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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: 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.