Traffic Cincinnati We need Light Rail!!!!! (Wilson: maintenance, to live in, dangerous)

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by WRnative

With no drivers, smaller trolleys running much more frequent and more direct routes may become practical.

The majority of any transit agency's expenses are wages for drivers. However I am quite skeptical that a driverless city bus will be in operation anywhere in 20 years or that driverless cabs will be in widespread use in a similar time frame. Meanwhile, driverless trains already exist.

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

The majority of any transit agency's expenses are wages for drivers. However I am quite skeptical that a driverless city bus will be in operation anywhere in 20 years or that driverless cabs will be in widespread use in a similar time frame. Meanwhile, driverless trains already exist.

You may be skeptical, but the industry is highly committed to an autonomous vehicle revolution by 2130.

https://media.ford.com/content/fordm...g-in-2021.html

As noted, Columbus will be a proving ground in the very near future.

If autonomous vehicles are a success by 2130, it's hard to believe that they won't be incorporated into mass transit services, especially by mass transit agencies already offering point-to-point service. Autonomous vehicles may allow transit agencies to develop hub-and-spoke strategies, artificially increasing densities to allow cities to develop fast express bus or dedicated rail lines for longer distance travel.

Aging Baby Boomers, forced by declining driving skills out of their driven personal vehicles, will be a force driving the autonomous vehicle revolution.

[jmecklenborg]

A friend of mine rode in one of the "driverless" Uber cabs in Pittsburgh this past summer. He said he could tell they're nowhere close to being able to ditch the driver. A big reason why they moved that research to the middle of nowhere was so the coastal media wouldn't see how little progress they've made. Google drove "driverless" cars around Silicon Valley for ten years.


The hype machine is using the specter of driverless cars (you know, cars that actually don't have a driver sitting in them who has to drive half the time, unlike today's "driverless" cars) to lobby against public transportation improvements. The media, tech nerds, and libertarians are eating it up.

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

A friend of mine rode in one of the "driverless" Uber cabs in Pittsburgh this past summer. He said he could tell they're nowhere close to being able to ditch the driver. A big reason why they moved that research to the middle of nowhere was so the coastal media wouldn't see how little progress they've made. Google drove "driverless" cars around Silicon Valley for ten years.


The hype machine is using the specter of driverless cars (you know, cars that actually don't have a driver sitting in them who has to drive half the time, unlike today's "driverless" cars) to lobby against public transportation improvements. The media, tech nerds, and libertarians are eating it up.

We can rely on your suspect opinions and your anecdotal reports, or on specific statements made by the likes of Ford.

Tough choice. Not, IMO, especially given your recent claim in the Cleveland forum of equivalency between the relatively tiny rail transit system in Buffalo with the much larger systems in Cleveland and St. Louis.

[jmecklenborg]

Well it's simply a fact that Buffalo's subway gets much higher per-mile ridership than the systems in either Cleveland or St. Louis. It's a great argument for subways and not building light rail lines on abandoned rail ROW's just because they're there (the Metrolink line through rural Illinois).


It's 2017. We're ten years into the driverless car hype. They need to put a dude in a driverless car with no controls and drive him from LA to NYC to demonstrate that the technology is viable. Problem is that it's quite obviously a lot more difficult to create driverless cars than the Apollo trips to the moon. Roadways and traffic are a non-stop asteroid belt.

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Well it's simply a fact that Buffalo's subway gets much higher per-mile ridership than the systems in either Cleveland or St. Louis. It's a great argument for subways and not building light rail lines on abandoned rail ROW's just because they're there (the Metrolink line through rural Illinois).

Cleveland's and St. Louis' rail ridership is lower because their networks and several times larger, encompassing lower density neighborhoods. Cleveland's system is a legacy system, except for the Waterfront Line, which a bus line could have much better served IMO. Most of time, it rarely has passengers in my limited experience.

In Cleveland's case, the development of the Healthline bus rapid also competes directly with the Red Line rail rapid, lowering Red Line ridership significantly.

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

It's 2017. We're ten years into the driverless car hype. They need to put a dude in a driverless car with no controls and drive him from LA to NYC to demonstrate that the technology is viable. Problem is that it's quite obviously a lot more difficult to create driverless cars than the Apollo trips to the moon. Roadways and traffic are a non-stop asteroid belt.

Autonomous vehicles likely first will be used within selected urban areas. That's why Ford is targeting the ride-sharing market. Read the Ford press release again. Automating urban areas is considerably more difficult than doing so on interstates.

Top analysts are issuing reports considerably more informed and detailed than the unsubstantiated opinions of anonymous C-D forum posters.

<<Such a future of shared, fully electric, driverless cars on demand is closer to reality than it might appear.>>

https://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/...hared-mobility

So you believe the Columbus $50 million DOT "smart city" project featuring autonomous vehicles is a boondoggle?

[jmecklenborg]

The Smart Cities thing is a Trojan horse/Potemkin village. It's a way for Silicon Valley to insidiously privatize public service cloaked as some sort of benevolent b.s. award they pass out at graduation.

[motorman]

Originally Posted by Wilson513

That is soooo silly. Cincinnati has a couple of traffic bottlenecks a couple times a day. Nothing that lasts more than a few extra minutes unless there is a broken down or an accident... There isn't a major city in the US that has any significantly better traffic than Cincinnati. Name one.

More input from Cincy's Brother from Another Planet... (Taking names later.)
_____________________
(A) EAST BOUND, I-275

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqCorFCrjNA
______________________
(B) SOUTH BOUND, I-75

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rigkwv8zshI

[motorman]

Originally Posted by WRnative

You may be skeptical, but the industry is highly committed to an autonomous vehicle revolution by 2130.

https://media.ford.com/content/fordm...g-in-2021.html

As noted, Columbus will be a proving ground in the very near future.

If autonomous vehicles are a success by 2130, it's hard to believe that they won't be incorporated into mass transit services...

By that time, Columbus may be a proving ground for human teleportation.

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by motorman

By that time, Columbus may be a proving ground for human teleportation.

Oops!!! Obviously s/b 2030.

Star Trek fan, huh?

Watched the new "Orville" space comedy (marginal), and noted how much time was wasted shuttling to and from places. It was annoying even though the trips only took seconds. Transporters have spoiled science fiction fans.