Threat to ride-sharing at Sky Harbor (Phoenix, Scottsdale: mover, movies, high school)

[exit2lef]

Originally Posted by MN-Born-n-Raised

Both rideshare vendors realize autonomous cars (costing them a lot in R&D) are going to cut down the time to break even and later profit.

Your argument was somewhat persuasive until you mentioned the much-ballyhooed prospect of autonomous vehicles. We've been drowning in AV hype for a decade now, but we're still nowhere close to widespread deployment and consumer acceptance. Uber's experiment has already resulted in the death of Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, and Waymo, which deserves some praise for its more cautious approach, is still limited to a small fleet operating within a geo-fenced area. If AVs ever live up to the seemingly infinite hype, it may be years after promotions and other strategies have run their course at Uber and Lyft.

Originally Posted by MN-Born-n-Raised

My guess is she ran for council/mayor as a stepping stone because she wants to be a career politician like her hubby.

She and Congressman Ruben Gallego announced their intention to divorce a while back, although I'm not sure if it's final yet.

[MN-Born-n-Raised]

Originally Posted by exit2lef

Your argument was somewhat persuasive until you mentioned the much-ballyhooed prospect of autonomous vehicles. We've been drowning in AV hype for a decade now, but we're still nowhere close to widespread deployment and consumer acceptance. Uber's experiment has already resulted in the death of Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, and Waymo, which deserves some praise for its more cautious approach, is still limited to a small fleet operating within a geo-fenced area. If AVs ever live up to the seemingly infinite hype, it may be years after promotions and other strategies have run their course at Uber and Lyft.

Do you remember back in 1993 how the internet was going to take over e-commerce? A lot of people predicted a swift takeover but it took a lot longer. How about artificial intelligence? Again, it's coming. I'm talking about learned AI. As in with data, AI gets smarter in many cases solutions that can ONLY happen with AI. Sorry white-collar jobs, but they will be decimated like engineers, radiologist, etc. How about the prediction of the take over of electric cars? It's projected by 2020, 50% of all cars sold in the USA will be electric/plug ins. https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/16/vo...-through-2025/ I predict it will be much farther out to hit 50% of the market share of new builds. But it WILL happen. Just as the "internet" has finally had a massive impact on the world (albeit a decade later than predicted).

So yea, autonomous cars will rule much of the landscape. They need a lot more data for AI. China is designing cities and sensors as we speak. It's the one major advantage of having a command economy (one group driving the ship). It's just going to take longer than some people think here in the States and in Europe. But we need overly optimistic people. If they weren't, they would lack the drive to push the frontier. They drive forward because they think it can happen sooner that it does. It's why the 1st guy to invent often doesn't win the prize.

[veritased]

Originally Posted by MN-Born-n-Raised

Looking at her pedigree, Mayor Gallego must be incredibly smart. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Gallego She has a Harvard UG and a Wharton MBA. I'm not so sure about the other council members. Now if she got into those schools based on her Trump-like legacy (Wharton) or by pretending to be USC athlete (rich and famous USC scandal), that's a different story. Those situations are outliers.

My guess is she ran for council/mayor as a stepping stone because she wants to be a career politician like her hubby. Time will tell. For me at least, having someone in charge that has two X chromosomes is refreshing and long overdue. Or we can continue to put forward rich, old, white male politicians with views like this (you cannot make this stuff up):

Well she might be incredibly smart. However, as I have found out over the decades, neither the H or the W pedigree can be counted on, and even when the IQ factor is there, there can often be a surprisingly narrow adherence or dependence on incomplete theory, versus a holistic real life approach. As well as especially with H, an arrogance factor that one finds also in more than a few Stanford or MIT grads of the last decade.
Just sayin' that I no longer look at college pedigree as anything but an initial signal of the quality of a person's ability to analyze and think independently.

If she truly understood her econ classes at W MBA, she would not have implemented this tax. But then, that is the Democrat influence on what would otherwise be a rational way of thinking, just my theory of course.

I hate to be deciding things by sex or race, but I sorta agree about the two X factor vs the crusty old white male, though I am technically at least partially belonging to the latter classification.

On autonomous vehicles, coming from having worked in the ai/deep_learning world, I would not bet on Uber/Lyft going driverless for quite some time. The drive to simulate human decision making is hitting a wall, with increasing returns on existing architectures marginal. We'll need another breakthrough similar to how CNN's hit GPUs about 10 years ago.... new hardware meets new algorithm.

[Valley Native]

Originally Posted by veritased

@exit2lef: ever heard of Mayor Pete? No? OK. Maybe you don't consider him a male elected official? Benchmarking with other airports? Let's not try and whitewash what was clearly a new and arbitrary tax just because they can force it down on the public. Would this pass a vote by all the stakeholders?

@valley native: no secret that I came to AZ in early 2019 from CA. So what? I've been to PHX countless times for business and leisure travel, to at least 3 of the 4 terminals. Of course, driving in to Term 4 from the east, I have seen what must be the Skytrain up above. But no clue whatsoever to its purpose, where it starts, where it ends. Guarantee you that most every traveler like me has the same understanding. We ain't gonna go out of our way to google 'train like transportation to PHX', why, we don't care, it starts obviously far away from the airport with no closer entry points, so we ain't gonna use it. We don't have the time to wait for a train wherever it starts, and then trundle along at 10mph or however fast it goes, watching that video.

I have used trains to get into airports in Asia and Europe, and SkyTrain like vehicles in USA mainly to get from Ta to Tb, but the PHX train that starts neither here nor there is an oddity to me. I am the customer, and PHX has not marketed it well, to me or anyone else who wasn't reading whatever newspaper or watching Ch3 or Ch10 the day Sky Train launched services. Which would be alot of people.

Point being that the SkyTrain is in use and has been since 2013. It's not funded with tax dollars, but by user fees. Granted, when people use airport services, they are contributing to the maintenance costs for this. I share your outrage at the City Council pushing these fee increases without a public vote, and the rideshare services threatening to pull out as a result. I also don't the idea of Super Shuttle going out of business either, but obviously they're not profitable anymore. Regardless, you don't have to use the SkyTrain ... nobody is forcing you to.

All of us are paying taxes and fees which are funding things that we don't use or don't like. For instance, I use rental car services periodically, especially in the summer months. The taxes on rental cars in Maricopa County are among the highest in the nation, and guess what a lot of those taxes are paying for: sports facilities (which should be privately funded, not paid for by public tax dollars)! Even so, I'm not going to quit renting cars because of it ... nobody is forcing me to.

And in the big picture, these taxes and user fees amount to a grain of salt compared to the amount of taxes we're paying for public schools, which don't benefit everybody like many like to claim. If you own property, you're paying at the bare minimum $1,000 per year to support a system that is costly & inefficient. The cost is more along the lines of $1,800 or higher for most property owners who are being forced to stuff their money into a giant black hole that not everybody uses.

[veritased]

If public schools are a black hole with little ROI, then we should fix that. We need an educated populace, especially as technology advances and changes the nature of many lower paying jobs. We have no kids in K-12, so we don't directly benefit, but I think property values do benefit where schools perform well, so indirectly I expect we would. That's been our experience to date.

On Skytrain, it's a nice high level concept, I don't have an axe to grind on public transpo, but I think it was quite poorly thought through and implemented. Does not appeal to me as a frequent short and long term out of town traveler. It should, as other airport public transpo arrangements have. If I feel like this, I am sure there are many others.

[Valley Native]

Originally Posted by veritased

If public schools are a black hole with little ROI, then we should fix that. We need an educated populace, especially as technology advances and changes the nature of many lower paying jobs. We have no kids in K-12, so we don't directly benefit, but I think property values do benefit where schools perform well, so indirectly I expect we would. That's been our experience to date.

On Skytrain, it's a nice high level concept, I don't have an axe to grind on public transpo, but I think it was quite poorly thought through and implemented. Does not appeal to me as a frequent short and long term out of town traveler. It should, as other airport public transpo arrangements have. If I feel like this, I am sure there are many others.

Definitely agree that an educated populace is needed, but why should taxpayers be on the hook for it? Numerous studies have stated that private schools are superior to public schools in many ways, especially in the educational quality. Kids who attended private schools are much more likely to earn a Bachelor degree (or higher) in college, and have successful careers compared to the ones who attended public schools. Off the topic, but it's a valid point.

I'm paying thousands every year for a system that I have no use for, and I'm forced to pay it in order to avoid being penalized, or a lien put on my house! I'm paying rental car taxes to help subsidize a sports/entertainment complex that I don't use, but I pay it anyway because I'm forced to whenever I rent cars. At the same time, you aren't forced to use a train that you don't see as beneficial. Quite frankly, I don't use the SkyTrain either because I have little or no reason to even go to Sky Harbor, but the costs amount to a mere drop in the bucket compared to public education and other things we're paying for.

[veritased]

I understand your positions as topics worthy of further thinking.

[wase4711]

wow, I'm dizzy from reading all the OT stuff in this thread...keep it going!!

[oceangaia]

Originally Posted by veritased

On autonomous vehicles, coming from having worked in the ai/deep_learning world, I would not bet on Uber/Lyft going driverless for quite some time. The drive to simulate human decision making is hitting a wall, with increasing returns on existing architectures marginal. We'll need another breakthrough similar to how CNN's hit GPUs about 10 years ago.... new hardware meets new algorithm.

I don't see them ever "going driverless". I think autonomous rides will be offered on select routes and you will have a new class UberA that is cheaper than UberX, much cheaper at first to generate demand. The number of select routes will grow over time but there will always be a ride class offering a human driver.

[veritased]

Originally Posted by oceangaia

I don't see them ever "going driverless". I think autonomous rides will be offered on select routes and you will have a new class UberA that is cheaper than UberX, much cheaper at first to generate demand. The number of select routes will grow over time but there will always be a ride class offering a human driver.

Maybe. I can see the concept of these truck convoys maybe working, but even there, that's speculative. It's the rare exception to the learned behaviour that will screw up the AI, and the results could be quite catastrophic and destroy public confidence overnight.