6 ms·

Self-driving cars will cause sprawl

51 points by aresant 9y ago

PeterStuer 9y ago
All will depend on whether people will still feel being chauffeured around in a self driving vehicle as 'travel time'. With few restrictions, you can design an autonomous light truck to be like a true 'mobile home-office/bedroom/apartment'. My personal prediction is that when we get to true AV's, it will be an ecological disaster, clogging roads orders of magnitude more than today.
- trevyn 9y ago
  Thought experiment to help you improve your prediction power in general: Imagine that your prediction was wrong. What are some possibilities for why it was wrong?
  - Simon_says 9y ago
    Oo, that's a good one.
- usrusr 9y ago
  The next step could be hooking up that self-driving mobile home to plumbing infrastructure on the company parking lot. Trailer park company town, here we come. I share your concerns though, that we will get stuck with an automobile version of the representational train cars of the steam age unless we find ways to channel autonomous driving into mode-independent transportation as a service. Uber as a transitional saviour? Never thought I would write this. Next requirement: replace/upgrade street parking with theftproof mooring clamps for parcel delivery containers that can then be much smaller than a car (sized as needed), and that could be self-driving or dropped/picked up by a "mothership" truck depending on urgency and/or technology. With that service in place, you could just summon transportation for your shopping bags, alleviating the trunk anxiety often associated with mode-independent transportation as a service.
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
We need cities that are easily traversed by humans, not cars.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  They need to be really small for that to work, and what's happening is that only 1M+ or even 5M+ population areas are in demand. A home to 5M people isn't likely going to be very walkable.
  - CAT0 9y ago
    > They need to be really small for that to work That's not true. One solution is the '10 Minute City/Neighborhood' and its guide to decision-making.
  - sveme 9y ago
    You can have locally village-like situations in a large city if you have a high enough population density and then connect these local villages with mass transit. I can walk to three movie theatres, all doctors, a university hospital, five or six different supermarkets and a shitload of other shops despite living in an agglomeration of three million. Another similar area is just six stops on the subway away.
    - m_mueller 9y ago
      Yes, that’s how Tokyo works. Living standard with average salary is quite nice for this reason.
  - Noughmad 9y ago
    The need to be small geographically. Manhattan is very walkable, and very in demand.
  - Scarblac 9y ago
    Add good bicycle infrastructure and it's a lot more doable.
  - 9y ago
thriftwy 9y ago
I think it would be positive. We will sprawl so much that we end up repopulating much of the area what we left previously. Suburbua (or sleeper districts) around city core is sprawl. Semi-rural settlements all over the map is not sprawl. It is normawl. Add more telecommuting and basic income, and we're all set.
- bobthepanda 9y ago
  Suburbs were also originally supposed to be pastoral garden cities. Usually the ideal of planners and technologists falls prey to the reality of mass-market commoditization.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    Aren't them? I guess you was never exposed much to other ways of mass urbanization. Like this: http://www.vsedomarossii.ru/photos/area_77/city_2894/street_10767/122712_1.jpg http://www.vsedomarossii.ru/photos/area_77/city_2894/street_... Or this: https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/v1492112219/articles/2016/06/26/the-lost-chinese-city-police-feared-to-enter/160625-_O-Connor-Kowloon-City-embed_yvvhte https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/v1492112219/artic... You will have to admit that suburbs are pretty pastoral.
    - paganel 9y ago
      I lived in an apartment building just like the first one in your photo until not that long ago (I now also live in a 8-storey apartment building, but it's a little smaller compared to the first one) and I'd take living in such a building over living in a suburbia-like hell every day of the year (this happens in an big East-European city). Living in that type of building meant that the tram-station was literally 50 meters outside of my building and a metro station a mere 5-minute walk away, there was a school just bellow my apartment's window (I could here the children playing in the school's yard in the morning) and a kindergarten 100 meters from my building's entrance and the same tram would take me to a Walmart-like store 3 stations away pretty easily (yeah, you don't need a car to do shopping). And on top of that, having a city that is comprised of mostly tall apartment buildings means that nature is a very short drive away (either with one's car or with public transport), but nowadays, as the suburbia phenomenon has also invaded the city of which I'm talking about, it means that in order to "reach" nature one has to drive further and further away.
bobthepanda 9y ago
This analysis is flawed. You can already do all of this internet browsing and whatnot that you can't do on a car on commuting modes where you're a passenger; a bus, or on a subway, or sometimes in a carpool. But that doesn't make people tolerate longer commutes on those modes.
- chrisseaton 9y ago
  Yes it does - people commute relatively happily up to two hours on a train - distances most people wouldn't consider driving - precisely because they can work effectively while commuting so they aren't losing time.
- apotheothesomai 9y ago
  Sitting comfortably in a car with space and silence is not sufficiently analogous to public transport for the analysis to be flawed on this account. And how many people on Caltrain or a major subway can actually even get a seat and space for comfortably sing a laptop during commuter hours?
  - rwmj 9y ago
    This could be some US thing, but in Europe trains are quiet and comfortable enough that plenty of people work/commute on them. And anyway it's not like modern offices are quiet, interruption-free workspaces either.
- jedberg 9y ago
  I had no problem commuting by train every day for 70 minutes plus the 20 minute drive to the train station, each way. Because I could get work done on the train.
JoachimS 9y ago
I'm probably dim. But I fail to understand why self driving cars will make the congestions in morning and evening commutes be radically reduced. If the wall described in the article is to be pushed out, the speed must increase from today. If we can go to work and go home at more varying times over a day then yes congestion should decrease. But why would AVs cause that effect? As long as everybody is expected to be at the office at 8am and leave at about 5pm, we need to move the same amount of people back and forth at the same time. Ride sharing (hey buses and metros are efficient for that!) may make the number of vehicles/person go down.
- colordrops 9y ago
  The amount of vehicles a road can handle before becoming congested is dependent on the safe distance needed between cars at a particular speed, the reaction time of drivers, and the consistency and coordination of driving styles. You won't see any improvements from AVs until human drivers are banned, after which the AVs can all drive at 100 mph and inches apart from each other. Traffic lights would also no longer be necessary.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    You would also have to ban pedestrians and cyclists.
    - dtech 9y ago
      It's not viable in cities, but large parts of commutes and congestion are on freeways where they are banned anyway. We don't even want cars driving 100 mph in cities because of noise and pollution (for gasoline cars). And if we went fully AV, we could still do away with traffic lights for cars in cities, as long as pedestrians and cyclists have their own safe passages and/or AVs are smart enough to deal with them just crossing at will.
    - skrause 9y ago
      And you shouldn't care about noise anymore. When there's a constant stream of self-driving cars at 100 mph on the streets every single place in the city will sound like living next to a major highway. And no, electric engines won't solve this problem, at speeds above 30 mph the engine is no longer the major source of noise, it's the tires and the aerodynamic noise.
Gibbon1 9y ago
Self driving minibuses solves mass transits last mile problem just saying. Cause no one is mentioning that. Self driving cars aren't going to make peoples commutes from Tracey to Moutainview any faster.
yAnonymous 9y ago
There need to be better parking solutions for any of that to actually happen.
rdlecler1 9y ago
We shouldn’t blame autonomous vehicles. Unaffordable housing is causing sprawl.
calvinbhai 9y ago
I think there's a simple solution: Zone to Zone travel tax based on time of the day. This tax wont apply to public transit, or shared rides (like UberPool, Lyft Line, Waze carpool etc). Applies to all other vehicles, even AV if it is a personal/commercial use thats not meant for shared rides, even if HOV (so that fewer people are looking for parking, blocking / flooding the streets in am/pm due to parking). any thoughts?

51 points by aresant 9y ago

All will depend on whether people will still feel being chauffeured around in a self driving vehicle as 'travel time'. With few restrictions, you can design an autonomous light truck to be like a true 'mobile home-office/bedroom/apartment'. My personal prediction is that when we get to true AV's, it will be an ecological disaster, clogging roads orders of magnitude more than today.

trevyn 9y ago
Thought experiment to help you improve your prediction power in general: Imagine that your prediction was wrong. What are some possibilities for why it was wrong?
- Simon_says 9y ago
  Oo, that's a good one.
usrusr 9y ago
The next step could be hooking up that self-driving mobile home to plumbing infrastructure on the company parking lot. Trailer park company town, here we come. I share your concerns though, that we will get stuck with an automobile version of the representational train cars of the steam age unless we find ways to channel autonomous driving into mode-independent transportation as a service. Uber as a transitional saviour? Never thought I would write this. Next requirement: replace/upgrade street parking with theftproof mooring clamps for parcel delivery containers that can then be much smaller than a car (sized as needed), and that could be self-driving or dropped/picked up by a "mothership" truck depending on urgency and/or technology. With that service in place, you could just summon transportation for your shopping bags, alleviating the trunk anxiety often associated with mode-independent transportation as a service.

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

We need cities that are easily traversed by humans, not cars.

thriftwy 9y ago
They need to be really small for that to work, and what's happening is that only 1M+ or even 5M+ population areas are in demand. A home to 5M people isn't likely going to be very walkable.
- CAT0 9y ago
  > They need to be really small for that to work That's not true. One solution is the '10 Minute City/Neighborhood' and its guide to decision-making.
- sveme 9y ago
  You can have locally village-like situations in a large city if you have a high enough population density and then connect these local villages with mass transit. I can walk to three movie theatres, all doctors, a university hospital, five or six different supermarkets and a shitload of other shops despite living in an agglomeration of three million. Another similar area is just six stops on the subway away.
  - m_mueller 9y ago
    Yes, that’s how Tokyo works. Living standard with average salary is quite nice for this reason.
- Noughmad 9y ago
  The need to be small geographically. Manhattan is very walkable, and very in demand.
- Scarblac 9y ago
  Add good bicycle infrastructure and it's a lot more doable.
- 9y ago

thriftwy 9y ago

I think it would be positive. We will sprawl so much that we end up repopulating much of the area what we left previously. Suburbua (or sleeper districts) around city core is sprawl. Semi-rural settlements all over the map is not sprawl. It is normawl. Add more telecommuting and basic income, and we're all set.

bobthepanda 9y ago
Suburbs were also originally supposed to be pastoral garden cities. Usually the ideal of planners and technologists falls prey to the reality of mass-market commoditization.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  Aren't them? I guess you was never exposed much to other ways of mass urbanization. Like this: http://www.vsedomarossii.ru/photos/area_77/city_2894/street_10767/122712_1.jpg http://www.vsedomarossii.ru/photos/area_77/city_2894/street_... Or this: https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/v1492112219/articles/2016/06/26/the-lost-chinese-city-police-feared-to-enter/160625-_O-Connor-Kowloon-City-embed_yvvhte https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/v1492112219/artic... You will have to admit that suburbs are pretty pastoral.
  - paganel 9y ago
    I lived in an apartment building just like the first one in your photo until not that long ago (I now also live in a 8-storey apartment building, but it's a little smaller compared to the first one) and I'd take living in such a building over living in a suburbia-like hell every day of the year (this happens in an big East-European city). Living in that type of building meant that the tram-station was literally 50 meters outside of my building and a metro station a mere 5-minute walk away, there was a school just bellow my apartment's window (I could here the children playing in the school's yard in the morning) and a kindergarten 100 meters from my building's entrance and the same tram would take me to a Walmart-like store 3 stations away pretty easily (yeah, you don't need a car to do shopping). And on top of that, having a city that is comprised of mostly tall apartment buildings means that nature is a very short drive away (either with one's car or with public transport), but nowadays, as the suburbia phenomenon has also invaded the city of which I'm talking about, it means that in order to "reach" nature one has to drive further and further away.

bobthepanda 9y ago

This analysis is flawed. You can already do all of this internet browsing and whatnot that you can't do on a car on commuting modes where you're a passenger; a bus, or on a subway, or sometimes in a carpool. But that doesn't make people tolerate longer commutes on those modes.

chrisseaton 9y ago
Yes it does - people commute relatively happily up to two hours on a train - distances most people wouldn't consider driving - precisely because they can work effectively while commuting so they aren't losing time.
apotheothesomai 9y ago
Sitting comfortably in a car with space and silence is not sufficiently analogous to public transport for the analysis to be flawed on this account. And how many people on Caltrain or a major subway can actually even get a seat and space for comfortably sing a laptop during commuter hours?
- rwmj 9y ago
  This could be some US thing, but in Europe trains are quiet and comfortable enough that plenty of people work/commute on them. And anyway it's not like modern offices are quiet, interruption-free workspaces either.
jedberg 9y ago
I had no problem commuting by train every day for 70 minutes plus the 20 minute drive to the train station, each way. Because I could get work done on the train.

JoachimS 9y ago

I'm probably dim. But I fail to understand why self driving cars will make the congestions in morning and evening commutes be radically reduced. If the wall described in the article is to be pushed out, the speed must increase from today. If we can go to work and go home at more varying times over a day then yes congestion should decrease. But why would AVs cause that effect? As long as everybody is expected to be at the office at 8am and leave at about 5pm, we need to move the same amount of people back and forth at the same time. Ride sharing (hey buses and metros are efficient for that!) may make the number of vehicles/person go down.

colordrops 9y ago
The amount of vehicles a road can handle before becoming congested is dependent on the safe distance needed between cars at a particular speed, the reaction time of drivers, and the consistency and coordination of driving styles. You won't see any improvements from AVs until human drivers are banned, after which the AVs can all drive at 100 mph and inches apart from each other. Traffic lights would also no longer be necessary.
- adrianN 9y ago
  You would also have to ban pedestrians and cyclists.
  - dtech 9y ago
    It's not viable in cities, but large parts of commutes and congestion are on freeways where they are banned anyway. We don't even want cars driving 100 mph in cities because of noise and pollution (for gasoline cars). And if we went fully AV, we could still do away with traffic lights for cars in cities, as long as pedestrians and cyclists have their own safe passages and/or AVs are smart enough to deal with them just crossing at will.
  - skrause 9y ago
    And you shouldn't care about noise anymore. When there's a constant stream of self-driving cars at 100 mph on the streets every single place in the city will sound like living next to a major highway. And no, electric engines won't solve this problem, at speeds above 30 mph the engine is no longer the major source of noise, it's the tires and the aerodynamic noise.

Gibbon1 9y ago

Self driving minibuses solves mass transits last mile problem just saying. Cause no one is mentioning that. Self driving cars aren't going to make peoples commutes from Tracey to Moutainview any faster.

yAnonymous 9y ago

There need to be better parking solutions for any of that to actually happen.

rdlecler1 9y ago

We shouldn’t blame autonomous vehicles. Unaffordable housing is causing sprawl.

calvinbhai 9y ago

I think there's a simple solution: Zone to Zone travel tax based on time of the day. This tax wont apply to public transit, or shared rides (like UberPool, Lyft Line, Waze carpool etc). Applies to all other vehicles, even AV if it is a personal/commercial use thats not meant for shared rides, even if HOV (so that fewer people are looking for parking, blocking / flooding the streets in am/pm due to parking). any thoughts?