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Why would self driving taxis behave different than human driven taxis? I mean, the same argument (cars don't need to be in walking distance) applies to taxis wh

Why would self driving taxis behave different than human driven taxis? I mean, the same argument (cars don't need to be in walking distance) applies to taxis whether a human drives it or a computer?

briandear 8y ago
Yes. I drove a taxi for a time during college and I remember drivers would camp at the airport for hours to get a $100 trip but would resent “short trips” despite you actually making more money on multiple short trips than a single airport run. Many of those drivers would use the airport wait time to take a shower, play poker, socialize, sleep. (For those not familiar, taxis at major airports wait in a slow moving off-site queue before you actually ever see them arrive at the terminals; that off-site often resembles a third-world village with everything from laundry, food vendors, ping pong, etc.) Drivers line up their cars, and they do their thing, returning to the vehicle from time to time to move it forward in the queue. Autonomous vehicle “drivers” don’t need to shower, use the bathroom, eat or sleep, so instead they can be constantly moving rather than camping at airports. A car in motion is generating revenue, so I think autonomous taxis would be fewer in number than human taxis as well as behaving in revenue-optimizing ways (i.e. not camping at the airport.) Theoretically, those airport taxi villages would likely turn into charging stations with a few employees to provide necessary services.
- jcranmer 8y ago
  > A car in motion is generating revenue Not necessarily. A lot of the self-driving taxi utopia is based on the idea that self-driving taxis will serve commuter traffic. And the major facet of commuter traffic is that you're going to have a high-volume, unidirectional traffic flow--once that car drops off its worker, there is no demand for it make any trips nearby. So if that car is in motion, it's still not carrying anybody, so it's not generating revenue.
  - skybrian 8y ago
    Assuming a rational market (never guaranteed), there would be low fares during off-peak hours, and in the reverse direction, with higher fares at peak. So, you'd get some "induced demand" and shift in demand by travel being sometimes being very cheap. It's sort of like congestion pricing. Uber has done some of this already.

Why would self driving taxis behave different than human driven taxis? I mean, the same argument (cars don't need to be in walking distance) applies to taxis whether a human drives it or a computer?

briandear 8y ago

Yes. I drove a taxi for a time during college and I remember drivers would camp at the airport for hours to get a $100 trip but would resent “short trips” despite you actually making more money on multiple short trips than a single airport run. Many of those drivers would use the airport wait time to take a shower, play poker, socialize, sleep. (For those not familiar, taxis at major airports wait in a slow moving off-site queue before you actually ever see them arrive at the terminals; that off-site often resembles a third-world village with everything from laundry, food vendors, ping pong, etc.) Drivers line up their cars, and they do their thing, returning to the vehicle from time to time to move it forward in the queue. Autonomous vehicle “drivers” don’t need to shower, use the bathroom, eat or sleep, so instead they can be constantly moving rather than camping at airports. A car in motion is generating revenue, so I think autonomous taxis would be fewer in number than human taxis as well as behaving in revenue-optimizing ways (i.e. not camping at the airport.) Theoretically, those airport taxi villages would likely turn into charging stations with a few employees to provide necessary services.

jcranmer 8y ago
> A car in motion is generating revenue Not necessarily. A lot of the self-driving taxi utopia is based on the idea that self-driving taxis will serve commuter traffic. And the major facet of commuter traffic is that you're going to have a high-volume, unidirectional traffic flow--once that car drops off its worker, there is no demand for it make any trips nearby. So if that car is in motion, it's still not carrying anybody, so it's not generating revenue.
- skybrian 8y ago
  Assuming a rational market (never guaranteed), there would be low fares during off-peak hours, and in the reverse direction, with higher fares at peak. So, you'd get some "induced demand" and shift in demand by travel being sometimes being very cheap. It's sort of like congestion pricing. Uber has done some of this already.