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I worry that self-driving cars are going to be used as an excuse not to expand public transit, especially in the Bay Area. The problem is scale -- once the popu

I worry that self-driving cars are going to be used as an excuse not to expand public transit, especially in the Bay Area. The problem is scale -- once the population reaches a certain size, the roads are going to be gridlocked even if every car is self driving. I'm not sure if the Bay Area is at that point yet, but NYC certainly is, as are most of the major cities of the world.

mywittyname 9y ago
Hopefully Uber/Lyft start a van/bulk transit service. This would help reduce traffic by combining trips while being more efficient than buses because the server can dynamically route the driver to optimize pickups and departures. Perhaps even adding discounts for riders willing to trek the last mile on foot.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Then why isn't that being done today? As you increase the number of passengers, the cost of the driver becomes relatively trivial. It seems as if this were a service people were willing to pay for these money-losing companies are missing a significant market opportunity. I know there's UberPool but as far as I can tell it isn't a wildly popular option.
  - Retric 9y ago
    Routing. Turning an efficient set of start > points to a combined path is a complex traveling salesman problem. But this is worse as you need to find multiple such sets from raw data. It's not hard to get some overlap but if you go past 2-3 passengers everyone gets a longer trip.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      That's probably true. Plus a lot of people just don't want to share vehicles. At some point, you're basically creating most of the disadvantages of a bus in a smaller vehicle.
- Tiktaalik 9y ago
  > while being more efficient than buses because the server can dynamically route the driver to optimize pickups and departures. There's a big assumption here that this dynamic routes would actually be more efficient than the simple fixed routes we have now. I'm skeptical.
- inostia 9y ago
  https://www.lyft.com/shuttle https://www.lyft.com/shuttle
  - r00fus 9y ago
    Only for SF and CHI. I'd love this but I'm not in their zone.
cbhl 9y ago
Not expanding public transit already happens. Google/Cisco/Apple/Facebook was running its own shadow public transit system for free to the cities, but the anti-techie lobbies demanded that SF regulate it to a shadow of its former self and tax the tech companies every time a bus stops to pick up passengers. In Seattle, Google just gives its employees a bus pass, because their public transit system isn't full and dysfunctional.
- Zelizz 9y ago
  In Seattle Microsoft also runs its own substantial bus service, "the Connector". There are so many Microsoft employees commuting in and out of Redmond every day that it makes a lot of sense.
stcredzero 9y ago
I worry that self-driving cars are going to be used as an excuse not to expand public transit, especially in the Bay Area. By reducing people's sunk cost in cars, it may well free up the public mind to alternative forms of transportation. A lot of political inertia comes in the form of personal sunk costs. Also, self driving vehicles could themselves be used to expand public transit. IIRC, In Portland in the 90's, there was this thing called the "Custom Bus" where an late-night adapted bus route could be formed by people phoning in a request for a pickup within 2 miles of a normal bus route. Automated vehicles and networked computers could let us do an even better job of adaptive transportation.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  > By reducing people's sunk cost in cars I love this conversation. The US new auto sales run rate is ~17 million vehicles/year, with an average price right around $35k. That's $595,000,000,000 per year in capital being allocated to automotive mobility alone. Think what better things we could do with that capital (or everyone could work far less!) if we only spent a fraction of that on automotive capital costs.
  - NegativeLatency 9y ago
    Don't forget maintenance, insurance, and gas costs
    - eutropia 9y ago
      Do we seriously spend 1 thousand billion dollars per year personally getting our asses around with cars after it's all said and done? Holy crap. That's more than 5% of GDP.
      - ghaff 9y ago
        I haven't checked the numbers but it doesn't surprise me. A car is the most expensive or second most expensive asset that most people own. (And/or they spend a lot of money on taxi/Uber/Lyft/etc.) And most people spend a decent chunk of their days getting from Point A to Point B. Only some of that is commuting. The cost of not being a subsistence farmer, I suppose. (Somewhat joking, but a big part of what makes modern civilization possible is mobility and a lot of that requires cars. In some situations, they're less important but they're still common pretty much anywhere.)

mywittyname 9y ago

Hopefully Uber/Lyft start a van/bulk transit service. This would help reduce traffic by combining trips while being more efficient than buses because the server can dynamically route the driver to optimize pickups and departures. Perhaps even adding discounts for riders willing to trek the last mile on foot.

ghaff 9y ago
Then why isn't that being done today? As you increase the number of passengers, the cost of the driver becomes relatively trivial. It seems as if this were a service people were willing to pay for these money-losing companies are missing a significant market opportunity. I know there's UberPool but as far as I can tell it isn't a wildly popular option.
- Retric 9y ago
  Routing. Turning an efficient set of start > points to a combined path is a complex traveling salesman problem. But this is worse as you need to find multiple such sets from raw data. It's not hard to get some overlap but if you go past 2-3 passengers everyone gets a longer trip.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    That's probably true. Plus a lot of people just don't want to share vehicles. At some point, you're basically creating most of the disadvantages of a bus in a smaller vehicle.
Tiktaalik 9y ago
> while being more efficient than buses because the server can dynamically route the driver to optimize pickups and departures. There's a big assumption here that this dynamic routes would actually be more efficient than the simple fixed routes we have now. I'm skeptical.
inostia 9y ago
https://www.lyft.com/shuttle https://www.lyft.com/shuttle
- r00fus 9y ago
  Only for SF and CHI. I'd love this but I'm not in their zone.

cbhl 9y ago

Not expanding public transit already happens. Google/Cisco/Apple/Facebook was running its own shadow public transit system for free to the cities, but the anti-techie lobbies demanded that SF regulate it to a shadow of its former self and tax the tech companies every time a bus stops to pick up passengers. In Seattle, Google just gives its employees a bus pass, because their public transit system isn't full and dysfunctional.

Zelizz 9y ago
In Seattle Microsoft also runs its own substantial bus service, "the Connector". There are so many Microsoft employees commuting in and out of Redmond every day that it makes a lot of sense.

stcredzero 9y ago

I worry that self-driving cars are going to be used as an excuse not to expand public transit, especially in the Bay Area. By reducing people's sunk cost in cars, it may well free up the public mind to alternative forms of transportation. A lot of political inertia comes in the form of personal sunk costs. Also, self driving vehicles could themselves be used to expand public transit. IIRC, In Portland in the 90's, there was this thing called the "Custom Bus" where an late-night adapted bus route could be formed by people phoning in a request for a pickup within 2 miles of a normal bus route. Automated vehicles and networked computers could let us do an even better job of adaptive transportation.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
> By reducing people's sunk cost in cars I love this conversation. The US new auto sales run rate is ~17 million vehicles/year, with an average price right around $35k. That's $595,000,000,000 per year in capital being allocated to automotive mobility alone. Think what better things we could do with that capital (or everyone could work far less!) if we only spent a fraction of that on automotive capital costs.
- NegativeLatency 9y ago
  Don't forget maintenance, insurance, and gas costs
  - eutropia 9y ago
    Do we seriously spend 1 thousand billion dollars per year personally getting our asses around with cars after it's all said and done? Holy crap. That's more than 5% of GDP.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      I haven't checked the numbers but it doesn't surprise me. A car is the most expensive or second most expensive asset that most people own. (And/or they spend a lot of money on taxi/Uber/Lyft/etc.) And most people spend a decent chunk of their days getting from Point A to Point B. Only some of that is commuting. The cost of not being a subsistence farmer, I suppose. (Somewhat joking, but a big part of what makes modern civilization possible is mobility and a lot of that requires cars. In some situations, they're less important but they're still common pretty much anywhere.)