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Stingy driverless cars will clog future streets instead of parking
It's a nightmarish vision of San Francisco's future, like something out of science fiction: streets full of driverless cars, crawling along implacably but at a snail's pace, snarling traffic and bringing the city to a standstill from the iconic Ferry Building to Union Square.
But according to Adam Millard-Ball, associate professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, this scenario could come to pass simply as a result of rational behavior on the part of autonomous vehicle owners. Congestion pricing that imposes a fee or tax for driving in the downtown core could help prevent this future, but cities need to act fast, before self-driving cars are common, he argues.
Those conclusions emerge from an analysis published in the journal Transport Policy, in which Millard-Ball used game theory and a computer model of San Francisco traffic patterns to explore the effects of autonomous vehicles on parking. He found that the gridlock happens because self-driving cars don't need to park near a rider's destination – in fact, they don't need to park at all.
The autonomous vehicle parking problem (DOI: 10.1016/j.tranpol.2019.01.003) (DX)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:31AM (17 children)
So, great 1st world science fiction, but it's not even reality. Self-driving cars don't drive places for no reason. They drive for same reason people drive places - to get somewhere. Once they get there, they don't drive back mindlessly. They drive back when someone needs them. This entire scenario is retarded anyway.
1. congestion happens by bad city planning - see Manila for example. Routes converging into one and lanes disappearing. That's how you get congestion.
2. cars drive to destination because of a purpose of the trip.
3. stingy owners would rent out their cars under Uber or whatever so others can use them, which means cars drive somewhere, not around.
4. Driving costs money. Parking costs less. Therefore the premise is stupid. When parking costs more than driving, then driving back and forth will happens. When parking becomes less expensive, more parking will happen. It's a regular economic problem and the only positive with self-driving cars is that overprices parking will disappear. And good riddance. Maybe instead of parking by the hour, these cars park by the second??
Driving round and round and round .... ok, Mr. Professor .... sounds like burning $5 of fuel to save $2 of parking fee ..... and imagine autonomous parking garage. You can cram more cars in there reducing the costs.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Nuke on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:56AM (6 children)
You obviously have no idea what it costs to park in central London for example.
Overpriced parking will dissappear because empty SD cars will be sent back-and-forth to the suburbs to park. Hence more traffic.
EV fans tell us that elecricity for their cars is cheap. In the UK as the moment it is very cheap or even free. OTOH you won't find many places to park in UK towns and cities as cheap as $2. Your figures are fantasy, or maybe it's like that where you live?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:09PM (3 children)
yeah I think he's never paid to park his car in an urban environment during a weekday.
the last time I parked in Chicago, it was $38 for the day. it was $20 for a half day.
and I had to walk a few blocks anyway to reach my destination, because the parking lots closest to it were full--or cost over $50.
The real cheap parking gets filled before the sun even rises and well before my car is on the road.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:01PM (2 children)
Where I live the regular day-use $10/day lots all become $10/hour when there is a sporting event.
The self driving car pattern will be "Drop me off at my job/event, drive to the suburbs to find free/cheap parking. Failing that, just drive in circles for 6 hours, the gas/electricity used will be cheaper then parking downtown."
When 20k+ people want to be dropped off right at the front door of an event, and those 20k+ cars want to find a place to park; it will be gridlock.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Touché) by acid andy on Tuesday March 12 2019, @09:44PM (1 child)
If it's electric you'd better hope it finds somewhere to recharge itself, otherwise it'll be out of juice when you want to be driven home. That's why I think standardized battery packs that can be swapped in instantly are the way forward (although there are all sorts of issues with liability if a customer has a damaged / worn out one that the gas station swaps out, and I bet demand would exceed supply such that all the pre-charged ones would have been taken so you'd still have to sit and wait for hours).
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 13 2019, @01:56AM
When parking is over $10, it also makes economic sense for a gasoline powered car to leave the city for parking. An electric car might go all the way home to charge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:01PM (1 child)
So, how is that different from taking a taxi?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 12 2019, @05:09PM
1. Ownership. All other things, especially cost, are going to be similar.
2. The taxi leaves the city center less often, and serves more people for its footprint
3. Honking. Don't talk to me about AI until the automatic cars learn to lay on the horn the microsecond the light turns green.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:56AM (3 children)
Scifi stands for science fiction, not reality.
1. Congestion happens because there are too many vehicles.
2. You've never driven around the block to avoid paying for parking?
3. Stingy people rent their apartments on Airbnb all the time, yet none of them have 100% occupancy.
4. In some places parking is _far_ more expensive than cruising along.
But I appreciate the condescending hostility.
(Score: 4, Informative) by HiThere on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:59PM (2 children)
Well...not entirely.
Congestion is not just too many vehicles, it's too many vehicles for the road design. The problem is, attempts to solve this have only resulted in increased travel, not, except temporarily, in decreased congestion. I used to work for a travel planning agency, and our rule of thumb was that "If you build a freeway, it will decrease congestion along that route for about 5 years.".
Congestion is cause by too many people wanting to be at the same place at the same time. Unfortunately, to resolve this you need not only a lot more roads, but a lot more parking. And both of those conflict with the use of space at the destination. This could be solved, or at least ameliorated, if each building was required to contain enough parking underneath it to hold the cars of everyone who might desire that as a destination. But that does horrendous things to the expenses.
In a way it's like blood circulation. Larger animals need to either devote more of their body to blood flow, increase blood pressure, or slow their metabolism. Elephants do all three, and are still near their limit. This makes me wonder about just how "hot blooded" the brontosaurus (or apatosaurus) was. It must have had a rather slow metabolism AND high blood pressure.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @06:21PM (1 child)
or make nice big drop off spots a few (6 to 8) blocks away from major venues or public transportation for times of higher congestion (football game) and allow door to door dropoff at times of lower congestion (Sunday morning film crew work)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday March 13 2019, @03:39PM
Sorry, but with all those ameliorations in place the problem still exists. There are a very large number of people who won't use public transit. Often it's because there is no convenient access, but there are also other reasons. This makes it difficult on people like me who can't drive, but I live with it.
FWIW, several public rail transit lines have routes that just about ONLY go to "drop off points with a lot of parking". It helps. But it doesn't solve the problem.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:32PM
> 3. stingy owners would rent out their cars under Uber or whatever so others can use them, which means cars drive somewhere, not around.
The reason you are driving not using public transport is because you need aspects of convenience such as immediate availability. If your car is galavanting bod-knows-where with some stranger in it, you may be making a few dollars for your incovenience, but you no longer have an available vehicle.
And at precisely what points in the journey from where you hop off, to some client's destination(s), back to where you hop on again, is the trip a trip "somewhere", but not "driving around" - isn't "around" just a collection of "somewhere"s? (If not, which bit of "around" isn't "somewhere" - be specific, please.) In particular in the case where you've told your car to never leave you stranded for too long, as per the above point.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by Mykl on Tuesday March 12 2019, @09:56PM
Already there. While there are cheaper 'early bird' options, full day parking in Melbourne, Australia can cost around $60 USD per day. It is already cheaper to drive around the CBD all day than to park (notwithstanding the driver).
To further complicate matters, gridlock will actually make it less expensive to run a driverless electric vehicle, as it will be able to power down when stuck in traffic. If congestion tax is implemented on a per-entry basis, cars that pay to come in will want to stay in rather than driving out of the congestion zone and re-entering (thus paying the tax twice that day), further clogging the space.
OP is right - driverless cars could create a nightmare traffic scenario unless we are careful of unintended consequences.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:04PM (3 children)
Driving round and round and round .... ok, Mr. Professor .... sounds like burning $5 of fuel to save $2 of parking fee
First off, that's $5 of fuel per time period. Is parking really only $2 for that same time period? It wasn't when I lived in London, New York or Chicago. Maybe Bozeman Montana or Redfish Canada don't have that problem, but many major cities do.
Second, you've obviously never seen these shitty billboards driving around Chicago ("trucks" with nothing but a big blowing sign on the back, that pause and creep slowly through the intersection blocking your ability to cross with the light, all just so you can see their shitty ad and make note of a product never to buy). I imagine those will become even more economical, and plentiful, when they no longer have to hire drivers, and are paying electric rates to charge, rather than gasoline fuel rates.
This will come, and if you can burn a buck or two worth of electricity telling your car to circle the block while you shop, vs $20 to park for an hour or two, I imagine you'll opt to do the former. Especially if, with 1000 of your compatriots, you can create a traffic jam and not even have to burn $0.10 worth of juice.
Humans are selfish by nature, and made much more selfish by nurture (at least in the UK and US), so expecting anyone to act sensibly for the common good when they can save a buck, while once a reasonable expectation, is not reasonable anymore, and probably won't be again until this cycle of civilization is over (which probably won't be long given the events of the last couple of years--yes, Russia, we'll fucking take you with us if it's the last thing we do) and a few centuries of people re-learning to live with one another in reasonable cooperation rather than cutthroat competition are behind us. In other words, not in our lives, or the lives of any progeny we'll ever know, but I digress.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @07:28AM
I imagine they will get vandalized. A lot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @11:34AM
Then the car drives for 15 minutes to place where it's cheaper to park. Don't translate current problems with parking to parking problems for driverless cars. Unless you have a car with a chauffeur, of course. And your chauffeur can't find place to park while you get your nails done.
That's a people's problem not a technical problem having anything to do with driveless cars.
No, if I need to shop for an hour or two or three, the car would go park somewhere. The difference is that it would not have to park anywhere near to where I am. It could be 20 minutes away.
I know people are selfish. But that doesn't mean you can't solve these problems economically ahead of time. If you have congestion charge of $10/hr to drive in some areas, then for stingy people it will be cheaper to take public transport or to have their vehicles leave the area. Or come there on public transport and just have the car pick them up?? Major cities with congestion problems like London, have excellent public transit.
I'm a stingy person. My first instinct on saving money would be not to have a car in the first place and to rent the car on as-needed basis. Currently, this scenario is not possible as it's a pain in the ass to rent a car - you have to go to car rental place, fill out forms, drive back from there, then return the car there, get back home ... driverless cars make renting a car just like renting a taxi, minus the expenses of the driver. They make taxis less expensive. So why would I buy a car for $100k that drives itself when I can rent it for $5-10/hr?
If anything, driveless cars would make public transit obsolete outside of the core congestion zones. That saves city money. But congestion prices could make transit still viable in core. For example, if you come to Toronto, outside of Toronto you'll find giant parking lots next to Go Stations - public transit trains to go to and from Toronto core areas. I don't expect this to change in the future, except that the need for these parking lots would decrease as cars can drive back home.
But yes, this is bike shed discussion topic. The important is to get driveless cars working, not worry about hypotheticals. Like worrying about "what jobs will we have on Mars?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @12:33PM
You would've had an upvote if you weren't spreading this stupid, tired propaganda. Gotta have a bogeyman though, right?