6 ms·

You mean sharing a ride like say a big, long vehicle with lots of seats that visits a number of stops on a route? Yeah, that would be a great idea. We could imp

by skgoa 9y ago

You mean sharing a ride like say a big, long vehicle with lots of seats that visits a number of stops on a route? Yeah, that would be a great idea. We could improve this even further by giving the ride-share vehicle it's own lane, then turn both the wheels and the road surface into metal to reduce friction. BRB, going to the patent office... Not to be too snarky, but as a non-american it has been amazing to watch the internet debate on the future applications of automated cars these last few years. Slowly but surely people are starting to figure out that public transport is a good thing.

jejones3141 9y ago
It's not a good thing for the rider. You can only ride where and when the state decides you can ride, and have to organize your life around it. Your residence or your destination is likely some distance from a stop, so you have the problem of getting to or from it, possibly in bad weather. You're herded like cattle into cramped, uncomfortable seats, with minimal provision for anything you may be carrying. What's good about that?
- lou1306 9y ago
  These things apply to bad public transport. In the same vein, I could say that driving a car requires your full attention for all the duration of travel; that your destination is likely some distance from a parking spot; that the time of travel is unpredictable as you can get into a traffic jam, or an accident, or stopped by police; and so on. Good public transport is really good for both the rider and the city.
- Broken_Hippo 9y ago
  "What's good about that?" You get exercise. Most people slack off in bad weather, so there is a bonus (I'm also in Norway. I walk and ride the bus 95% of the time. You get used to it and dress appropriately.) Sure, most public transport doesn't provide door to door service - cabs do, though, and those generally have more options. And though there are limitations, you don't have to own a car nor pay for all the expenses with it. Some of these are bad or incomplete public transport issues, which means they can be improved.
alanfranzoni 9y ago
I'm not american, and I use public transport in Italy. But the public transport is simply ineffective a) from a door-to-door timing perspective and b) from a flexibility perspective. Sure, I don't live in a big city, so maybe the public transport is not as effective as it could be; but many people I spoke with even in London (and other places like Berlin, Paris, Milan) seem to share the same suffering: constantly using public transport ONLY is annoying. Unless you plan your life now & forever (e.g. you buy an house on the right subway line to your job, and never change jobs) you'll find a moment when it's hard to do what you'd like to do. Want to go to the gym? Ouch, the last subway ride ends before you'd go out. Need to collect your kids before going home? No luck, their school is in a badly-served zone. That's the issue with public transit.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Where I live, the buses cause significant traffic problems. They stop in driving lanes to pick up and disgorge passengers. Their stops are out of sync with traffic signals. They are slow. Self-driving cars available on demand might solve a lot of that. However, like most "utopias," I don't think we will ever achive the ideal efficiencies that self-driving car advocates imagine. The real world is too complicated.
  - alanfranzoni 9y ago
    > Where I live, the buses cause significant traffic problems. > They stop in driving lanes to pick up and disgorge > passengers. Is that really a BUS problem in your area? This happens in Italy as well. But the root cause is cars - cars that happen to be "momentarily parked" in bus stop areas, that force bus drivers to stop in the middle of the road. > They are slow. Very often, that's true, they're painfully slow.
patresh 9y ago
I think you're not seeing the full potential of such a system. Public transportation for now is very useful but over large distances can involve many changes, waiting times and inefficiencies. We could have a swarm of driverless cars taking in all passenger requests and computing the optimal dispatching of driverless cars. For instance pick up passenger A and B, drive to place C and drop off B who gets has another driverless shuttle pick him up a minute later, pick up customer D and drive to E. Since all shuttles would be aware of each other's locations, they can take that into account into the schedule computation and avoid jamming streets.
- skgoa 9y ago
  This would not reduce traffic, though. In fact it would increase traffic, because now cars are transiting between revenue trips instead of waiting at the curb.
  - iainmerrick 9y ago
    It would increase traffic, but free up some parking space!
nkoren 9y ago
No, not like that. Trains work well for arterial routes that need to carry large volumes of people along predictable corridors at predictable times of day -- eg., for commuting. And yes America certainly needs to get better at investing in them. But trains don't work at all well for serving smaller volumes of people moving in stochastic patterns at arbitrary times of day. Neither do buses. Cars serve this need very well -- they also generate massive negative externalities in the process, but they do serve this need. Why should we care about "people moving in stochastic patterns at arbitrary times of day"? Transport planners call this "incidental travel," implying that it isn't really significant. But this is because transport planners don't have a good means of addressing it. In fact, incidental travel actually the majority of trips that people take: going shopping, visiting friends, going to the doctor's, eating out, etc. The balance is about 60/40 for incidental travel / commuting. People own cars to serve this need, because nothing else will (unless you're in a mega-city that can afford to run high-frequency mass transport 24/7). Then, since car ownership is a sunk cost, people use their cars for commuting as well, where they're really sub-optimal. Travel demand is an incredibly heterogeneous problem, which can only be addressed with a hierarchy of modes. That includes mass transport at fixed schedules, individual transport that is on-demand, and intermediate collective transport modes that currently doesn't really exist. Autonomous vehicles with 4-8 person capacities and demand-responsive routing would solve a broad class of transport problems that conventional public transport cannot -- and could do so without many of the negative externalities of private cars. I've written much more on the subject, if you're interested: http://archive.podcar.org/blogs/nathan-koren/article/news/the-case-for-grt-ii-a-hierarchy-of-modes/ http://archive.podcar.org/blogs/nathan-koren/article/news/th...
- skgoa 9y ago
  I don't disagree. In fact I work on software for cars, so my career depends on personal transport staying relevant. However, that doesn't adress the question of whether automated cars will increase or decrease traffic. The original claim was that automated cars will reduce traffic by being more efficient (somehow) and people sharing them for trips. I pointed out that we have the sharing aspect of the issue largely figured out already. The point I did not make, but implied, is that automating cars, buses, trains, boats and aeroplanes will not by itself have much impact on traffic. Instead only a significant shift to more shared (instead of individual) use of these transport modes would. I feel that the image of the trafficless automated transport utopia that is so often conjured on HN, reddit etc. is a massive red herring. Because the benefits people claim stem from automation actually stem from public transport. Whether the shift to shared transport will happen or not and if it happens how big the shift will be, are completely open questions as far as I can see. I believe that, trips for commuting have lots of scope for being bundled into shared/public transport. Meanwhile the bulk of other trips will continue to be made largely with personal transport. (And I make no claim as to whether those vehicle are owned by the end user or by a fleet operator, that's an entirely different debate.) Not coincidentally, this is exactly what happens in many big european cities that have both good public transport and the road infrastructure to allow for lots of cars to travel at the same time. Many people over here commute daily by public transport, bycicle, rideshare etc., but they also have at least one car for those other trips.

by skgoa 9y ago

jejones3141 9y ago

It's not a good thing for the rider. You can only ride where and when the state decides you can ride, and have to organize your life around it. Your residence or your destination is likely some distance from a stop, so you have the problem of getting to or from it, possibly in bad weather. You're herded like cattle into cramped, uncomfortable seats, with minimal provision for anything you may be carrying. What's good about that?

lou1306 9y ago
These things apply to bad public transport. In the same vein, I could say that driving a car requires your full attention for all the duration of travel; that your destination is likely some distance from a parking spot; that the time of travel is unpredictable as you can get into a traffic jam, or an accident, or stopped by police; and so on. Good public transport is really good for both the rider and the city.
Broken_Hippo 9y ago
"What's good about that?" You get exercise. Most people slack off in bad weather, so there is a bonus (I'm also in Norway. I walk and ride the bus 95% of the time. You get used to it and dress appropriately.) Sure, most public transport doesn't provide door to door service - cabs do, though, and those generally have more options. And though there are limitations, you don't have to own a car nor pay for all the expenses with it. Some of these are bad or incomplete public transport issues, which means they can be improved.

alanfranzoni 9y ago

I'm not american, and I use public transport in Italy. But the public transport is simply ineffective a) from a door-to-door timing perspective and b) from a flexibility perspective. Sure, I don't live in a big city, so maybe the public transport is not as effective as it could be; but many people I spoke with even in London (and other places like Berlin, Paris, Milan) seem to share the same suffering: constantly using public transport ONLY is annoying. Unless you plan your life now & forever (e.g. you buy an house on the right subway line to your job, and never change jobs) you'll find a moment when it's hard to do what you'd like to do. Want to go to the gym? Ouch, the last subway ride ends before you'd go out. Need to collect your kids before going home? No luck, their school is in a badly-served zone. That's the issue with public transit.

ams6110 9y ago
Where I live, the buses cause significant traffic problems. They stop in driving lanes to pick up and disgorge passengers. Their stops are out of sync with traffic signals. They are slow. Self-driving cars available on demand might solve a lot of that. However, like most "utopias," I don't think we will ever achive the ideal efficiencies that self-driving car advocates imagine. The real world is too complicated.
- alanfranzoni 9y ago
  > Where I live, the buses cause significant traffic problems. > They stop in driving lanes to pick up and disgorge > passengers. Is that really a BUS problem in your area? This happens in Italy as well. But the root cause is cars - cars that happen to be "momentarily parked" in bus stop areas, that force bus drivers to stop in the middle of the road. > They are slow. Very often, that's true, they're painfully slow.

patresh 9y ago

I think you're not seeing the full potential of such a system. Public transportation for now is very useful but over large distances can involve many changes, waiting times and inefficiencies. We could have a swarm of driverless cars taking in all passenger requests and computing the optimal dispatching of driverless cars. For instance pick up passenger A and B, drive to place C and drop off B who gets has another driverless shuttle pick him up a minute later, pick up customer D and drive to E. Since all shuttles would be aware of each other's locations, they can take that into account into the schedule computation and avoid jamming streets.

skgoa 9y ago
This would not reduce traffic, though. In fact it would increase traffic, because now cars are transiting between revenue trips instead of waiting at the curb.
- iainmerrick 9y ago
  It would increase traffic, but free up some parking space!

nkoren 9y ago

No, not like that. Trains work well for arterial routes that need to carry large volumes of people along predictable corridors at predictable times of day -- eg., for commuting. And yes America certainly needs to get better at investing in them. But trains don't work at all well for serving smaller volumes of people moving in stochastic patterns at arbitrary times of day. Neither do buses. Cars serve this need very well -- they also generate massive negative externalities in the process, but they do serve this need. Why should we care about "people moving in stochastic patterns at arbitrary times of day"? Transport planners call this "incidental travel," implying that it isn't really significant. But this is because transport planners don't have a good means of addressing it. In fact, incidental travel actually the majority of trips that people take: going shopping, visiting friends, going to the doctor's, eating out, etc. The balance is about 60/40 for incidental travel / commuting. People own cars to serve this need, because nothing else will (unless you're in a mega-city that can afford to run high-frequency mass transport 24/7). Then, since car ownership is a sunk cost, people use their cars for commuting as well, where they're really sub-optimal. Travel demand is an incredibly heterogeneous problem, which can only be addressed with a hierarchy of modes. That includes mass transport at fixed schedules, individual transport that is on-demand, and intermediate collective transport modes that currently doesn't really exist. Autonomous vehicles with 4-8 person capacities and demand-responsive routing would solve a broad class of transport problems that conventional public transport cannot -- and could do so without many of the negative externalities of private cars. I've written much more on the subject, if you're interested: http://archive.podcar.org/blogs/nathan-koren/article/news/the-case-for-grt-ii-a-hierarchy-of-modes/ http://archive.podcar.org/blogs/nathan-koren/article/news/th...

skgoa 9y ago
I don't disagree. In fact I work on software for cars, so my career depends on personal transport staying relevant. However, that doesn't adress the question of whether automated cars will increase or decrease traffic. The original claim was that automated cars will reduce traffic by being more efficient (somehow) and people sharing them for trips. I pointed out that we have the sharing aspect of the issue largely figured out already. The point I did not make, but implied, is that automating cars, buses, trains, boats and aeroplanes will not by itself have much impact on traffic. Instead only a significant shift to more shared (instead of individual) use of these transport modes would. I feel that the image of the trafficless automated transport utopia that is so often conjured on HN, reddit etc. is a massive red herring. Because the benefits people claim stem from automation actually stem from public transport. Whether the shift to shared transport will happen or not and if it happens how big the shift will be, are completely open questions as far as I can see. I believe that, trips for commuting have lots of scope for being bundled into shared/public transport. Meanwhile the bulk of other trips will continue to be made largely with personal transport. (And I make no claim as to whether those vehicle are owned by the end user or by a fleet operator, that's an entirely different debate.) Not coincidentally, this is exactly what happens in many big european cities that have both good public transport and the road infrastructure to allow for lots of cars to travel at the same time. Many people over here commute daily by public transport, bycicle, rideshare etc., but they also have at least one car for those other trips.