SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 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.