Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
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 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.
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