

Who Wins More From The Google Car: Cities or Suburbs? - thebigdeluge
http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2012/05/24/who-wins-more-from-the-google-car-cities-or-suburbs/

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ryandvm
This guy doesn't even touch on the impending changes in the freight handling
industry that will result from driverless vehicles.

Imagine how much cheaper shipping becomes when you have truck drivers that can
run 24 hours a day, have fewer accidents, never strike, and cost $0.30/day in
"wages". Sure, there are going to be about 300,000 layoffs practically
overnight, but such is life with automation.

The shipping industry is poised to change radically and, like it or not, they
will have Google to thank for it.

~~~
moylan
i'm beginning to think that the biggest problem may now be legal.

with a driver there is someone to get a signature/payment/paperwork whilest a
driverless vehicle would need something else.

who's responsible for damage inside the back of a truck when it made 3-4
deleiveries?

how easy would it be to stop and steal the contents of one of these vehicles
if it can be stopped on a quiet road with a rolling roadblock?

my brother has done 90% of his work on the road in many service/delivery jobs.
he reckons at least here in ireland there will always need to be somebody on
board to load/unload/handle paperwork/report problems . or if not need to be
it might for a long time be cheaper to be.

~~~
checker
The cost of a driver vs someone who sleeps in a truck and gets people to sign
papers might still be a substantial cost savings. Who knows? If there needs to
be a human, maybe 'truckers' end up riding along in an autonomous vehicle for
low wages. Some may watch tv while others may work another job online between
stops.

~~~
protomyth
Truckers aren't exactly making huge sums of money now. Their has been downward
pressure for years. That is why so many do the fake log thing and work so many
hours.

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Symmetry
You'll be able to make your cities and built up suburbs much denser if you
don't have to have as many parking spaces.

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bitslayer
"Making cars extremely fast won’t make them much more dangerous." Once again,
car advocates don't seem to realize that there are other things out there in
the street. Sure, they won't be more dangerous to other cars. In dedicated
roadways that makes perfect sense. But in city streets? The life of the street
require them to remain multiuse, and the constant push for higher speeds has
been extremely destructive to that fabric.

~~~
Retric
If you go to the Baltimore MD Inner Harbor they have a raised pedestrian
walkway covering several blocks it completely changes how you treat walking
though that part of the city.

In Crystal City VA they have a significant underground walkway / mall that
spans ~15 city blocks, and connects to the DC Metro (subway system).

Between the two options I prefer the underground walkway, but either option
completely change how long it takes to get around. Rather than trying to
accommodate both cars and pedestrians if you just separate the two both
benefit. Cars can make turns easier and avoid accidents, people don't need to
stop at intersections.

~~~
pwthornton
No, only cars benefit from this. The idea is to remove people from the streets
to allow more cars to move. This has the effect of making that area less
desirable.

Look around the world. Desirable places strongly correlate to people walking
at street level, because this allows people to pass shops, cafes, etc. and
easily go in. It's the core of city life.

Crystal City is one of the least nice places close to downtown DC. Above
ground it has huge streets, little street life and few people walking around.
Compare that with Dupont Circle, where the city is full of life (this is where
I work).

Raised or underground walkways are a great way to kill a city. Skybridges are
a very 1970s idea and they are being torn down. Where I live, Downtown Silver
Spring (not far from Crystal City), sky bridges are expressly forbidden in the
CBD.

There are some areas way up North (upper Midwest, Canada) where there are
underground walkways due to the weather in the winter. Most places, including
the DC area, are fine in the winter.

There is a lot of writing about Skybridges out there. Here is a start:
[http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/654/skybridges-
dont...](http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/654/skybridges-dont-make-
the-connection/)

~~~
Retric
_That's particularly bad because people often don't use skybridges even when
they are there. Pedestrians generally don't want to climb two flights of
stairs on each end just to cross a street; they will take the shortest path._

I agree, most Skybridges are terrible. But, it's a density and network effect
question, when you can walk 6 blocks without going back to street level AND
the shop you want to get to is also up/down there AND you take your elevator /
escalator to that level then it works. The Crystal City underground suffers
from making the underground path a lot longer so you can often get someplace
faster at street level. However, I have both lived and worked in the area and
used it all the time.

PS: Dupont Circle greatly benefits from being part of a much larger city, it
is walk-able with a well connected subway system. However, it's a low density
area and driving around there sucks. If live in that area or take the metro
it's great, but you can't sustain that when building get taller and people
still want to drive.

~~~
pwthornton
I would disagree that Dupont Circle is low density. Density is more of a
reflection of the width of roads than the heights of buildings. Narrow roads
and alleys allow for a lot of density without a lot of height. Look at Western
Europe to see how they get more density than U.S. cities without sky scrapers.

Paris is largely mid-rise buildings or lower. Paris is denser than NYC and not
that far behind Manhattan in terms of density (54,000 people per sq mi in
Paris versus 71,000 for Manhattan and 27,000 for NYC as a whole). DC density
could be greatly raised without taller buildings by filling in missing teeth
(abandoned lots of unused buildings on otherwise built streets) and by
urbanizing the large swaths of the City that are suburban. Narrowing some
streets to allow for wider buildings would also help.

Ultimately, I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't think elevators
or escalators really belong in an urban setting. I do agree that being able to
get to a store that you know you want to get to via underground tunnels can
have its benefits. But one of the things that I like about living in an urban
area are all my unplanned walks, where I walk around, check out the shops,
grab a coffee, maybe go into a few stores. A lot of urban life is unplanned
and when we remove people from streets, we begin to lose that.

~~~
Retric
DC is under 9,500/square mile which is ~1/3 those high density areas. So,
sorry but building height _is_ important when your comparing areas with 4 vs
40 floor building AND a balanced mix of commercial and residential space.
However, NY City also has a lot of 3 and 4 story buildings and central park is
huge. Still the difference is mostly a question of the density of office space
vs housing as NY includes a lot more of the surrounding area than DC.

~~~
pwthornton
Huge swaths of DC are single family homes. DC also has Rock Creek Park, which
is twice as big as Central Park. We also have the Mall. There is a lot of land
in DC that can't be built on.

Paris is denser than just about any US city and it is largely low and mid
rise.

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pwthornton
Autonomous cars will not replace public transportation, unless people
magically start carpooling. An underground train with hundreds of people on it
sitting close together moves a lot more people than a car with one person in
it (how most people get to work).

Autonomous cars, however, should allow people to better car share and require
less parking spaces. Perhaps most exciting, we could get rid of cab drivers
who are some of the most unsafe drivers around.

~~~
mseebach
> unless people magically start carpooling

Loads of bus routes will become viable when they can be serviced with a
driver-less minivan. That's essentially formalised car pooling. That will make
car-less suburb living much more practical.

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lmm
When the article says "inter-city", that's the opposite of what it means,
right?

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archetypical
The Google car is a truly clueless idea with no imagination. We don't need
automated cars, what we need as a society is to reduce our dependence on cars.

Want to stop car crashes and reduce fatalities? It's dirt simple. Stop driving
cars.

~~~
protomyth
What mode of transport can actually replace cars in the USA with its current
infrastructure and rural / suburb / city living?

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archetypical
Bicycles and trains. The current infrastructure of roads and highways should
not be sustained, nor will it be affordable to taxpayers indefinitely.

~~~
protomyth
Bicycles do not work in northern climes in winter. The average person cannot
ride a bike in below zero weather with 40mph gusts. Trains are more expensive
than roads. Neither of these solutions work for anywhere but the coasts and a
few urban areas in between.

How exactly do you expect people to move furniture?

~~~
archetypical
You can't seem to envision anything but a world of cars, mass consumption and
long supply chains we currently rely on.

Thinking has to change, lifestyles have to change. People must become more
resilient and do business locally. This isn't optional. It's the imminent
economic and ecological reality.

~~~
protomyth
Where are you getting your food from? The whole concept of these self-
contained cities surrounded by miles and miles of empty land is absurd.

~~~
archetypical
When you refer to empty land that surrounds cities, are you talking about one
of the most underappreciated assets a city could have which is arable land in
close proximity to the population?

Arable land may become a valuable economic engine for many cities as peak oil
and climate change realities break our current modes of distribution.

Building more roads and tacky exurban houses destroys this valuable land we
all may need, and only a few benefit from it (and everyone will pay more in
taxes). Think about it.

