC
Cars are not the solution to that. Hooligans and irritating people are just a possibility in literally every social environment, they always have been, and they always will be. Answers to that problem are social - it's a bigger problem in America than Japan, for exmaplem.
Answers which involve removing oneself from society (by entering a private car) are not good answers. And when you factor in the externalities, you're just displacing "I'm upset, possibly even unwell due to sleep lost" onto "we replaced 90% of the local natural environment with pavement and paint it with crushed human beings every single day".
chpatrick · 2026-04-28 19:25:42 UTC
In the US it's often not the last mile, but the last 10 or 100 miles. I'm saying this as someone enjoying fantastic public transport in Budapest.
jwagenet · 2026-04-28 19:26:53 UTC
I agree with you, however in the US the “last mile” is often the “last 50 miles” when goal is outdoor recreation.
JeremyNT · 2026-04-28 19:31:24 UTC
> At least 80% of what you’re describing would be satisfied by trains and buses. It’s wild that Americans are so obsessed with self-driving cars while ignoring public transit that solves most of the problems. It’s reliable, more efficient, better for the environment, and less stressful for you.
As an American, it's far easier to imagine autonomous robot driven road trips than it is to imagine a government that is competent enough to build passenger rail networks.
catlover76 · 2026-04-28 19:33:55 UTC
Why? Isn't Amtrak that, but just geographically-scoped? Isn't Caltrain workable? Subways also function fine in NYC, DC, Boston, and even LA
(to be clear, I don't think the other poster is correct that having trains would satisfy the desire of the guy who wants a self-driving Rivian. I consider his want/need there to be fundamentally different)
Karrot_Kream · 2026-04-28 19:39:51 UTC
Amtrak started out as a holding company for private passenger rail companies that went bankrupt. It's never had a static amount of funding (until the Biden admin, Amtrak had to renegotiate its budget regularly) and many of its stations are just pet projects for rural Congress reps who want to give their district a way to leave their area, so Amtrak runs many trains at a loss.
Building new rail projects in the US is very hard because of capital costs and regulations like NEPA (and CEQA in California) which require environmental review for everything. Brightline in Florida was able to get around this by working in an existing highway ROW.
xnx · 2026-04-28 20:12:41 UTC
> Brightline in Florida was able to get around this buy working in an existing highway ROW.
Amtrak (where it exists) is often deprioritized for freight travel, and other times is often limited to extremely low speeds, resulting in extremely slow travel. Your road trips are only possible if you have extremely relaxed time constraints and specific destinations in mind.
Fees are also very high for such a slow option.
As for the future, well... it is bleak. This administration is actively trying to block transit expansion, presumably due to their undying affection for the fossil fuel industry, going so far as to withhold funding from already awarded grants to regional rail.
So while the northeast can sort-of pull it off due to its relatively compact nature and history of more progressive policies, this leaves the vast majority of the country in a no-mans land.
Karrot_Kream · 2026-04-28 20:18:35 UTC
Amtrak simply leases the lines in the West from freight providers rather than owning the track outright. The reason Amtrak can offer so much better service in the Northeast Corridor is because they own the track. Incidentally the NEC is the only part of Amtrak operating at a profit.
JuniperMesos · 2026-04-28 20:29:11 UTC
It's better if trains prioritize freight travel and car-focused roads prioritize passenger travel, than the other way around. Human beings have more pressing time constraints than nearly all shippable physical goods.
jdprgm · 2026-04-28 19:52:16 UTC
It's comically (and extremely variably) priced. A trip from DC to NYC and back would be ~$25 in electric costs with a typical electric car versus Amtrak could easily be $300+ though possibly as cheap as $50 if you are flexible to awful hours like depart at 4:30am or something.
square_usual · 2026-04-28 19:54:14 UTC
You should factor in the time/stress/wear costs but yes, I've found driving to be significantly cheaper than even the DC Metro most days.
habnds · 2026-04-28 20:32:13 UTC
the actual cost of a trip between times square and the national mall is about $200 all things considered based on the ~0.80 federal mileage reimbursement rate for 250 miles. that train corridor is overwhelmingly successful as well so the idea that amtrak isn't a good deal is at odds with reality.
pishpash · 2026-04-28 21:14:17 UTC
That's assuming you don't already have a time-depreciating asset in your possession. Per mile cost is about halved if you drive significantly more than average.
habnds · 2026-04-28 21:34:09 UTC
People in and around the acela corridor drive significantly less than the national average.
ssl-3 · 2026-04-28 20:24:42 UTC
The remaining dregs of Amtrak are the result of the nationalization of the failing private passenger lines in the US.
We used to have passenger rail. Even the desolate nowhere of semi-rural Ohio was well-served. Street cars to get around town, inter-urbans to get between nearby towns, and proper passenger trains to get to points far-away.
It didn't work out. There's reasons why it didn't work, like the literal conspiracy between General Motors and Firestone Tire that deliberately sought to destroy it.
Whatever those reasons were, they are are behind us. So it may seem superficially easy to just put it all back... but it isn't.
When the lines stopped being used, we tore them out. They're gone. And where the lines are gone, old stations are also mostly gone. Cities had once been built around (and because of) rail, but were subsequently built for cars as time marched forward and things continued to expand.
In some cases, whole communities have disappeared in the transition away from rail. In many other cases, we let our central stations decay and rot or demolished them to make space for things like convention centers.
So what's left is what we have: We have cars.
It's easy for me to see a future where I can buy a car and curl up in the back seat with a movie (and maybe a cocktail) while it ferries me from A to B.
That's a future I might actually live long enough to see, and it appears to be inevitable.
And I'd love to be freed of the chains of having to drive myself from A to B.
But I'll be dead and buried before we get passenger rail to be even 1/10th of what it once was.
So I choose to dream practical dreams. I can only play the hand I'm dealt.
ashishb · 2026-04-28 19:32:22 UTC
> At least 80% of what you’re describing would be satisfied by trains and buses. It’s wild that Americans are so obsessed with self-driving cars while ignoring public transit that solves most of the problems. It’s reliable, more efficient, better for the environment, and less stressful for you.
So, let's say you take public transport from SF to Yosemite/Los Angeles.
Now, how do I cover the last mile (or even multiple points)?
Take more public transport? Hitchhike?
The reason long-distance public transport works well in Europe is that there is good local public transport in both the source and the destination cities. When that does not exist, you are better off driving.
chucksmash · 2026-04-28 19:32:52 UTC
It would also be satisfied by magic flying carpets. Between flying carpets, functional public transport, and self-driving cars, only one of these three things is not utter fantasy in the near-ish future in the United States.
Karrot_Kream · 2026-04-28 19:36:35 UTC
Connecting two Waymo geos with a train would be an interesting company idea. You could lease freight track the way Amtrak already does it in the American West but try to negotiate a contact more favorable than Amtrak's. You could try to work with Waymo to work on bundles.
Amtrak could do the same thing but because of how Amtrak is organized in not sure that it would be possible. Most of the current Waymo geos are not connected by Amtrak directly and require transfers.
some_random · 2026-04-28 19:37:52 UTC
It's a train or bus that is exclusively yours, goes exactly where you want it to go, when you want to go. Sounds objectively better than a train to me.
arijun · 2026-04-28 19:38:33 UTC
I am a huge proponent of increased public transit (I'm of the opinion that every city should have a massive congestion tax with large swaths only accessible on foot or by public transit), but trains and buses would be wildly inconvenient for what op is describing.
Trying to take something like a windsurf board on a train, and then having to navigate multiple train changes along with whatever other baggage you have makes it a non-starter.
The "last mile problem" you mention is unresolved when it comes to getting from the closest public transit stop to the actual destination (frequently in a park or even off road).
And finally, the final cost to the rider would be significantly higher, as sleeper trains are not cheap.
I think America could do quite well if it focused on public transit in and between densely populated areas. Fewer cars in cities could make for denser cities, which in turn could allow for even more public transit. But outside of population centers, America is much more spread out than Europe, meaning that trains are less economical, and often wouldn't get the ridership that would allow them to make sense.
BobbyJo · 2026-04-28 19:39:20 UTC
People just do not understand how big and spread out the US is compared to other countries. "Last mile" dramatically underestimates how much heavy lifting the personal transportation part would need to do. More like "last 50 miles".
Comments
No, we have them in St. Louis and it snows a few times per year here.
https://www.botanicalinterests.com/community/blog/usda-hardi...
Definitely, and at no cost to taxpayers.
> It's just an vastly more inefficient than any other form of public transit
Waymo is less efficient in the narrow case of transporting hundreds of people between two specific points at a specific time, but more efficient for almost every other case.
If Waymo had dedicated right-of-way in the same way trains do, it would be more efficient.
The flip side is drastically fewer parking spaces needed, most of which can be located outside of the city core. And decreased costs due to fewer accidents.
https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2026/04/self-driving-car...
> Hannah Schafer, communications director for the Portland Bureau of Transportation, said Waymo is welcome to map out the city streets.
> “All they’re doing right now is basically taking pictures. Taking pictures in the right of way, anyone is allowed to do that. That’s not something that we regulate,” Schafer said.
> However, she said the city would regulate the testing and driving of autonomous cars.
> “No one can drive driverless vehicles in Portland without a permit,” Schafer said. “That is not allowed.”
...
> Portland fought vigorously with Uber over the terms of its local arrival a decade ago and a battle is already brewing over Waymo. Portland council member Mitch Green staked out his opposition in January, telling constituents on Bluesky, “You should know I don’t support that.”
...
> Oregon legislators considered a bill earlier this year that would have set statewide rules for self-driving cars, and would have prohibited local governments from imposing blanket prohibitions on autonomous vehicles. The bill died in committee following opposition from local governments.
"When I go I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming and afraid like the passengers in his car"
Even if you also have good winter tires on, if your level of "caution" could be best measured as normal to high, sometimes it's a judgment call on when you want to pull off to the shoulder for 45 seconds to let a bunch of vehicles behind you pass. I'm not sure this is something any automated driver has been configured for. Or just generally to deal with driving when the road condition could best be described as "two only partially visible ruts in the snow where the tires of previous vehicles have driven, with snow in the centre".
Same thing in somewhere with a climate like upper Michigan or in Maine.
You couldn't see anything. As soon as there wasn't a car 20 yards in front of you, it was a complete whiteout. Ice built up on the wiper as quickly as you could possibly reach out of your window and clear it. Radar would probably be nice, but I don't think it'd be enough to keep driving. The cameras and lidar would be an absolute wreck.
I'm sure we'll get there eventually, but that is really the final frontier for AI driving I think. Waymos aren't even allowed to drive in a snowstorm right now. I suspect that you'll be dealing with Caltrans closing the pass for the rest of your life.
http://cadcd.uwaterloo.ca
Disclosure: My grad student advisor.
Humans and Control System Models need feedback to operate, and worse still... when any input into the vehicle's controls produce zero results, you will spin out.
My concern with a model in these conditions is that it wouldn't recoginize the fact that other cars were in the ditch and that it should probably slow down
The main limitation is still sensors in the snow, but it seems to not be that big of a deal to build sensor packages that are better at seeing in the snow than a human is.
Being able to plot a series of inputs that can more efficiently use available traction than a human doesn't prevent you from blundering your way into a dumb situation where the laws of physics dictate that the only possible outcomes are various flavors of bad ones.
It's not clear how often the software will chose poorly and need to brute force its way out with traction/handling. The fact that they seem to be hedging against this by putting the hardware on particularly performant cars indicates it must happen enough to matter or be rare but bad enough to matter when it does happen.
Waymo will probably also rack up a ton of technically not at fault accidents by being obtuse in traffic since there's when there's snow there's a lot less margin for the "two people trying to pass each other in a hallway" type missteps that behavior tends to create.
I love Waymo in other cities, but it'd be especially helpful here during the 1 day every other year that we actually get any snow ... if we ever get snow here again.
The second-order effects of that could be pretty wild. If people stopped owning their own cars, we wouldn't need houses with garages and driveways. It'd favor dense development with loading zones rather than parking spaces. It'd also be a big boon for EV adoption since the cars are all owned by one corporate owner and all go home to a centralized depot to charge at night rather than needing to retrofit EV chargers onto everyone's living situation. (Indeed, Waymo runs an all-electric fleet.). There'd be a premium on very reliable powertrains, since the cars might easily put 60-70K miles/year on them instead of the 10-15K that is typical of passenger vehicles. I dunno why Waymo went with Jaguar instead of Toyota, but perhaps "EV" is the explanation. Cars would wear out in 3-5 years instead of lasting for 15-20, and so you'd always have the latest hardware and technology on the car.
All the money we spend on traffic enforcement would become pointless, with audits of the software becoming a more effective use of dollars instead. But that blows a hole in many small local PD's budgets, many of which use speeding and parking tickets to raise revenue. Municipalities would likely find themselves powerless at regulating Big Self-Driving Rideshares.
The third-order effects are interesting as well. Once all cars on the road are self-driving, why not have them draft each other and physically link up to improve power efficiency and safety? You might even call such an arrangement a "train", blurring the line between road and rail transportation. But then, if you've got docking and linkage mechanisms, why not put the boundary between the electronics & powertrain and the passenger compartment, like the Rivian "skateboard" platform? You could return to private ownership of the passenger compartment - where, after all, some people like to store all their junk - and then have the rideshare own only the means of locomotion. Then you could extend this to other forms of locomotion like elevators, airplanes and ferries, so that your passenger compartment could just drop down an elevator shoot, onto a waiting self-driving car, which links up with others to become a train, takes you to the airport where you're loaded onto a plane without ever having to board, and then your pod deplanes and a self-driving car takes you straight to your hotel, where you now have transportation to wherever you want to go.
The future looks an awful lot like intermodal containers for people.
Love this concept.
As self-driving vehicles become a larger share of road use, roads can be more efficiently designed just for them: no speed limit, just 2 strips of pavement for the tires, no signage or striping, etc.
We'll just build the cars with parts that seldom fail. And we'll make them very strong, so that the only risk from hitting a deer or even a cow is a splash of gore.
That should help eliminate the need to turn. A loud horn and flashing lights will do pretty well for any errant humans that cross the path.
We can even reduce rolling resistance by using steel wheels instead of rubber, and we can make the road a surface of continuous steel for durability.
We can even hitch the cars together so they can't collide with eachother and they can collectively share the propulsion load. (Maybe even with automatic micro payments, so a car with low battery can pay the others to help it along.)
What would we call this thing?
> You might even call such an arrangement a "train"
Joking aside, though, the big issue with trains is last-mile. The road network covers a lot more land than the rail network does, and can reach places that trains can't. And this seems to be inherent to the physics of it, driven (hah) by cars ability to turn where trains cannot.
Mass transit enthusiasts love to gloss over the very real convenience issues that mass transit has, saying "Well everybody should just live next to the train station." The world doesn't work like that. Hence why I think a hybrid system of dockable autonomous vehicles that can be linked up into a train in high-throughput thoroughfares gives you the best of all worlds.
So a Tesla?
As for autonomy, Waymos have LIDARs which at least provides more redundancy.
I see these as different design tradeoffs so no judgment implied.
Always feels a little weird to read a comment that is plausibly going to end up being referenced in a future news article.
I’m not saying cars shouldn’t ever exist. The ‘last mile problem’ is a thing, and proper self-driving cars could be good for part of that (especially after a train and bus if you have lots of stuff). But you want to sleep in a vehicle with lots of storage space while driving across the country? That’s called a train. Nothing new needed.
I want to move on my schedule and convenience, I don't want to have to warp my day to day around someone else's departure schedule.
And there's nothing wrong with it! I take detours on road trips all the time following “Historic <thing> →” signs or just because I see something interesting in the distance and want to go check it out. On a train journey I'd just have to watch them pass by.
Buses can be slower, but I don't even know of a 2x difference. For longer trips they can travel 24/7. And overall they are more efficient because you can do other things instead of driving.
> This doesnt even get into the anti-social behavior present on both
I don't have a problem on buses and trains. I have more problem with other drivers when I drive. Your comment is, ironically, antisocial.
That sounds like hell. Bus seats are just as tight as coach class airline seats, and unlike trains there isn't even an option to pay exorbitant pricing for a sleeper compartment.
1. https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/2025-Q4-Ride...
But one huge factor that you have to contend with is the randomness of the tragedy of the commons problem on public transport / shared transport. A train journey can be blissful to sleep on right until a loud group gets on and sits across from you and there's no seats available to move.
I think this is something that can't be overlooked, especially if you're talking about something like a short trip where if you don't sleep well en route, quite a large proportion of the trip time is going to be affected. Having a private vehicle where you can guarantee control of your environment is a really huge plus.
But that's precisely the problem, it only takes a very tiny minority to change this. If one group, one person sometimes, in a carriage of 50 people decides to go against this, then that's that. It's not even particularly common, but it happens, it's random, and so it's just something that must be contended with.
The majority consensus is to desire a peaceful environment but do nothing when it is violated.
That is why it breaks down — once it is discarded in a melting pot the cultural expectations are unclear and it seems you’re at least initially dependent on the state or mob dynamics.
Answers which involve removing oneself from society (by entering a private car) are not good answers. And when you factor in the externalities, you're just displacing "I'm upset, possibly even unwell due to sleep lost" onto "we replaced 90% of the local natural environment with pavement and paint it with crushed human beings every single day".
As an American, it's far easier to imagine autonomous robot driven road trips than it is to imagine a government that is competent enough to build passenger rail networks.
(to be clear, I don't think the other poster is correct that having trains would satisfy the desire of the guy who wants a self-driving Rivian. I consider his want/need there to be fundamentally different)
Building new rail projects in the US is very hard because of capital costs and regulations like NEPA (and CEQA in California) which require environmental review for everything. Brightline in Florida was able to get around this by working in an existing highway ROW.
And will probably go bankrupt this year: https://www.wlrn.org/business/2026-01-23/brightline-business...
Fees are also very high for such a slow option.
As for the future, well... it is bleak. This administration is actively trying to block transit expansion, presumably due to their undying affection for the fossil fuel industry, going so far as to withhold funding from already awarded grants to regional rail.
So while the northeast can sort-of pull it off due to its relatively compact nature and history of more progressive policies, this leaves the vast majority of the country in a no-mans land.
We used to have passenger rail. Even the desolate nowhere of semi-rural Ohio was well-served. Street cars to get around town, inter-urbans to get between nearby towns, and proper passenger trains to get to points far-away.
It didn't work out. There's reasons why it didn't work, like the literal conspiracy between General Motors and Firestone Tire that deliberately sought to destroy it.
Whatever those reasons were, they are are behind us. So it may seem superficially easy to just put it all back... but it isn't.
When the lines stopped being used, we tore them out. They're gone. And where the lines are gone, old stations are also mostly gone. Cities had once been built around (and because of) rail, but were subsequently built for cars as time marched forward and things continued to expand.
In some cases, whole communities have disappeared in the transition away from rail. In many other cases, we let our central stations decay and rot or demolished them to make space for things like convention centers.
So what's left is what we have: We have cars.
It's easy for me to see a future where I can buy a car and curl up in the back seat with a movie (and maybe a cocktail) while it ferries me from A to B.
That's a future I might actually live long enough to see, and it appears to be inevitable.
And I'd love to be freed of the chains of having to drive myself from A to B.
But I'll be dead and buried before we get passenger rail to be even 1/10th of what it once was.
So I choose to dream practical dreams. I can only play the hand I'm dealt.
So, let's say you take public transport from SF to Yosemite/Los Angeles. Now, how do I cover the last mile (or even multiple points)? Take more public transport? Hitchhike?
The reason long-distance public transport works well in Europe is that there is good local public transport in both the source and the destination cities. When that does not exist, you are better off driving.
Amtrak could do the same thing but because of how Amtrak is organized in not sure that it would be possible. Most of the current Waymo geos are not connected by Amtrak directly and require transfers.
Trying to take something like a windsurf board on a train, and then having to navigate multiple train changes along with whatever other baggage you have makes it a non-starter.
The "last mile problem" you mention is unresolved when it comes to getting from the closest public transit stop to the actual destination (frequently in a park or even off road).
And finally, the final cost to the rider would be significantly higher, as sleeper trains are not cheap.
I think America could do quite well if it focused on public transit in and between densely populated areas. Fewer cars in cities could make for denser cities, which in turn could allow for even more public transit. But outside of population centers, America is much more spread out than Europe, meaning that trains are less economical, and often wouldn't get the ridership that would allow them to make sense.