4 ms·

Therein lies the social change though. Because fundamentally, most people go to work at 9 and leave at 5. Driverless cars don't alter this without other changes

by ethbro 11y ago

Therein lies the social change though. Because fundamentally, most people go to work at 9 and leave at 5. Driverless cars don't alter this without other changes: you still need a car for every commuter to satisfy maximum demand (9am, 5pm). You have to combine that with flexible work hours (honestly, no reason this isn't already a thing), carpooling, or hybrid transport with car+rail/bus to have any impact on car ownership.

losteric 11y ago
Your last bit seems to be key. Self-driving cars will make public transportation more attractive by filling the "last-mile" role, letting governments invest in better service along core transit lines. Wake up, do your morning routine, walk out the door, and there's a car waiting to chauffeur you to the subway station (or long-distance bus service)... preset with your favorite seat position, climate, and music. Flex hours would help drive down costs by reducing idle capacity between 9 and 5 though. > carpooling Self-driving vanpools with just-in-time routing FTW.
- maerF0x0 11y ago
  personally speaking my gripe with public transit isnt last mile (getting to the bus/train stop) its the stopping and accelerating at everyone elses stops along the way. a 10 minute drive becomes 15 mins because suzie expects me to stop at her work and johnny wants me to stop at his gym. Wasted time. single passenger (ie very small) autonomous vehicles seems like the best fleet. Now the hard part of getting people to accept them socially. (eg: "I look like a wimp in that small thing, I want a hummer" or what have you)
  - losteric 11y ago
    Right now bus stops are set with the idea that everyone will walk to their final destination. Stops will go down if we have autonomous "last-mile" taxis.
bsder 11y ago
> (honestly, no reason this isn't already a thing) I suspect that the need to sync up with kiddie prison (aka school) is what locks everything into 9-to-5. Unless you can get back to a majority of households having only one working adult, I don't think this is going to change any time soon.
- Tiksi 11y ago
  Another major factor for 9to5 is probably having a common time that businesses are open. Many businesses need to interact with a multitude of other companies during their working hours. Having the same working hours as every other company you need to interact with makes scheduling meetings/phonecalls/etc a lot easier, or reduces the need for scheduling and the overhead that comes with it. I'm sure there's a good way to solve this too, but I can't think of one off the top of my head at the moment.
  - ethbro 11y ago
    This is absolutely true for a number of businesses, however as things are becoming more global (or at least one part of the human touch is) I believe it's fading. I think a lot of processes could be migrated to asynchronous B2B communication without an overall impact on efficiency. Indeed, probably some gains from batching similar parcels of work together as opposed to a day of "What about X1?" "What about Y1?" "What about X2?" etc etc.

by ethbro 11y ago

losteric 11y ago

Your last bit seems to be key. Self-driving cars will make public transportation more attractive by filling the "last-mile" role, letting governments invest in better service along core transit lines. Wake up, do your morning routine, walk out the door, and there's a car waiting to chauffeur you to the subway station (or long-distance bus service)... preset with your favorite seat position, climate, and music. Flex hours would help drive down costs by reducing idle capacity between 9 and 5 though. > carpooling Self-driving vanpools with just-in-time routing FTW.

maerF0x0 11y ago
personally speaking my gripe with public transit isnt last mile (getting to the bus/train stop) its the stopping and accelerating at everyone elses stops along the way. a 10 minute drive becomes 15 mins because suzie expects me to stop at her work and johnny wants me to stop at his gym. Wasted time. single passenger (ie very small) autonomous vehicles seems like the best fleet. Now the hard part of getting people to accept them socially. (eg: "I look like a wimp in that small thing, I want a hummer" or what have you)
- losteric 11y ago
  Right now bus stops are set with the idea that everyone will walk to their final destination. Stops will go down if we have autonomous "last-mile" taxis.

bsder 11y ago

> (honestly, no reason this isn't already a thing) I suspect that the need to sync up with kiddie prison (aka school) is what locks everything into 9-to-5. Unless you can get back to a majority of households having only one working adult, I don't think this is going to change any time soon.

Tiksi 11y ago
Another major factor for 9to5 is probably having a common time that businesses are open. Many businesses need to interact with a multitude of other companies during their working hours. Having the same working hours as every other company you need to interact with makes scheduling meetings/phonecalls/etc a lot easier, or reduces the need for scheduling and the overhead that comes with it. I'm sure there's a good way to solve this too, but I can't think of one off the top of my head at the moment.
- ethbro 11y ago
  This is absolutely true for a number of businesses, however as things are becoming more global (or at least one part of the human touch is) I believe it's fading. I think a lot of processes could be migrated to asynchronous B2B communication without an overall impact on efficiency. Indeed, probably some gains from batching similar parcels of work together as opposed to a day of "What about X1?" "What about Y1?" "What about X2?" etc etc.