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But there has to be a limit to demand for VMT at some point, right? If car travel was easier and cheaper, would more people take more trips? Of course. There

But there has to be a limit to demand for VMT at some point, right? If car travel was easier and cheaper, would more people take more trips? Of course. There are obviously trips that people don't take because they're too cumbersome with current technology. But at the very least we know 1 person cannot exceed more than 24hrs of equivalent VMT. So there's at least a hard limit there. And I doubt most people want to spend the majority of their lives in cars. So there's some natural limit on VMT that we'll approach. I mean, think about it like this. If self driving taxis were a thing, would you be in the car 4x more than you are today? I wouldn't want to. Maybe I'd take more weekend trips to LA for fun excursions, but during the week my schedule would probably be about the same. So the hope, I think, is that the improved efficiency of self driving cars will allow us to easily hit that ceiling with at least the current infrastructure, if not _less_. It's not hard to imagine that the current infrastructure could become at least 400% more efficiency with self driving cars. Cars that can drive bumper-to-bumper at 60+ mph, no accidents, no rubber necking, no aggressive driving, no brake checks, and no traffic waves from lane changes. Not to mention the space saved by using taxis sized for the task. Right now people drive 4 seaters for their daily, 1 person commutes. Imagine all of those people are now in 1 seaters. Maybe even self driving motorcycles!

ghaff 9y ago
Some limit although I could easily see it doubling especially if there's a lot of "deadheading" to reposition empty vehicles. I think about my own situation and I'd definitely go to more evening events and I'd be inclined to go further for weekend recreation if I didn't need to personally drive. As for your other points, they mostly apply if 100% autonomous vehicles were the only thing on the road. Even if they were available today (which they're not really all that close to), it's hard to see that being a political possibility for many decades even if there were no other obstacles.
- fpgaminer 9y ago
  Yes, 100% will take awhile, but we're likely to see Self Driving Car Lanes first. In fact, in California, we can just replace the car pool lanes with Self Driving Car Lanes. These would be lanes of the freeway or multi-lane roads that only self driving cars can drive in. That would allow most of the efficiency gains to apply. Then we'll see a phasing out of bad drivers. People who get DUIs, X number of tickets, etc would be required to use a self driving car. So of the human drivers left, more will be competent. So basically, as self driving cars add additional load on the roads, we'll be slowly giving them more and more efficiency advantages to offset that load.

ghaff 9y ago

Some limit although I could easily see it doubling especially if there's a lot of "deadheading" to reposition empty vehicles. I think about my own situation and I'd definitely go to more evening events and I'd be inclined to go further for weekend recreation if I didn't need to personally drive. As for your other points, they mostly apply if 100% autonomous vehicles were the only thing on the road. Even if they were available today (which they're not really all that close to), it's hard to see that being a political possibility for many decades even if there were no other obstacles.

fpgaminer 9y ago
Yes, 100% will take awhile, but we're likely to see Self Driving Car Lanes first. In fact, in California, we can just replace the car pool lanes with Self Driving Car Lanes. These would be lanes of the freeway or multi-lane roads that only self driving cars can drive in. That would allow most of the efficiency gains to apply. Then we'll see a phasing out of bad drivers. People who get DUIs, X number of tickets, etc would be required to use a self driving car. So of the human drivers left, more will be competent. So basically, as self driving cars add additional load on the roads, we'll be slowly giving them more and more efficiency advantages to offset that load.