It’s crazy that so many bought into this hype… It’s really worrying that so much global capital is flowing into “blue sky” projects rather than traditional infrastructure and public transportation. Trains, buses, ferry boats… That is what we should be spending money on.
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Who is saying that autonomous cars need new public transportation? And why would this require an increase in the need for public transportation? I thought autonomous cars would shorten commutes due to all the cars on the road communicating with one another, and potentially eliminating things like stop lights. I agree we are far away from level 4 autonomous cars. But I do love the idea of sending my autonomous car to run errands for me. I could order groceries online, and have my car pick them up, or when I need new tires I could just let my mechanic know that my car will be stopping by for service.
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I can see this working for highway cargo, and maybe inside controlled circuits, like big corporate campuses*. Factories already have autonomous parts transporters, so it could be broadly extended. But while a driver is needed to take over in case of emergency, forget it.
*campi
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I have a car but for the last 2ish years have been 99% carfree in my getting around. That remaining 1% is when the world is clearly out to punish anyone without a car.
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It looks like any new job I get will require me to commute 30+ miles and no public transit is going to beat a car for that. My North Seattle to Redmond commute was 1.5 to 2 hours by bus but only half that time by car and if I wasn’t able to get the bus pass taking the car would have been cheaper even counting the extra wear and tear on the car.
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I’m not sure how detailed they’ve been about it upstairs but a viable green new deal framework includes trillions in public transit funding
I think the first step would be to fully subsidize ridership for all people in households with an income of <50k, coupled with significant expansions of transit in the areas of the country with poor options. In major cities, initiate a London-style inner ring driving tax.
The question isn’t whether or not we can eliminate most ICE vehicle traffic in the US. The issue is that we must, and any credible plan simply must account for it
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There are people with mobility issues that live in rural environments that need access to doctors.
Public transit does not cover that. Nor does Uber.
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we have a few. so give it time i guess.
dunno. maybe corporate owned cars will stem-off corporate owned roads. ( god forbid the two ever are allowed to “complete.” want to use road X, you can only use car Y. )
i’m not quite ready for the brave new world of ai cars.
people think driving the internet superhighway is bad. ads everywhere, your personal information monetized, malware and scams?
i can pretty much guarantee that driverless cars will be worse. making the people they transport the product.
think ridesharing has filled the roads? corporate owned and driven cars will likewise only make that worse. ( amazon: we guarantee 5 minute pickup… by filling every block with a fleet of cars. )
seems like people tend to look at the upside of technology without considering the down.
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We used to have pretty much that, until GM paved over them…
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I think that use of “drive” is a sibling, rather than a descendant, of the modern use of “drive” to mean “operate a motor vehicle”. Both come from the older meaning of “to urge animals to move in a certain direction”, e.g. “the shepherds drove the sheep into a pen”, which led to the vehicular meaning via use of that term for horse-drawn vehicles, e.g. “a stagecoach driver”.
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para-transit.
the model is not quite so sexy, nor so profitable as ride-sharing, but treating public transport as a utility, using software to help schedule and route buses can ( in theory ) help.
take this link worth a grain of salt because they are a company that does this. still maybe an interesting read.
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If we ever get fully autonomous vehicles, the absolute worst-case scenario is that we add autonomy on top of our existing model of individual private car ownership, as you seem to expect. It’s tremendously inefficient for your personal car to go to the grocery store to pick up groceries when a single autonomous van could deliver dozens of orders in a single trip. And don’t get me started on the number of extra pointless vehicle-miles and wasted space implied by the idea of private cars driving themselves to sit idly in a parking garage after dropping their owners off in the city (when autonomous taxis could be productively picking up a nearby passenger instead)…
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We still may be a ways off from fully self driving cars, but when it does happen its going to get insane pretty quickly. What insurance company is going to want to insure human drivers compared to a networked mesh of self driving vehicles? Why wouldn’t premiums for human drivers skyrocket? Talking about how it could never happen in this country just strikes me as short-sided. American car culture is not going to win in a battle against American “fuck you if your bills are too high” culture. High insurance rates will quickly price people out of living in the country, sparsely populated areas, or areas where geography or weather make it harder to implement self driving cars. Larger metropolitan areas will probably be completely covered by self driving car zones (with exceptions for things like loading docks and driveways.) If you live outside of one of those zones and need to be able manually drive, well tough shit if you can’t afford a policy for that. We will have a whole new rash of ghost towns in all those small harder to reach areas off the highways.
The good thing is that it might save a bunch of wilderness areas because only a small portion of the population will be able to afford to go “off path”. Maybe we will get more walk-able cities. On the other hand, if it’s harder to get to large areas of the country, no one will see if those areas are strip mined of all resources. Cities could also remain very car dominated, so we will get the worst of car culture and box store suburbia with the added bonus of having all of our movement continually tracked. #boringdystopia
Nah, I’m not grouchy today, why the fuck are you even asking? 
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I really don’t get why self-driving cars was ever bought into. It requires billions in investment into software, hardware, and public infrastructure with the end goal of our grandkids using basically the same mode of transportation as our grandparents. Its scientific revolution as brought to you by corporate board rooms who want the world to change as little as possible
Investing in public transportation, new energy efficient types of conveyance, or basic research into new tech that not every 12 year old can think up all produce much better, much cheaper outcomes.
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This makes no sense. Your argument for self-driving cars is people wanting to save money, but your description of a world with them requires massive fleets of new vehicles and massive public investment into infrastructure to support them (not to mention the major investment into tech that is still really difficult). Why wouldn’t the same people mind the huge increase in cost on their car notes and road taxes?
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Um, well, how about a hearty “maybe”.
All the risks of driver error now are distributed across 200+ million, well, drivers, each of whom has an insurance policy for every car driven. (Yes there are drivers who go uninsured but then there are lots of people with more than one car and insuring each of them)
You tell me when you think that Google or Microsoft or Ford or Toyota is willing to pick up the full liability for all deaths/injuries/property damage caused by every vehicle/AI software suite they build, for as long as that vehicle is operational. My guess is “sometime shortly before or after the heat death of the universe”.
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Didn’t they all vote for Trump? Fuck them and their issues then. 
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I agree, you bring up some good points. But I don’t think this article is targeting efficiency. Our MPG goals are targeting efficiency.
Not the roads, I mean in general. More and more jobs will be automated away within my life time. And this will be different than in the past where automation lead to service industry or innovation will lead to new, different jobs. Yes, there will be some of both, but the nearish future will lead to a lot of jobs being obsolete.
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