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I am optimistic about self driving cars, but we also lower to floor of possible vehicle occupancy to 0. I'm curious to see if average occupancy goes up or down.

I am optimistic about self driving cars, but we also lower to floor of possible vehicle occupancy to 0. I'm curious to see if average occupancy goes up or down. Linking up cars sounds great! Maybe we could make the cars electric. And we could create escape hatches to walk between them. We could make them shorter so the car is essentially a seat. And then we could make them 100% subscription based and shared so you never take them away. I think I might just have reinvented trains! Our obsession with automobiles borders on insanity. Yes, the last mile is hard to do with public transit but for high capacity, high cost thoroughfares trains win every time.

dmix 9y ago
> but we also lower to floor of possible vehicle occupancy to 0 That's a great point that I hadn't yet considered. In terms of finite energy resource demand it's not as big of a deal when the average car both smaller and electric. But in terms of traffic and related resource utilization this will ultimately become a far more common phenomenon, even possibly in the top 1-2 most frequent scenarios as driverless cars attempt to reach a new client or drive to the closest automated charging port. I'd be curious to see the traffic/resource impact of such a hypothetical scenario. Although I anticipate some smarter people than me are already calculating these costs. At least I hope so!
- jakecopp 9y ago
  I'm really hoping we can take advantage of the start of driverless cars to implement a per kilometer and also demand driven tax/toll system. The current method of funding roads with fuel tax won't work any more, and it doesn't make sense for the taxpayer to pay for roads if they barely use a car and take public transport. I am optimistic this method of taxing cars will make public transport much more attractive, especially in peak, and encourage off peak driving. This will be especially important for empty cars - they don't care about congestion so without a tax would fill up the road for extremely unimportant tasks. This also gives the option of different rates if the vehicle is empty or not - I have no idea if an empty vehicle should be charged more or less, but it's good we have time to think through these things! I am interested how the politics of this will work out - in Sydney the government often builds toll roads when rail would be more appropriate as they can privatise roads and get additional income. This leads to the government building more freeways to the airport when we already have a fast train there (which has a huge station access fee as a result of a previously botched public/private partnership).

dmix 9y ago

> but we also lower to floor of possible vehicle occupancy to 0 That's a great point that I hadn't yet considered. In terms of finite energy resource demand it's not as big of a deal when the average car both smaller and electric. But in terms of traffic and related resource utilization this will ultimately become a far more common phenomenon, even possibly in the top 1-2 most frequent scenarios as driverless cars attempt to reach a new client or drive to the closest automated charging port. I'd be curious to see the traffic/resource impact of such a hypothetical scenario. Although I anticipate some smarter people than me are already calculating these costs. At least I hope so!

jakecopp 9y ago
I'm really hoping we can take advantage of the start of driverless cars to implement a per kilometer and also demand driven tax/toll system. The current method of funding roads with fuel tax won't work any more, and it doesn't make sense for the taxpayer to pay for roads if they barely use a car and take public transport. I am optimistic this method of taxing cars will make public transport much more attractive, especially in peak, and encourage off peak driving. This will be especially important for empty cars - they don't care about congestion so without a tax would fill up the road for extremely unimportant tasks. This also gives the option of different rates if the vehicle is empty or not - I have no idea if an empty vehicle should be charged more or less, but it's good we have time to think through these things! I am interested how the politics of this will work out - in Sydney the government often builds toll roads when rail would be more appropriate as they can privatise roads and get additional income. This leads to the government building more freeways to the airport when we already have a fast train there (which has a huge station access fee as a result of a previously botched public/private partnership).