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Question: Is it possible that self-driving cars will make this kind of infrastructure less important? I've thought about this a bit, and I wonder if, outside of

• abritinthebay 10y ago
  Not really. Transport problems don't go away with self-driving vehicles. In fact they just end up having the same issues (they're a form of mass transit if they end up shared).
• honkhonkpants 10y ago
  Mass transit is about architecture, not transportation. What we're really talking about here is where we can make dense neighborhoods that can be served by subways. Cars can't serve dense neighborhoods because they are too big for the number of people carried, and there's nowhere to store them when they are empty. On the flip side, sparse neighborhoods can't be served by mass transit because there aren't enough people who can reach the system, and it takes to long to go anywhere. So the question really is what kind of architecture do you want? After that question is answered you can talk about whether cars or trains make more sense for that place.
  • erikpukinskis 10y ago
    Cars can serve dense neighborhoods if they are more self contained. If you can architect things so that people mostly walk or bike to everything then the car is only for special trips. In such a world public transit is only necessary for major arterial commuting. Self driving cabs can also transfer people between these arteries to maximize throughout. But milk route busses and subways stopping every other block will be unnecessary. Getting to this world would require much more communal space and stronger neighborhoods with more of a cultural center of gravity so you didn't have people flitting all over the city in rabdom directions in desperate attempts to find a place to fit in socially and professionally. Imagine small towns, packed as densely as a big city. An arterial subway like San Francisco's is adequate for that.
    • honkhonkpants 10y ago
      You seem to be describing the urban form advocated at http://carfree.com/topology.html http://carfree.com/topology.html (among other places).
• electricEmu 10y ago
  It will help to some extent, but SOVs suffer from induced demand. The ability of automated cars may make roads more congested. A grade separated line will carry more people to destinations that are built around that infrastructure faster than self driving cars.
• SilasX 10y ago
  No, they're far less person-dense than rail transport on dedicated lines. Having a human operator is not the bottleneck to the scale-up; the high space requirement is. (Also, the need to yield to all the other traffic.) They can, however, supplement rail infra, by covering last-mile in the suburbs for commuter lines, or off-hour transport when it's too noisy or unprofitable to run the lines.
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• erispoe 10y ago
  No. Self-driving car will be more space-efficient than non autonomous cars, but it's especially true on highways and for parking. It's still an order of magnitude less efficient at transporting a vast number of people in the minimum amount of space than mass transit. Not enough for dense urban environments. Self-driving rideshare will be great for suburbs, not so much for dense cities. A good source: http://humantransit.org/2016/08/pushing-back-on-ridesourcing-and-microtransit-pr-the-video.html http://humantransit.org/2016/08/pushing-back-on-ridesourcing...
• marcoperaza 10y ago
  The responses to you are assuming some dichotomy between fixed-line transit and automated cars carrying average one person each. That's a very bogus assumption. There would clearly be automated uberpool-like services, and everything else from single-rider to buses. It is indefensible to pour billions of dollars into fixed-line transit at this point. But construction is where the action is in local corruption, so they'll keep doing it.
• sfblah 10y ago
  Nice how I got downvoted to -1 here for asking a question. Sheesh.