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Passing an enforceable law against that will be a lot easier, since the companies responsible for self-driving car algorithms can be bashed upside the head with

Passing an enforceable law against that will be a lot easier, since the companies responsible for self-driving car algorithms can be bashed upside the head with it.

sokoloff 5y ago
Send the car on an errand and have it come back, or even send it “home” and summon it later. (I’m deeply skeptical that we’ll have level 5 self-driving cars in my lifetime, but if we do, we won’t need to pay $50 in today’s money to park anywhere…)
- jdminhbg 5y ago
  Even outside of "cheating" like this, self-driving would have a pretty significant impact on parking economics. You don't need to have parking spread throughout the city in convenient places, because you can send your car to the central parking depot while you're shopping and recall it when you're done.
  - criddell 5y ago
    I don't think sending a car on an errand is cheating in any way. In fact I think it's one of the great promises of self driving cars. People already do curbside pickup of groceries, dry cleaning, restaurant food, etc... There's no reason a person needs to be in that car.
  - vkou 5y ago
    This sounds wonderful, except for the part where your desire to avoid paying for parking is creating gridlock for everyone else, as your car drives around, creating traffic. [1] Since I'm not interested in paying the taxes necessary to double the amount of roads in town, and since I hate traffic, I'd rather just make what you describe illegal [2], just like how many other nuisances are illegal on public roadways. It should be pretty easy for legislatures to force vendors to disable self-driving summons/parking on public roads. [1] And no, even if the traffic you create is counterflow, we will still need more road capacity, and I'm not paying for it. Where I live, there is no 'counterflow' - traffic consistently sucks in both directions of travel. [2] Or toll you, preferably to the point where you'll find it more advantageous to just pay for parking.
    - jdminhbg 5y ago
      I think you misunderstood. I'm not talking about driving around in a holding pattern. I'm saying that instead of interspersing valuable real estate with parking lots so that people can walk from their car to the shop/restaurant, you can put all the parking in one (realistically, a few) places.
- SECProto 5y ago
  > Send the car on an errand and have it come back, or even send it “home” and summon it later Now imagine what this will do to rush hour traffic - There would be twice as many vehicle trips for the same number of people. Road tolls (particularly on unoccupied cars) would be needed as part of any solution, which everyone loves even more than parking fees.
  - rahimnathwani 5y ago
    "Road tolls (particularly on unoccupied cars)" Why should the number of occupants affect the amount of the toll?
    - kspacewalk2 5y ago
      To disincentivize cars driving around empty.
      - rahimnathwani 5y ago
        A toll on all cars (not just empty cars) would already disincentivize driving around empty.
        SECProto 5y ago
        A larger toll on empty cars would disincentivize it more.
        rahimnathwani 5y ago
        "A larger toll on empty cars would disincentivize it more." A larger toll on all cars would disincentivize it just as much. My point is: why not set the toll at an optimum level, and then let each car owner decide whether it's worth the car driving at a particular time and place? If we want to charge people based on the contents of the car, why not charge lower tolls for cars with 5 occupants instead of 4. Or lower tolls for cars carrying older or fatter people (who are less able to take public transport)? It seems to me that road usage prices should be high enough to limit/eliminate congestion and that, if they were that high, there would be no need to discriminate based on what is being carried.
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  Agreed on the likelihood of having ubiquitous level 5 self-driving cars in my lifetime as well (I'm in my mid-30s). But I'm also very skeptical about the desirability of this kind of a transformation, and the desirability of (re-)building cities around it. Your examples are two of infinitely many that illustrate how self-driven or not, cars fuck things up. In short, many people agree that the human-driven, gasoline-powered car is the problem. But far too many zero in on the adjectives, implying that solving the "human-driven" part will solve our cities' problems (love the traffic-light-free intersection visualizations, totally want to be a pedestrian trying to live next to those). Then there are people pretending electric cars are more than just marginally better for the environment when the full life cycle of both the energy required to power them and the materials that go into them is considered. Stop trying to fix the car. The car is the problem. Specifically, at a certain point (you can quantify it as certain population density, or population size) there are too many of them to rely on them for transportation of most people and to have liveable cities. In North America, we sacrificed the liveability of cities to keep the car, in Europe they're sacrificing the car for liveability. There's not too much more to it than that. Electric self-driving cars change this a bit, but not enough to matter. It's basically the same as above.
- Symmetry 5y ago
  Why do that when you could send it somewhere where parking is cheap? The behind anti-cruising laws is to prevent cars from jamming up popular locations, if you send it somewhere other than your destination block then the law is working.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    If there’s a place nearby that’s more advantageous than a farther away place, people will naturally do that. It would hopefully spur some competition for economy parking someplace close but not in the city center.

Passing an enforceable law against that will be a lot easier, since the companies responsible for self-driving car algorithms can be bashed upside the head with it.

sokoloff 5y ago

Send the car on an errand and have it come back, or even send it “home” and summon it later. (I’m deeply skeptical that we’ll have level 5 self-driving cars in my lifetime, but if we do, we won’t need to pay $50 in today’s money to park anywhere…)

jdminhbg 5y ago
Even outside of "cheating" like this, self-driving would have a pretty significant impact on parking economics. You don't need to have parking spread throughout the city in convenient places, because you can send your car to the central parking depot while you're shopping and recall it when you're done.
- criddell 5y ago
  I don't think sending a car on an errand is cheating in any way. In fact I think it's one of the great promises of self driving cars. People already do curbside pickup of groceries, dry cleaning, restaurant food, etc... There's no reason a person needs to be in that car.
- vkou 5y ago
  This sounds wonderful, except for the part where your desire to avoid paying for parking is creating gridlock for everyone else, as your car drives around, creating traffic. [1] Since I'm not interested in paying the taxes necessary to double the amount of roads in town, and since I hate traffic, I'd rather just make what you describe illegal [2], just like how many other nuisances are illegal on public roadways. It should be pretty easy for legislatures to force vendors to disable self-driving summons/parking on public roads. [1] And no, even if the traffic you create is counterflow, we will still need more road capacity, and I'm not paying for it. Where I live, there is no 'counterflow' - traffic consistently sucks in both directions of travel. [2] Or toll you, preferably to the point where you'll find it more advantageous to just pay for parking.
  - jdminhbg 5y ago
    I think you misunderstood. I'm not talking about driving around in a holding pattern. I'm saying that instead of interspersing valuable real estate with parking lots so that people can walk from their car to the shop/restaurant, you can put all the parking in one (realistically, a few) places.
SECProto 5y ago
> Send the car on an errand and have it come back, or even send it “home” and summon it later Now imagine what this will do to rush hour traffic - There would be twice as many vehicle trips for the same number of people. Road tolls (particularly on unoccupied cars) would be needed as part of any solution, which everyone loves even more than parking fees.
- rahimnathwani 5y ago
  "Road tolls (particularly on unoccupied cars)" Why should the number of occupants affect the amount of the toll?
  - kspacewalk2 5y ago
    To disincentivize cars driving around empty.
    - rahimnathwani 5y ago
      A toll on all cars (not just empty cars) would already disincentivize driving around empty.
      - SECProto 5y ago
        A larger toll on empty cars would disincentivize it more.
        rahimnathwani 5y ago
        "A larger toll on empty cars would disincentivize it more." A larger toll on all cars would disincentivize it just as much. My point is: why not set the toll at an optimum level, and then let each car owner decide whether it's worth the car driving at a particular time and place? If we want to charge people based on the contents of the car, why not charge lower tolls for cars with 5 occupants instead of 4. Or lower tolls for cars carrying older or fatter people (who are less able to take public transport)? It seems to me that road usage prices should be high enough to limit/eliminate congestion and that, if they were that high, there would be no need to discriminate based on what is being carried.
kspacewalk2 5y ago
Agreed on the likelihood of having ubiquitous level 5 self-driving cars in my lifetime as well (I'm in my mid-30s). But I'm also very skeptical about the desirability of this kind of a transformation, and the desirability of (re-)building cities around it. Your examples are two of infinitely many that illustrate how self-driven or not, cars fuck things up. In short, many people agree that the human-driven, gasoline-powered car is the problem. But far too many zero in on the adjectives, implying that solving the "human-driven" part will solve our cities' problems (love the traffic-light-free intersection visualizations, totally want to be a pedestrian trying to live next to those). Then there are people pretending electric cars are more than just marginally better for the environment when the full life cycle of both the energy required to power them and the materials that go into them is considered. Stop trying to fix the car. The car is the problem. Specifically, at a certain point (you can quantify it as certain population density, or population size) there are too many of them to rely on them for transportation of most people and to have liveable cities. In North America, we sacrificed the liveability of cities to keep the car, in Europe they're sacrificing the car for liveability. There's not too much more to it than that. Electric self-driving cars change this a bit, but not enough to matter. It's basically the same as above.
Symmetry 5y ago
Why do that when you could send it somewhere where parking is cheap? The behind anti-cruising laws is to prevent cars from jamming up popular locations, if you send it somewhere other than your destination block then the law is working.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  If there’s a place nearby that’s more advantageous than a farther away place, people will naturally do that. It would hopefully spur some competition for economy parking someplace close but not in the city center.