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https://gizmodo.com/uber-and-lyft-have-a-hot-new-idea-for-screwing-over-cit-1822661060
The arrival of autonomous vehicles is an inevitability, so it makes sense that before mass adoption hits, companies like Lyft and Uber would want to band together to determine what our self-driving future will look like. Sounds pretty harmless, right?
Well, not so fast, because a new pledge by 15 big-name transportation companies seems designed to screw over city-dwellers who want to ride in their own self-driving cars. Item #10 of the Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities, co-signed yesterday by Uber, Lyft, Zipcar, and Didi Chuxing (China's largest ride-sharing service), reads as follows:
10. WE SUPPORT THAT AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES (AVS) IN DENSE URBAN AREAS SHOULD BE OPERATED ONLY IN SHARED FLEETS.
Due to the transformational potential of autonomous vehicle technology, it is critical that all AVs are part of shared fleets, well-regulated, and zero emission. Shared fleets can provide more affordable access to all, maximize public safety and emissions benefits, ensure that maintenance and software upgrades are managed by professionals, and actualize the promise of reductions in vehicles, parking, and congestion, in line with broader policy trends to reduce the use of personal cars in dense urban areas.
Translation: These companies want to make it illegal for individuals to use privately owned self-driving cars in big cities, effectively giving the signatories control of our autonomous streets.
See the Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities site for details on their principles, which are enumerated here:
- We plan our cities and their mobility together.
- We prioritize people over vehicles.
- We support the shared and efficient use of vehicles, lanes, curbs, and land.
- We engage with stakeholders.
- We promote equity.
- We lead the transition towards a zero-emission future and renewable energy.
- We support fair user fees across all modes.
- We aim for public benefits via open data.
- We work towards integration and seamless connectivity.
- We support that autonomous vehicles (AVs) in dense urban areas should be operated only in shared fleets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @09:09PM
It's incredibly expensive to have a network of buses that cover every street corner with minimal wait time and minimal number of transfers
About 2 years back, The Orange County system evaluated usage and culled several routes with low ridership.
Those routes were mostly the south end of the county where they have built curvy roads for people with cars.
The folks who tend the houses and kids of the affluent folks down there then had to figure out alternate ways to get to their jobs.
In the north end of the county, where streets are a nice grid pattern, there weren't many changes for the worse and several routes saw increased frequency.
They added some X buses and Bravo buses on some heavily-used routes.
Those only stop at major streets and the time between buses is 10, 12, or 15 minutes for much of the day.
(The regular buses still operate on those routes if you need to get to an intermediate stop without walking to it.)
If you aren't getting good service where you are, your transit authority sucks.
Ours is doing quite well.
I wrote above about an Uber-like thing they've started with actual point-to-point service via vans so that you don't even have to walk very far if you aren't especially close to a bus route.
.
Now, what pissed me off about OCTA is that
1) They farmed out their Lost & Found to a private moving & storage company.
2) That building is not on a bus route--not even close.
3) The building has a little tiny sign that says OCTA Lost & Found.
and
4) The webpage doesn't mention any of those facts.
Privatization sucks.
...and the old location WAS on a bus route and they haven't take down the page for that from their website nor have they updated the page.
...and Google prioritized the old page, which apparently still had more links to it.
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