Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

>>And it never occurred to you that maybe the whole concept of lack of public transportation was at fault?

Sure it did. What kind of power does a 15 year old have, exactly, to influence it though? A scooter has improved my mobility when I was 15. Going on the internet and saying that the lack of public transport is at fault would have not.

Besides, we do have really good public transport! It's just that even with buses running every 30 minutes it can still take a long time to get anywhere if you live couple towns over from where you need to be. So it's like.....45 minute bike ride, 15 minute scooter ride, or 1.5 hour bus ride because you have to swap buses twice? Not everything works for everyone, not everyone lives in the major cities. I didn't live out in the countryside either, but in a collection of smaller towns 4-5km apart, 10k population each.



> What kind of power does a 15 year old have, exactly, to influence it though? A scooter has improved my mobility when I was 15. Going on the internet and saying that the lack of public transport is at fault would have not.

True, of course.

But it's not about the individual 15 year old scooter owner who makes an individual decision to get a scooter, when they live outside the city, in a situation where it benefits them greatly, etc etc.

It's about the systemic impact of legalising a class of vehicles and thus adding hundreds of thousands more vehicles to the road network. People in situations where they could have happily stayed on public transport instead move to driving these small vehicles, which aren't as bad as full-sized cars but still consume resources and occupy valuable road and parking space. Fewer public transport users means fewer voters who care about public transport, and more who care about roads. That's not a step in the right direction.

(I grew up in rural Australia, I understand why you need private motorised transport to get around - but plenty of the customers who are going to be buying this Ami vehicle are going to be in extremely dense urban areas.)


People’s lives, especially the adolescent phase thereof, are short. I don’t blame them one bit for maximizing their mobility.

If you want public transport adopted, make it effective and reasonably efficient and people will use it. Crimping people’s mobility in the meantime to garner support for better public transport at some time in the distant future is not likely to work well.




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2027 batch! Applications are open till November 2.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: