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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: 2) by bradley13 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:50AM (8 children)
This sounds just like climate change forecasts: We have a model, programmed with lots of assumptions, that leads to a catastrophe. Quick, we gotta do something!
In this specific case, the questionable assumption is that fully autonomous cars will be drop-in replacements for current cars. It's at least as likely that autonomous cars will lead to a huge decline in car ownership, as networks of Uber-like cars will be available on-call. In which case, traffic congestion will be reduced, not increased.
But even granted that questionable assumption, the individual car owner is presented with a simple trade-off: How much does it cost to operate a car vs. how much it costs to park. Operating cost will be at least $0.50/mile, and likely more like $1.00/mile. Driving around at - say - an average 20-30 miles per hour, all day long? Parking isn't anywhere near that expensive - that's bad assumption #2. As for deliberately creeping along at 1mph - that would get you fined today, no need for any special rules.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nuke on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:18PM (5 children)
So the success of a revolutionary technology hangs on the success of an unrelated social revolution? Your scenario only fits a metropolitan hipster life-style.
Believe me, people will still want to own their own cars, whether they are SD or not. A few bad experiences with cleaning up the previous users' vomit, shit, spilt beer and used condoms will see to that. Unlike a taxi or Uber, there will be no driver/owner to supervise or moderate what happens inside. For most users the interior of their car is personal space; I keep in my car some spare clothes, waterproofs, outdoor boots, spare glasses, emergency rations, photographic tripod, certain tools, camping stove and kettle, a 5 litre water container, some reference books ... I also keep it immaculately tidy.
There may well be a business in SD car sharing, just as there have always been taxi businesses, but it will remain a minority thing.
(Score: 2, Funny) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:25PM
So that your vehicle looks like this http://www.blog.solarhaven.org/BurroCart2ADJ.jpg [solarhaven.org]?
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:58PM (3 children)
You ask that, like you think it's ridiculous, but you're wrong. A revolutionary technology like this causes societal change. They go hand-in-hand.
Consider the original introduction of the automobile. They tended to scare horses, so initially there were extreme restrictions. Now, one could have said: this is just a dead-end technology, because horses dominate and no one wants to give up their horse for a noisy machine. Instead, for sheer convenience, people gave up their horses - revolutionizing personal transportation.
Full self-driving cars will also cause a societal revolution. Why are (some) people so attached to their cars? Largely, because they are in control and enjoy the driving experience. Take that away, and the vehicle becomes just transportation. Less attachment to the vehicle will mean more people happy to just hail a ride.
So, back to your comment: the success of a revolutionary technology does go hand-in-hand with a social revolution. But the two are not unrelated - they are inextricably linked, each feeding back onto the other.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday March 12 2019, @05:18PM (2 children)
Sorry, but it had long been known that horses had to be replaced *somehow*, and most people couldn't afford the upkeep on one. But if the horse hadn't been replaced there were estimates that the streets of New York city would be a mile deep in horse shit by the time the population had doubled. It's not clear what the equivalent current problem is. Electric cars doesn't imply publicly owned cars become dominant. It's not clear to me why smart cars would change that. It would probably mean that car rental became much more feasible. (If the car can come to you itself, and return on its own, then rental is useful in a lot more situations.) But there's a big difference between "more people are able to do well without owning a personal car" and "few enough people will own a personal car that it will become unusual". E.g., if cars were self-driving, I might rent a car occasionally. I don't drive, and wouldn't want to own one. But that's an edge case. I see no sign that it would become dominant.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by optotronic on Wednesday March 13 2019, @02:29AM (1 child)
You can argue about the relative importance of these versus streets filled with manure, but:
1) Global climate change: electric vehicles have the potential to significantly (?) contribute to the solution
2) Inability of drivers to pay attention to driving vs. their smart phones: self driving cars could fix this
(Score: 4, Insightful) by vux984 on Wednesday March 13 2019, @03:58AM
#1 is orthogonal to the question. People will shift to electric regardless. There is no reason to think that simply becoming electric is going to motivate people not to own one. Self-driving tech is the hypothesis that has been raised that will reduce ownership.. but that has really nothing to do with electric, or with global warming.
#2 Am I really going to stop owning a car and hail one simply so i can look at my smartphone instead? And why wouldn't i still own one? Then i can look at my smartphone in clean, well maintained, luxury... instead of a smelly beat up 'fleet' car?
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:50PM
It's more like Quick, I gotta publish something sensational to advance my career otherwise I'm never going to be able to pay back my student loans!
It's kinda hilarious. Well, darkly hilarious. Pretty much all the complaints conservatives have about academia are caused by attempting to do science with a capitalist funding model.
Not that I ever expect it to change, not in my lifetime anyway. This 1k-2k year cusp of humanity has been really impressive all in all. A handful of humans for a brief decade or two were even living off-world (even if just in LEO). But there's really only so much that can be accomplished at each cusp.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by vux984 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @07:24PM
"It's at least as likely that autonomous cars will lead to a huge decline in car ownership, as networks of Uber-like cars will be available on-call."
Why is that "at least as likely"? actual uber is already on call; has it dramatically decreased car ownership and reduced congestion? Maybe a little... but its hardly a revolution going on. Why do you think making the car driverless would improve?
Here's another prediction -- making them driverless is going to result in the cleanliness dropping, motivating people to own their own. Just based on how rental cars frequently get returned.
So here's yet another prediction -- driverless cars will have uncomfortable easy to hose down plastic seats, be wheel-chair accessible, and smell of body odor, perfume, and air freshener. It'll be functional but scuffed and scratched and beat to shit. And it'll have cameras monitoring you, and they'll probably be broken or colored over with black marker and gum half the time. Someone will have tagged it with grafitti, someone else will have scrubbed that mostly off, only to have another layer of grafitti added. The plastic seats will have hearts carved in to them with profoundness like 'TJ was here' and 'fag'. And someone threw up in it "recently". Much like an old subway car.