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Ideal in terms of travel time efficiency, not energy efficiency or space efficiency. Travel time is the wrong property to optimize for when we're looking at tr

Ideal in terms of travel time efficiency, not energy efficiency or space efficiency. Travel time is the wrong property to optimize for when we're looking at transportation and urban design. It's the mistake we've made in America for the last century. We should be optimizing for quality of life and health. Optimizing for those things yields design like Copenhagen -- bike paths, walking paths, trains and busses for longer trips. It's quiet. It's energy efficiency. It's much better for our health. It encourages healthy social interaction and the feel of community.

AlgorithmicTime 8y ago
Quality of life is optimized by minimizing travel time. Hence, flying cars.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Ideal in terms of travel time efficiency, not energy efficiency or space efficiency. Not even in terms of the first, because of the last; it's the optimal individual choice in terms of travel time, but making it the socially dominant option produces sprawl (because of space inefficiency); and flying doesn't actually change that (because any dense arrangement means high concentration near the endpoints, and because flight in built up areas is problematic.)
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>Travel time is the wrong property to optimize for when we're looking at transportation and urban design. You'll probably eat those words. Or maybe your grandchildren or great great grandchildren will. The value of human time has been steadily going up for millennia. We used to have slaves build pyramids and pick cotton, now we use machines. We used to churn our own butter. Now there's enough wealth in the world that we can afford to have butter specialists make butter and logistics specialists get it to the store shelves. Tasks that we used to think it was reasonable to allocate human time and effort two we no wouldn't think about doing manually today. I would be highly surprised if in the future we did not continue to optimize for smaller travel times. Of course there are energy and space trade-offs. I think it's highly likely that we will chose to solve the problems caused by those trade-offs rather than having people endure longer travel times when we have the power to shorten them (with tradeoffs). Spending less and less human time on "overhead" tasks (like churning butter, washing clothes, traveling, etc.) has been a constant theme for millennia. I do not see any reason why that will change.
nawitus 8y ago
Flying autonomous vehicles can reasonably be energy efficient, and clearly are space efficient (due to the three dimensions that provide plenty of space). Travel time is the correct property to optimize for my values. I don't want to spend unnecessary time in transit. That's a subjective value, of course. You can optimize for quality of life, health and short travel times at the same time. Copenhagen might be a good target with current level of technology, not necessarily the technology of future. I don't care for imposed social interaction due to public transportation. People don't really interact with strangers in public transportation anyway (in my culture that is).

AlgorithmicTime 8y ago

Quality of life is optimized by minimizing travel time. Hence, flying cars.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> Ideal in terms of travel time efficiency, not energy efficiency or space efficiency. Not even in terms of the first, because of the last; it's the optimal individual choice in terms of travel time, but making it the socially dominant option produces sprawl (because of space inefficiency); and flying doesn't actually change that (because any dense arrangement means high concentration near the endpoints, and because flight in built up areas is problematic.)

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

>Travel time is the wrong property to optimize for when we're looking at transportation and urban design. You'll probably eat those words. Or maybe your grandchildren or great great grandchildren will. The value of human time has been steadily going up for millennia. We used to have slaves build pyramids and pick cotton, now we use machines. We used to churn our own butter. Now there's enough wealth in the world that we can afford to have butter specialists make butter and logistics specialists get it to the store shelves. Tasks that we used to think it was reasonable to allocate human time and effort two we no wouldn't think about doing manually today. I would be highly surprised if in the future we did not continue to optimize for smaller travel times. Of course there are energy and space trade-offs. I think it's highly likely that we will chose to solve the problems caused by those trade-offs rather than having people endure longer travel times when we have the power to shorten them (with tradeoffs). Spending less and less human time on "overhead" tasks (like churning butter, washing clothes, traveling, etc.) has been a constant theme for millennia. I do not see any reason why that will change.

nawitus 8y ago

Flying autonomous vehicles can reasonably be energy efficient, and clearly are space efficient (due to the three dimensions that provide plenty of space). Travel time is the correct property to optimize for my values. I don't want to spend unnecessary time in transit. That's a subjective value, of course. You can optimize for quality of life, health and short travel times at the same time. Copenhagen might be a good target with current level of technology, not necessarily the technology of future. I don't care for imposed social interaction due to public transportation. People don't really interact with strangers in public transportation anyway (in my culture that is).