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Once automated vehicles take over (eventually), most people will switch to taxis. Taking taxis everywhere will be cheaper than owning your own vehicle. So the

Once automated vehicles take over (eventually), most people will switch to taxis. Taking taxis everywhere will be cheaper than owning your own vehicle. So the need to park will be greatly reduced. Eventually, mass transit will fail and underground subways will be repurposed for AVs. Parking will be built underground for off peak storage of vehicles, allowing the repurposing of surface parking spots. Maybe agricultural robots will make use of them. Cities will get quieter.

cozzyd 8y ago
Yeah taxis don't have sufficient capacity. You'd just double the cars on the roads. Autonomous buses on the other hand could make a dent (since the primary cost of buses in rich countries is labor).
- 55873445216111 8y ago
  I'm curious about this. How do you arrive at the conclusion that autonomous taxi adoption results in a doubling of the number of cars? Do you have a link?
  - cozzyd 8y ago
    Because order half the time they'll be empty driving to their next pickup. The increase in ride-sharing has already greatly increased congestion: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20180316/issue01/180319945/whats-making-traffic-worse-in-chicago-signs-point-to-uber-lyft http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20180316/issue01/1803...
    - stretchwithme 8y ago
      But in the most popular areas, many cars get multiple riders and find their next rides in the same area. And out in the boonies, some people will keep their personal cars, as it will take longer to get a ride. Also, the average car size will shrink. Not only will we lose the driver's seat, but peak demand as people go to work may be met with even smaller one-seat cars. You won't need a car that can handle your worst-case scenario for most of the time. Bigger cars will still be available, of course, because people do like to travel with their friends and family whenever possible. All in all, it's a lot more likely that that most seats will be filled.
      - cozzyd 8y ago
        I disagree. The article I linked suggests in NYC that Ubers are empty 1/3 of the time on weekdays. The problem of course is that no city is so mixed use that destinations are equally likely to be origins at any given time of day. taking labor out of the equation it will become cost effective to be empty an even larger fraction of the time (presumably humans stop driving when they're not getting enough fares to be worthwhile). It may also be economical for these vehicles to never park (not only because parking costs money or might be far away, but because it increases latency) for large fractions of the day.
  - ju-st 8y ago
    Nobody wants to take a cab to drive from CBD to suburb at 10am. The cabs still have to drive to somewhere to park themselves until most of them are needed again at 5pm. Cars in general are mainly used at both rush hours and are parked somewhere in between. Sharing cars won't magically change human behaviour. Some googled "traffic by time of day" graphs: http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~cs1173/images/SATraffic3Intersections.png http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~cs1173/images/SATraffic3Intersection... and http://www.cmt4austin.org/Traffic_By_Time_of_Day.htm http://www.cmt4austin.org/Traffic_By_Time_of_Day.htm
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  I mean, both can exist. The middle class in Beijing use taxis/didi fairly ubiquitously, poorer people use the subway and buses more. Autonomous taxis could also easily caravan reducing their capacity disadvantage over autonomous buses.
chimeracoder 8y ago
> Eventually, mass transit will fail and underground subways will be repurposed for AVs. No matter how autonomous the vehicle, a tunnel of cars will never have the the same throughput capacity as a subway. For supporting the kind of dense cities that we need to in order to have a somewhat sustainable society in the long-term, that's crucial. Unless you're talking about fully autonomous subway systems, in which case those already exist - like in NYC.
- blt 8y ago
  The NYC subway system is not autonomous. Every train has a driver. Autonomous subways do exist though.
  - chimeracoder 8y ago
    > The NYC subway system is not autonomous. Every train has a driver. The L train is actually fully self-driving and self-operating. The TWU has a contract with the MTA that requires them to hire someone to sit around and press a keepalive button every so often, though that doesn't make the train any less autonomous. (The TWU has a history of striking these sorts of "deals" with the MTA - typically, they take the form of requiring the MTA to pay for the cost of any jobs that are eliminated due to technological advancements. In other words, it becomes more expensive for the MTA to introduce technology - even technology that's already been standard practice for decades elsewhere in the world - than to keep using older and more expensive systems.) So at this point, we're talking about political barriers to self-driving trains, rather than technological ones, and "repurposing subways for self-driving car tunnels" has all of those same barriers, on top of being a dramatically less efficient way of moving people around.
dsnuh 8y ago
Every time I hear this notion that autonomous vehicles will replace private car ownership in the U.S., it strikes me as a futurist pipe dream. I think truly autonomous vehicles are a long way away, if ever. The capital and construction required to totally rearrange the average American city to get to the scenarios you describe would be incredible. I also think we are underestimating the cultural aspect of car ownership in America, as another commenter above pointed out.
- stretchwithme 8y ago
  I think it will tke longer than most of the optimists project. But it will happen. And there will continue to be people who choose to drive. I don't see a problem with that. If anything, they will be much more capable than today's average driver, as those barely capable give up and take cabs. They will certainly receive more scrutiny, as the number of cameras on the road will explode.
  - dsnuh 8y ago
    If those barely capable give up and take cabs, then explain my morning commute. ;) Seriously though, I don't see truly autonomous vehicles unless we acheive general artificial intelligence. I don't see that happening in my lifetime or my children's, but obviously I am not an optimist. I don't know that driving skill will correlate with desire to drive or own a car. I think getting average Americans to give up their private vehicles and rely solely on public transportation or autonomous vehicles is a SV pipe dream.
    - stretchwithme 8y ago
      Easy to explain your commute. We don't have cheap automated cabs yet. People can't chose an option that they don't have.
      - dsnuh 8y ago
        My point is that I don't think many people would take that option even if it were available. I know I wouldn't, unless the costs to own and operate a private car went up drastically, and even then, I see it as more of an augmentation than a replacement, i.e. maybe I own a single car instead of two, and use cabs for most trips. There are some realities I think get overlooked. For example, I have a family of six, plus a dog that can't be left alone. How do I go about getting where I need to go in a fast and convenient way? Let's say I can't afford to live in the dense city center, and like most people, I live in the suburbs. Barring some huge shift in politics, infrastructure, and major advancement in AI, what is my motivation to give up my minivan?
Tiktaalik 8y ago
lmao The cost and availability of parking is one of the primary deterrants to car ownership and driving. If that is removed, then due to induced demand, the price commuting by car will substantially decrease. Following induced demand again this means the amount of traffic on the road will substantially increase, which will be a nightmare for cities. Autonomous cars will not solve anything and will in all likelihoods make the situation much worse. The only thing that will take cars off the road is simply to reduce the amount of road available to them.
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  One thing that will take cars off the road is to provide better alternatives modes of transportation.
  - Tiktaalik 8y ago
    Nope again due to induced demand. As people abandon their cars for public transit options, less traffic incentivizes people to choose to drive. Traffic will always fill to occupy the available space available. This is why LA and Houston have built incredibly wide highways and have never solved their traffic issues.
ghaff 8y ago
>Taking taxis everywhere will be cheaper than owning your own vehicle. People say this but it's very unclear it will be the case. Especially outside of places where the environment (salted roads for example) take a toll, most of the cost of owning a car is ultimately distance, not time. A lot of factors could make pay-per-use fleet cars a bit cheaper or more expensive than owner but it's not clear that the economic difference will really be all that great. I also see people expecting drastically cheaper prices than Uber but the overall costs (including those associated with getting the car to you) are still going to be 50 cents a mile or so.
- stretchwithme 8y ago
  The distance traveled will be a bigger part of the cost of robotic travel. That's what happens when you are sharing the capital cost with many other users. And that is a big part of why AVs will be cheaper. Paying 1/10 of $500 a month is better than paying $500. The cost will also depend on how big a vehicle you need. For many people going to work, they only need room for one person and a little space for cargo. Paying for 1/4 of a vehicle is cheaper than paying for a whole vehicle. So even the variable cost of your transportation will go down.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    But there is no $500/month. There is some Time Value of Money involved, yes, when I plop down $30K for a vehicle that will last for 150K miles or whatever. ADDED: It would be silly to let it sit for 5 years before using it because that $30K could hopefully have been earning money elsewhere. The "$500/mo" is just the financing vehicle you've chosen to purchase the car. But mostly there is $0.50 / mile or so which is reasonably constant whether I put 10K miles on my car per year or 50K. There's some savings in provisioning for average usage rather than peak usage as to type of vehicle and so forth. But I'm skeptical how significant this will be beyond city dwellers who are on the cusp of not owning their own vehicles (or their own second vehicles) anyway.

cozzyd 8y ago

Yeah taxis don't have sufficient capacity. You'd just double the cars on the roads. Autonomous buses on the other hand could make a dent (since the primary cost of buses in rich countries is labor).

55873445216111 8y ago
I'm curious about this. How do you arrive at the conclusion that autonomous taxi adoption results in a doubling of the number of cars? Do you have a link?
- cozzyd 8y ago
  Because order half the time they'll be empty driving to their next pickup. The increase in ride-sharing has already greatly increased congestion: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20180316/issue01/180319945/whats-making-traffic-worse-in-chicago-signs-point-to-uber-lyft http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20180316/issue01/1803...
  - stretchwithme 8y ago
    But in the most popular areas, many cars get multiple riders and find their next rides in the same area. And out in the boonies, some people will keep their personal cars, as it will take longer to get a ride. Also, the average car size will shrink. Not only will we lose the driver's seat, but peak demand as people go to work may be met with even smaller one-seat cars. You won't need a car that can handle your worst-case scenario for most of the time. Bigger cars will still be available, of course, because people do like to travel with their friends and family whenever possible. All in all, it's a lot more likely that that most seats will be filled.
    - cozzyd 8y ago
      I disagree. The article I linked suggests in NYC that Ubers are empty 1/3 of the time on weekdays. The problem of course is that no city is so mixed use that destinations are equally likely to be origins at any given time of day. taking labor out of the equation it will become cost effective to be empty an even larger fraction of the time (presumably humans stop driving when they're not getting enough fares to be worthwhile). It may also be economical for these vehicles to never park (not only because parking costs money or might be far away, but because it increases latency) for large fractions of the day.
- ju-st 8y ago
  Nobody wants to take a cab to drive from CBD to suburb at 10am. The cabs still have to drive to somewhere to park themselves until most of them are needed again at 5pm. Cars in general are mainly used at both rush hours and are parked somewhere in between. Sharing cars won't magically change human behaviour. Some googled "traffic by time of day" graphs: http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~cs1173/images/SATraffic3Intersections.png http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~cs1173/images/SATraffic3Intersection... and http://www.cmt4austin.org/Traffic_By_Time_of_Day.htm http://www.cmt4austin.org/Traffic_By_Time_of_Day.htm
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
I mean, both can exist. The middle class in Beijing use taxis/didi fairly ubiquitously, poorer people use the subway and buses more. Autonomous taxis could also easily caravan reducing their capacity disadvantage over autonomous buses.

chimeracoder 8y ago

> Eventually, mass transit will fail and underground subways will be repurposed for AVs. No matter how autonomous the vehicle, a tunnel of cars will never have the the same throughput capacity as a subway. For supporting the kind of dense cities that we need to in order to have a somewhat sustainable society in the long-term, that's crucial. Unless you're talking about fully autonomous subway systems, in which case those already exist - like in NYC.

blt 8y ago
The NYC subway system is not autonomous. Every train has a driver. Autonomous subways do exist though.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > The NYC subway system is not autonomous. Every train has a driver. The L train is actually fully self-driving and self-operating. The TWU has a contract with the MTA that requires them to hire someone to sit around and press a keepalive button every so often, though that doesn't make the train any less autonomous. (The TWU has a history of striking these sorts of "deals" with the MTA - typically, they take the form of requiring the MTA to pay for the cost of any jobs that are eliminated due to technological advancements. In other words, it becomes more expensive for the MTA to introduce technology - even technology that's already been standard practice for decades elsewhere in the world - than to keep using older and more expensive systems.) So at this point, we're talking about political barriers to self-driving trains, rather than technological ones, and "repurposing subways for self-driving car tunnels" has all of those same barriers, on top of being a dramatically less efficient way of moving people around.

dsnuh 8y ago

Every time I hear this notion that autonomous vehicles will replace private car ownership in the U.S., it strikes me as a futurist pipe dream. I think truly autonomous vehicles are a long way away, if ever. The capital and construction required to totally rearrange the average American city to get to the scenarios you describe would be incredible. I also think we are underestimating the cultural aspect of car ownership in America, as another commenter above pointed out.

stretchwithme 8y ago
I think it will tke longer than most of the optimists project. But it will happen. And there will continue to be people who choose to drive. I don't see a problem with that. If anything, they will be much more capable than today's average driver, as those barely capable give up and take cabs. They will certainly receive more scrutiny, as the number of cameras on the road will explode.
- dsnuh 8y ago
  If those barely capable give up and take cabs, then explain my morning commute. ;) Seriously though, I don't see truly autonomous vehicles unless we acheive general artificial intelligence. I don't see that happening in my lifetime or my children's, but obviously I am not an optimist. I don't know that driving skill will correlate with desire to drive or own a car. I think getting average Americans to give up their private vehicles and rely solely on public transportation or autonomous vehicles is a SV pipe dream.
  - stretchwithme 8y ago
    Easy to explain your commute. We don't have cheap automated cabs yet. People can't chose an option that they don't have.
    - dsnuh 8y ago
      My point is that I don't think many people would take that option even if it were available. I know I wouldn't, unless the costs to own and operate a private car went up drastically, and even then, I see it as more of an augmentation than a replacement, i.e. maybe I own a single car instead of two, and use cabs for most trips. There are some realities I think get overlooked. For example, I have a family of six, plus a dog that can't be left alone. How do I go about getting where I need to go in a fast and convenient way? Let's say I can't afford to live in the dense city center, and like most people, I live in the suburbs. Barring some huge shift in politics, infrastructure, and major advancement in AI, what is my motivation to give up my minivan?

Tiktaalik 8y ago

lmao The cost and availability of parking is one of the primary deterrants to car ownership and driving. If that is removed, then due to induced demand, the price commuting by car will substantially decrease. Following induced demand again this means the amount of traffic on the road will substantially increase, which will be a nightmare for cities. Autonomous cars will not solve anything and will in all likelihoods make the situation much worse. The only thing that will take cars off the road is simply to reduce the amount of road available to them.

TheCoelacanth 8y ago
One thing that will take cars off the road is to provide better alternatives modes of transportation.
- Tiktaalik 8y ago
  Nope again due to induced demand. As people abandon their cars for public transit options, less traffic incentivizes people to choose to drive. Traffic will always fill to occupy the available space available. This is why LA and Houston have built incredibly wide highways and have never solved their traffic issues.

ghaff 8y ago

>Taking taxis everywhere will be cheaper than owning your own vehicle. People say this but it's very unclear it will be the case. Especially outside of places where the environment (salted roads for example) take a toll, most of the cost of owning a car is ultimately distance, not time. A lot of factors could make pay-per-use fleet cars a bit cheaper or more expensive than owner but it's not clear that the economic difference will really be all that great. I also see people expecting drastically cheaper prices than Uber but the overall costs (including those associated with getting the car to you) are still going to be 50 cents a mile or so.

stretchwithme 8y ago
The distance traveled will be a bigger part of the cost of robotic travel. That's what happens when you are sharing the capital cost with many other users. And that is a big part of why AVs will be cheaper. Paying 1/10 of $500 a month is better than paying $500. The cost will also depend on how big a vehicle you need. For many people going to work, they only need room for one person and a little space for cargo. Paying for 1/4 of a vehicle is cheaper than paying for a whole vehicle. So even the variable cost of your transportation will go down.
- ghaff 8y ago
  But there is no $500/month. There is some Time Value of Money involved, yes, when I plop down $30K for a vehicle that will last for 150K miles or whatever. ADDED: It would be silly to let it sit for 5 years before using it because that $30K could hopefully have been earning money elsewhere. The "$500/mo" is just the financing vehicle you've chosen to purchase the car. But mostly there is $0.50 / mile or so which is reasonably constant whether I put 10K miles on my car per year or 50K. There's some savings in provisioning for average usage rather than peak usage as to type of vehicle and so forth. But I'm skeptical how significant this will be beyond city dwellers who are on the cusp of not owning their own vehicles (or their own second vehicles) anyway.