4 ms·

50 Billion could buy a lot of self driving cars in 5 years.... why not just spend it on city owned cars that taxpayers can order on demand?

by LAMike 11y ago

st3v3r 11y ago
Cause that would do nothing to alleviate traffic congestion.
- barney54 11y ago
  And neither does light rail. light rail is a bad investment. It is expensive and low capacity. It is 19th century technology. Building bus rapid transit makes much more sense because it is felixible and less expensive. But politicians don't like photo ops with buses nearly as much as with trains.
  - stephenboyd 11y ago
    The proposal is for bus improvements and bus rapid transit as well as light rail.
  - g8gggu89 11y ago
    There's no drawback to buying a lot more electric buses for Seattle?
  - dpark 11y ago
    Politicians like trains because their constituents like trains. Buses are stuck in traffic. Light rail runs on dedicated lines. Light rail is attractive because it is more predictable. The buses in Seattle are less attractive because they suffer the same congestion and unpredictability as driving.
    - superuser2 11y ago
      Bus rapid transit specifically refers to bus lines on dedicated right-of-way. However, once you are going to the trouble of building dedicated right-of-way, the incremental cost of making it rail isn't too bad compared to the enormous efficiency/scalability of rail over buses.
- praxulus 11y ago
  Not exactly nothing (people won't need to drive around looking for parking, in theory self-driving cars could pack in more closely to reduce road congestion), but probably not enough to make it worth it.
- natrius 11y ago
  All you have to do to eliminate congestion is to raise the price of congestion until it goes away. Don't want to pay the full price? Share a ride with other people. This is only unpopular because so many people would rather have free, congested roads and expensive, slow transit than just paying for the roads. This will clearly change before most of Seattle's new plans are completed: self-driving cars will clog up our roads waiting for riders unless we charge them to be on the roads.
  - st3v3r 11y ago
    The problem with that solution is that it puts most of the burden on those least able to shoulder it. Most of us here probably have flexible hours, so moving our commute by even an hour isn't that big of a deal. Someone working a lower end job has set hours, so they cannot move their commute. Meaning they have to drive when congestion happens, meaning they get hit with the price.
    - natrius 11y ago
      Very true. We can subsidize those trips if we want to, but I don't think that will be necessary. Employers in high congestion areas will have to pay more to compete with other employers. It'll probably work itself out, but if it doesn't, we should fix it directly instead of forcing everyone to endure traffic.
      - st3v3r 11y ago
        Except they won't.
- marcoperaza 11y ago
  Traffic exists because human drivers form a compression wave. The car in front of you accelerates, then you accelerate, then the person behind you, etc. Every time someone taps the brakes, they create traffic behind them. Self-driving cars would presumably synchronize, allowing all of the cars to start moving at almost the same time and move in unison at high speeds. Also, people don't feel safe driving at 60mph in a densely packed road, so they don't. This should be no problem for a computer, so you could have a densely packed highway but traffic still moving at very high speeds. Basically, flow velocity could remain constant as the highway becomes more congested. On city streets, your car would route around traffic light timing, in coordination with other vehicles, to distribute traffic and prevent unnecessary stopping. Edit: One caveat worth mentioning is that these optimizations would be most effective if a road is 100% automated cars, though maybe dedicated lanes are a good transition mechanism. Once the safety benefits are clear, I think adoption will be very fast. The societal cost of car accidents is absolutely massive.
  - paulddraper 11y ago
    "people don't feel safe driving at 60mph in a densely packed road, so they don't" Not only do they not feel safe, they aren't safe driving bumper-to-bumper. Computers will have better reaction times, so much of that goes away. But it's still dangerous. If two cars ahead of me slows, and the car ahead doesn't slow and collides, it will decelerate very quickly, perhaps too quickly for my brakes at 60mph.
    - marcoperaza 11y ago
      You're right, the failure mode for self-driving cars at high speeds is catastrophic, but that's no different from many safe technologies. And the bar here is pretty low. You'd have to really screw up when designing the system for it to be even remotely as dangerous as human drivers. If everyone switched to self-driving cars, serious car accidents would probably become something you hear about in the news, not something that's happened to many of your friends.
  - st3v3r 11y ago
    That kind of technology won't be commonplace, available, or in a position to do anything about the problem for a long, long time. Meanwhile, the traffic problem exists today. I'm all for self driving cars, but I'd like to see solutions for the problem today, not just letting things get worse until something magically makes it better.
rtpg 11y ago
Let's say that 500,000 cars (100k/car, pricing in the cost for storage and maintnance). The most Expensive subway line in the world cost 15 billion and serves something like 800k people. So you could also use that money to build two subway lines and save for maintenance. You could probably build 4 light rail lines (since you're not digging tunnels but instead buying up land). Plus rail incentivises denser living, meaning that the more rail lines you build, the shorter you need to make them. Self driving cars let you share the cars so kind of solves the parking problem (but keeping track of people doing nasty stuff), but is really just a bunch of micro-buses. If you can get the political will for rail, it's a pretty effective way of moving people around.
- barney54 11y ago
  Rail isn't very efficient in the United States--except for maybe Manhattan (even then MTA loses money). Seattle should look at what's happening in other cities. For example, according to the LA Times, "The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the region's largest carrier, lost more than 10% of its boardings from 2006 to 2015, a decline that appears to be accelerating. Despite a $9-billion investment in new light rail and subway lines, Metro now has fewer boardings than it did three decades ago, when buses were the county's only transit option." http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ridership-slump-20160127-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ridership-slum... Phoenix spent $1.4 billion on light rail and transit growth slowed (even though population growth did not). http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2016/01/phoenix-light-rail-continued-fail.html http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2016/01/phoenix-light-... The point is that rail is not on-demand. It is not flexible. It is not serve people individually. Rail does a wonderful job of taking larges numbers of people from dense living areas to dense working areas. The future is not light rail. The future is much closer to the individualized, on-demand, flexible nature of Uber rather than the rigid, expensive, inflexible nature of rail.
  - koenigdavidmj 11y ago
    We just added two stops to our light rail line. It still doesn't sync up with nearby buses, and school is on break (one of the stops is for the university). Instantly, the line became overcrowded and we'll be lengthening trains next week. In Seattle people ride trains if they're there. This is an observable fact.
rayiner 11y ago
Cities like NYC and Boston are still enjoying the fruits of investment in rail that they made 100+ years ago. Those self driving cars wouldn't last 10.
specialist 11y ago
Upvoted you. As a huge supporter of mass transit and the public good, methinks the era of centralized big bang projects are coming to an end. In the '80s, one of my buddy's sci-fi stories (a detective novel, mystery) featured on demand personalized transportation. I've been wanting that forever. With the cost of collaboration and coordination falling thru the floor, its inevitable. Stuff like Uber, Pronto, Car2Go, ZipCar are exciting precursors.
- jkchu 11y ago
  Services like Car2Go are great when you are staying within the city. The main traffic issue in Seattle is traveling to/from/through downtown Seattle. Adding a train that travels between Bellevue and Seattle would solve a ton of problems with the traffic on our two bridges, 520 and I-90. Currently we only have buses as our only mass transit option. I have found riding the bus to take significantly longer that simply driving (they get stuck in all the same traffic).

50 Billion could buy a lot of self driving cars in 5 years.... why not just spend it on city owned cars that taxpayers can order on demand?

by LAMike 11y ago

50 Billion could buy a lot of self driving cars in 5 years.... why not just spend it on city owned cars that taxpayers can order on demand?

st3v3r 11y ago

Cause that would do nothing to alleviate traffic congestion.

barney54 11y ago
And neither does light rail. light rail is a bad investment. It is expensive and low capacity. It is 19th century technology. Building bus rapid transit makes much more sense because it is felixible and less expensive. But politicians don't like photo ops with buses nearly as much as with trains.
- stephenboyd 11y ago
  The proposal is for bus improvements and bus rapid transit as well as light rail.
- g8gggu89 11y ago
  There's no drawback to buying a lot more electric buses for Seattle?
- dpark 11y ago
  Politicians like trains because their constituents like trains. Buses are stuck in traffic. Light rail runs on dedicated lines. Light rail is attractive because it is more predictable. The buses in Seattle are less attractive because they suffer the same congestion and unpredictability as driving.
  - superuser2 11y ago
    Bus rapid transit specifically refers to bus lines on dedicated right-of-way. However, once you are going to the trouble of building dedicated right-of-way, the incremental cost of making it rail isn't too bad compared to the enormous efficiency/scalability of rail over buses.
praxulus 11y ago
Not exactly nothing (people won't need to drive around looking for parking, in theory self-driving cars could pack in more closely to reduce road congestion), but probably not enough to make it worth it.
natrius 11y ago
All you have to do to eliminate congestion is to raise the price of congestion until it goes away. Don't want to pay the full price? Share a ride with other people. This is only unpopular because so many people would rather have free, congested roads and expensive, slow transit than just paying for the roads. This will clearly change before most of Seattle's new plans are completed: self-driving cars will clog up our roads waiting for riders unless we charge them to be on the roads.
- st3v3r 11y ago
  The problem with that solution is that it puts most of the burden on those least able to shoulder it. Most of us here probably have flexible hours, so moving our commute by even an hour isn't that big of a deal. Someone working a lower end job has set hours, so they cannot move their commute. Meaning they have to drive when congestion happens, meaning they get hit with the price.
  - natrius 11y ago
    Very true. We can subsidize those trips if we want to, but I don't think that will be necessary. Employers in high congestion areas will have to pay more to compete with other employers. It'll probably work itself out, but if it doesn't, we should fix it directly instead of forcing everyone to endure traffic.
    - st3v3r 11y ago
      Except they won't.
marcoperaza 11y ago
Traffic exists because human drivers form a compression wave. The car in front of you accelerates, then you accelerate, then the person behind you, etc. Every time someone taps the brakes, they create traffic behind them. Self-driving cars would presumably synchronize, allowing all of the cars to start moving at almost the same time and move in unison at high speeds. Also, people don't feel safe driving at 60mph in a densely packed road, so they don't. This should be no problem for a computer, so you could have a densely packed highway but traffic still moving at very high speeds. Basically, flow velocity could remain constant as the highway becomes more congested. On city streets, your car would route around traffic light timing, in coordination with other vehicles, to distribute traffic and prevent unnecessary stopping. Edit: One caveat worth mentioning is that these optimizations would be most effective if a road is 100% automated cars, though maybe dedicated lanes are a good transition mechanism. Once the safety benefits are clear, I think adoption will be very fast. The societal cost of car accidents is absolutely massive.
- paulddraper 11y ago
  "people don't feel safe driving at 60mph in a densely packed road, so they don't" Not only do they not feel safe, they aren't safe driving bumper-to-bumper. Computers will have better reaction times, so much of that goes away. But it's still dangerous. If two cars ahead of me slows, and the car ahead doesn't slow and collides, it will decelerate very quickly, perhaps too quickly for my brakes at 60mph.
  - marcoperaza 11y ago
    You're right, the failure mode for self-driving cars at high speeds is catastrophic, but that's no different from many safe technologies. And the bar here is pretty low. You'd have to really screw up when designing the system for it to be even remotely as dangerous as human drivers. If everyone switched to self-driving cars, serious car accidents would probably become something you hear about in the news, not something that's happened to many of your friends.
- st3v3r 11y ago
  That kind of technology won't be commonplace, available, or in a position to do anything about the problem for a long, long time. Meanwhile, the traffic problem exists today. I'm all for self driving cars, but I'd like to see solutions for the problem today, not just letting things get worse until something magically makes it better.

rtpg 11y ago

Let's say that 500,000 cars (100k/car, pricing in the cost for storage and maintnance). The most Expensive subway line in the world cost 15 billion and serves something like 800k people. So you could also use that money to build two subway lines and save for maintenance. You could probably build 4 light rail lines (since you're not digging tunnels but instead buying up land). Plus rail incentivises denser living, meaning that the more rail lines you build, the shorter you need to make them. Self driving cars let you share the cars so kind of solves the parking problem (but keeping track of people doing nasty stuff), but is really just a bunch of micro-buses. If you can get the political will for rail, it's a pretty effective way of moving people around.

barney54 11y ago
Rail isn't very efficient in the United States--except for maybe Manhattan (even then MTA loses money). Seattle should look at what's happening in other cities. For example, according to the LA Times, "The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the region's largest carrier, lost more than 10% of its boardings from 2006 to 2015, a decline that appears to be accelerating. Despite a $9-billion investment in new light rail and subway lines, Metro now has fewer boardings than it did three decades ago, when buses were the county's only transit option." http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ridership-slump-20160127-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ridership-slum... Phoenix spent $1.4 billion on light rail and transit growth slowed (even though population growth did not). http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2016/01/phoenix-light-rail-continued-fail.html http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2016/01/phoenix-light-... The point is that rail is not on-demand. It is not flexible. It is not serve people individually. Rail does a wonderful job of taking larges numbers of people from dense living areas to dense working areas. The future is not light rail. The future is much closer to the individualized, on-demand, flexible nature of Uber rather than the rigid, expensive, inflexible nature of rail.
- koenigdavidmj 11y ago
  We just added two stops to our light rail line. It still doesn't sync up with nearby buses, and school is on break (one of the stops is for the university). Instantly, the line became overcrowded and we'll be lengthening trains next week. In Seattle people ride trains if they're there. This is an observable fact.

rayiner 11y ago

Cities like NYC and Boston are still enjoying the fruits of investment in rail that they made 100+ years ago. Those self driving cars wouldn't last 10.

specialist 11y ago

Upvoted you. As a huge supporter of mass transit and the public good, methinks the era of centralized big bang projects are coming to an end. In the '80s, one of my buddy's sci-fi stories (a detective novel, mystery) featured on demand personalized transportation. I've been wanting that forever. With the cost of collaboration and coordination falling thru the floor, its inevitable. Stuff like Uber, Pronto, Car2Go, ZipCar are exciting precursors.

jkchu 11y ago
Services like Car2Go are great when you are staying within the city. The main traffic issue in Seattle is traveling to/from/through downtown Seattle. Adding a train that travels between Bellevue and Seattle would solve a ton of problems with the traffic on our two bridges, 520 and I-90. Currently we only have buses as our only mass transit option. I have found riding the bus to take significantly longer that simply driving (they get stuck in all the same traffic).