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If I were making decisions in a city that was currently car-centric, I would wait until the effects of self-driving cars are better understood before making dra

If I were making decisions in a city that was currently car-centric, I would wait until the effects of self-driving cars are better understood before making dramatic changes. If we get fleets of on-demand self driving cars in cities that are currently car-centric, many of the disadvantages of car transportation will be ameliorated. A 45 minute commute by car is no fun, but when the car is able to drive itself and you've got high speed wireless data access, it probably won't be so bad.

sampo 10y ago
If a self-driving car makes driving more palatable, people will buy homes behind even longer commutes, and you get even more traffic (more miles driven per day). The throughput capacity of a road (cars per hour) will not improve much, so they may even make congestion worse.
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  That's my concern too. In LA and DC there are plenty of people who have 90 minutes commute each way. With autonomous cars this is much less painful so people may move even further away from work.
- andrewmutz 10y ago
  I think it's too early to be sure of the effects. A widely available fleet of self-driving cars may help the last-mile problem with public transportation (how do you get from, say, the subway station to your workplace or from the subway station to your house). If this makes public transportation easier, this may decrease miles driven per day. Will self-driving cars reduce the accident rate, and the congestion that results from traffic slowdowns near accidents? Will self-driving cars make better use of less obvious travel routes and avoid bottlenecks in the road network?
- wott 10y ago
  Yes, that's also a common problem with infrastructures (be they road or public transit): each time you spend millions (or billions) building/improving them, people go farther, keeping more or less the same commuting time (and keeping complaining about it), thus you then have 2 new problems instead of 1: the congestion happens farther on areas/lines you haven't treated yet, and soon it also accumulates on the sections you have just treated because new traffic from remote places ends up gathering there, making them as congested as they were before you spent m/billions on them...

sampo 10y ago

If a self-driving car makes driving more palatable, people will buy homes behind even longer commutes, and you get even more traffic (more miles driven per day). The throughput capacity of a road (cars per hour) will not improve much, so they may even make congestion worse.

maxxxxx 10y ago
That's my concern too. In LA and DC there are plenty of people who have 90 minutes commute each way. With autonomous cars this is much less painful so people may move even further away from work.
andrewmutz 10y ago
I think it's too early to be sure of the effects. A widely available fleet of self-driving cars may help the last-mile problem with public transportation (how do you get from, say, the subway station to your workplace or from the subway station to your house). If this makes public transportation easier, this may decrease miles driven per day. Will self-driving cars reduce the accident rate, and the congestion that results from traffic slowdowns near accidents? Will self-driving cars make better use of less obvious travel routes and avoid bottlenecks in the road network?
wott 10y ago
Yes, that's also a common problem with infrastructures (be they road or public transit): each time you spend millions (or billions) building/improving them, people go farther, keeping more or less the same commuting time (and keeping complaining about it), thus you then have 2 new problems instead of 1: the congestion happens farther on areas/lines you haven't treated yet, and soon it also accumulates on the sections you have just treated because new traffic from remote places ends up gathering there, making them as congested as they were before you spent m/billions on them...