[jFriedensreich]

I don't live in Berlin, but even if: have you ever taken public transport in less mainstream lines? Apart from nothing working and connections taking forever and operations stopping at night, horrible signage that lets you stress even more, you sit next to human excrements, hooligans coming from football games, nazis wanting to beat you up, stink, rude music and beggers. I sometimes miss it for sentimental value, but compared to a world of robots driving us with relaxing music in a clean and safe space i know what future I want.

[askl]

> have you ever taken public transport in less mainstream lines?

Yes, I have. I never drove a car myself and maybe used a taxi 10 times in the last 30 years.

Will waymo even be available in less mainstream areas? It seems more reasonable for them to go for dense places instead and leave the unprofitable regions for someone else.

[tialaramex]

> Will waymo even be available in less mainstream areas?

Ever is a long time. It's not reasonable to predict beyond a decade or so. It's easily possible that this becomes huge and in the 2040s people are astonished that "driving yourself" was a thing, the same way it's hard to comprehend now that most people weren't literate. Not "Couldn't write an essay / read a newspaper" but "Couldn't sign their name / read a postal address"

But it's also possible that this goes nowhere, and outside of a few large cities there is never a robot taxi market, it just doesn't exist. Waymo is, among other things, a bet that there is a large market.

Dense places are where it starts, but that was also true for the telephone. Bell didn't provide service to tiny rural settlements, they wired places like Boston and New York, AIUI the general service provision was a government initiative even in the US, it was never strictly profitable enough for huge corporations to spend their own money making it universal.

[dmoy]

Is there really that much poop on Berlin public transit?

Seattle has some of the highest per capital homeless in the US, and a dearth of public toilets, and yet there's not that much poop on our public transit.

I am also skeptical that y'all's violent crime rate is higher than ours.

Granted I haven't taken Berlin public transit in 20 yrs, so I don't know.

[dmoy]

> I am also skeptical that y'all's violent crime rate is higher than ours.

Ok well I am wrong. Berlin's violent crime rate is 2-4x higher than Seattle? Huh. The homicide rate is within touching distance.

That was not what I expected, ok.

[rangestransform]

I’d put Berlin ubahn halfway between nyc and japan in terms of cleanliness and orderly behavior, the bigger problem is that there’s no ac in the summer

[jFriedensreich]

its mostly pee and vomit, poo is indeed rare.

[Hikikomori]

Didn't see any poop in berlin, but did see it in Shibuya station, spread out by hundreds of people.