Highway spending increased by 90% in 2021. This is one of many reasons why car traffic is growing faster than population growth.
Highway spending increased by 90% in 2021. This is one of many reasons why car traffic is growing faster than population growth.
While I’m a strong proponent of reducing and possibly eliminating car use, this image is disingenuous. They neatly packed 69 (nice) people into a medium bus, sure. But when showing cars, it’s almost 1 persons per car (I counted 15 cars in a row and there are 4 rows, so 60 cars). You can definitely use cars more efficiently than that.
Assuming that actually autonomous self-driving cars exist, they could be extremely efficient. Especially if you treat them like ride sharing taxis. In other words, a lot of people could share the same car and that would reduce the amount of owned cars. They also never waste space being parked. So I can see how when we make a real self-driving car, it can potentially reduce traffic. Especially for all those cases where public transportation doesn’t work.
And what the heck is a “connected car”?
Two facts:
Is that for rush hour? Because, overall, the national average is closer to 1.5
Fully agree.
See the argument of induced demand: “Oh everyone is using self-driving cars, that means there’s more space for my car!”
I’m not a car owner, so I might be wrong. But I don’t think it’s normal for people to decide owning a car based on whether or not there’s room for it.
Also, I think they meant that self-driving cars that will be taking non-owners to their destination. Since there’s already a car that’s taking me, I don’t need to buy my own.
When people feel there’s more room for cars/infrastructure is more hostile to walking, they are more inclined to buy and use a car. That’s why adding lanes to highways never works to reduce traffic. You are not making more space for the same amount of cars, you’re inducing non-car owners to switch and get one, or already existing car owners to use it more, resulting in more cars in circulation.
Similarly, autonomous cars are perceived as taxis which people irrationally perceive as emotional license to acquire and use a car. Narratives like cars as freedom or tech companies coming to take your car.
Sure, it is counter intuitive, but there’s a billion dollar marketing industry dedicated to exploiting this and other similar cognitive biases. See green washing and the use of recycling to promote further consumerism. Or using health labeling to keep unhealthy foods in high demand, etc.
The problem you described sounds more like a side effect of the core issue – corporate greed. Cars can be bad, and overuse is a problem, but let’s not blame them for the faults of the system. Until the core issue is fixed, nothings will be truly efficient and useful, because those aspects will be sacrificed to profit.
And what is the average occupancy of a bus in your North American city?
Regarding your 1st point, yes, it is a problem that cars are underutilized. So I think that in addition to promoting public transport, for the time being, we could also promote proper usage of cars. Here in Europe, we don’t have much problems with cars compared to US, but oh boy you guys overseas need to tame your F-150 owners.
Regarding the 2nd point, it’s not a fact but an opinion. With which I don’t really agree. I believe that true self-driving cars will eventually surpass the capabilities of meatbags, but I will look up the literature. Solely based on what you said, it seems to me that the “dead heading” problem is just a logistical issue that can be solved using science/technology (if the fleet of cars is algorithmically dispersed enough, they will always pick up a nearby passenger, as a hypothetical solution).
But yes, the corporations remain an issue and they will surely find a way to mess everything up. That is a separate problem that also needs solving, capitalism and overconsumption.
Regarding your first point, I’m aware that that is the unfortunate truth. That IS the issue with cars when it comes to efficiency.
If you load the car with 3-5 passengers it easily beats busses in efficiency, according to my calculations. But that’s not gonna happen.Regarding your second point, the core of the issue is just capitalism, not self-driving cars or privately owned cars.
Cars don’t have to drive around empty if they are some sort of shared transport that can pick up the nearest passenger.
If companies aren’t gonna cause unnecessary car purchases only those who need them anyway will own them.
Basically, the problem with cars is not cars themselves as a concept, it’s the overuse and misuse. But unfortunately, that isn’t changing anytime soon.
Huh? If you’re being very generous you can fit 3 cars into the space of 1 bus. A bus can definitely hold more than 15 people.
I have already rescinded that decision in this comment. But I wasn’t comparing the volume, I was comparing the amount of useful work done relative to the weight. If you wish, the details are in the linked comment.
So true, extra emphasis on the misuse in the US. I was recently in Iceland, which is a very car centric country, and I was amazed by how much better their car situation was. They kept their roads nice and tight, used roundabouts, they had 30kmph(18mph) speed limits in residential and city centers, raised sidewalks, etc. Best of all most people drove small cars! It was the first time I enjoyed driving and didn’t mind being around cars because I actually felt safe.
But then I got back to the US and it was disgusting how wasteful we are with our car infrastructure. Instead of 9ft car lanes our lanes are 12ft minimum often with 8ft buffers. Even small suburban streets are 40 to 50 feet wide. Our parking lots look like lakes of asphalt, and our intersections are so fucking huge there is no safe way for a kid to use them
Even being generous with using SUVs, a really small bus can fit 30+ people, in the same space that would occupy two SUVs with less than 10 people combined.
Yeah, I already crossed out that statement. See details here.
Would love to see those calculations.
See this.
Spoiler alert: I decided I was wrong.
But try the cool calculator I made!
Every panel is flawed
People don’t walk that closely together
People don’t bike that closely together
Only a double decker bus could fit that many people without cramming people in like sardines
Moving cars should obey a safe following distance, so unless traffic is gridlocked, they shouldn’t be that close either
Bikes even if not packed as closely massively decrease the total volume. Even if they were all riding all after one another on a bike lane it would be miles shorter than cars on a road.
And as for the bus… I have been on busses that full. You clearly have not travelled peak hour traffic on a busy route. Just look at any Japanese or Indian train to see how space efficient they are able to transport petiole
“Space efficient” is a very kind euphemism for “being packed cheek by jowl and smelling what everyone had for lunch.”
Just add more buses in that case. This is the good kind of induced demand.
Even then, in a well designed city, there are enough viable alternatives when buses get too crowded (walking, cycling, trains, even a slightly different bus route).
I’m just saying that if you want people who don’t take transit to consider it, do not praise a system that requires workers to cram people forcefully into subway cars, even if it does more than double passenger capacity.
Yeah public transit is for ugly disgusting poor people!
/s
I know plenty of ugly disgusting rich people and would also not like to smell them or feel them rubbing against me.
Things being close together isn’t really an issue here because it’s just meant to visualize the volume. They are not trying to paint a realistic scenario, I don’t think.
I’d argue against that.
The concept of robot taxi sounds nice, but it devolves into an unsustainable mess. Ride sharing isn’t simple, especially when we talk about uncertain way points. Meaningfully matching cases where people can share a robot car with completely random drop off is a logistical nightmare. I used to work at a Ride hailing company as an analyst, and people being unhappy with the duration of the shared ride was the biggest issue for that category (removing for generic cases like payment issues).
Additionally, I’m sure it’s going to be a safety factor. I’m unlikely to get into a car with a random stranger when there’s literally no one else in the car. Miss me with trusting some corporate with safety in such cases.
I’ve done ride shares a few times with Uber and it went pretty well. Basically it only worked from downtown to the airport, as the only scenarios with similar routes. Maybe a sporting or music event would be the same, I don’t know
I’m not sure what you mean here by Downtown.
But again, if all you’re looking for is a good transport system from one high population density area (airports almost always are) to another high population density area, you’ll be better served by having a reliable and decently fast metro train or the likes, than a cab, as long as people don’t mind walking for 5-10 minutes from their closest stop. If that distance is higher, by all means taxis are amazing for last mile connectivity. But expecting cars to solve public transport at large has always looked like a losing battle to me.
Boston. I’ve gotten shared rides between downtown Boston and the airport but that’s the only scenario where I’ve been able to
It’s also a bit of a cautionary tale on transit, because Boston managed to screw that up with too many connections making it take too long.
If I want to goto the airport from my home in the inner ‘burbs:
I have lots of great transit options but none that connect smoothly and frequently enough to actually use. This is better when living in the city but still all the connections and delays turn what should be a great transit experience into an impractical one. I’m going to end up driving to the airport every time (up to three day trip or Uber for longer)
Never been to US, so I won’t comment on the specific infra.
However, I have lived in multiple cities, and have seen multiple cities build their metro networks from scratch in 20 years. And they’ve been absolutely over and beyond what could’ve been achieved by any improvement in car infrastructure, apart from demolishing entire houses and shops to expand the roads on both sides.
Thank you, that is a very interesting insight. But besides sharing cars in parallel (multiple passengers at once) there can also be sequential sharing, which is, I understand, a regular taxi without a driver. But I think that high availability of cars like that, which are cheap, would still reduce the amount of car owners, and consequently increase public transportation utilization.
Why do something that complicated when bus and tram lines are way more efficient? Cities need to take the money they apend on subsidizing car ownership and invest it into mass transit.
Because trams and busses can’t fulfill every need. Certain point to point transportation options still need to exist, we just need to make them as efficient as possible.
And as I mentioned in another comment,
turns out busses aren’t really as efficient as I thought they were. Fully packed small cars are way more efficient.Edit: Changed my mind. See previous comment.
Most cars only ever have 1 person in them, 2 occasionally, and rarely ever more than that inlesst it’s a damily trip somewhere. A bus with 5 passengers is taking up less space than 5 cars of any size. Even in mass transit Meccas like The Netherlands obviously still have private cars that people use. But designing transport infrastructure around more efficient methods allows for use cases where a personal car iis necessary fleeting. Obviously moving trucks and delivery vans can’t be replaced by a tram. But a well designed city wouldn’t require me to drive my car just to pick up eggs and a loaf of bread, or to get a beer at a local bar, or go to a baseball game.
Sequential sharing isn’t sharing. That’s how any cab operators functions.
The problems you’re mentioning aren’t problems with human drivers, but the problems with perfect allocation. Robo taxis won’t solve them.
You’re correct sir, this thread is nothing more than shitty propaganda. Instead of, you know, going with actual real facts.
The solution would be autonomous single seat cars, similar to the podbike. They would only be like ~1m wide (3 feet) and could use mostly bicycle transmission hardware and be extremely aerodynamic at commuting speeds.
Without needing steering you could also do two seaters with seats that face each other, so could also be low to the ground and narrow for aerodynamics.
The majority should still be bus or tram or train but autonomous cars could unlock a lot of possibilities because they fill the gaps. We just haven’t seen the “correct” design for autonomous robo taxies yet.
Interesting proposal. I think that a single-seat vehicle will inherently be too inefficient cause you need to have all the infrastructure, but you carry only 1 person. 2-4 passenger vehicles would probably still be most optimal.
But yes, I do believe that autonomous cars will unlock possibilities that humans can tap into. Eventually, robo-car will not be equal to a taxi, it will be more than that. But I hope that it’s publicly owned and not corporate.
Yeah that would need to be planned together with the city planning and redesign to make mostly walkable cities / suburbs.
Someone mentioned statistics that average passenger number is 1.2. And with an autonomous taxi you wouldn’t need to drive your kid somewhere and then pick it up, you’d throw it in the single seat podcar and get notified once it arrived. So for rides where you can’t take public transport or a bicycle / velomobile, the passenger number would be closer to 1. Then you’d have double seater podbikes which would also be good for shopping if you have bags of stuff you can put on the seat in front of you.
Then you’d still need 4 passenger vehicles but they would be incredibly rare. Plus delivery trucks for grocery stores etc.
As for embedded energy for a “podcar”, it only weighs like 50kg compared to the 2000kg of a car (ok probably more like 150kg). Presuming that autonomous vehicles are vastly more safe than normal cars and almost never crash, you save on infrastructure too. You don’t need a heavy windscreen out of glass because you don’t need high visibility (glass is required for wipers and because plastic gets dull over time). You only need much smaller motors, batteries, simple bicycle style wheels, lightweight breaks, and no steering wheel and no cockpit. At least for speeds lower than say ~60 kmh (40 mph) you could literally use bicycle hardware.
If what you say is true, and they can fit all the necessary tech into 50kg, or anything under the weight of an average human, then I agree, in efficiency, that (50%+) beats even the best bus scenario (35% at full capacity) according to my calculations. By efficiency, I mean what percentage of carried weight is useful.
Hmm, weight of the podbike is 90kg, so it’s probably closer to 200kg as an autonomous vehicle. It would be awesome if it could beat a bus but that is unlikely.
You could make it lighter but it becomes a question of manufacturing cost (lightweight is costly, like composite) and battery size and how often it drives itself to charging and how many solar / wind you need at the charging station.