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I'm so happy to see this idea starting to get mainstream attention. I predict that in 50-100 years we'll look back on the age of the automobile as one of the bi

I'm so happy to see this idea starting to get mainstream attention. I predict that in 50-100 years we'll look back on the age of the automobile as one of the biggest mistakes in urban planning. Automobiles are dangerous, kill thousands of people every year, contribute significantly to pollution, and cause health problems by discouraging physical activity. They're expensive, inefficient, and cause more harm than good within major cities IMO. My dream is that one day most streets in Manhattan will be closed to car traffic and replaced with green space full of trees, flowers, children playing, and usable public space.

criddell 7y ago
Self-driving cars are going trigger a new wave of automobile growth, at least in the US. They won't be dangerous, will run clean, be super convenient and unbelievably inexpensive to own and operate. They are going to throw gasoline on the sprawl fire. There will certainly be some city centers and other areas closed to car traffic (although probably not most of Manhattan - delivery vehicles are a significant part of the traffic). I'm one of the people looking forward to the day when I can move further out of the city. I don't care if my commute is an hour or more if I can work or sleep or do other things while the car drives me.
- brenden2 7y ago
  Small deliveries are done by bicycle these days in Manhattan. Large items, like furniture, could be delivered using small electric trucks with special permits for this purpose.
  - criddell 7y ago
    I was thinking more about the fleet of Sysco, UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc... trucks.
    - greglindahl 7y ago
      ... all of which are looking at electric vehicles. And are a small % of the current overall traffic.
- beefield 7y ago
  > Self-driving cars are going trigger a new wave of automobile growth, at least in the US. They won't be dangerous, will run clean, be super convenient and unbelievably inexpensive to own and operate. My guess is that you are wrong. At least what comes to driving in cities. As the (current) main problem of cars in cities is not accidents, emissions, lack of convenience or even cost. It is the massive amount of space one car takes[1]. And self driving tech is not going to do anything to solve that. If not the opposite, when empty cars are driving around looking for a parking spot. [1] https://permaculturenews.org/images/bus_car_bike_compare.jpg https://permaculturenews.org/images/bus_car_bike_compare.jpg
  - darksaints 7y ago
    I think it's going to be far worse than that. The economics of self driving cars are so biased toward taxi-like usage that the city streets won't just be filled with cars taking up a lot of space. They'll be filled with cars moving at a glacial pace because the streets are all gridlocked by pickups and dropoffs. Every street will look like an airport or elementary school pickup/dropoff zone. And even where there aren't commuting clusters, the fact is that cars will actually obey the laws, meaning pedestrians will finally be free to cross at unmarked intersections, and cyclists will be able to share the lanes with cars.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
      Who's to say cities won't regulate how many of these cars can be on the road at any time? They already do this for taxis... And I believe some of them put limits on Uber and Lyft, too. Right?
      - thelittleone 7y ago
        This is done in Singapore. You can buy a car no problem but you need a certificate of entitlement to register and drive it. COE price fluctuates based on demand but has been over $50k USD (no mistake). A small island nation. Traffic still gets pretty bad but it would probably be a lot worse without this policy.
- makerofspoons 7y ago
  They will run clean, but if carbon is taxed appropriately I'm doubtful they will be cheap enough for the average person to own one since the manufacturing will be far from clean. Most likely people will summon a shared vehicle with an app.
- megaremote 7y ago
  > They won't be dangerous, will run clean, be super convenient and unbelievably inexpensive to own and operate. Oh, they will not use tires? Which leave smalls bits of plastic everywhere they go that get washed into our waterway as micro-plastic.
  - jdnenej 7y ago
    It's not just small bits of rubber you see on the side of the road, it's billions of rubber dust particles that come off the tires and blow in to the air giving you cancer.
  - garretraziel 7y ago
    I would say that yes, in some distant future, they will not use tires.
vonmoltke 7y ago
> I predict that in 50-100 years we'll look back on the age of the automobile as one of the biggest mistakes in urban planning. I think that's a very hyperbolic prediction. I think elevating the automobile to the detriment of other forms of transportation will be viewed as a mistake, but the automobile itself is no more a mistake than the horse and carriage were. > My dream is that one day most streets in Manhattan will be closed to car traffic and replaced with green space full of trees, flowers, children playing, and usable public space. When was this ever true in Manhattan, and why do you think it would become true just by getting rid of cars? Crowded city streets predate cars by centuries.
- mc32 7y ago
  Agreed. It was a necessary step to the next stage. We could say the industrial revolution was a great disaster as if disrupted how people worked, their relationship to labor, capital, etc., but it also enabled us to get where we are today.
- asveikau 7y ago
  > When was this ever true in Manhattan, Probably not what they are going for, but uptown was relatively undeveloped until surprisingly recently in historical terms. Also there are lots of famous photos of kids playing on Manhattan streets from circa the '30s and earlier.
- Robotbeat 7y ago
  Put all the vehicles (of whatever type) underground.
  - isostatic 7y ago
    Underground isn't an infinite space. Power, Sewers, basements, vaults, foundations, and existing tunnels. In London, building a new tunnel for crossrail involved threading a TBM through a gap with 80cm clearance (that's less than 2 cubits). The deeper you go, the wider the problems above, the more existing infrastrucutre is effected, not to mention the issues of how to return to the surface. Build decking over all the existing surface streets, only allow electric vehicles on the (current) underground streets, don't allow anything larger than a pushbike on the top.
Merrill 7y ago
This is quite possible for Manhattan and probably for other cities. Manhattan once had transportation needs for streets since it was ringed with wharves for seaborne and river commerce, had huge warehouses, railroad yards, factories, and all the facilities of a dynamic manufacturing city. That has all disappeared and the Manhattan economy is essentially services for residences, entertainment, media, finance, government, hospitals, etc. Production of goods is minor, and distribution and warehousing have mainly moved out, e.g. Fulton fish market. So Manhattan becomes a forest of towers mainly for residents and offices, with some more specialized buildings for hospitals, conference centers, sports venues, etc. But there is even little need for retailing space, since the distribution centers for online retailers serving Manhattan can be in the outer boroughs or NJ. In this scenario the transportation system boils down to distribution of food and other goods to the towers and the collection and removal of garbage, plus mass transit intra island and to/from the hinterlands for commuters to the office towers, as well as mass transit to/from airports for the tourism and business travelers. Manhattan is probably ahead of other cities in becoming a pure center of goods consumption.
jandrese 7y ago
The idyllic dream of vendors lugging their wares through the subway and city streets every day... When construction companies hire armies of people to walk individual I-beams through the city for every project... Where I get to haul my garbage a dozen blocks to the nearest accessible trash pickup location... In the end you still need roads. You don't get to convert all of that space into a park even if you ban cars.
- dan_quixote 7y ago
  Meh, just watch how construction happens in the central district of any European city. It's not as simple as just backing a flatbed up to the door, but they get by just fine.
  - jcranberry 7y ago
    They do, with roads. The point GP was making that it's not feasible to convert roads into bowers.
    - johnday 7y ago
      On the other hand, it would be feasible to convert roads into normally-pedestrianised areas, which you need a permit or a one-day pass to drive through. There are numerous city centres in the UK which use this method. The central portion of Canterbury, Kent, is a great example.
      - jdc 7y ago
        And you could probably do with only one lane.
      - Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago
        Another alternative is allowing driving only at certain times, for example in Spain (and I guess in other places too) it's common to have pedestrianized areas with a few hours (say, from 8 to 10) where vans are permitted to enter for loading and unloading.
nightsd01 7y ago
Cars kill thousands of people a year....in a country of 330 MILLION people? Sorry but the sheer convenience of automobiles greatly outweighs the cost. This trend to “ban cars” is one of the silliest and dumbest ideas I’ve ever seen. Just because you don’t like cars doesn’t mean they aren’t often the best option for many people. Banning them and pretending they don’t exist doesn’t change that fact.
- megaremote 7y ago
  They kill 40,000 people every single year in the USA, and injure or disable over 2 million more. And that is not including death from the pollution the cause. And this is just one reason they are the worst invention created by man.
foobar1962 7y ago
> I predict that in 50-100 years we'll look back on the age of the automobile as one of the biggest mistakes in urban planning. No need to wait that long, the regret is felt already. Sydney ripped up its extensive tram network in the 1950s and 1960s to improve the roads for cars. Remnants of the infrastructure remain: cuttings through rocky, hilly areas in particular. My mother (in her 90s now) talks about taking the tram to Bondi. Melbourne was smart enough to keep their tram network.
- thelittleone 7y ago
  Isn’t it ironic that trams are about to start running again in Sydney.
- megaremote 7y ago
  They tried in Melbourne too. A few people stood up and fought to save them, like Robert Risson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Risson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Risson
  - jdnenej 7y ago
    The people I know from Melbourne absolutely love the trams as well and talk shit about how awful it is to get around Sydney
raldi 7y ago
Automobiles kill thousands of people every day.
mymythisisthis 7y ago
People travel for about 3hrs before wanting a break. Cars killed all small cities a 3hr drive away from a major city. It's like a nuclear bomb went off in most small cities.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  My GF's dad said where he he lived in the Midwest there used to be a small store at each major cross roads. About every 5 miles. Cars came and every other one died and there was a store every ten miles. Then they paved the road and it was every 30 miles. And then the interstate when in and only the major towns every 60 miles apart survived.
  - mymythisisthis 7y ago
    Drivers in Wyoming drive an average of 21,821 miles a year (https://www.carinsurance.com/Articles/average-miles-driven-per-year-by-state.aspx https://www.carinsurance.com/Articles/average-miles-driven-p...) The circumference of the earth is 24,900 miles. Our species will not survive much longer.
Ericson2314 7y ago
Yes to this. To all the people saying cars were some necessarily step, I disagree. I think the damage cars and sprawl have done to our land use and social structures will take every bit as long to clean up as as the carbon emissions.
deepGem 7y ago
I've thought long and hard about the automobile and it's allure. As much as I hate the inefficiencies, I still believe that for a vast majority of humans, the automobile is their private abode, that takes them to places. We are explorers by heart and ever since the invention of the wheel, we have coveted vehicles. They are our private sanctuaries that propel us from one location to another. No other mode of transport, be it a bus, train or god forbid a plane, provides this level of comfort. We covet our automobiles so dearly that we have decided to ignore the perils of air pollution and traffic stress on our own health. If this is not a testament of our love for the automobile then I don't know what is. That being said, it's quite clear that the automobile in it's current form is highly space inefficient. The 4 wheeled structure has not undergone any change since the dawn of chariots. I think a change is coming, not sure when, perhaps with the advent of flying cars from Sebastian Thrun.
- simongray 7y ago
  > I still believe that for a vast majority of humans, the automobile is their private abode, that takes them to places. We are explorers by heart and ever since the invention of the wheel, we have coveted vehicles. They are our private sanctuaries that propel us from one location to another. No other mode of transport, be it a bus, train or god forbid a plane, provides this level of comfort. I think this is a cultural artefact of a car-centric society. Cars are not really viewed in this way in my culture (Denmark). They're just another mode of transportation, nothing special about them compared to bicycles, busses, trains, etc. People go with what is most convenient. If you need to get some office work done remotely, then being a passenger in a train saves more time than driving a car. If you want exercise built in to your commute, bicycles are better. In an urban setting, cars are in fact seen as a hassle. They're mostly loved by people in rural areas. I don't deny that cars have their place, but the kind of exploration potential that a car offers (relatively infrequent, longer distances) can easily be served by rented cars. There is no reason to own a car just to go on infrequent car trips.
  - bb123 7y ago
    But your comment glosses over the part about rural people though. The reason these people love them is because there is no alternative and I don't really see how we can change that. Mass transit doesn't make sense in rural areas.
Razengan 7y ago
> My dream is that one day most streets ... will be closed to car traffic and replaced with green space full of trees, flowers, children playing, and usable public space. While I share that dream, and rarely ever need a car myself, I cannot currently imagine a better alternative to having a personal car in your home for the following situations: • The most obvious: People who need to be chaperoned: children, the elderly and people with disabilities. • The next most obvious: Medical emergencies where you don't have to (or don't want to) wait for an ambulance. • Privacy for groups of people, with group activities (e.g. playing music, making out) confined to the automobile's enclosure. • Following on the previous point: Going out with the whole family as a single unit, with provisions for taking care of infants etc. right there. These can be solved if/when fully automatic on-demand cars become widely available, that anyone can request anywhere anytime with a tap on their phone and don't require passengers to learn how to drive. (But I'm afraid they'll be a huge privacy leak, with companies scrambling to record everything that happens in their cars.) Almost everything else, like shopping, can already be taken care of with current technology and services just fine (e.g. home delivery.) Until we get Star Trek teleportation.
- benj111 7y ago
  "The most obvious: the elderly and people with disabilities" Interesting you pick that as your first point, as this is an argument for the opposite. The 3 groups of people that can't drive, are these 2 and kids.
  - Razengan 7y ago
    > The 3 groups of people that can't drive, are these 2 and kids. Ah sorry, I should have explicitly stated that they need others to drive them around. Taxis and public transport are usually not convenient for them.
    - benj111 7y ago
      Id argue against public transport not being convenient older people, certainly compared to other groups. I can see how public transport is more of a challenge for certain disabled groups. I can't see why taxis couldn't fill that role here though???
loco5niner 7y ago
> replaced with green space full of trees, flowers, children playing, and usable public space. Perhaps a few frolicking unicorns as well

criddell 7y ago

Self-driving cars are going trigger a new wave of automobile growth, at least in the US. They won't be dangerous, will run clean, be super convenient and unbelievably inexpensive to own and operate. They are going to throw gasoline on the sprawl fire. There will certainly be some city centers and other areas closed to car traffic (although probably not most of Manhattan - delivery vehicles are a significant part of the traffic). I'm one of the people looking forward to the day when I can move further out of the city. I don't care if my commute is an hour or more if I can work or sleep or do other things while the car drives me.

brenden2 7y ago
Small deliveries are done by bicycle these days in Manhattan. Large items, like furniture, could be delivered using small electric trucks with special permits for this purpose.
- criddell 7y ago
  I was thinking more about the fleet of Sysco, UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc... trucks.
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    ... all of which are looking at electric vehicles. And are a small % of the current overall traffic.
beefield 7y ago
> Self-driving cars are going trigger a new wave of automobile growth, at least in the US. They won't be dangerous, will run clean, be super convenient and unbelievably inexpensive to own and operate. My guess is that you are wrong. At least what comes to driving in cities. As the (current) main problem of cars in cities is not accidents, emissions, lack of convenience or even cost. It is the massive amount of space one car takes[1]. And self driving tech is not going to do anything to solve that. If not the opposite, when empty cars are driving around looking for a parking spot. [1] https://permaculturenews.org/images/bus_car_bike_compare.jpg https://permaculturenews.org/images/bus_car_bike_compare.jpg
- darksaints 7y ago
  I think it's going to be far worse than that. The economics of self driving cars are so biased toward taxi-like usage that the city streets won't just be filled with cars taking up a lot of space. They'll be filled with cars moving at a glacial pace because the streets are all gridlocked by pickups and dropoffs. Every street will look like an airport or elementary school pickup/dropoff zone. And even where there aren't commuting clusters, the fact is that cars will actually obey the laws, meaning pedestrians will finally be free to cross at unmarked intersections, and cyclists will be able to share the lanes with cars.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
    Who's to say cities won't regulate how many of these cars can be on the road at any time? They already do this for taxis... And I believe some of them put limits on Uber and Lyft, too. Right?
    - thelittleone 7y ago
      This is done in Singapore. You can buy a car no problem but you need a certificate of entitlement to register and drive it. COE price fluctuates based on demand but has been over $50k USD (no mistake). A small island nation. Traffic still gets pretty bad but it would probably be a lot worse without this policy.
makerofspoons 7y ago
They will run clean, but if carbon is taxed appropriately I'm doubtful they will be cheap enough for the average person to own one since the manufacturing will be far from clean. Most likely people will summon a shared vehicle with an app.
megaremote 7y ago
> They won't be dangerous, will run clean, be super convenient and unbelievably inexpensive to own and operate. Oh, they will not use tires? Which leave smalls bits of plastic everywhere they go that get washed into our waterway as micro-plastic.
- jdnenej 7y ago
  It's not just small bits of rubber you see on the side of the road, it's billions of rubber dust particles that come off the tires and blow in to the air giving you cancer.
- garretraziel 7y ago
  I would say that yes, in some distant future, they will not use tires.

vonmoltke 7y ago

> I predict that in 50-100 years we'll look back on the age of the automobile as one of the biggest mistakes in urban planning. I think that's a very hyperbolic prediction. I think elevating the automobile to the detriment of other forms of transportation will be viewed as a mistake, but the automobile itself is no more a mistake than the horse and carriage were. > My dream is that one day most streets in Manhattan will be closed to car traffic and replaced with green space full of trees, flowers, children playing, and usable public space. When was this ever true in Manhattan, and why do you think it would become true just by getting rid of cars? Crowded city streets predate cars by centuries.

mc32 7y ago
Agreed. It was a necessary step to the next stage. We could say the industrial revolution was a great disaster as if disrupted how people worked, their relationship to labor, capital, etc., but it also enabled us to get where we are today.
asveikau 7y ago
> When was this ever true in Manhattan, Probably not what they are going for, but uptown was relatively undeveloped until surprisingly recently in historical terms. Also there are lots of famous photos of kids playing on Manhattan streets from circa the '30s and earlier.
Robotbeat 7y ago
Put all the vehicles (of whatever type) underground.
- isostatic 7y ago
  Underground isn't an infinite space. Power, Sewers, basements, vaults, foundations, and existing tunnels. In London, building a new tunnel for crossrail involved threading a TBM through a gap with 80cm clearance (that's less than 2 cubits). The deeper you go, the wider the problems above, the more existing infrastrucutre is effected, not to mention the issues of how to return to the surface. Build decking over all the existing surface streets, only allow electric vehicles on the (current) underground streets, don't allow anything larger than a pushbike on the top.

Merrill 7y ago

This is quite possible for Manhattan and probably for other cities. Manhattan once had transportation needs for streets since it was ringed with wharves for seaborne and river commerce, had huge warehouses, railroad yards, factories, and all the facilities of a dynamic manufacturing city. That has all disappeared and the Manhattan economy is essentially services for residences, entertainment, media, finance, government, hospitals, etc. Production of goods is minor, and distribution and warehousing have mainly moved out, e.g. Fulton fish market. So Manhattan becomes a forest of towers mainly for residents and offices, with some more specialized buildings for hospitals, conference centers, sports venues, etc. But there is even little need for retailing space, since the distribution centers for online retailers serving Manhattan can be in the outer boroughs or NJ. In this scenario the transportation system boils down to distribution of food and other goods to the towers and the collection and removal of garbage, plus mass transit intra island and to/from the hinterlands for commuters to the office towers, as well as mass transit to/from airports for the tourism and business travelers. Manhattan is probably ahead of other cities in becoming a pure center of goods consumption.

jandrese 7y ago

The idyllic dream of vendors lugging their wares through the subway and city streets every day... When construction companies hire armies of people to walk individual I-beams through the city for every project... Where I get to haul my garbage a dozen blocks to the nearest accessible trash pickup location... In the end you still need roads. You don't get to convert all of that space into a park even if you ban cars.

dan_quixote 7y ago
Meh, just watch how construction happens in the central district of any European city. It's not as simple as just backing a flatbed up to the door, but they get by just fine.
- jcranberry 7y ago
  They do, with roads. The point GP was making that it's not feasible to convert roads into bowers.
  - johnday 7y ago
    On the other hand, it would be feasible to convert roads into normally-pedestrianised areas, which you need a permit or a one-day pass to drive through. There are numerous city centres in the UK which use this method. The central portion of Canterbury, Kent, is a great example.
    - jdc 7y ago
      And you could probably do with only one lane.
    - Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago
      Another alternative is allowing driving only at certain times, for example in Spain (and I guess in other places too) it's common to have pedestrianized areas with a few hours (say, from 8 to 10) where vans are permitted to enter for loading and unloading.

nightsd01 7y ago

Cars kill thousands of people a year....in a country of 330 MILLION people? Sorry but the sheer convenience of automobiles greatly outweighs the cost. This trend to “ban cars” is one of the silliest and dumbest ideas I’ve ever seen. Just because you don’t like cars doesn’t mean they aren’t often the best option for many people. Banning them and pretending they don’t exist doesn’t change that fact.

megaremote 7y ago
They kill 40,000 people every single year in the USA, and injure or disable over 2 million more. And that is not including death from the pollution the cause. And this is just one reason they are the worst invention created by man.

foobar1962 7y ago

> I predict that in 50-100 years we'll look back on the age of the automobile as one of the biggest mistakes in urban planning. No need to wait that long, the regret is felt already. Sydney ripped up its extensive tram network in the 1950s and 1960s to improve the roads for cars. Remnants of the infrastructure remain: cuttings through rocky, hilly areas in particular. My mother (in her 90s now) talks about taking the tram to Bondi. Melbourne was smart enough to keep their tram network.

thelittleone 7y ago
Isn’t it ironic that trams are about to start running again in Sydney.
megaremote 7y ago
They tried in Melbourne too. A few people stood up and fought to save them, like Robert Risson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Risson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Risson
- jdnenej 7y ago
  The people I know from Melbourne absolutely love the trams as well and talk shit about how awful it is to get around Sydney

raldi 7y ago

Automobiles kill thousands of people every day.

mymythisisthis 7y ago

People travel for about 3hrs before wanting a break. Cars killed all small cities a 3hr drive away from a major city. It's like a nuclear bomb went off in most small cities.

Gibbon1 7y ago
My GF's dad said where he he lived in the Midwest there used to be a small store at each major cross roads. About every 5 miles. Cars came and every other one died and there was a store every ten miles. Then they paved the road and it was every 30 miles. And then the interstate when in and only the major towns every 60 miles apart survived.
- mymythisisthis 7y ago
  Drivers in Wyoming drive an average of 21,821 miles a year (https://www.carinsurance.com/Articles/average-miles-driven-per-year-by-state.aspx https://www.carinsurance.com/Articles/average-miles-driven-p...) The circumference of the earth is 24,900 miles. Our species will not survive much longer.

Ericson2314 7y ago

Yes to this. To all the people saying cars were some necessarily step, I disagree. I think the damage cars and sprawl have done to our land use and social structures will take every bit as long to clean up as as the carbon emissions.

deepGem 7y ago

I've thought long and hard about the automobile and it's allure. As much as I hate the inefficiencies, I still believe that for a vast majority of humans, the automobile is their private abode, that takes them to places. We are explorers by heart and ever since the invention of the wheel, we have coveted vehicles. They are our private sanctuaries that propel us from one location to another. No other mode of transport, be it a bus, train or god forbid a plane, provides this level of comfort. We covet our automobiles so dearly that we have decided to ignore the perils of air pollution and traffic stress on our own health. If this is not a testament of our love for the automobile then I don't know what is. That being said, it's quite clear that the automobile in it's current form is highly space inefficient. The 4 wheeled structure has not undergone any change since the dawn of chariots. I think a change is coming, not sure when, perhaps with the advent of flying cars from Sebastian Thrun.

simongray 7y ago
> I still believe that for a vast majority of humans, the automobile is their private abode, that takes them to places. We are explorers by heart and ever since the invention of the wheel, we have coveted vehicles. They are our private sanctuaries that propel us from one location to another. No other mode of transport, be it a bus, train or god forbid a plane, provides this level of comfort. I think this is a cultural artefact of a car-centric society. Cars are not really viewed in this way in my culture (Denmark). They're just another mode of transportation, nothing special about them compared to bicycles, busses, trains, etc. People go with what is most convenient. If you need to get some office work done remotely, then being a passenger in a train saves more time than driving a car. If you want exercise built in to your commute, bicycles are better. In an urban setting, cars are in fact seen as a hassle. They're mostly loved by people in rural areas. I don't deny that cars have their place, but the kind of exploration potential that a car offers (relatively infrequent, longer distances) can easily be served by rented cars. There is no reason to own a car just to go on infrequent car trips.
- bb123 7y ago
  But your comment glosses over the part about rural people though. The reason these people love them is because there is no alternative and I don't really see how we can change that. Mass transit doesn't make sense in rural areas.

Razengan 7y ago

> My dream is that one day most streets ... will be closed to car traffic and replaced with green space full of trees, flowers, children playing, and usable public space. While I share that dream, and rarely ever need a car myself, I cannot currently imagine a better alternative to having a personal car in your home for the following situations: • The most obvious: People who need to be chaperoned: children, the elderly and people with disabilities. • The next most obvious: Medical emergencies where you don't have to (or don't want to) wait for an ambulance. • Privacy for groups of people, with group activities (e.g. playing music, making out) confined to the automobile's enclosure. • Following on the previous point: Going out with the whole family as a single unit, with provisions for taking care of infants etc. right there. These can be solved if/when fully automatic on-demand cars become widely available, that anyone can request anywhere anytime with a tap on their phone and don't require passengers to learn how to drive. (But I'm afraid they'll be a huge privacy leak, with companies scrambling to record everything that happens in their cars.) Almost everything else, like shopping, can already be taken care of with current technology and services just fine (e.g. home delivery.) Until we get Star Trek teleportation.

benj111 7y ago
"The most obvious: the elderly and people with disabilities" Interesting you pick that as your first point, as this is an argument for the opposite. The 3 groups of people that can't drive, are these 2 and kids.
- Razengan 7y ago
  > The 3 groups of people that can't drive, are these 2 and kids. Ah sorry, I should have explicitly stated that they need others to drive them around. Taxis and public transport are usually not convenient for them.
  - benj111 7y ago
    Id argue against public transport not being convenient older people, certainly compared to other groups. I can see how public transport is more of a challenge for certain disabled groups. I can't see why taxis couldn't fill that role here though???

loco5niner 7y ago

> replaced with green space full of trees, flowers, children playing, and usable public space. Perhaps a few frolicking unicorns as well