Driverless car should help downtown parking, traffic (construction, live)

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Copanut

Did you catch that article in the Post this morning?

Missed it, but I pretty quickly found it on the P.G. website.

I have to say I'm one of the legion of under 40 people who can't drive stick shift. My parents didn't have any by the time I was a teenager, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've even been in a car with stick shift in the past ten years.

Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam

Why take the transit at all to the North Shore or Station Square if you have a driverless car?

Just program it to drive out of the North Shore garage and pick you up at the office.

That might seem like a good idea to an individual, but in aggregate it's a bad idea. Can you imagine the line of driverless cars waiting to pick people up in front of the old USX building at 5PM? Downtown roads could end up more congested than in rush hour now, if only because all the cars which would normally be "stuck in traffic" inside garages waiting to get on the streets would all be on the streets.

From the perspective of the city, there's no reason to allow this. Indeed, since there wouldn't be downtown garages any longer (the self-driving cars wouldn't use them due to cost, which would quickly result in their being redeveloped) there would be no reason to even allow personal vehicles downtown. Much better to have everyone take the T or BRT outside of downtown proper to meet up with their cars, where there would be more capacity for the lines of cars, and the lines themselves would be smaller.

Downtown wouldn't have to ban cars downtown entirely of course. Some sort of congestion pricing zone, like they currently have in London, and are considering in DC would be enough. If it cost significantly more to have your car meet you Downtown than to take transit to it in a more outlying location, everyone but the rich would choose that option anyway.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by EveKendall

People are getting way too excited about this way too soon. How long will it realistically be before the majority of cars on the road are driverless? How much are these things going to cost?
This seems like 50 years (at least) into the future. And who knows how things might be different in other ways then? Maybe everyone will telecommute by that time.

Kinda hard for nurses, teachers, retail/restaurant workers, factory workers to telecommute. There's this presumption that everyone has a white collar high tech job.

[SteelCityRising]

I'm not holding my breath. Hybrid vehicles have been mainstream for about a decade now, yet how many hybrids do you see on the roads? Not many, even here in the supposedly "ahead of the curve" East End, where you'd think people would want to be early adopters of newer technologies aimed to improve the environment. Why? The technology is still very, very expensive. I recently owned a Honda Civic Hybrid. The transmission died after around 65,000 miles, and a replacement one would have run me nearly $4,000. In addition, I was being told the hybrid battery was becoming weak, which would be several thousand more dollars to replace. I now drive a non-hybrid Honda Fit. It's not as efficient as the hybrid, but it's not drastically less efficient, either. If not everyone can initially outlay a $10,000 premium just to possess the hybrid technology, let alone pay thousands above and beyond regular full-combustion automobiles for maintenance and repairs, then what makes everyone think people will pounce on self-driving cars that will probably start around $50,000, accounting for pricing premium of driver-operated vs. car-operated being even more drastic than the pricing premium of hybrid vs. non-hybrid?

Until that time we're more likely to continue to see our local roads dominated by cheaper self-driven non-hybrid SUVs, for better or for worse.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

I'm not holding my breath. Hybrid vehicles have been mainstream for about a decade now, yet how many hybrids do you see on the roads? Not many, even here in the supposedly "ahead of the curve" East End, where you'd think people would want to be early adopters of newer technologies aimed to improve the environment. Why? The technology is still very, very expensive. I recently owned a Honda Civic Hybrid. The transmission died after around 65,000 miles, and a replacement one would have run me nearly $4,000. In addition, I was being told the hybrid battery was becoming weak, which would be several thousand more dollars to replace. I now drive a non-hybrid Honda Fit. It's not as efficient as the hybrid, but it's not drastically less efficient, either. If not everyone can initially outlay a $10,000 premium just to possess the hybrid technology, let alone pay thousands above and beyond regular full-combustion automobiles for maintenance and repairs, then what makes everyone think people will pounce on self-driving cars that will probably start around $50,000, accounting for pricing premium of driver-operated vs. car-operated being even more drastic than the pricing premium of hybrid vs. non-hybrid?

Until that time we're more likely to continue to see our local roads dominated by cheaper self-driven non-hybrid SUVs, for better or for worse.

It's true these cars will be very expensive to own for quite some time (probably until the mid 2030s). But they will be cheaper to rent than most other options.

Think about it. Unlike a taxi today, you won't have to pay a driver. The insurance costs should also be much lower. And they can theoretically operate 24 hours a day (although practically speaking they won't be doing much driving at night. All of this means even if there is an initially high capital cost for someone like Uber, the profit margin from a driverless car should be much greater - even if you price it at a discount to manually-driven cars.

If you need to have a rental car for a day, a traditional car rental will probably remain cheaper for some time - although given regular rental cars have their own overhead issues related to payroll, and often include insurance policies, perhaps not. Zipcar should certainly remain cheaper for awhile, but it's nowhere near as convenient as a self-driving taxi, which delivers itself to you.

[FreightTrainRunning]

Originally Posted by Katiana

Kinda hard for nurses, teachers, retail/restaurant workers, factory workers to telecommute. There's this presumption that everyone has a white collar high tech job.

Frankly even things like software development are moving away from telecommuting except in emergencies. Yahoo made news a few years ago when they banned it and a lot of the big tech companies are at least discouraging it. Modern software development processes like "scrum" and "XP" are dependent on having everyone in the same office close to full time. My office keeps each of its teams in the same room so that we can easily consult and collaborate on tasks. You can work from home if you have a sick kid or need to wait for the plumber but it's not something that you can do routinely.

For all of our high-tech gadgets, nothing matches the information bandwidth of face-to-face communication.

[Katarina Witt]

Yes, I remember that issue with Yahoo! DH worked at home some when he was recovering from his surgery, he said what you said in your last sentence.

[captainmidnight]

Originally Posted by Pitt Chick

Also, would they successfully negotiate the Pittsburgh Left?

This is only available in the Pittsburgh customized code that will cost you extra money

Seriously though, driverless cars will follow laws by the book so no Pittsburgh lefts and no running stop signs/red lights but they would yield to pedestrians and know how to merge! Also, these cars will be able to "see" and "talk" to each other so they know where other cars and objects will be at all times. Imagine perfect zipper merges on the Parkway East! Compared to now where you have to go on non-verbal signals from other drivers to communicate and hope the other driver isn't distracted.

[I_Like_Spam]

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

I'm not holding my breath. Hybrid vehicles have been mainstream for about a decade now, yet how many hybrids do you see on the roads? Not many, even here in the supposedly "ahead of the curve" East End, where you'd think people would want to be early adopters of newer technologies aimed to improve the environment. Why? The technology is still very, very expensive.

Hybrid cars really don't do anything different that conventional vehicles.


Its really tough for an ordinary guy to justify spending that kind of extra money to do the same thing- most people are either unconvinced about global warming, or unconvinced that they themselves making this considerable sacrifice will making any difference about it.


On the other hand, the driverless car promises quicker service, and the ability to transport passengers with the absolute minimum effort on the part of the operator. The operator can read the newspaper and drink their coffee on the way to work while actually traveling and doing it on their own schedule (instead of a mass transit schedule).

People will want to own this new technology for real, seen and impressive advantages it offers.


At least until they come out with the pilotless jet airplane.

[Kippy]

In order for the driverless car system to work seamlessly, don't the cars need to communicate with one another? This would require the entire population to adopt driverless cars simultaneously, which would be a tall order.

The refusal to allow human input (e.g., a steering wheel) and human override seems creepy and foolish to me.

[kjtocool]

Driverless cars will hit the market by 2020ish, but adoption is going to be slow at first.

Long term, adoption will go exponential. Why? Money! The cost of insuring a car driven by a human will spiral out of control, and when they grab the market, most will be priced out of a human driven car when mass manufacturing isn't around to drive down the production costs.

In addition to all of this, most people hate change, can't see it coming, think in terms of today, not tomorrow. The future won't contain anywhere near the number of cars of today's world. There will be an onslaught of companies allowing you to virtually hail a ride, drop you where you need to be, and move onto the next customer. Cars will change from being in use 10% of the day or less to 90%+. The way cars are built is going to change, our culture regarding cars is going to change in a massive way.