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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: 3, Informative) by Mykl on Tuesday March 12 2019, @09:56PM
Already there. While there are cheaper 'early bird' options, full day parking in Melbourne, Australia can cost around $60 USD per day. It is already cheaper to drive around the CBD all day than to park (notwithstanding the driver).
To further complicate matters, gridlock will actually make it less expensive to run a driverless electric vehicle, as it will be able to power down when stuck in traffic. If congestion tax is implemented on a per-entry basis, cars that pay to come in will want to stay in rather than driving out of the congestion zone and re-entering (thus paying the tax twice that day), further clogging the space.
OP is right - driverless cars could create a nightmare traffic scenario unless we are careful of unintended consequences.