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Many good points in that article. Probably self driving cars are finally going to force us to review and to fix in many occasions the way we are using cars toda
by _ph_ 10y ago
Many good points in that article. Probably self driving cars are finally going to force us to review and to fix in many occasions the way we are using cars today. Especially the ways which are already broken today. A good example is the competition for the parking in front of a Starbucks or other similar shops. The common usage pattern is still crafted by how traffic was decades ago, and you could still just drive to a location and leave your car. But that depended on there being fewer cars than parking lots. In most locations, this is a thing long past - so I would consider the current situation already as broken. Self driving cars would make it worse and such could force us to finally find solutions for these situations.
There are two obvious ways of fixing that situation. The first, recognize that trying to reach a location by individual cars cannot work out and ban private cars. Many European Cities have large pedestrian zones where private cars are locked out of whole streets in city centers.
The other option would be, and fortunately self driving cars would be part of the solution, to create enough parking spaces. Parking in the streets would still be disallowed, creating large pickup areas instead. So the road sides would be free of parking cars, enabling drivers to stop at any desired spot. As soon as the passengers left the car, the car would leave immediately for a nearby garage. This would of course depend on the creation of the necessary amount of parking garages.
- chx 10y agoBanning private cards, I believe, will be unnecessary. I know free market is often folly but in this case, I believe, the advantages of just tapping in the app to call a driverless cab will be huge. In almost all cases it must be cheaper than owning a car which doesn't work most of the time just sits there.
- _ph_ 10y agoI was not speaking of a total ban of private cars, just banning cars from certain streets. Converting streets to pedestrian zones is quite successful in the center of large cities, where the distances are short and the traffic density higher than individual transport could deliver.
- neuromute 10y agoSelf driving cars could solve the problem of congestion and the problem of parking quite easily. If all cars were autonomous, then the flow of traffic could be optimised and things like traffic lights and roundabouts could be eradicated, this would drastically improve travel times. In an ideal world, no-one would own their own self-driving car, there would be a fleet (ideally state owned and taxpayer funded) that you simply order on-demand, like uber. This way there is no need to park. You simply arrange your pickup times either on-demand or ahead of time, so a vehicle is always there to scoop you up wherever you are.
- Turing_Machine 10y ago"(ideally state owned and taxpayer funded)" Why "ideally"? That would be a recipe for broken, dirty cars. People won't take care of government property (or property that doesn't belong to them in general). You don't usually see privately-owned cars driving around with ugly graffiti tags, nor do such cars typically smell of urine, the way that public buses and train cars often do. With respect to cars specifically, ask anyone who's worked for a rental car company what kind of condition the cars often come back in. People abuse the crap out of rentals to the fullest extent they think they can get away with. This isn't specifically a modern phenomenon, either -- consider the old-time phrase "I'm going to beat him like a rented mule."
- g_sch 10y agoNonetheless, public transit is an immensely popular way of getting around in cities all over the world, and it comes with the advantage of providing greater access at lower cost than privately owned transportation. There are many people willing to make this trade-off.
- marcosdumay 10y agoPublic transit does not need to be owned by the government. But governments can work too, so I don't think there's a universal best way to do it. (Here at Brazil we'll certainly be better with no government interference at all, but other places have other trade-offs.)
- nommm-nommm 10y agoThe only problem with this is I can't imagine the logistics of out-of-town travel, say I want to go 200 miles away for a week. Have the car travel 200 miles and drive back? Have the car stay in the destination city? Then you have to have thousands of cities with some sort of ownership/maintaining agreement.