A general experience of building more roads has been that it causes people to travel more and thus use up the capacity of the new road without relieving the old roads.
I would be very surprised if driver-less cars will result in us needing less streets. We can repurpose parking space but it’s unlikely that we can do the same for roads.
I still think that trains and subways will make sense for major arteries, and buses for very common (especially not-straight-line) routes.
I do think mixed-use-planning would both reduce trips and increase the impact of autonomous vehicles by making longer-distance commutes less common. However, there’s a lot of friction from other parts of society. It’s easier to change jobs (and job locations) than to move, especially if you own instead of rent, and especially especially if you live with a partner and you each work in different places in and around the city.
1) at worst, reducing, at best, eliminating, the headway between vehicles that’s needed to allow human drivers to react (@shminux’s “zooming in all directions”)
2) in busy times and locations, aggregate multiple journeys into multiple-occupancy vehicles running ad-hoc routes. (I think that’s what the OECD “shared mobility liveable cities” study is proposing; UberPool is similar; Citymapper’s “smart buses” are similar (though all with human drivers))
Whether or not you get multiple-occupancy vehicles depends on market economics and not what a city planner who wants low traffic desires.
Poor people might go for multiple-occupancy vehicles but I would expect that richer people do want to get faster to their destination.
Getting faster to the destination however isn’t the only thing worth consuming. You also want to spend the time in the vehicle well.
It might be that a smart startup figures out how to have multiple-occupancy vehicles that provide a desirable experience of social interaction between the passengers but in the absence of that you can do a lot more for the experience in custom designed vehicles.
You might get a new haircut on your way to work, exercise in a driving gym, get a massage, take a shower or engage in a variety of different experiences that are enabled by specialized vehicles.
The more specialized vehicles you have, the more often you will have vehicles that drive empty to their destination.
A general experience of building more roads has been that it causes people to travel more and thus use up the capacity of the new road without relieving the old roads.
I would be very surprised if driver-less cars will result in us needing less streets. We can repurpose parking space but it’s unlikely that we can do the same for roads.
Yeah, I’m not convinced in either direction that the efficiency boost from autonomous vehicles will be able to overcome Smeed’s law ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smeed%27s_law ).
I still think that trains and subways will make sense for major arteries, and buses for very common (especially not-straight-line) routes.
I do think mixed-use-planning would both reduce trips and increase the impact of autonomous vehicles by making longer-distance commutes less common. However, there’s a lot of friction from other parts of society. It’s easier to change jobs (and job locations) than to move, especially if you own instead of rent, and especially especially if you live with a partner and you each work in different places in and around the city.
Autonomy can allow for higher density by:
1) at worst, reducing, at best, eliminating, the headway between vehicles that’s needed to allow human drivers to react (@shminux’s “zooming in all directions”)
2) in busy times and locations, aggregate multiple journeys into multiple-occupancy vehicles running ad-hoc routes. (I think that’s what the OECD “shared mobility liveable cities” study is proposing; UberPool is similar; Citymapper’s “smart buses” are similar (though all with human drivers))
Whether or not you get multiple-occupancy vehicles depends on market economics and not what a city planner who wants low traffic desires.
Poor people might go for multiple-occupancy vehicles but I would expect that richer people do want to get faster to their destination.
Getting faster to the destination however isn’t the only thing worth consuming. You also want to spend the time in the vehicle well.
It might be that a smart startup figures out how to have multiple-occupancy vehicles that provide a desirable experience of social interaction between the passengers but in the absence of that you can do a lot more for the experience in custom designed vehicles.
You might get a new haircut on your way to work, exercise in a driving gym, get a massage, take a shower or engage in a variety of different experiences that are enabled by specialized vehicles.
The more specialized vehicles you have, the more often you will have vehicles that drive empty to their destination.