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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 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?"