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posted by mrpg on Sunday May 12 2019, @04:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-like-bikes dept.

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666_

New Research Confirms That Ride-Hailing Companies Are Causing a Ton of Traffic Congestion

A study published today in Science Advances comparing pre- and post-rideshare boom traffic in San Fransisco found that the presence of Uber, Lyft, and similar companies has been an overall detriment for people who like getting where they're going quickly.

That businesses which pay people to have their vehicles on the road would, well, increase the number of cars blocking up the transit grid might appear to be a forgone, perhaps even obvious conclusion. But the body of writings on Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) as they're sometimes called is, surprisingly, mixed. Some studies found that Ubers and Lyfts were choking the streets of New York, Boston, and Chicago; a few claimed, conversely, that rideshares were alleviating traffic. Thus the team behind today's paper—composed of two University of Kentucky staffers and members of San Francisco's County Transportation Authority—had their work cut out for them.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @01:51PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @01:51PM (#842661)

    Have the car drop you off at work, circle the city all day, occupying free parking spaces for as long as it's allowed before moving onto the next, and then just waiting to pick up back up again wherever you might be.

    Why do people constantly repeat this misconception? The cars would leave the city center and go somewhere parking is more plentiful. Also, up to half the traffic in city centers is already cars driving around looking for parking. All this traffic disappears.

    Why fight through traffic jams? Have the car deliver your work and parcels and do your chores. Just program it and let it sit in the queue for 8 hours, who cares, it's not you queuing, right?

    Presumably this is supposed to be better if you do have to sit in traffic?

    Self driving cars will dramatically improve quality of life by making transportation available to people who can't easily drive, especially the elderly and disabled. This is without even considering the ordinary people who aren't injured and killed by idiots and drunks.

    Everything about self driving cars is good. The only question is how to get them here as quickly as possible, and how to prevent them from becoming a privacy disaster.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @05:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @05:54PM (#842716)

    Why do people constantly repeat this misconception? The cars would leave the city center and go somewhere parking is more plentiful.

    Increase in parking available in the city center would mean more people would opt to drive to work instead of taking public transport.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by ledow on Sunday May 12 2019, @10:05PM

    by ledow (5567) on Sunday May 12 2019, @10:05PM (#842766) Homepage

    Why?

    If parking costs money, but you're electric powered and autonomous, then it would have to fight its way out of the city, park up, then time itself coming back to miss all the traffic and potentially delay its arrival for your needed time. Or it could just circle in an hour earlier to be sure to miss the big queues and then just circle the block - costing next to nothing.

    And if you're a large autonomous vehicle company, you'd much rather have all your autonomous "taxi" cars circling, saying, London city centre (who cares, you're not driving them!) ready to pick up passing fares rather than miles away outside of town where you'll also have to pay for parking. You will literally have companies do this with their delivery fleets to save time/money because it's more convenient than having them parked up somewhere 10 miles away and having to queue their way back into town. As it is, Zip cars (short-term rent a shared car, just book it and walk up to the nearest Zip car and it opens for you so long as nobody else has booked it) are basically parked outside people's houses and there are entire teams of drivers doing nothing but picking them up from OUTSIDE town to drive them back INTO town ready for being used where they are needed most. Once those become autonomous, you just don't need the drivers, that's all!

    The elderly and disabled will benefit, who says they won't? They also get paid mobility allowances (whether in the form of bus passes, mobility cars, specially adapted cars, etc.) so it would actually save money to just sign them up to such a service. What's that got to do with anything?

    Everything about self-driving cars is *not* good. First, they don't exist, because they just can't be made with current technology. It's that simple. Second, when they do exist, they will be misused and the worst contention for them is to be on the road with humans (for both the self-driving cars and the human drivers). Third, once implemented, car ownership goes out of the window - legislation will soon see to it that they have to be compliant with certain regulations, and they'll go almost into the same category as private aircraft - where most people who can fly them can't actually afford to own them. You go from software-as-a-service to transport-as-a-service. And given that the owners of the cars will still have to pay for their upkeep, that just makes them more expensive than owning your own car.

    Self-driving cars are still a sci-fi wet dream, and considered as such. They are far from a panacea. They also make *excellent* terrorist delivery vehicles, not to mention a perfect city-wide troll (book out 1000 cars, send them all to 10 Downing Street... little cost, perfectly legal, absolute chaos ensues).