One of these levers is to quadruple road capacity through new roads.
The other is to quadruple road capacity through driverless cars with perfect routing efficiency.
What do these have in common?
First: they are still massively wasteful of space. Moreso with a driverless car, which is going to be able to avoid having to find a parking spot nearby.
Second: induced demand. Double capacity, triple, quadruple, it doesn't matter. It will return to the "barely works" equilibrium in short order, except you'll have further lashed yourself to a wasteful mode of transport.
I recognise cars have unique utility and that driverless cars will enhance that utility. But for mass people movement, a train is the clear leader, followed by a bus in a dedicated lane. As the world becomes increasingly urbanised that will only grow more important.
> Moreso with a driverless car, which is going to be able to avoid having to find a parking spot nearby.
Only if wasting energy is acceptable. Loafing about doing loops around the owner will very quickly be more costly in terms of energy expenditure (plus opportunity cost of "now I have less energy to go to my next destination") than parking for awhile, especially if we get to a point where every parking space is capable of EV charging (which is exactly the direction in which I'd like to see the world gravitate, since that'll significantly alleviate the problems with EV range relative to ICE).
Thus, I'm far from convinced that this will ever actually be a significant problem. Only way the "perpetually-circling autonomous vehicle" problem would be realistic is if we lived in some Nikola-Tesla-esque utopia where wireless electricity is abundant and constantly charging cars as they drive (or maybe if it's a sunny day and solar tech gets advanced enough to be able to meaningfully power a car on solar power alone).
What I was driving at was that people will expect their car to drive away after rush hour (meaning 4 trips, not 2, per day). And they will expect it to come early and loiter near their workplace, which usually won't mean parking or stopping.
So to recap: the car is used twice as much and yes, does laps of the block while waiting to pick you up.
Right, but the longer it's loitering, the more fuel and/or battery it's wasting. Likewise, the further "away" it drives, the more fuel and/or battery it's wasting.
The ideal will always be for it to park (or better yet: charge) as soon and as close as possible, and to delay "unparking" and departing for pickup until as late as possible. It's possible that some people will want to subvert that somewhat (i.e. "please park at this specific parking garage instead of the closest" or "please loiter for a couple minutes and wait for me"), but - again - I ain't convinced those will actually amount to a significant traffic impact.
EDIT: as another bonus, self-driving cars don't have to worry about whether or not the driver can get in/out during these "wait for my owner to need me again" periods, so they can park in much tighter parking spaces while they wait.
Lever 1 is impossible in big cities unless you want to raze hundreds of buildings and/or build big stacks of bridges with only a bit less razing. (And tunnels are even less of a possibility than stacked roadways.)
It's harder than just providing parking space for the cars and there are problems with that.
Agreed. My point was that folks predicting the Self Driving Singularity set great store by efficiency gains, but that these are in meaningful terms the same as capacity gains.
Whether we increase the number of cars on the road by packing them tighter or adding roads doesn't matter. Any gains are quickly consumed.
> taxis ... results in a price of 56 rappen (about half of 1 euro) per kilometre driven.
Ahem... a 7 minute ride from our hotel to the train station came up to 35 CHF. That's around 5 km, so around 7 CHF/km or 6.25 EUR/km. Just something to these dreamy 56 rappen and realism of the study in perspective.
> The ideal level of demand and price lies at a fleet of some 3,000 automated taxis, which results in a price of 56 rappen (about half of 1 euro) per kilometre driven. This roughly corresponds to the current per kilometre costs of a conventional private vehicle, but is much lower than the 2.73 Swiss francs per kilometre of a conventional taxi.
If you look at the full context, I think the article states that this is the price which could be achieved by an optimally sized fleet of driverless taxis - it even says right there that the actual, current price with conventional taxis is much higher than that figure.
The current taxi fees in Zurich are actually even higher than 2.73, even before factoring in the base fee and fees for waiting times, but I don't see how that in itself would limit what prices driverless taxis can realistically achieve.
In Zurich, the maximum base fare is 8 CHF, while the maximum price per kilometer driven is 5 CHF [1]. UberX currently costs 1.80 CHF per kilometer [2]. It's not all that unrealistic to assume that this cost will go down to 56 Rp. when letting autonomous vehicles drive.
First, we always overestimate new technology’s ability to solve problems, while underestimating the side effects. So any grandiose claims about self driving cars fixing congestion should’ve been met by more skepticism in the press.
Second, we already know that people are willing to spend a large amount of money on personal transit that goes above and beyond the bare necessities of transit, at least in rich western nations. I see no reason why that would suddenly stop once the vehicle’s owner is no longer behind the wheel.
Self driving cars in areas with poor public transport will likely make things worse. Self driving cars in areas with good public transport combined with apps that schedule combination routes, and fleet management that makes better decisions about driving patterns, could be a big benefit.
E.g. the minicab and Uber drivers around mine are often more clueless than I am about traffic patterns nearby, despite the fact I don't drive myself. Realtime coordination to pick less congested routes dynamically could improve things a lot.
And apps like Citymapper that don't just suggest a single mode of transport has a lot of potential. In London they're experimenting with bus routes of their own. The long term potential is being able to promise you short waits and low cost by e.g. telling you to wait for the bus when the bus is near, but sending a car - rideshare or not - if there's a wait, and dynamically scheduling minibuses for high traffic routes not covered by the standard routes, for example.
I'd prefer that over a car the whole way a lot of the time, because living somewhere highly urban, driving the whole way can almost never compete on speed, but figuring out the optimal route that keeps changes few and waits low is often tricky. E.g. Citymapper just recently introduced me to a route I had no idea was an option - a station I've never used before because it's too far too walk and awkward to get to by bus, and so I didn't even know what trains go from there. But suggesting an Uber there and train from there, and a second change got me where I wanted to go ~20 minutes faster with the same number of changes as if I'd gone the route I expected to take. Mixing and matching like that has the potential to make taking a car the whole way a lot less attractive for a lot of routes where people do opt for that today.
But it does require a lot of things to go right. For starters, multi-mode transport apps that are free to pick the optimal mix needs to win the battle for being consumers first choice in planning trips.
>Second, we already know that people are willing to spend a large amount of money on personal transit that goes above and beyond the bare necessities of transit, at least in rich western nations. I see no reason why that would suddenly stop once the vehicle’s owner is no longer behind the wheel.
The success of Uber suggests that some people are choosing not to purchase private vehicles. But we don't know if this is limited to Millennials.
> The success of Uber suggests that some people are choosing not to purchase private vehicles. But we don't know if this is limited to Millennials.
The success of Uber only tells you that a) some people use taxis, and b) a pirate taxi using VC money to offer rates at below market level will be popular with taxi users, for obvious reasons.
How many people do you know that have replaced a personal car with Uber? I’ve known two people like that, and everyone else I know uses them in place of traditional taxis.
I use Uber/Lyft as a replacement for cabs to/from the airport, but almost all of my other usage of them is in replacement for driving my own car into the city. (In other words, these are trips that I'd otherwise take, but not via taxi.)
Conversely, I don't know why people still buy cars in urban areas. Rural, I get. But I've lived in cities all my adult life, and I don't even have a drivers license. It feels like a waste of time, and owning a car feels like a pointless waste of money. Why would I pay to have a car that I need to worry about, including thinking about where it happens to be located when I want a car.
I like being able to open up Citymapper, tell it where I want to go, and now they've started not just suggesting Uber and others for the whole ride as an alternative to public transport, but suggesting it for parts of the way. A car you own can't compete with taking you to a train station and picking you up on the other side.
Today it takes ~3 minutes on average to get a car to the front of my house. That's with human drivers, spaced out inefficiently. Get driverless, and you can get a mix of ride shares and individual cars based on spacing out cars based on predicted demand and picking the most efficient solution based on customer preferences with very low wait times at even lower cost.
Owning a car just can't compete in my eyes. Maybe that's shaped by living in European cities where driving long distances almost never competes favorably with mixing and matching with trains and underground (a typical commute for me in the days I used to commute in to central London would have taken twice as long with car, and maybe ~30% less if a car/rideshare service could guarantee to be here in 3-4 minutes instead of waiting for the bus or walking to the train station; with apps suggesting the best route I'd still take the bus when the wait is low, but know I could start my journey later because I'd have a shorter maximum wait)
EDIT: Even more so because parking restrictions are getting stricter and stricter. The London borough where I live won't even entertain planning applications for housing if it includes more than 1.5 parking space per unit. That's expected to drop further as density increases - note that this is not permits for the road etc., but applies whether or not you build your own off street parking. The reason is that restricting parking is seen as a way of discouraging car ownership to reduce demand on surrounding road infrastructure.
I was 100% with you until I got a kid. And then a second one. With car seats, baby carriages, spare diapers, towels, tissues etc etc the value of having a car always packed with "your stuff" goes up a lot.
Many families still manage fine. My siblings an me were raised without a car and since then the availability of public transport and things like cargo bikes has only improved.
Certainly you can manage fine. And it gets easier when the kids get older and are more independent.
But if you can afford a car, it's still a big help. So families will keep buying cars. I'm just trying to explain GPs "I don't understand why people buy cars", not saying that it's a requirement.
Even without kids, I find having a vehicle with "my stuff" in it to be invaluable. It's also handy when I need to haul something, or if I want to go somewhere not readily serviced by public transit (which is, you know, the vast majority of even California, let alone the United States); sure, I can rent a car or truck or whatever for those occasions, but it only takes a few instances of that to become less costly than just buying a used car.
It did get harder when I got a kid, but I took him on the bus and in taxis just fine from he was a baby. It was a pain for a bit, but not enough to make me want a car.
I'd recommend getting a drivers license anyway. It opens up some opportunities + will come in handy if, at some point, you decide to move to more rural areas.
Having lived almost my entire life in 1M city, I don't have one either, but I recently moved to a ~15k city and this is forcing me to finally get that license.
Oh puh-leeze. 1970s called, they want their flying cars back. And the Moon colonies and strong AI. (Spoiler: jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but never any jam today)
I grew up in a ~25k town and public transport was still just fine. There are certainly places where it wouldn't be, and of course big differences between how small you can go and get decent public transport depending on country etc. (e.g. my brother lives 20-30 minutes by car or probably twice that by bus outside that ~25k town, and if I lived there I might feel differently), but I just can't see myself willingly moving anywhere where it'd be a problem.
In the US, the urban/rural distinction isn't enough. It's more like NYC or SF/everywhere else. I'm in a very large city (Dallas), and my choices for commuting back and forth to work include busses and ride-sharing. Taking a bus means literally hours per day, and it would cost me more to take Lyft every day than it currently costs me to maintain my car, and I live extremely close to my office by Dallas standards (3.2 miles, 5.15 km).
It's possible the math would change if I both lived and worked within walking distance of a light-rail stop, but only a small percentage of residences or offices fall into that category, and neither my home nor my office are included.
It probably also helps that my car is paid for, so my monthly costs are only: insurance, fuel, 1/12th of my inspection and registration fees, and a few oil changes per year. Over a long enough time frame, I'd have to include whatever it will cost me to replace this car someday, but eventually the VC money underwriting Lyft is going to run out, so I'll take my chances.
> - Being able to get where you need to go without requesting a ride.
If your car has parked far away from your location you need to "request" it just like a shared car.
> - Your own car will wait with infinite patience.
That could be useful every now and then. But not very important on my list if the waiting time is small enough.
> - Kids
I mentioned baby seats. But the availability of shared cars could mean that you can drop off multiple kids at multiple locations using multiple cars all at once.
To begin with, this may be true. But then people will think, why am I spending all this capital buying and keeping my own device when I could use a service when I need.
It's ironic that the "land of the free" is spearheading this change. While renting is justified in some cases, each thing you rent instead of owning means signing a contract to abide by, which severely limits what you can do with an item, and means you have yet another party you're beholden to that you have to keep track of.
For people without a hired person to manage all these subscriptions, I wonder just how cognitively-taxing a rent/subscribe-everything lifestyle would be.
Maintaining your property is often much more cognitively taxing. Consider a car, for example: you have to keep track of oil changes, water, tires, brakes, taxes, insurance, and the list goes on, each with its own schedule.
Which is why I like my own car, I know it has been maintained to the higuest standard. Many ubers are downright frightening to anyone who knows anything about cars, and taxis seldom better.
> Consider a car, for example: you have to keep track of oil changes, water, tires, brakes, taxes, insurance, and the list goes on, each with its own schedule.
Not sure where you're from, but for me and my two vehicles, it's not really that big of a deal.
* Oil - look at sticker on windshield (when I change my own oil, I just erase the sticker and write it myself)
* Water - look in the radiator every once in a while; low? Add some coolant (never plain water!)
* Tires - look at them every now and again; need air? - add air, tread look too worn? - buy new ones, hear a clicking while driving? stop, and look for rock or nail
* Brakes - look and feel, listen for squeaking; if it squeaks, probably hitting the indicator strip - change 'em out. If feeling spongy, flush and refill fluid; pull the tires off (during a rotation) and look at 'em. Rear drums if you have 'em - common on trucks - only need to be checked occasionally - they rarely need to be replaced often unless you haul loads regularly
* Taxes - what taxes? I buy used, pay with cash - anything else, you're getting ripped off
* Insurance - get the bill, pay the bill
I do as much maintenance as I can myself, otherwise if I think it needs to go into the shop - into the shop it goes. Having two vehicles means I don't have to worry about if one is in the shop. Sometimes I've swapped - one car in the shop, get it back, swap the other one in (usually for things I can't handle - things that need a lift or are beyond my skill or tool level). About the only other thing I have to worry about is timing belts, but that's only on one vehicle now (my Jeep has a chain, I'll hear the noise once it wears beyond a certain point - the 4.0 I6 is near indestructible anyhow), and I got it changed when I purchased it, so it's good for 60k, at which point I'll probably need a complete engine overhaul anyhow (given the age of the vehicle - 1999 Isuzu VehiCROSS).
I love both of my vehicles, and I can't yet get anything in a hybrid or electric that compares (nor could I afford it, even if it did exist). I sincerely hope that battery tech gains to the point where a charge will get you 600-800 miles (because once you put that tech into a 4wd vehicle, with a lift and 30+ inch tires - that number will drop like a rock). But it ain't there yet, and even when it does happen, I won't be able to afford v1.0 - so I'm sticking with my current vehicles.
Plus - I'm hoping my VehiCROSS becomes a collectible; it has all the categories of one, but for some reason, it hasn't quite happened yet. I love driving that beast, tho...
People used to rent movies before Netflix (and before DVDs, for that matter). The big win with Netflix was that there was no due date to a Netflix rental, rather than having to rent by the day. (Plus, done by mail, and a bigger catalog than your neighborhood video store.)
Netflix is my DVD shelf as a service. I used to own lots of movies and series. Now they are all ripped and stored in hard drives, much like my music. I rarely buy new movies - I wait until they are on Netflix or Amazon and, if, for some reason (a 6 year old one, usually) I can't wait, I rent them from Apple.
One of these levers is to quadruple road capacity through new roads.
The other is to quadruple road capacity through driverless cars with perfect routing efficiency.
What do these have in common?
First: they are still massively wasteful of space. Moreso with a driverless car, which is going to be able to avoid having to find a parking spot nearby.
Second: induced demand. Double capacity, triple, quadruple, it doesn't matter. It will return to the "barely works" equilibrium in short order, except you'll have further lashed yourself to a wasteful mode of transport.
I recognise cars have unique utility and that driverless cars will enhance that utility. But for mass people movement, a train is the clear leader, followed by a bus in a dedicated lane. As the world becomes increasingly urbanised that will only grow more important.