40k people are dying a year from cars, and the problem is that driverless electric cars are not the solution. They are the faster horse kind of innovation. If we were serious about reducing fatalities, improving health, and reducing pollution, the solution would be to drastically reduce the amount of miles driven per year and the number and the size of the cars. We need to encourage people to bike and walk and use public transportation. Autonomous trains would work extremely well and we don't have to worry about bicyclists. The zoning laws and car centric development of cities is the issue.
> The zoning laws and car centric development of cities is the issue.
Well, the main issue is that most of the cars on the road during the busiest hours have just 1 person in them.
I think when the dust finally settles, the main form of passenger transit in urban-ish areas will basically be something that looks like autonomous vans.
Unlike public transit today, they won't have predefined timetables, nor predefined startpoints and endpoints. They'll pick you up wherever you are, whenever you want, and drop you off wherever you want, but they might take a roundabout way to get there to pick up and drop off other passengers too.
If they usually have 2+ people in them at a time, we'll be able to use our existing infrastructure (roads) at a much higher throughout.
How is this an improvement over trains, trams, and light rail?
I think reusing car-based infrastructure with busses is an important step in transitioning away from car dependency, but roads are not permanent. In many parts of America, trams and railways were torn down to be replaced by roads. The roads can be replaced too, if it is clear that alternatives are better.
Plus, roads are destroyed incredibly quickly by cars and busses, so they will need replacing eventually, whereas rail is much more resilient.
It seems to me that rail-based transport is much more effective in dense urban environments.
Point to point transit at the time when you need it.
If I want to get from A to B at 14:00 and can do that in 30 minutes by car, but the only bus that goes there requires me to change at C, and it takes 20 minutes to get from A to C, 20 minutes to get from C to B, a 10 minute wait time at C, and the connection happens every 30 minutes and isn't perfectly aligned with my schedule, I'm now facing the choice between 30 min by car or over one hour (including the wait time at my destination because I had to take an earlier connection) with public transit. Add a 5-10 minute walk at each end to account for the distance between the nearest stop and the start/destination, and public transit can take 3x as long.
If there is a van service that gets me there in 40 minutes at a time of my choice, that's a much more acceptable option.
This may also consist of a car first taking me to a tram/bus stop a few minutes away that gets me more directly to the destination.
The van service also solves the problem of those few-percent edge cases where regular public transit just doesn't work, which force people to get a car, which then gets used even for trips where public transit would otherwise be acceptable (but not great).
This is already possible today. You don't need driverless cars to do it. Uber can already do it, but it's not taking over. Unless you're suggesting we will have more cars just sitting around waiting for rides, because they're driverless. Then we get back to them being so convenient that nobody will want to ride with another person.
In other words, why does making the car driverless suddenly make everybody want to use it?
So they if get rid of the drivers they contract who is buying and paying for the cars and maintenance? - are you suggesting Uber start carjacking their existing drivers?
Do you know what percentage of driver compensation effectively goes to car ownership and maintenance?
None or few of those options are particularly accessible (EDIT: for people who cannot walk/cycle long distances). Public transportation often is quite inaccessible while still claiming to be accessible (like the London Underground and the New York Subway). Central management of driverless cars could solve the problem in a more inclusive fashion and isn't just more of the same idea. We should still reduce the size of the vehicles, though.
EDIT clarification: Accessibility for wheelchair users, blind people, and anyone with ambulatory restrictions. Most stations are not wheelchair accessible to the train and having to go on much longer routes to compensate is not equal access. And many 'encouraging other use' initiatives block all cars, leaving these people in the lurch. Something that gave door-to-door access to everyone, equally, via a fleet of cars, could be superior.
If we could reduce car infrastructure to the point where only people who need a car for the transportation to be accessible would use it that would be a dream.
I don’t get the accessibility angle at all. It’s a non-issue because you will have a very hard time finding people who have issues with exceptions for accessibility. That would still reduce the need for car infrastructure massively.
The thing is, we need to start building the future right now, right here and massively. That means public transportation centric development (= building public transport to nowhere and letting the area develop alongside the walksheds with appropriate mixed use zoning) and actually being brave enough to re-structure existing solutions along those lines. That all isn’t magic, we just need to do it. We know it works, it doesn’t require any technological breakthroughs.
>> None or few of those options are particularly accessible.
At the moment, neither are self-driving cars sufficiently capable to replace human drivers.
We're chasing a future tech dream when we already have technology that can solve the problems we are facing right now.
Edit: What do you mean by "accessible"? The London underground and generally public transport in the UK works very well. Speaking after having lived there for 15 years, studying and working in London and a smaller town, and never having owed a car.
I can tell you've never tried to use the Underground with a wheelchair, tho if you're questioning what accessible means in that context—because it's really bad. cars are very accessible for those with mobility disabilities & for many others.
I don't use a wheelchair and I don't know about the London underground but I can tell you that public transport in the small town I lived for 15 years were eminently accessible, as evidenced by the continuous presense of passengers with obvious (and varied) mobility issues on them.
In any case improving accessibility on public transport also does not require any new technology that we don't know how to create. It just requires political will.
This is a common refrain, that things must be accessible because you see people with mobility issues using them. But it's not true - the people you see are the people who are coping with it, either all the time or on that day. You don't see all the people for whom it is not accessible. It's well-known in disabled circles that most public transport is hit and miss at best and exclusionary/ableist/injuring at worst.
Actually solving the problem does involve new technology, because the worst cases need door-to-door access and most cannot afford taxis (nor do welfare systems provide them).
What makes it all harder though is the continual fight to persuade every last person that it is a significant problem, because they're so sure it can't be.
Just going with the parent comment and I'm asking when did you last use the Underground and what station do you think has accessibility issues? I found that the London system is pretty much accessible with aggressive retrofitting on older stations, but I'll acknowledge that if you have used it say more than 10 years ago then I understand.
I've used it plenty and still use it. It is getting better in places, but just look at the tube map - large parts of the system still lack step-free access, let alone the problems the system has in other ways (overcrowding and people not giving up their seats or making space appropriately); we should be trying for (in-city) transport systems that don't require such congregation.
The last time I travelled the tube with a wheelchair user with a pain condition, the (non-strike) closures hit in such a way that we couldn't reach our destination without going on a detour that was so long (more than an hour) that the system assumed we'd forgotten to swipe out and back in and charged a penalty fare. The people manning the help-intercoms were unable to assist in finding a route that didn't have closures. And it's normal to have to find alternative, slower routes than the ones everyone else can take.
+1 on London underground being very accessible. Although I only lived there for a few months, it was insanely easy to get around relative to American cities I've lived in (San Diego, SF, DC) although I think Berlin's combination of train and tram was even better
Surely it would be easier to make public transportation more accessible in a non-car oriented city than making driverless cars, which then have large amounts of continuous infrastructure costs, health care costs from less exercise, social costs, and also the fact its still not known if this is even entirely possible.
As a thought experiment, we have no cars other than emergency vehicles and some commercial vehicles occasionally. Everyone is able to walk to 90% of destinations, and bike or public transport the last 10%. It would be easier to have people who can't walk well in small electric personal transport devices (wheel chairs, segway, electric bikes, motorized scooters seen at walmart) that if they crash do not pose any threat to anyone. Surely adding wheel chair accessible elevators to train stops for public transit, is easier than building out entire car centris highway infrastructure that requires continuous expensive maintenance. Public transit and walking is already more accessible to the blind than automobiles, that is a nil point.
Or 1m+ people if you count non Americans as people. I'm optimistic that self driving tech will be able to be repurposed to prevent accidents even if fitted to non electric non self driving vehicles. The switching to bikes etc. is a nice idea but probably won't happen in a hurry.
