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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: 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?