I live and commute in Phoenix, and tried desperately to find a van share,express bus, or light rail route to work. No dice. So i drive alone 50 minutes each way. With all the other drivers doing the same thing. Today i sat for 15 minutes while a cargo train passed through a main commuter artery at rush hour. Stupid. Painful. Wasteful. The reason? This expense is borne by me, for car, insurance, gas. The government has no incentive to make this better.
2
In the future, everyone will have a conveyor belt hooked up to their home; that’s the solution the gurus called scientists today have to stop the 8-lane congested highway fiasco we now call transportation. You’ll be able to do everything directly from bed, the way you’ve always dreamed! That will be the commercial. We know the only real way out of this dilemma is to redesign what cities actually should look like. That’s the way the animals would love too because you would stop encroaching on their habitat. We will get around to this you know. Just as soon as world population drops by 50%.
Sensor based autonomous vehicles will never work.
There too many variables in the form unpredictable other drivers, bad roads, weather, mud, bird poop, sunlight, glare, reflection, hydroplaning, ice, snow, muck, pedestrians, bikers, kids, insufficient computing power, faulty code and liability concerns. Do you really want to trust your life to that tech given all those variables?
It's far easier to land a 777 in zero visibility as this is done in a positively controlled environment.
When the crashes happen, and they will, watch all the liability be thrust upon the occupants. People will then instantly abandon the tech and drive themselves in constant fear of 40 ton driver-less trucks, because by then SCOTUS will absolve motor freight carriers of all liability and still make any deaths the responsibility of the poor folks who have to still drive their cars.
4
Subway, tube, underground public transport. A proven solution.
4
We’ve had driverless cars before — it was called public transportation.
4
Several thoughts -
For many years, plans for building additional lanes on existing highways have often been rejected, the argument usually being that any increase in capacity encourages sprawl and thus is quickly used up. To me it should have been obvious long ago that increased capacity promised by autonomous vehicles would have the same effect.
The plan proposed by Mr. Calthorpe somewhat resembles a plan enacted in the early 1920s by the city of Detroit and its surrounding counties to deal with traffic congestion. Several existing roads were to be converted to 204-foot wide boulevards with eight lanes of traffic and four interurban tracks in the median. The plan was being implemented and had made a promising start when the Depression essentially brought it to a halt. (See "The 'super-highways' of Detroit"; https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=8737.0)
Finally, this plan's Silicon Valley roots remind me of Marissa Meyer's 2013 memo "asking all employees with work-from-home arrangements to [instead] work in Yahoo! offices." Does Mountain View need to move 40K people each day because, as the memo claimed, "some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings"? It amazes me that, after 100 years and a zillion dollars worth of organizational behavior studies, a major SV employer has to rely on random in-person serendipity in order to be successful.
2
"Mr. Calthorpe’s plan is an evolution of the concept of “transit-oriented development” he pioneered while teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, in the late 1980s. It focuses on designing urban communities that encourage people to live near transit services and decrease their dependence on driving."
I looked at the picture of the "pioneering" work, with trolleys in the center of El Camino Real and saw the New Orleans trolley system. http://www.norta.com/Getting-Around/Our-Streetcars
But that's not going to fix the San Francisco area. Building more homes is the big thing lacking. When they add one home per eleven new jobs they are not creating a workable solution.
“Autonomous rapid transit’s greater capacity combined with lower cost could really be the stimulus for the housing development,” said Denny Zane, executive director of Move LA, a group that has built broad community support for funding improvements in transportation. “We need to integrate autonomous technologies in a setting that will enhance transit use.”"
Well, no. LA used to have very good rapid transit until the car companies head it removed. Putting "autonomous" in front of the thing means you add space for one or two more people and reduce salaries, but this is not a revolution. It's just undoing decades of toxic car culture.
1
The only thing which reduces congestion is fewer vehicle, yet it's the only answer which most North Americans refuse to consider.
3
Amazon home delivery drives down car trips. Expand work from home and reduce them even more. When you go out take uber or mass transit or bike/ walk in a walkable city. Only those living out in the burbs and rural areas will still drive a lot.
2
Thanks for bringing Peter Calthorpe's ideas to readers. I agree with his thoughts on autonomous vehicles. Clearly, congestion in and around our metropolitan areas is a major cause of accidents, fatalities, injuries and health-harming pollution.
I have been working with James Powell, co-inventor with Dr. Gordon Danby, of superconducting Maglev transport and an idea of the late Senator Pat Moynihan to build a national Maglev guideway network to connect our metro areas with a 300 mph, all-weather, system for both trucks, cars, and freight containers. Thus far, this system has come close to being the next phase of our Interstate Highway System but has failed to win approval over high-speed rail. We persist on gaining approval for this system because its capability to carry trucks, as well as passengers, AND operates at much less cost than airlines and highway cars (5 cents per passenger mile and 10 cents a ton-mile) because this it does not touch rails or use friction brakes. It also can be adapted to existing rail systems at very low cost by installing aluminum loop encapsulated in polymer concrete panels.
It is quiet, smooth, comfortable. Powell et al, wrote about the history of this technology in "The Fight for Maglev" and "Maglev America" and we publish our papers and books and the Moynihan concept on a website, www.magneticglide.com
We have studied adapting Maglev to the NYC and Washington DC metro areas and are certain that this system can benefit the country.
1
Liberals will not rest until everyone is on trains and buses and bikes! We need an all of the above approach. Can’t be dogmatic in either direction.
87% of traffic on the roads is caused by human bad driving. Autonomous driving solves that and, yes, will indeed reduce traffic (that inconvenient fact interferes with some activists).
Look around at the bad drivers around you. Are the Uber drivers you pass texting while driving? Looking at their phones? Amazed at how much worse traffic has become over last few years.
1
@Ronald Klein Agreed! And according to your ZIPcode, we are neighbors. Perhaps our views are shaped by the poor drivers in our area.
Though my commuting days are long behind me, I would get so annoyed when traffic on the interstate slowed due to gaper's block or police activity on the shoulder - a daily occurrence. All it takes is one driver to slow down, starting a domino effect. These types of delays would be resolved by driverless cars.
The future can't come soon enough!
As a Seattle urban planner said, if everyone had self-driving cars you’d double the traffic on the road. You would have the car take you to work but to avoid the high parking rates in the city, you’d send the car back home. Then it would make another trip into the city to pick you up to take you home.
2
Discussions of of autonomous vehicles inevitably jump from the current state (none) to a far future state (many).
The near future state is what concerns me. We can assume that ai algorithms will continue to make conservative decisions. They speed less, stop on yellow, and wait longer before pulling out into traffic. While (probably) safer, the congestion problems caused by 5-10% of vehicles driving autonomously will be vast:
The guy reading the news and watching YouTube isn’t gonna care if his car takes twice as long to pull out into traffic. But all the traffic behind him is going to be backed up.
When human drivers realize that a driverless car will yield to them they’ll take advantage of it. The passenger in the driverless car probably won’t care, but everyone stuck behind her will.
If driverless cars are going to park themselves, they’ll stop in front of the building for the passenger to get out, congesting traffic behind them. When that same car is driving to its parking spot without a passenger it will have no legal rights, and people will take advantage of that. Imagine the congestion that someone could cause by standing in front of a driverless car in a crosswalk. And do people have the right to send their vehicle through my neighborhood when they aren’t in it?
2
My late brother-in-law, one of the most misanthropic people I ever knew, used to say with venom, "The problem with public transportation is the public. Unfortunately, I think most Americans feel the same way he did. They are simply not going to turn in their cars (gas, diesel, electric, solar, hydrogen, whatever) and take the bus or light rail or trains as long as they feel "free" by driving themselves.
2
Driverless vehicles are coming a little too late for us. As an aging couple, we could get around in a two-seater with room for groceries. Such small vehicles, collectively controlled as a swarm, can certainly ease congestion by working more closely together. These vehicles can be as long as current behemoths are wide (size not mentioned by Markoff), changing how parking is done.
Mass transit is certainly to be expanded, but with reduced mobility, getting to a station is itself a problem. Maybe a hybrid solution--wee vehicle to get to a station, and another wee vehicle to finish to the destination.
2
Driverless cars won’t solve traffic problems, “smart” appliances are solving non problems while serving hackers, Facebook is bad for democracy, and my phone is Apple’s tool to monetize my attention at the expense of my sanity.
Seems like most of what’s come out of Silicon Valley in the past decade is bad for society, and driverless cars are just the latest example of overhyped “solutions” that create more problems than they solve.
Just imagine what life is gonna be like when the 10%’s self-driving cars are clogging up intersections while they check their Instagram accounts and Skype into meetings. They won’t care how long they have to wait until the ai decides it’s safe to pull out, but the rest of us, stuck in ever longer lines behind them, sure will.
1
Imagine 24 hour congestion in urban areas where cars circulate all the time.
Off street Parking has provided solutions for 100 years and can ameliorate this potential fatal gridlock.
Parking doesn't solve gridlock.
More road capacity doesn't solve gridlock.
Ride hailing doesn't solve gridlock.
Ride sharing doesn't solve gridlock.
Autonomous vehicles won't solve gridlock.
Less vehicles are the only solution to gridlock.
3
Cars, unless they are the frequent and convenient mass-transit kind, are not the solution.
2
This is obvious to anyone who thinks about it, but the so-called silicon valley geniuses want to pretend like they can solve the worlds problems when they are really after making a lot of money. Large numbers of driverless vehicles may reduce parking problems, but instead of being parked these cars will be driving around the streets empty.
4
The private ownership of autonomous vehicles makes no sense and won't happen, so the fear expressed here are baseless. The Uber model will be the sole source for individual mobility because once the driver is eliminated and the total electrification of the fleet happens, private owner goes away. No one enjoys the burden of car ownership, we all just want to get from point A to B. When this transition occurs, costs drop and the number of cars needed to provide the rides plunges. Most cars are sitting idle 95% of the time. As a bonus, we save 40,000 lives otherwise lost to car accidents, and give mobility to the young and elderly. There is no reason to fear the future, no visits to the gas station and mechanic and more time for fun things.
1
@sob - there's also the possibility that a group of unregulated competitors will fill streets with multiple cars competing for the same ridership. That's already happening here with the difference being there are people driving around looking for riders, and traffic has gotten worse.
There are a lot of possible benefits from electrification quite distinct from the full self-driving which, realistically, is farther in the future (if and when it gets here). Simpler machinery means far fewer repairs, no complex engine or transmission, longer-lasting brakes, no exhaust, no paying for platinum in the catalytic converter.
Realistic self driving (SAE level 5) is more difficult than the companies looking to profit soon want us to consider.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/technology-innovation/automated-vehicles-safety#issue-road-self-driving
In the meantime, we have liability issues to figure. Society also needs to have input on little things like the algorithms that will be used to decide who to kill, when a violent collision is inevitable.
A funny thing they'll have to deal with, too, is that one researcher pointed out one difficulty with self-driving cars is pedestrians jaywalking, knowing that the cars WILL stop to avoid them.
But driver assist will get better, improving safety, and electric cars will mean much cleaner air, whoever's driving.
If I had known that this were a justification for autonomous vehicles, I would've agreed with this article a long time ago. This is the most absurd suggestion I have heard. The author is right about everything but there's more. People will have slower, not faster, commutes and not just because there will be more traffic. Commuters now reach their destinations by speeding and by speeding egregiously. They go 90 in a 60 mph zone . An autonomous car won't do that . And if it does a ticket will be issued much more efficiently than in our present circumstances.
As a result, there will be more traffic, and it will go slower. Welcome back to the future .
1
The real estate crew loves the single driver model as it promotes endless expansion of development from the city centers.
Concentrated housing as promoted in new-urban-ism runs counter to to that and receives push back from the real estate /developer lobby.
Calthorpe is correct regarding congestion.
Reorganizing work times to reduce congestion seems a better solution...
2
He's right. The more cars there are the more congestion there will be. You can't build yourself out of congestion - that's been known for decades. Many billions of dollars have been spent trying to but have failed. Self -driving cars may have a slight benefit in that all cars can be guided as a pack, so everyone starts and stops at the same time, maintains exactly the same speed, eliminates passing, travel at closer distances, etc. But congestion occurs where capacity drops like at entrance and exit ramps, traffic lights, psychological barriers like tunnels, poor road surface, and others. Self-driving cars can't change that. And congestion will always rise to a level of tolerance.
Anyway, where is it written that every car must move from any Point A to any Point B without hindrance? The popular expectation that travel must be congestion-free is unrealistic and unfounded in any planning or engineering theory. Never happened, never will. Only fewer vehicles will address the problem, but only partially. The rest is as Peter Calthorpe says.
Steven Branca, CNU-A
4
Yes. I have the argument from time to time in the Civil Engineering world. I find too often that proponents of driverless cars have a decentralization philosophy of everything and are also usually big proponents of solar roof tops, at the tap water filters, home greywater reuse, all justified with libertarian like ideals that people will have great information and do the 'right thing'. Fundamentally, I don't think people have good information, let alone 'perfect information' to act on (and false information is always out there --see anti vaccinators), and even if they did have great information people don't act on it for numerous reasons (NGOs have a heck of a time getting Indians to abandon open defecation and use latrines because they think their gross; similarly, when NGOs develop water filtration devices, villagers abandon them at the first requirement of cost or effort), and even if people acted on perfect information, a tragedy of the commons often ensues unless we develop sophisticated understanding of systems based on game-theory and the outcome still may be undesirable or elusive (aka, when waze sends a hoard of cars through a tight alley creating its own congestion). At the end of the day, the promises of driverless cars in terms of congestion is all fantasy built on faulty assumptions and supported by nothing more than ideology. We need to invest in real infrastructure that works (like trains), now.
11
Too many people beget too many houses too far apart and the attendant too many miles of expensive paved roads.
As Paul Goodman put it in the 50s, the problem isn't private cars vs public transportation but why the trip.
6
Lots of moving parts
1.) Few people work their entire careers with a single employer.
2.) Even those that do work for a single employer have to face the likelihood of their employer relocating once (or more!) during their careers.
Major stumbling blocks as I see it are far flung office parks, corporate relocations, tax abatements & bidding wars among jurisdictions that encourage such moves. What good in "denser housing" if your job is up and moves?
On the housing side, until rents are tax deductible, the pressure will be to buy housing, and policies allowing capital-gain rollovers encourage the purchase of ever more expensive homes further out (land is much cheaper).
Those who can work from home or at nearby office sharing locations will be all set. Younger people are OK with smaller residences in cities for a larger pool of potential mates, night life, and the buzz of cities. And well-heeled empty nesters or retirees may trade down to small quarters in exchange for being near restaurants, entertainment, etc. (Interestingly some young families are staying n the urban core while others are-discovering close in suburbs.
Those with less money are likely to continue to struggle. They can't afford the denser housing and the autonomous buses are unlikely to service their areas. Perhaps the exurb's empty McMansions will offer bargain rents.
2
Driverless cars run by an artificially intelligent system with real time visibility of road traffic conditions and designed to:
(1) facilitate ride-sharing
(2) provide first and last mile pickups and drop offs for people using mass transit systems
will definitely help to take cars off congested arterial roads.
3
@Richard Mitchell-Lowe
Wishful though.
(1) Why would people accept ride sharing? Uber is 'designed' for that too, but it's not what happens. Most all people don't and won't choose to "share rides" with strangers. Driverless cars will most definitely be making trips for individuals, and between trips, will be circling on some algorithm until it is hailed again. This only leads to more passenger miles, not fewer.
(2) Again, wishful. Why transfer in that last mile when the car could just take you the entire trip? If the arterial road is flowing (uncongested), people will refill it with their own vehicles again vs 'sharing' or taking mass transit.
1
@Jim
On the contrary, at least I find that when ride sharing is much cheaper than typical Uber (at peak hour) I absolutely go for it. This is because its better than and almost the same price as public transport. Often the delay due to sharing is minimal or non-existent.
As long as people aren't in a great hurry, if sharing is considerably cheaper people will prefer this option.
1
@Marcus
People are always in a hurry. Do you think we want to leave home early to get to work on time? Or get home later after work? And the same for other places to go.
1
If self-driving cars are utilized on highways, will they still drive slowly in the left lane, like all to many human drivers?
That was a half-serious comment, but unless there are dedicated lanes/roads, as in ART, it's hard to imagine that self-driving cars would be a substantial solution, if not contributing more to congestion.
Insightful article. What I understood is that currently minimum occupancy rate per vehicle is one. However, in the future, when driverless cars go mainstream, minimum occupancy rate will decline to zero - meaning far more cars sprawling around. Hence, far more congestion.
6
I ride the bus frequently. While a bus driver doesn't need to be driving the bus, I do see the need for a conductor to deal with the human problems on any mass transit system: harassment, open containers, smoking. Driverless busses without any sort of human element to control for bad behavior might only push more people into cars.
15
Mr Calthorpe is wrong, for the following reasons:
1) The use of autonomous vehicles will accelerate the move from gas to electric vehicles.
2) The vehicles since automated will function more effectively, and efficiently handling, and reducing congestion through automated speeds, spacing and maneuvering.
3) It will reduce human error - the main cause of accidents, and consequently congestion on the highways.
4) The size of the vehicles could be substantially reduced, making them more like the Fiat 300 rather than the Ford Expedition for example.
5) Overall the car use will be far more efficient. Most cars don't move for 90% in any given 24 hour period. I would guess the number of actual cars needed to produced could be halved?
6) The cost of owning a car, insurance, an maintenance could be transferred to other household budget items essentially freeing up a couple of hundred dollars a month, and creating an economic boost for the 'middle class'
7) It could be tied to subsidies or government work programs to get those people struggling at the bottom to be able to get to work, and keep a job.
There are so many more things that could be added to list this but I have to get back to work
4
Bus lanes should be outside car traffic lanes so that passengers don’t have to navigate car traffic to get to the bus.
1
I love this. Our ideas need to push the envelope. We must be radically hopeful. Thanks for your visualized solution. If we can see it then we can act on it.
1
This is the biggest "duh" article ever. Anyone who has ever been to Europe or Asia could tell you that you need mass transit for cities to function properly. I live in Phoenix where the only viable mode of transportation is car. It makes me sad that even though self driving cars are still years away, and won't make it faster to get around, it's disincentivizing municipalities from investing in rail. To be honest I'm not sure why you wouldn't just build heavy or light rail down El Camino if it was upzoned. People keep trying to solve problems that already have perfectly good solutions.
28
@disquieted I was thinking the same thing! Umm, yeah if we just replace cars with, I don't know, cars! then nothing changes!
8
Peter is right on this. A key point not mentioned is that autonomous vehicles as well as services such as uber, lyft and taxis will average about 0.6 passengers per mile, thus being much less efficient than even single occupant owner driven vehicles. This is a complete and total lose lose lose situation with regard to congestion, air quality, and costs.
10
@Arlee
It depends on the relative price of sharing vs sole occupancy. Also, there is no reason why driving around without a destination could be reduced via regulation. With these two caveats I'd like to see how the simulations go.
Don't need to be a guru to know this... even if we're to believe that the fantasy of autonomous vehicles has any technological merit to it (and it doesn't, driving NEEDS human interaction) they still don't solve the question of the space and infrastructure needed to handle car traffic, autonomous or not
It's THAT simple people, invest in proper mass transit infrastructure instead of believing some Silicon Valley techbro ideas have the answers to problems in our cities
10
The reality is, Big Tech has never reduced congestion in any aspect of our lives where it intrudes and lays these claims.
Remember when "they" told us paper forms, letters, and such were gonna be a thing of the past? Ha ha. Companies, big or little, and every public enterprise still consume millions of tons of paper, file tons of it, and still ship tons out.
What Big Tech does is congest us more. The home based phone suddenly became portable, freeing us up (to conquer the world they sold us) and now we're beholden to the devices and companies that provide the services and/or Apps. We gave away our personal data, which is now purposely and belligerently overwhelming us with targeted advertizing and Fake news and fear mongering.
Does life feel less congested these days, or more? Be honest.
22
I’m not sure the U. S. Postal Service would completely agree with you.
Conclusions that driverless cars result in reduced congestion are based on the assumption that the majority subscribe to a service - they do not own a personal vehicle. You have one car being used 80 percent of the day as it drops off passengers and picks up others, compared to 4 or 5 vehicles being used 10 percent of the day. Much of the savings come from the lack of a driver and the large number of people sharing the cost.
8
Mr Calthorpe is right: driverless cars will not be the urban game changer. Car sharing, however, could be. The average car is parked 80% to 90% of the time. If a car-share car is parked only 50% of the time, we will need 30% to 40% fewer cars, and 30% to 40% fewer parking spaces and roads to accommodate them. Mass transit cannot go everywhere. Car sharing can help solve the "last mile" problem.
To make it work, we need to start insuring drivers, rather than vehicles. And the auto manufacturers will have to resign themselves to selling fewer cars.
7
Fewer cars would require fewer parking spaces but would otherwise not reduce congestion. One car making five trips produces the same amount of car usage as five cars each making one trip m
7
@Donald Bailey
Partly agree, re: the insurance. However, part of the insurance is for the value of the car to repair/replace. Would the drivers necessarily be driving the same car each trip, day in/day out?
1
Our cities are ruined by automobiles; another instance of the “tragedy of the commons”.
The problem, boiled down to its nut, is this: more automobiles than available road-space for them in many built-up urban areas. It’s less about demand than volume, measured in cubic feet. A thoroughfare cannot host more vehicles than its carrying capacity, measured in cubic feet at ground level, allows — any more than a 1 gallon jug can hold 2 gallons.
A typical automobile’s “road-print” might measure 5 feet x 7 feet x 15 feet (the vehicle itself plus some buffer space between it and the vehicles around it). That’s 525 cubic feet, moving or standing-still. Whether it’s driven or driverless is irrelevant.
Possible solutions, such as they are, present serious drawbacks and impracticalities:
- ration road-space by making Manhattan streets toll roads;
- impose very expensive congestion pricing, as in London;
- double-deck all Manhattan streets;
- ban automobiles altogether;
- invent a flying car; or,
- stop driving — as I have done.
10
There is already a really efficient system invented. It's called public transportation. With Buses and trams you can transport way more people cheaply to similar destinations than with any individual system.
Unfortunately, the US has created that monster called urban sprawl which will create a lot more problems in the next couple generations.
22
@Two in Memphis If you live in an area with good public transit, then your comment is true. However, if you live somewhere, like the Bay Area, where public transit only reaches certain areas and could take you twice the amount of time as driving, you need to have a car. That's why we have such terrible congestion in the Bay Area. Urban sprawl is ALREADY a huge problem, we don't need to wait generations.
Proponents have the idea that companies like Uber and Lyft are going to own the cars instead of individuals. Then we will simply share the vehicles at, of course, rates well below current taxi or Uber rates. Both ideas are asinine. Imagine if the whole nation went to work by taxi. How could you possibly have enough taxis to deliver every worker at the time of his choosing? How much capital would it take to own that many vehicles? Now that capital gets spread over 100 million households. What entity would want to own that many vehicles to then have 90% of them sit unused for most of the working day as individual vehicles now do? People believing prices would drop do not know anything about what goes into a price. Only people that work in government have the childish idea of prices being costs plus %. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Costs only determine if you offer the service. The market always provides the price. Why would the price be less than what market now pays for Uber or Lyft?
Autonomous vehicles will come and they will likely reduce commercial drivers and insurance rates and expand commuter ranges. They will not reduce congestion.
16
@Michael
It all depends on how competitive the industry is. If privately owned cars can compete then it would seem that profit margins may be driven down substantially.
Raise the property taxes on Commercial Property only, to the point where businesses will consider relocating to lower-tax areas. Use the tax revenues to build mass transit infrastructure. Raise the minimum wage to the point where housing and medical insurance is affordable, i.e. tie the minimum wage to the cost of living within a set commuting time, (not distance) of 20 minutes via mass transportation.
2
@Ron Bartlett "...to the point where businesses will consider relocating to lower-tax areas"
The problem there is that the businesses might relocate outside of the tax-base entirely, causing overall tax revenues to go *down*.
2
@Ron Bartlett
Commercial taxes are both regressive and fungible. They ultimately get passed to consumers in the form of higher prices for goods and services; inflation.
Sanity will return to Manhattan’s streets only after many many thousands of single drivers decide that it just isn’t worth the cost and aggravation to drive there. And a few million people decide that commuting to-and-from work by driving, or being driven, in an automobile is too wasteful in terms of time and expense and too injurious to our sick, if not dying, biosphere.
As more vehicles become available, more common routes will emerge, which will encourage financial incentives for pooling riders in vehicles designed for it. Pooling will save riders money and reduce traffic.
1
@David Anderson
What you are suggesting is essentially a BUS.
4
What do autonomous vehicles add to your equation? Nothing. If your idea does not work with driver in pooled vehicle, it won’t work with a robot.
2
@Two in Memphis
Except that it's a whole lot more pleasant than a bus and potentially drops you off and picks you up closer to where you want.
1
Why would anyone think driverless cars would improve congestion?
If people can look at their phones or laptops instead of the road, they will be more willing to deal with longer and longer commutes.
The intent was never to reduce congestion. The intent was always to replace commercial drivers and cut costs.
32
@MTS
It’s like synchronized swimming. Machine-controlled vehicles theoretically lack human vices. They can be programmed to accelerate and decelerate simultaneously with others in its vacinity, eliminating “friction” — the human eye-hand-foot coordination time-lag. Also, because a master computer knows the start/end location of every trip it could act as a kind of route mastermind. Algorithms control vehicles’ direction, course and speed. Vehicles move not autonomously, individually, but in fluid blocs as frictionlessly as possible.
Practicality aside, the insoluble problem remains: too much unrationed demand for, essentially, fixed and finite (“rationed”) supply. Decreasing vehicular friction doesn’t create more road-space. Nor can it eliminate rationing. It only enlarges the ration available for division, creates more carrying-capacity through increased efficiency, but at the margin — at most, a 15% volume increase. Like packing 11 sardines inside a tin designed for 10 by trimming fins and fitting one sideways.
In London, to ration demand during high-demand periods expensive congestion pricing is used. Another method is to assign every vehicle an odd or even number, prominently displayed as a windshield sticker. Odd-number vehicles can only be driven on dates that end in odd-numbers. Violators pay steep fines. France uses toll highways to raise revenue and decrease imported oil fuel demand.
None of it is enough. We must abandon daily commuting by automobile.
1
@MTS The logic is that once you don’t need a driver, taking cabs becomes cheaper (and more pleasant) than owning and driving a car. And once taxis become the new norm, a large market is created for ride sharing, and ride sharing will cut down congestion significantly. Taxis also solve the issue of the last and first miles in traditional public transportation, so it makes it much more attractive.
The problem you are mentioning still exists, but it can be mitigated with congestion pricing. People who want to use a car on their own on the whole journey will pay for the trouble (congestion) it is causing, while people who rideshare will be able to share that cost.
You mention in passing that Waymo is partnering with Valley Metro in the Phoenix region to develop a transportation system with features much like those in Mr. Calthorp's ART concept. I wish there had been more information about that partnership.
5
@Richard Chard I thought the same thing. This is the first I've heard of it and I have friends who work for Valley Metro and City of Phx.
All of the “solutions” focus on increasing the supply of housing, which then requires radical reactions to reduce congestion and prices. Wouldn’t a better approach be to reduce demand in the already congested areas by providing tax and other incentives for businesses to locate away from the congested areas? This would distribute jobs over a broader area. Housing would follow the jobs. Commutes would be shorter. Congestion and greenhouse gasses would be lessened. Also, much congestion is caused by “ride sharing” cars driving around aimlessly until summoned via an app by a passenger. Wouldn’t staging areas for such cars reduce congestion?
2
Completely wrong. When densities are high, people can reach places on foot. Spreading out inevitably results in more congestion not less, as getting to anything requires a car, and mass transit can’t deal with the last mile problem.
5
@Nick Waranoff Saying that the higher supply of housing will create issues of congestion implies that you accept the fact that the lack of housing will conversely force people out.
Either this is true, and then this asks an important question: is an easier commute for you important enough to justify the trouble people go through because of the housing issue? If families live cramped in poor quality apartments, it is because living in their area (rather than where housing is cheaper) is very important to them.
But your assumption might very well be wrong. Building housing does not create the people who would be living in it. The question is where will these people live if you don’t build the housing. If they still live in the same area, but just in more cramped conditions, then they will make similar commutes and the impact of congestion is nil whether you build or not. If they live further away but still work at the same place, then they actually have a longer commute, and create more congestion, not less.
Driverless cars are just the auto and fossil fuel industries Hail Mary against what's been staring America in the face for decades: a gross lack of mass transit infrastructure paired with little/no safe biking infrastructure throughout the country.
We will soon be nearly a century behind the rest of the developed world in tackling this.
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I'm skeptical that real motivations behind the driverless car have that much to do with safety or congestion. I think it has more to do with who will get there first, and who will profit from the systems and software.
Whether or not the self-driving car (or truck) reduces congestion or is practical, safe, or economically feasible, once the idea took hold, a race for dominance was inevitable. Now that it's been perceived as the next big "killer app," the gold rush by both car companies and Silicon Valley is unstoppable. At stake is neither congestion nor safety, but propriety software that will be required to run the system. Someone has to write it, and that someone will profit handsomely.
What's unfortunate is that the talent of Silicon Valley is being used not to reimagine urban transportation entirely, but to simply profit from a system that inherently causes congestion. It would be like the buggy manufacturers in 1920 doubling down with driverless buggies. They're still buggies.
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Mr. Calthorpe may be 100% correct in both his predictions and solutions but he does not deal with the elephant in the room - namely that CAR companies are in the business of building and selling individual CARS - even autonomous ones. "Public transportation" has been a four-letter word in the automobile industry since the end of WWII and there is no indication that will change.
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@Jason Shapiro. Mr. Calthorpe likely knows that the real elephant in the room are a VOTING public comprised of significant numbers who have never used public transportation or ridden a bike to get anywhere. I have done both for many years, though we own one car. I'm always stunned by the people who insist that they couldn't do without a car despite seeing me do it regularly and with ease. I live in a downtown neighborhood where residents are having a fit that a much needed 8 unit apartment building dedicated parking on two vacant lots might result in less available street parking. The problem is that though everyone loves to complain about congestion, few want to be a part of the solution.
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When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Silicon Valley knows how to designer consumer products. They have no idea how to deal with scarcity because they don't know how to tell consumers they can't have everything they want. So their only answer to congestion is an expensive new technology that makes commuting more fun and convenient for the wealthiest. In the meantime, they're making shrinking public budgets worse with their tax avoidance and their contributions to Republican politicians.
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