Car2Go + DriverlessCar + Uber - Better than mass transit someday? (Austin: safe area, buying)

[jb9152]

Originally Posted by GoddessPapa

Driverless cars are a panacea to many traffic issues, particularly with regard to safety.

No doubt. They will bring positive revolutionary change to an industry that really hasn't seen a huge leap in technology in some time.

Originally Posted by GoddessPapa

Even if we took the worst case scenario, which is that driverless cars removed no net vehicles from the mix, ....(quote cut for length)

All of which is nice but doesn't do a thing for system capacity, which is the number one gorilla in the room transportation issue that we face as a region.

Driverless cars will come, no matter what. There are too many good reasons not to have them. However, I was responding to the original poster's speculation that a horde of driverless cars will be the way that we fix our traffic issues in Austin. That is patently not true. If anything, as I've been saying until I'm blue in my electronic face, widespread adoption of automation will result in capacity *losses*. The only way that that wouldn't be true is if we were all, as drivers, diligently self-enforcing the safe stopping distance upon ourselves, and the police had enough resources and "give a damn" to enforce it as law.

[jb9152]

Originally Posted by Austin97

Sorry, I started to then got interrupted and forgot.

This is one way to calculate capacity. Capacity clearly has to do with the # of lanes AND the speed of the traffic.

Appendix N: Procedures for Estimating Highway Capacity - HPMS Field Manual - Highway Performance Monitoring System - Policy Information - FHWA

BaseCap = 1,000 + 20FFS; for FFS <= 60 (10)
BaseCap = 2,200; for FFS > 60...

(+ enough engineering stuff to make your eyes roll into the back of your head...)

All of which is very interesting (and which I've seen many times before, and used many times before since this is what I do for a living), *if* you're talking about human-controlled autos, where we don't care about maintaining an enforced safe stopping distance. Once you begin enforcing separation distance between individual vehicles, it's a new ballgame. The calculation actually gets easier and more exact. No more (or very little) estimation involved (note the title - "Procedures for Estimating..."). There is a fixed distance between units; it's pretty easy to calculate flow when every particle is moving uniformly with the same fixed distance between them. If you were to do that calculation, though, you'd find that capacity goes *down* with uniformity and strict enforcement of separation distances.

[jb9152]

Originally Posted by Austin97

...Also instead of busses/trains on fixed routes there could be driverless vans that pick up 3-4 people in the same area going to roughly the same destination.

It's a good thought, if you can get folks to change their travel behavior. Problem is, it doesn't overcome the issues caused by the combination of a constrained guideway (the highways) and enforced separation distances between vehicles.

I guess what I'm saying is that if you could get more people into fewer vehicles, that's a really good thing. That's why mass transit works in the places that it's most successful - there is an intentional focus on moving *people* rather than moving *cars*. And high capacity transit can move a LOT more people than a fleet of 3-4 passenger vans.

But, if we can get people to adopt ridesharing more frequently, then good on us! I just don't want anyone to be laboring under the misapprehension that it will solve the capacity deficit problem. It will help, for sure.

[jb9152]

Originally Posted by austin-steve

Brining it back to Austin, I just think it would be a travesty to spend 1.4 Billion for the starter leg of a dead and ineffective transportation model that doesn't solve the transportation or traffic problems of Austin.

Driverless vehicles will not only fail to "solve" the transportation problems of Austin, widespread adoption will make those problems worse. It's just laws of physics. But again, if you think Disney can invent some kind of anti-matter doohickey that somehow allows the autonomous cars to enter another dimension where the basic physical laws don't exist, then you're welcome to that belief.

I said this before, but it bears repeating, I think. I'm a conservative, believe it or not. I believe whole heartedly in the free market, which includes at a minimum ideas and commerce between free actors. I don't like it when government interferes in people's lives, even when it thinks it's "helping". Where I deviate from my political soulmates is that I refuse to believe in things that are simply matters of fantasy or faith. This driverless car debate, to me, is roughly equivalent to the left's dogged belief in the religion of "anthropogenic global warming"...or "climate change"...or whatever the en vogue term is today. It's the right's Manbearpig.

There are physical realities that have to be considered. There are the realities of regulatory government and risk-averse manufacturers that have to be considered. And when I do that, the veil falls away, and I see that the autonomous vehicle is a really great idea, that will do nothing to solve our primary problem of capacity deficit. Because of that whole "inconvenient truth" of things like gravity, momentum, friction, etc.

[Komeht]

Originally Posted by austin-steve

Agreed on the shared rides. When summoning a car to take me downtown at 8AM let's say, there could be a toggle for "Share=Yes" meaning I'm willing to pair up with one or more riders. This would be incentivized somehow, perhaps with cheaper trip charge.

The Disney idea is brilliant. And I'm sure a lot of the science Disney knows about moving hordes of people would be directly applicable to moving hoards of cars.

Brining it back to Austin, I just think it would be a travesty to spend 1.4 Billion for the starter leg of a dead and ineffective transportation model that doesn't solve the transportation or traffic problems of Austin.

Austin is investing in Blockbuster when it should be preparing for NetFlix.

More likely that SDV are the next highly hyped Segways. Anyone see any cities that have been redesigned to accommodate Segways?

You invest in the gold standard proven technology that has proven it's value time and time again all over the world.

[austin-steve]

JB, you sound like a trained, knowledgeable person who abides reality. Exactly the sort of person from whom creative, innovative problem solving can't emerge. You're constrained by your logic and what you know and believe. Imagine if Steve Jobs or Bill Gates had had a childhood buddy like you, naysaying and declaring impossible their crazy ideas instead of asking "why not?".

History is replete with the impossible becoming reality. I choose to believe in the capacity or American Ingenuity to overcome the impossible. Driverless cars will come, until they are displaced by personal flying craft, which will not be constrained by the limitations of surface-based road lanes.

Steve

[Komeht]

Originally Posted by austin-steve

JB, you sound like a trained, knowledgeable person who abides reality. Exactly the sort of person from whom creative, innovative problem solving can't emerge. You're constrained by your logic and what you know and believe. Imagine if Steve Jobs or Bill Gates had had a childhood buddy like you, naysaying and declaring impossible their crazy ideas instead of asking "why not?".

History is replete with the impossible becoming reality. I choose to believe in the capacity or American Ingenuity to overcome the impossible. Driverless cars will come, until they are displaced by personal flying craft, which will not be constrained by the limitations of surface-based road lanes.

Steve

Yeah dood - like totally.

[jb9152]

Originally Posted by austin-steve

JB, you sound like a trained, knowledgeable person who abides reality. Exactly the sort of person from whom creative, innovative problem solving can't emerge. You're constrained by your logic and what you know and believe. Imagine if Steve Jobs or Bill Gates had had a childhood buddy like you, naysaying and declaring impossible their crazy ideas instead of asking "why not?".

History is replete with the impossible becoming reality. I choose to believe in the capacity or American Ingenuity to overcome the impossible. Driverless cars will come, until they are displaced by personal flying craft, which will not be constrained by the limitations of surface-based road lanes.

Steve

And no offense intended, Steve, but you sound like a religious zealot. Now we're talking flying cars? Wow. Just wow.

I have no problem with out of the box thinking; I've done my fair share. But I'm not talking about minor engineering issues that need a little innovation to overcome. I am talking reality - physical laws of the universe. Maybe the manufacturers will pull off some kind of technological miracle to sidestep reality, but I remain skeptical - both of their ability to do that, and their dedication to anything except their bottom line (which is as it should be), which makes them risk-averse and less likely to be playing around with bending time and space for the sake of a better automobile.

[GravityMan]

I think the biggest hurdles for driverless cars will be political, regulatory and cultural, not technical. (I feel the same way about many other budding technologies, such as Google Glass, Oculus Rift, etc.) I can see certain entities (notably those who feel threatened) spreading FUD about driverless vehicles. And there are a lot of people out there who are just wary of change in general.

Within several decades, I cam see the technology working primarily as a mass rental service, kinda like the taxi industry on a widespread scale. Few people will actually own their driverless cars. Like the OP mentioned, use an app to arrange pickup, dropoff, etc. After the car drops you off at work or whatever, it can go provide service for the next customer. There will be less need for large parking lots in front of every building. In fact, provided people adopt this on a very large scale, it could ultimately lead to fewer cars on the road in general. Cars today spend most of their time parked somewhere instead of in operation.

The tech ideally would be efficient enough so that a vehicle could be ready at a moment's notice for certain cases...for example, your wife is pregnant and just went into labor...you need to get her to the hospital now.

I can also see driverless vehicle becoming popular for shipping (excluding large freight), especially for SMBs and individuals. Instead of making traditional arrangements with UPS, FedEx or USPS, just summon a specially equipped vehicle to transport the cargo directly to the recipient. The vehicle could be equipped with a robot or drone to drop off the package if the recipient isn't home and if it's a safe area.

My biggest technical concern is security. What if one of these things gets remotely hacked, and used for a remote kidnapping or crash? I believe that just about any piece of tech engineered by human hands could be hacked by a different person if he's talented enough.

I still think there will be a place for buses and light rail, though (although I suppose the buses could eventually be driver-less themselves). Those options will probably be more affordable for low-income people.

[Komeht]

Originally Posted by jb9152

And no offense intended, Steve, but you sound like a religious zealot. Now we're talking flying cars? Wow. Just wow.

I have no problem with out of the box thinking; I've done my fair share. But I'm not talking about minor engineering issues that need a little innovation to overcome. I am talking reality - physical laws of the universe. Maybe the manufacturers will pull off some kind of technological miracle to sidestep reality, but I remain skeptical - both of their ability to do that, and their dedication to anything except their bottom line (which is as it should be), which makes them risk-averse and less likely to be playing around with bending time and space for the sake of a better automobile.

You don't even have to get to physics. It's simple geometry and geography. I posted above Jarrett Walker's article on this - but Steve isn't interested in actually dealing with reality but thinks we can over come spacial limitations by. . .I'm not sure what.

Driverless cars may one day solve certain problems, but not the need for mass transit. And anyone who thinks this isn't thinking clearly at all.