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Modern urban planners can take a lesson from this. People abandoned light rail in Los Angeles because they preferred their cars. A car provides anytime, anywher
by joshuaheard 11y ago
Modern urban planners can take a lesson from this. People abandoned light rail in Los Angeles because they preferred their cars. A car provides anytime, anywhere, personal door-to-door transportation versus the fixed-time, fixed-place, mass transit system that only takes you part way like fixed rail. Light rail will die a similar death in U.S. cities, especially when self-driving cars decrease traffic by a significant amount in the near future.
- bluthru 11y agoCars don't scale. People get around in high density cities without cars just fine. It saves money and it's better for the environment, too.
- ghaff 11y agoAnd, yet, most high density cities also have a huge amount of automobile traffic in addition to whatever public transportation they have. (Although, depending upon the city, a significant portion of that auto traffic is cabs--in part because of the expense/difficulty of parking.)
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- thrownaway2424 11y agoThat's only true if your origin and destination are both surrounded by parking which makes them places not worth visiting. The thing about trams is they enable a full urban environment of places people actually want to be.
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- rhino369 11y agoIf by people you mean people inside your socioeconomic bubble.
- thrownaway2424 11y agoAre you implying that there are socioeconomic classes whose constituents enjoy a car-based cityscape like this one: http://www.ronbeitler.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/mall.jpg http://www.ronbeitler.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/mall.jp... ?
- ghaff 11y agoNo, most people do not enjoy strip malls in their own right. However, a great many people prefer spread out neighborhoods and exurban areas within driving distance of those strip malls over denser cityscapes.
- thrownaway2424 11y agoEveryone is welcome to the life they prefer, but as for the actual urban areas I'd prefer to see some efficiency. The subsidies we currently pour out to the great many people you describe are immense.
- maxxxxx 11y agoI am not sure self-driving cars will reduce traffic. My expectation is that they will increase traffic. By a lot probably. And commutes will get even longer.
- mateo411 11y agoI think that self driving cars will help with parking, but not with traffic. You won't have to park your car in the city, where space is at a premium, the car will go park itself at another location, or pick up another passenger.
- choward 11y agoYou're assuming car ownership will remain in place as it is now. If vehicles are shared instead of fully owned, you can be more efficient. Think of how many trips are simply transporting a car. For example, let's say I need to pick up a friend from the airport. I would waste a one-way trip going to the airport. I didn't need to go to the airport. The only reason it was necessary for me to go is that I needed to get a car to my friend. If my fried could have just summoned the nearest self driving car, an entire one way trip wouldn't ever occurred.
- skykooler 11y agoHowever, there is a flaw in that system, in that most people tend to be on the road at the same time (rush hours).
- maxxxxx 11y agoIf it becomes popular to share cars then this may work. Looking at reality I have my doubts though. If people wanted to share cars you would see neighbors sharing cars for example. In the US many families or friends not even share cars. When I go out with people it ends up with seven people going in 4 cars or similar. A self driving car takes the pain out of driving so unless society changes a lot we will see more cars driving around (often empty) and people will have longer commutes while sleeping their car.
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- drewbug01 11y ago> especially when self-driving cars decrease traffic by a significant amount in the near future. This is a fallacy - self-driving cars may reduce car ownership and may reduce traffic fatalities, but they could only reduce traffic if speeds were extraordinarily high. That _might_ happen, but it'd also make every street a freeway. It's unlivable, and I will fight against that world.
- rhino369 11y ago>This is a fallacy - self-driving cars may reduce car ownership and may reduce traffic fatalities, but they could only reduce traffic if speeds were extraordinarily high. That's not true at all. A ton of traffic congestion is caused by people making suboptimal decisions in traffic. Blocking intersections, not merging properly, stooping and going instead of coasting at a set speed, etc. really reduce the speed of traffic. If you created a self driving only traffic system that guided the cars in an optimal path and speed you could increase traffic throughput by a lot. But the current generation of self driving cars aren't even close to that task. If anything they will clog traffic even more when they panic and stop in the middle of traffic. That prevents accidents but it also will clog streets during rush hour. But eventually they may solve traffic jams.
- thedaemon 11y agoNot sure why are are getting down voted as you are correct that people making sub-optimal decisions while driving in traffic. I remember watching a video of people driving in a circle and how bad mistakes trickle back to the end of the traffic.
- thedaemon 11y agoPlease see today's article on HackerNews front page: http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160428-how-ai-will-solve-traffic-part-one http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160428-how-ai-will-solve-tr...
- ConroyBumpus 11y agoI just got a wicked case of the heebie-jeebies thinking about the automotive equivalent of CSMA/CD.
- grillvogel 11y agolol I'm sure places like Japan and New York City regret their horrible investments in rail every day