How will that help? By some studies, about 30% of traffic on downtown city streets is drivers circulating looking for street parking. With self-driving cars, they could cause congestion by circulating all day instead of parking.
If you get the train downtown then you are already downtown. You don’t need a self driving car at all. You need a way to get from your house to the train station by self driving car.
Or you have a lot more demand responsive transport. Everyone gets on a mini bus in the suburbs and you all get dropped off at the stores or locations you want one by one.
I’ve seen stuff about sharing them so there’s less cars parked and people just get dropped off and it takes the next person. But taxis already exist and haven’t solved the problem so I don’t think self driving cars are the answer there.
From the passenger’s perspective, a taxi and a self-driving car are functionally identical. But back when Uber, Lyft, and the rest were offering cheap rides subsidized by VC money, all that happened was that they made traffic congestion slightly, but measurably, worse. People didn’t give up private cars in large numbers, though.
If we get self-driving cars, then people’s private cars can add to the problem by cruising around empty most of the time, and if they’re not in them, there’s nobody to be bothered by traffic delays. The only way to achieve the dream of eliminating gridlock would be to ban private cars. And if that were politically feasible, why not just do it now with transit?
![[meme] choochoo](https://quokk.au/static/media/posts/8L/4e/8L4eFCNmnx9NzyK.webp){kind=link}
How will that help? By some studies, about 30% of traffic on downtown city streets is drivers circulating looking for street parking. With self-driving cars, they could cause congestion by circulating all day instead of parking.
If you get the train downtown then you are already downtown. You don’t need a self driving car at all. You need a way to get from your house to the train station by self driving car.
Or you have a lot more demand responsive transport. Everyone gets on a mini bus in the suburbs and you all get dropped off at the stores or locations you want one by one.
I’ve seen stuff about sharing them so there’s less cars parked and people just get dropped off and it takes the next person. But taxis already exist and haven’t solved the problem so I don’t think self driving cars are the answer there.
From the passenger’s perspective, a taxi and a self-driving car are functionally identical. But back when Uber, Lyft, and the rest were offering cheap rides subsidized by VC money, all that happened was that they made traffic congestion slightly, but measurably, worse. People didn’t give up private cars in large numbers, though.
If we get self-driving cars, then people’s private cars can add to the problem by cruising around empty most of the time, and if they’re not in them, there’s nobody to be bothered by traffic delays. The only way to achieve the dream of eliminating gridlock would be to ban private cars. And if that were politically feasible, why not just do it now with transit?