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Self-driving cars may lead to marginal improvements in road throughput, but shared-vehicle transportation will always be able to move more people in the same am

Self-driving cars may lead to marginal improvements in road throughput, but shared-vehicle transportation will always be able to move more people in the same amount of space. If a transit route has sufficient ridership to justify investing in rail, it is already going to be very congested at commuting hours, and will remain so after self-driving cars become common.

CamperBob2 10y ago
Self-driving cars may lead to marginal improvements in road throughput, but shared-vehicle transportation will always be able to move more people in the same amount of space. It's not useful to "move more people in the same amount of space" if those people are going to end up someplace other than where they need to be. Classic case of optimizing the wrong parameter. You can't apply 19th-century rail route design to 21st century transit problems... well, you can, but it's never going to be optimal. Self-driving cars may lead to marginal improvements in road throughput, but shared-vehicle transportation will always be able to move more people in the same amount of space. If a transit route has sufficient ridership to justify investing in rail, it is already going to be very congested at commuting hours, and will remain so after self-driving cars become common. The whole roadway system can be a "transit route," with the proper planning. A fleet of autonomous vehicles is a train... but one that has none of the drawbacks of fixed routes.
- akgerber 10y ago
  A fleet of autonomous vehicles transporting people from disparate point to disparate point still requires a lot of roadway space per human being transported, which is the root cause of road congestion. That is as true in 2016 as it was in 1916, and will remain true in 2116. Fixed-route rail transit requires compatible land use to be successful, but most of our most economically successful areas are already very dense— and the only reason than Silicon Valley isn't is that such density is illegal, with the absurd result of $2M ranch houses. A bilevel rail car can comfortably transport 160 people in the footprint of four Honda Civics cruising as an autonomous car-train.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    The thing is, though, the roads already exist. And we know we're using them suboptimally now.

CamperBob2 10y ago

Self-driving cars may lead to marginal improvements in road throughput, but shared-vehicle transportation will always be able to move more people in the same amount of space. It's not useful to "move more people in the same amount of space" if those people are going to end up someplace other than where they need to be. Classic case of optimizing the wrong parameter. You can't apply 19th-century rail route design to 21st century transit problems... well, you can, but it's never going to be optimal. Self-driving cars may lead to marginal improvements in road throughput, but shared-vehicle transportation will always be able to move more people in the same amount of space. If a transit route has sufficient ridership to justify investing in rail, it is already going to be very congested at commuting hours, and will remain so after self-driving cars become common. The whole roadway system can be a "transit route," with the proper planning. A fleet of autonomous vehicles is a train... but one that has none of the drawbacks of fixed routes.

akgerber 10y ago
A fleet of autonomous vehicles transporting people from disparate point to disparate point still requires a lot of roadway space per human being transported, which is the root cause of road congestion. That is as true in 2016 as it was in 1916, and will remain true in 2116. Fixed-route rail transit requires compatible land use to be successful, but most of our most economically successful areas are already very dense— and the only reason than Silicon Valley isn't is that such density is illegal, with the absurd result of $2M ranch houses. A bilevel rail car can comfortably transport 160 people in the footprint of four Honda Civics cruising as an autonomous car-train.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  The thing is, though, the roads already exist. And we know we're using them suboptimally now.