Quote:
Originally Posted by hurricaneMan1992
Getting back to the point of the article, another issue that will affect congestion is that some people who currently leave earlier or later to work to avoid the traffic will now feel more comfortable commuting during the "proper" rush hour no matter how long it takes, further increasing the level of congestion.
In the end, reducing the spacing between vehicles is similar to adding a lane and will be subject to the well-known induced demand conundrum, in which increasing capacity increases usage, but does not decrease congestion. Plus the unanswered question of where we're going to park all of these automated cars.
So in the end, the best way to have "productive commuting" (and to improve commuting in general) is to improve mass transit coverage. If not automated rail, then automated busses with GPS tracking in dedicated lanes.
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Autonomous vehicles running on a dedicated lane are basically mass transit once synched up on the dedicated portion. In fact more flexible than any form of mass transit. You can line them up until you basically have a continuous "bus" from hither to yon...then you break up at either end to deliver. Send them back out the dedicated lanes to get them out of the congested area after unloading.
And that is without using a shared vehicle as a minibus continuously providing service to multiple users.
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