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"It is a self driving car, it is so clearly the future, I wish it existed now, it is going to be awesome (in my opinion)." Even now, several years into the cur

• brianwawok 10y ago
  Little bit sad right? I want a nation of walking. But this is much more likely to actually happen. A grid of self driving cars powered by renewable energy. I will take it over the current state.
  • snewk 10y ago
    i will take it over he current state because it makes walking, cycling, and bus transit safer. it will be interesting to find out by what magnitude.
• stevenleeg 10y ago
  This! A million times this! While self driving cars will do great things for people such as yourself (and overall I fully support their development/adoption), I also share the fear that it will prevent American urban centers from a desperately needed shift away from cars dependence in favor of better public transit and urban density. I really don't see the idea of every person in the country having their own personal transportation device (or even shared self-drivings car with something like uber) as a sustainable path for the US to continue down. The technology for good transportation in/among major cities already exists: walking, biking, mass-transit, and high-speed rail. I wish Americans would be more open to these concepts rather than dismissing them in favor of the form of transit that has yielded nothing but horribly designed and polluted cities.
  • ckinnan 10y ago
    A huge part of the urban footprint today is set aside for parking. With self-driving cars, people will use rideshare services and banish parking lots to remote areas outside the city, freeing up more space for parks or density. This technology is also much safer for bikers and walkers. Self-driving will be a benefit for urban areas and supports more walkable cities.
  • harigov 10y ago
    Actually, this maybe a step forward towards better mass transit, if there is one. If I run an autonomous taxi service to pick/drop people, and if I see that there is money to be made by offering to pick/drop multiple people at once, why wouldn't I? Economics of bus is relatively minor compared to investing and operating trains, so this may very well be a possibility.
• throwawayReply 10y ago
  People enjoy space and privacy. And income inequality means that people can literally afford to pay for other people to not be near them as they travel. Busses and trains and other mass transport will return when income inequality is reduced to the point where the amount it costs people to pay for their own space is no longer affordable for them, but if you're earning 500 times the person next to you, you'll happily pay what it takes for them to disappear.
  • majani 10y ago
    Also cars have an element of freedom to them. Go anywhere, anytime. They also feed off the laziness of most adults.
  • JulianMorrison 10y ago
    Trains are an artefact of income inequality. Someone can afford to build them and it's not you. Someone has all the leverage over whether you get a ticket to ride and at what price, and it's not you.
• freehunter 10y ago
  Cars changed the world. There's not really any going back from that. It works in places where the urban population is over 90% (like Japan) but not when urban population is substantially lower (like the US). How would the rural population get to the bus/train station? My grandma's house is half an hour by car to the nearest freeway, how long would she have to walk to get to public transport? Public transport only works inside of cities, and there's a lot of infrastructure already built to support sprawling metropolitan areas where everyone has 1/4 acre of land surrounding their detached home. There's not a lot of push to tear all that up and forcibly relocate the residents to inner-city apartments. You know the benefit of electric, self-driving cars, though? An intelligent car isn't going to run you over on your bike. Be happy about that.
  • honkhonkpants 10y ago
    The number of people in America who live half an hour from the nearest freeway is so small as to be irrelevant. Nobody is suggesting that 0% of trips be taken by car. It's fine if your grandmother drives around. It does not matter in the big picture. What matters is if the 82% of Americans who live in cities are forced to crawl through sprawling car-choked landscapes, or are able to live in a walkable environment. High reliance on cars prevents the latter. By the way you were wrong about that Japan vs US comparison as well. USA has a higher proportion of urban residents than does Japan. And they have plenty of trains in Japan.
    • freehunter 10y ago
      >USA has a higher proportion of urban residents than does Japan. According to my Google search, Japan's urban population is 90%+. The US is around 80%. That's why I mentioned the two places.
    • ghaff 10y ago
      82% of Americans do not live in cities. Rather, they live in areas classified as urban (which really means not rural) by the census bureau. Here's the definition: "To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,500 people, at least 1,500 of which reside outside institutional group quarters." Yes, I'm guessing that many of those urban areas are within half an hour of a freeway--though this may be less true in the West. But the vast majority of those 82% don't live in places that are remotely walkable.
• aub3bhat 10y ago
  train networks and subways are significantly more expensive to build, operate and maintain, even electrified ones. Roads + autonomous electric cars are hard to beat in terms of efficiency, utility and ease of operation.
  • honkhonkpants 10y ago
    A road even with perfect operation can only carry about 2000 cars per lane mile per hour. That is /very easy/ to beat with any other kind of technology.
  • lhopki01 10y ago
    Efficiency of what though? Space? Roads take up way more space than tracks. Efficiency of cost? Roads are very expensive. Often more expensive per passenger mile than railroads. Efficiency of energy use? Moving a 2000kg electric car around for 1 person is never going to be efficient. Efficiency of through-put? Roads even with autonomous cars will never have the throughput of a train-line. Also I think you significantly underestimate the cost of road building and maintenance.
    • drcross 10y ago
      Now that we have electric and self-driving cars you assumptions of what a car is have the ability to be drastically altered. >Space? Roads take up way more space than tracks. Highways can now be minimised to two tracks, the standard width of a vehicle, vibration reports can tell the councils where pothole repair is most needed. >Moving a 2000kg electric car around for 1 person is never going to be efficient. Car's are 2000kg in part to protect the driver, as crashes trend to 0 there's no reason they need to be so big. >Roads even with autonomous cars will never have the throughput of a train-line. Trains are rarely full. Cars can get smaller, we can mitigate traffic jams.
      • lhopki01 10y ago
        A single lane of highway doesn't get more than 2000 cars per hour. Even self driving won't increase that much. If all cars have to wait for someone to get out of their cars since we're only on 1 lane then it'll get even worse. Eletrics cars are 2000kg because a the battery weighs a lot. Trains get smaller too when it's not rush hour. France regularly runs one carriage trains the size of a bus. Mitigate and smooth flowing aren't the same thing. On way to work I see cars backed up for miles. Doesn't matter if they're self driving or not when cars move bumper to bumper already.
• Swizec 10y ago
  There is hope. More and more young urbanites in dense cities are already eschewing car ownership for walking and on-demand rentals. Even European-style public transit can only be so convenient[1], and a fleet of selfdriving ubers would be perfect. I hope that this will mean even fewer people decide to own cars and that car ownership becomes increasingly uncommon. [1] public transit is great for when you have a lot of time and aren't carrying a lot of things. Doing, say, your weekly groceries by bus or walking is annoying af. Source: living in a European city without owning a car. PS: I live in the US now and not having a car is much more convenient than it was in Europe. Uber and zipcar and getaround are magic. We didn't have that in my city
• jobigoud 10y ago
  I will feel safer bicyling in LA when cars and trucks are self-driving though.
• noveltyaccount 10y ago
  I think the future is self-driving public transit. I imagine minivans that perform dynamic route optimization. Instead of a bus that stops every block on a pre-determined route, use an app to input your pickup location and destination and the self-driving van picks you and a few people up from a small radius, and drops people off in a small radius. This will be faster and cheaper than both public transit and even driving yourself (no hunting for parking).
  • majani 10y ago
    Unfortunately, public transit is way less profitable than selling cars to people, so self driving public transit doesn't seem like the top priority, despite having the best net benefit for society
    • noveltyaccount 10y ago
      Good point. I have always imagined this to be government subsidized just like public transit is today. I live in Seattle where we're spending billions laying light rail, and I have to wonder if it's all for naught, if self-driving public transit will make rail obsolete.
  • petra 10y ago
    That would be great. One problem though: Self-driving tech may offer a very cheap taxi, so many users would prefer not to use shared vans. Heck, to a certain extent we're already in that scenario, with some sharing services are cheaper than cars(@ridewithvia, @ridechariot, and maybe uber pool and lyft line) - and yet people prefer cars.
  • remolueoend 10y ago
    Sion (Switzerland) is currently testing a self-driven shuttle-bus in and around the city [1]. [1] https://www.postauto.ch/en/news/start-public-testing-autonomous-shuttles https://www.postauto.ch/en/news/start-public-testing-autonom...
• RodericDay 10y ago
  Same. I'm really happy that, insofar there's cars, they're good. However, having lived in walkable cities, where the car is basically a specialty tool for moving furniture or going away to the country for the weekend, the idea of it becoming even more enmeshed into daily life is a grim prospect.
• vineet7kumar 10y ago
  As much as I agree with you on the importance of good public transport, I am hopeful that the "car culture" will evolve into an alternative to the existing public transport systems; Once we have self-driving cars running on clean energy operating in an Uber like sharing economy model, there will be no need for car ownership and the cost of a ride will be low enough for the majority of people to afford. I understand that this is more difficult to achieve in reality than in ideas but I am hopeful. About health related issues, we will still have to look for other ways to make a healthier society.
• beefield 10y ago
  The math in the following image is not going to change regardless who is driving the car. If you want to have a city, you need to have public transport. If you want to have a suburban sprawl, that's another story. http://www.boredpanda.com/space-required-to-transport-60-people/ http://www.boredpanda.com/space-required-to-transport-60-peo...
  • chrismarlow9 10y ago
    the math changes because the autonomous cars become the public transport. all the cars on the left aren't necessary because they wont sit in a lot all day, they will continue to drive and deliver passengers all day. it creates an option of a private form of public transportation, something that only sort of 'half' exists with uber, since you obviously still have the human driver factor (who requires pay, health insurance, hours off, can be drunk on the job, etc) which makes costs/prices go up. If you can automate the driver, rates fall drastically. if you can make the cars electric, you help the planet. it all works nicely together if everything plays out right.
    • beefield 10y ago
      The math changes for how much storage space for cars is needed, but not how much space is needed for transporting people. Changing a garage to something more useful is not exactly helping traffic jams.
• Shivetya 10y ago
  don't compare europe with japan with regards to rail usage, they really don't compare. Japan's usage is over half again the nearest European nation; Switzerland. plus in many if not most countries rail simply doesn't go where people need to be. in countries with a choice cars are winning out and with autonomous and eventual ev powered cars it won't be a bad thing
• JulianMorrison 10y ago
  Self driving cars change what roads mean. Once we get to full fledged self driving taxi culture, cars won't park. Car sharing will be common at the cheaper end. So it becomes a lot more like busses. Much smaller fleet on the road. I expect that roads will get pedestrianized, returning them to common usage, because a Google car will calmly stop if a child is kicking a ball in the road. Trains are intrinsically unequal, they serve hub towns at best and cities only at worst, they are dirty, cramped, noisy, unprivate and they don't go when or where you want to go. Even with Google maps seaming together journeys out of trains and busses, you end up waiting and walking a lot. And trains are an intrinsic monopoly with a staggering up front investment, you can't make them better with market forces. I foresee self driving cars cannibalizing the train's market of people who just want to pay for journeys rather than the vehicle.