Car2Go + DriverlessCar + Uber - Better than mass transit someday? (Portland: dorm, bankrupt)

[scm53]

Originally Posted by jb9152

Well, since the outcome will be reduced system capacity, I don't think there's much to get outraged over. It just won't work.

The problem is, no one can afford your solution. That just won't work either.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by austin-steve

As I jogged pre-dawn past a parked Car2Go downtown the other morning which had it's parking lights on, and I wondered if that would kill the battery, it got me to thinking. It dawned on me that a combination of Car2Go, Driverless Car technology and Uber might someday represent a cheaper, more effective, environmentally friendly, and efficient way of moving the scattered masses.

I haven't thought it completely through but it's been stewing.

What if I didn't own a car but could use an Uber-like app to summon a driverless car to pick me up and drop me off?

This solves the following problems:
1) No routes or schedules needed. It's 24/7/365.
2) Solves the "last mile" problem as it gets me to any Point B from any Point A, door to door.
3) Traffic congestion will be immensely reduced by driverless cars which don't rubberneck, have emotions or get into wrecks. They communicate with each other in a Borg-like way, increasing road capacity through advanced technology, much as the bits and bytes of internet traffic are managed.

This could be subsidized using the money not wasted on Austin rail, and by ditching Cap Metro entirely and using the 1 cent sales tax to build and maintain the fleet of driverless cars.

Much as computerized inventory intelligence lets Walmart, Home Depot, Costco and other distribution centers learn and predict demand and need, so would the traffic system learn the travel patterns of Austin and be able to pre-stage cars close to areas where demand peaks are about to occur.

We might still have a Family Car for vacations, beach trips, etc., but if getting around was as easy as some taps on an app followed by a short wait and a stress free ride to a destination while I work on my tablet or talk by phone, why would I want to drive myself anywhere?

I think this is the future, and has probably already been thought of, but if that's the case, why are we building a rail line that will be made obsolete in 10-20 years by the system described above, or something similar?

Steve

absolutely 100% this is the future. I hope we can delay rail for long enough for the technology to become obvious to everyone else. Meaning we dont actually have to have in use driverless cars, just enough proof of concept that it is the solution.

[jb9152]

Originally Posted by scm53

The problem is, no one can afford your solution. That just won't work either.

You don't even know what my solution is. Hyperbolic much? "No one" can afford it?

So, please elaborate then. Tell us what you think the region should do about its capacity deficit.

[jb9152]

Originally Posted by Austin97

absolutely 100% this is the future. I hope we can delay rail for long enough for the technology to become obvious to everyone else. Meaning we dont actually have to have in use driverless cars, just enough proof of concept that it is the solution.

Well, no. Read the rest of the discussion. Driverless cars will make the problem worse, not better.

[Austin97]

driverless cars will not reduce system capacity, they will increase it.

Capacity is more a function of driving speed. Once all/most cars are driverless the average speed of roads will increase because you wont have all the lane changing, braking/speeding up etc.

In fact tailgating slows traffic down because it causes people to brake more often which causes a 5mph decrease for each car behind it.

The turnover time for a car is 8 years. So 30-40 years down the road we will have a majority driverless cars. I say expand roads now in anticipation of driverless cars.

Also people will own their own cars which avoids the massive influx of cars going counter traffic that you used as a straw man.

rail does not increase capacity enough to be worthwhile vs the same money spent on roads. Feel free to try to prove that it does/will

[jb9152]

Originally Posted by Austin97

driverless cars will not reduce system capacity, they will increase it.

Capacity is more a function of driving speed. Once all/most cars are driverless the average speed of roads will increase because you wont have all the lane changing, braking/speeding up etc.

Absolutely false. Capacity is a function of the distances between units. As speed and separation distance increase (exponentially with speed), capacity drops.

Originally Posted by Austin97

In fact tailgating slows traffic down because it causes people to brake more often which causes a 5mph decrease for each car behind it.

But that is negligible (as is braking/speeding up, lane changing, etc.) because it's pretty hard to overcome an enforced 20-carlength separation.

Originally Posted by Austin97

The turnover time for a car is 8 years. So 30-40 years down the road we will have a majority driverless cars. I say expand roads now in anticipation of driverless cars.

Until it's every single one, there's not a car manufacturer in the world that will risk a fatal accident that can clearly be shown to be because of an unsafe braking algorithm mixed with human-controlled vehicles. And even after every car is driverless (which will happen eventually), there is no way to overcome that pesky little thing called reality. The reality is that even with instantaneous reaction time, it still takes 230-240 feet to stop the average auto traveling 70 mph, under ideal conditions (higher speeds have yet higher stopping distances, and they increase exponentially as a function of speed). With stop offset and safety margin included (which will happen because the feds will require it and the manufacturers are risk-averse), it approaches 300 feet. So, 70 mph = 20 car lengths enforced separation. That's physics and reality. You're talking about "proofs of concept".

Originally Posted by Austin97

Also people will own their own cars which avoids the massive influx of cars going counter traffic that you used as a straw man.

I didn't make that point, but it's still salient because the original poster talked about "staging" driverless vehicles near areas of potential demand. How many square miles around those "areas of potential demand" do you suppose will have to become parking lots/garages? How much traffic will be *leaving* the activity centers to go somewhere to stage?

Originally Posted by Austin97

rail does not increase capacity enough to be worthwhile vs the same money spent on roads. Feel free to try to prove that it does/will

Sure thing. A commuter rail system operating at 15 minute headways using 8 car trains with a standee load of about 260 can transport the equivalent of nearly 5 highway lanes during peak times. The math is straightforward - 4 (times per hour) X 8 cars X 260 = 8,832 passengers per hour. A highway lane like those on I-35 at peak volumes can transport about 1,872 passengers per hour, if we assume the average US auto occupancy rate of 1.2 per vehicle. 8,832/1,872 = 4.7 lane equivalents of capacity. Have any idea what it would cost to build an additional 8 to 10 lanes onto I-35? I'll save you more brain-deadening math - it's a *lot* more.

[verybadgnome]

From everything I've heard driverless cars will reduce congestion, but now I'm thinking that probably won't happen until they are the vast majority of cars on the road since a few inattentive human motorists will still cause huge delays. What about the tourists from Mexico, classic car guys, and motorcyclists? I do not think they will be on autopilot unless or you could just restrict their use. And big rigs would still slow everything down on the hills of IH-35.

Of course if everyone owns their own driverless car you still have the parking problem in high dollar places like downtown that transit avoids. Driverless cars may encourage even longer commutes since that time is no longer considered wasted. If so we will be using even more gasoline (unless they go electric) and will have to build more roads to service these exurbs.

[Komeht]

Originally Posted by scm53

I was reading something interesting recently (Jarrett Walker?) and the writer was saying we should focus on transit outcomes, and not transit methods. What you are talking about, Steve, is an outcome based solution that is guaranteed to outrage the method focused folks.

When I think of all the things in my life that have gone from ubiquitous to non-existent, this seems eminently do-able.

Since you bring up Jarrett Walker...here's his explanation on why this is a really really misguided notion:

Human Transit: will driverless cars abolish buses? (email of the month)

They are assuming that technology will change the facts of geometry, in this case the facts of urban space.
They are assuming that the costs of having every passenger encased in a metal sphere (in terms of production energy and emissions) are readily absorbable by the planet. (To be fair, the SDV discussed here is one that you don't own but just grab when you want it, so if it replaced the car there would be far fewer cars. But that's different from replacing a bus.)
If they think that self-driving cars will replace buses but not rail, then they haven't informed themselves about the vast diversity of different markets that buses are used to serve. Self-driving cars many logically replace some of these markets but not others.
They believe that public transit is incapable of improving in ways that make it more positively attractive to a wider range of people, despite the fact that it is doing so almost continually.

[Komeht]

Thread is pretty hilarious: driverless cars are the great white hope of the road warriors. "This will finally save us and our giant failed experiment will finally thrive!!! Viva Suburbs!

Never. Gonna. Happen.

The future is MORE public transit, not less and the answers to almost all of Steve's concerns lies in BETTER urbanism, not worse. The 21st Century will be the century of the city. By the end of it, most of the idiocy auto-dependency of the last 50 years will be a distant memory and a lesson learned. The next 25 years will be the tug of war as the perpetrators of sprawl attempt to save the last bits of failed experiment. By mid century, there won't even be a debate, it'll just be the long slow process of disassembling the bankrupt system and building anew in a way that worked for millenniums but was forgotten in the mad dash to embrace all things automobile.

But let's assume Steve's nutty idea has a 1% chance in actually happening the way he thinks it will. Is that how you design transit policy? Dorm room BS level altered state ideas "dooooood, like cars could just pick us up, you know like wherever and, and take us wherever...it'll be totally rad"

Lol, you guys rock.

[petro]

The majority of public transport services the poor. In Austin, that is the bus system. After that, you have a small segment of the population that uses public transport to get to work, via the commuter rail. Public transport by definition, does not include modes of transportation which are not shared by strangers without private arrangement. That includes taxicabs, carpooling, uber, cars-to-go, etc.

The idea that driverless cars via uber and cars-to-go could ever be a replacement for mass transit systems is flawed for these reasons. It does not account for the poor, doesn't move strangers en masse, puts more cars on the road, which increases pollution, energy consumption, etc.