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I think driverless cars could be the future of public transportation. Instead of big trains and buses with limited reach, we would have thousands of public vehi
by mkr-hn 15y ago
I think driverless cars could be the future of public transportation. Instead of big trains and buses with limited reach, we would have thousands of public vehicles that take you where you need to go when you need to be there. It eliminates the big barriers to public transport--the lack of personal space, timing, and reach.
No car? Just hop on the municipal/county dispatch website, request a car, pay your fee, and wait for the nearest open vehicle to bring itself to you. It can even coexist peacefully with private transportation.
- cal5k 15y agoI'll be honest, I'm waiting for commercially available vehicles so I can be the first to order a fleet of them and do just that :-)
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- mkr-hn 15y agoThis would be a big boon to any of the cities around me (like Athens [GA]). They have limited street parking, so the fees are big and the times are short. This would let you go to where you're going and send your car over to a high-density parking garage across town to wait for you.
- uuilly 15y agoOr you rent your car out to the grid rather than park it. Like air-bnb for cars.
- truebosko 15y agoBig trains and buses still move a lot more people than one small car. If everyone hopped into their driverless car, we'd be back to where we are now -- gridlock :)
- nerfhammer 15y agoIn theory driverless cars could end up having algorithmic optimizations and use networked information such as to use overall road capacity much more efficiently. Then hackers can take control and direct all traffic to participating gambling establishments.
- paganel 15y ago> In theory driverless cars could end up having algorithmic optimizations and use networked information such as to use overall road capacity much more efficiently. A company like Google isn't smart enough to drive off about.com from the front page of almost all of their SERPS, and do you actually expect them to come up with an "algorithmic optimization" for driverless-cars in cities like Cairo or Istanbul?
- adrianN 15y agoTraffic routing is a much simpler problem than deciding which webpages are relevant to which search terms. A bunch of CS undergrads could probably come up with a prototype system.
- DanielStraight 15y agoHow do you deal with the inherent inefficiency of having a separate vehicle for every passenger (or small group of passengers)? Publicness is not the only benefit of public transportation. Trains and buses are incredibly efficient per passenger mile. They also take up a lot less space than cars, and last longer and cost less per passenger to manufacture. Making a car driverless doesn't solve these problems.
- pavel_lishin 15y agoIt wouldn't necessarily have to be the only public transit option. In New York, I can get to work by train much faster than by car - but if I need to go to, say, Ikea, it's two trains and a bus. A cheap, public car would be great.
- DanielStraight 15y agoI agree completely. I don't necessary think it's a bad idea, I just don't think it's a good idea "instead of big trains and buses."
- mkr-hn 15y agoI think of this more as dealing with the present (and unpleasant) reality. I prefer buses and trains, but we haven't found a way to get people to fund and use them enough to make them viable outside big cities. A lot of the gridlock in my city comes from people doing stupid things that force other drivers to slow down to avoid a wreck. Automated cars would reduce the impact of bad drivers by removing them from the equation.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- spoold 15y ago"we haven't found a way to get people to fund and use them enough to make them viable outside big cities" "We" being? I live in a village of <5000 and have access to a frequent train service into London, and another hub in the other direction. From there I can get to pretty much any town in the country in typically no more than three hops, and usually quicker than I could drive. It's not perfect, and funding /is/ a problem, but please don't assume that your experience is universal, or that yours is the only country represented here.
- pavel_lishin 15y agoDo a lot of people avoid public transport just because of the lack of personal space?
- mkr-hn 15y agoEvery person I know who has talked about public transport says the other people (especially bums napping and skeevy people) are the big thing that limits the amount of traveling they do on rails and buses. Reach and timing take up the next two slots.
- checker 15y agoI can definitely feel 'trapped' when people invade my personal space, especially if they smell or have a cough. Those experiences are horrible for the extended amounts of time required for a commute. I still ride, but driving really isn't an option. Sometimes I wonder why public transport doesn't raise the prices during rush hour to create an equilibrium where the trains don't become sardine cans. I guess economically and somewhat ethically it might be harmful. I pay $10 to get to work and back in rush hour. Parking is $12 for the day, plus gas and wear and tear. I would gladly pay some extra cash if it made the trains emptier, cleaner, and more reliable.
- nhaehnle 15y agoDo you want all those people to clog up the streets in their cars? Lots of cities have problems with their transportation capacities, but simply shuffling people around isn't going to fix that.
- minikomi 15y agoMaybe a first class area for daily commute
- kalleboo 15y agoSome of the trains used for commuting where I live (southern sweden/denmark) do have a first class area (which is nearly always empty…).
- initself 15y agoIt's the future of "transportation", period. People will look back to the time when humans drove transportation and laugh.
- Cushman 15y agoEric Schmidt has referred to it as "solving the bug that cars were invented before computers." It seems so obvious now!
- DrewG 15y agoAnd in the even farther future, people will look back on the time when it was legal to have a human driven car the same way we look back on safety standards in the early 1900's
- rednum 15y agoI wonder if human-driven car will become minority of vehicles in next 30 years. If the technology will be affordable and good enough, this seems like a probable scenario. Also it could be possible that driverless cars will reduce traffic jams by introducing some better routing algorithms.
- roc 15y agoThey'd reduce traffic jams simply by behaving consistently over time. A very large number of traffic problems are caused by distracted/daydreaming drivers, aggressive drivers, overly cautious drivers over-braking, etc. Consider the situation of lane-merging. Studies have shown a zipper-merge at the end of the disappearing lane to be the most efficient method. Yet human drivers create huge traffic snarls in these situations based almost entirely on their emotional reaction to what they perceive as 'fairness', which hinges on a thoroughly baseless concept of 'winning' in traffic. Introduce driver-less cars and --with no other changes to traffic patterns at all-- the rising incidence of proper zipper-merging will reduce the frequency and severity of traffic problems.
- erikpukinskis 15y agoThis already exists in Austin, TX and a few other cities around the world. http://www.car2go.com http://www.car2go.com has Smart cars scattered around the city. You grab the nearest one (or book ahead with your smartphone), swipe your RFID card, drive as long as you'd like, and then leave it in any public parking spot. Edit: Minus the driverless bit obviously. :)
- kmfrk 15y ago... And it's going to be around three years, until everyone takes them for granted and bitch about every minor niggle. :)
- JCB_K 15y agoAnd instead of 50-100 people on 1 vehicle, it's 1. Not really eco-friendly, and not cheap either.
- smhinsey 15y agoI think it's only a matter of time (maybe 10-20 years, who knows) until one of the larger urban areas with huge traffic problems, such as Manhattan, London or Beijing mandates these sorts of systems in congested areas. It really seems like it could be the only viable solution to traffic problems in cities whose roads just can't handle the loads, and it seems like a logical next step after congestion pricing like London already does.
- IsaacL 15y agoThese are also known as "taxis".
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]