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Self driving electric cars will have little effect on traffic congestion. If the region is completely car-centric in its design, with a weak public transit syst

Self driving electric cars will have little effect on traffic congestion. If the region is completely car-centric in its design, with a weak public transit system, you'll still have traffic jams and lengthly commutes. The only difference is that the single people in the cars can look at their phone instead of looking at the bumper infant of them.

prawn 12y ago
One thing that might help is a significant reduction in street parking. The two-lane road (one each direction) I take to work has parking each side. Each may become another lane for cars or bike lanes once the need for parking starts to be eliminated. The four-lane alternative to work has two lanes set aside for parking. In that case, I suspect they'll put light rail down the middle and retain two lanes each side. I think price and convenience will mean that more people car-pool in automated ride-sharing services too.
marssaxman 12y ago
I'm not a fan of bumper infants, personally - prefer to keep the squishy mini-humans inside the car - but I can understand why some people might adopt that solution... ;-) More seriously, am I really the only person who can't stare at a phone in stop-and-go traffic without starting to feel motion-sick? Every time the robot car fantasy comes up people talk about how great it will be to sit around reading the whole time, and I just think - no, I'll be sitting there with nothing to do, and that sounds awful.
forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
> Self driving electric cars will have little effect on traffic congestion. Are you sure? It seems like it would definitely have a decent impact on traffic in certain situations, like those traffic jams that are only caused by people slowing down too early and speeding up too late, compressing the traffic. I believe a lot of problems of traffic could be fixed with self-driving cars, especially if they worked together. Certainly you'll never make certain cities free of traffic congestion, but I think a lot could be done in smaller cities and suburbs.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  Actually, I think the biggest market will be china, where mega cities like Beijing are incredibly congested without much more room to build anymore roads. The gov might just say: self-driving only inside the 5th ring, and the traffic would be much much better, even it just applied to limited access ring roads (though I bet they would do arterials also).

prawn 12y ago

One thing that might help is a significant reduction in street parking. The two-lane road (one each direction) I take to work has parking each side. Each may become another lane for cars or bike lanes once the need for parking starts to be eliminated. The four-lane alternative to work has two lanes set aside for parking. In that case, I suspect they'll put light rail down the middle and retain two lanes each side. I think price and convenience will mean that more people car-pool in automated ride-sharing services too.

marssaxman 12y ago

I'm not a fan of bumper infants, personally - prefer to keep the squishy mini-humans inside the car - but I can understand why some people might adopt that solution... ;-) More seriously, am I really the only person who can't stare at a phone in stop-and-go traffic without starting to feel motion-sick? Every time the robot car fantasy comes up people talk about how great it will be to sit around reading the whole time, and I just think - no, I'll be sitting there with nothing to do, and that sounds awful.

forgotpasswd3x 12y ago

> Self driving electric cars will have little effect on traffic congestion. Are you sure? It seems like it would definitely have a decent impact on traffic in certain situations, like those traffic jams that are only caused by people slowing down too early and speeding up too late, compressing the traffic. I believe a lot of problems of traffic could be fixed with self-driving cars, especially if they worked together. Certainly you'll never make certain cities free of traffic congestion, but I think a lot could be done in smaller cities and suburbs.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago
Actually, I think the biggest market will be china, where mega cities like Beijing are incredibly congested without much more room to build anymore roads. The gov might just say: self-driving only inside the 5th ring, and the traffic would be much much better, even it just applied to limited access ring roads (though I bet they would do arterials also).