Why self-drive rather than conventional taxis with drivers? The safety case for having a driver are self-evident; plus benefits such as someone able to help less mobile passengers in and out of the car, carry shopping etc. Self drive offsets the cost of the driver with a more expensive vehicle, and other problems (will a self-drive taxi pull over and throw out someone about to throw up after a night on the town ... leaving the mess unknown until the next passenger refuses to get in?)
Because people are expensive.
Autonomous vehicles are very expensive to develop, but the marginal cost of production is not so high. In terms of parts, it's not really more than an extra $1000 in bulk - and if it's truly autonomous, you can scrap the driver controls, so you get some back. So to what degree is "a more expensive vehicle" true? It depends on your point of view - right now, there is no suitable production autonomous car. In 30 years time, every car might be autonomous, and the marginal cost to the user will be small.
But people are expensive, and will get progressively more expensive.
(A self-drive taxi would identify the vomit with its internal cameras, automatically charge the user's credit card for cleaning, take itself out of service and return to base for said cleaning, and copy the full video of the journey to the legal department in case the customer disputed the charge.)
Taxis, self drive or otherwise, don't solve the congestion problem. Like any four wheeled vehicle designed to carry passengers, with a single occupant they're appallingly space inefficient.
No, they don't - but if you're the only person that wants to make a particular journey, a taxi is the best option. You want public transport for popular routes, and personal transport for unpopular routes. Long journeys might include both.
The thing that useful, affordable taxis let you do is not own a car, which is where the battle is. Once someone owns a car, the marginal cost of using it is almost always going to be lower than any other form of transport. But if I have some kind of taxi available for my oddball journeys, then I don't need to own a car, and so there's no temptation to not use public transport for common journeys.
The most practical system is mass transit combined with personal rapid transit and personal public transport with available vehicle rental for longer and inter city transit.
At present operating a self-drive taxi would include insurance to cover what happens when something goes wrong with the complex algorithms inside the computer and it causes an accident. Until the insurance companies think that's a smaller risk than a human driver (who would need additional qualifications for driving, so be a better driver than the average car driver) that's always going to be an ongoing additional cost.
At present operating a self-drive taxi would include insurance to cover what happens when something goes wrong with the complex algorithms inside the computer and it causes an accident. Until the insurance companies think that's a smaller risk than a human driver (who would need additional qualifications for driving, so be a better driver than the average car driver) that's always going to be an ongoing additional cost.
True. I suppose it depends on what timescale you're thinking - are you trying to get something going in the next couple of years in existing towns and cities, or are you planning the construction of a new town?
(Although I think from the point of view of town planning, it doesn't matter. Unless you are imagining the sort of personal transport system that needs dedicated roads, the needs of a fleet of self-driving taxis and human-driven taxis are pretty much the same.)
Almost by definition, those advocating a 15-min city are talking about redevelopment of existing urban areas. There isn't space for the construction of new towns from the ground up. So, it's not going to be a rapid process of getting from where we are to that point, although a lot of our urban areas (at least in Europe) are already not that far from that ideal with the exception of work. Anything where the basic infrastructure was laid down before about 1980 would have been built with local services in place, only the more recent developments have been built around an assumption that people will have cars to get to more distant services. Many of those services may have been lost, but there's scope to replace them.
And, I agree that the infrastructure needs for private cars and taxis (whether or not with a human driver) are largely indistinguishable with the exception of car parking requirements - fewer private cars significantly reduces the needs for car parking (of course, many of those older urban developments have inadequate parking facilities for the current private ownership needs so reducing that need is beneficial without leaving loads of unused parking capacity). At the moment we need to significantly reduce private car use, that means not investing in increasing capacity. So investing in new roads for (driverless) taxis would be counter productive.
The big issues with driverless cars (whether used as taxis or otherwise) are that this is predicated on the assumption that the current town layouts based on car use are not going to change and that we can continue to build very low density inefficient housing estates (and, we do need to be moving towards higher density more efficient housing), and that it's another example of "we don't need to change, we'll just develop new technology to solve our problems" - which is a dangerous route to take, we need to do what we can with existing technology and consider new tech a bonus.
The big issues with driverless cars (whether used as taxis or otherwise) are that this is predicated on the assumption that the current town layouts based on car use are not going to change and that we can continue to build very low density inefficient housing estates (and, we do need to be moving towards higher density more efficient housing), and that it's another example of "we don't need to change, we'll just develop new technology to solve our problems" - which is a dangerous route to take, we need to do what we can with existing technology and consider new tech a bonus.
I don't believe that you can replace all private travel with public transport, nor do you need to. You need to replace the majority of private travel with mass transit. There will always be a long tail of unusual journeys, where personal transport is appropriate (because only one person wants to go there). If taxis, or car-share services, can meet that need (both in terms of availability and affordability) then you remove an incentive for people to own a car.
I keep imagining a future where you book individual or family sized pods that have enough battery to trundle around the local area but anything longer and they get coupled into a road train, with a tractor unit plying a particular stretch of main road before decoupling and either going into another local area or joining a different train for the next section of the route. The tractors would follow designated routes like buses but the pods could clip on and off as needed, just hitching a lift and extending their range significantly. Automate it and you get the best of private travel and public transport. Need to take more luggage? Just charter a luggage pod of the right size and set it to the same destination as you. Going on a longer journey? Book a larger pod with a table, toilet and bed.
I keep imagining a future where you book individual or family sized pods that have enough battery to trundle around the local area but anything longer and they get coupled into a road train
It's a cool sf-type idea, but I think these suffer from the same congestion issues that @KarlLB mentioned. You've still got a lot of overhead in each pod compared to the size of a person. Buses and trains at rush hour are pretty efficient at packing people into a small space.
Yet buses, trains ...& most especially trams ....in city life tend to be run for profit. Which means, no checking on behaviour of users.
I once had the misfortune to travel from Manchester to London on a train full of football supporters returning from a match. They weren't bad guys, by any means - they were a load of guys having a good time - but the good time they were having wasn't consistent with the good time I wanted to have. Which was a problem because of our shared space.
This isn't a problem unique to public transport - it also occurs in blocks of flats, and anywhere else where people are trying to live in close proximity to other people.
Perhaps it's worse on public transport because it's usually strangers you need to be considerate of you, rather than your neighbour.
I keep imagining a future where you book individual or family sized pods that have enough battery to trundle around the local area but anything longer and they get coupled into a road train
It's a cool sf-type idea, but I think these suffer from the same congestion issues that @KarlLB mentioned. You've still got a lot of overhead in each pod compared to the size of a person. Buses and trains at rush hour are pretty efficient at packing people into a small space.
Only during certain hours, if then. Buses are subsidised. In capitol costs and in operating costs. Not to mention infrastructure repair.
Only during certain hours, if then. Buses are subsidised. In capitol costs and in operating costs. Not to mention infrastructure repair.
Those certain hours are the hours at which congestion is the biggest problem. Public transport fits more people per square foot of road space than personal transport, by quite a large factor. The fact that buses are subsidized doesn't change their size, nor does it change the size of private vehicles.
If you move people out of buses and in to individual pod-transports, they'll take up more space at peak hours. If you already have a congestion problem, you just made it worse.
Only during certain hours, if then. Buses are subsidised. In capitol costs and in operating costs. Not to mention infrastructure repair.
Those certain hours are the hours at which congestion is the biggest problem. Public transport fits more people per square foot of road space than personal transport, by quite a large factor. The fact that buses are subsidized doesn't change their size, nor does it change the size of private vehicles.
If you move people out of buses and in to individual pod-transports, they'll take up more space at peak hours. If you already have a congestion problem, you just made it worse.
Not necessarily, because a lot of the folks who live off the bus routes would otherwise just drive, not take the bus. And, unlike buses, the tractor units could pick up and set down while moving, improving the flow of traffic and improving journey times.
And, unlike buses, the tractor units could pick up and set down while moving, improving the flow of traffic and improving journey times.
What happens when someone in the middle of the tractor’s pod train wants to stop but all the people behind them don’t?
I was imaging it as have a telescopic "spine" that pods could lock on to. As the pods can move independently the pod would simply increase its motor speed to match the tractor and detach itself to take whatever junction it needed. This would be made easier by journeys being pre-planned so most of the time the next pod needing to leave would be at the rear.
Not necessarily, but I'm probably not explaining the idea very well, and it's far enough of in the future in terms of technology and cultural change to not be spending too much time on.
What's interesting to me is what the trade-offs are. What has to be given up to have a 15-minute city ?
Is it density ? No-one can have a house with a large garden ?
Depends on how large 'large' is. Certainly mid-density housing is entirely compatible with a 15-min city; something similar to the typical 1930s semi-detached housing developments would be fine, as are the various new towns of the 1960s (Milton Keynes, East Kilbride etc). Lots of houses with gardens, and lots of public open space ... probably if the gardens were very much larger this would be at the expense of the public space (personally, I'd value public space above large personal gardens).
Are we talking about a city of 250,000 people divided into 25 more-or-less self-contained districts of 10,000 people, with identical facilities ? Including for example a bookshop that stocks only what appeals to the average person.
15min walking distance in medium density housing (see above) would be closer to districts of 20-30,000 people. If you roll that upto 15min cycling distance then you'd have towns of at least 100,000 all being in that distance. With a proportion of higher density blocks of comfortable sized flats then it wouldn't be impossible for a town of 250,000 to contain 8-10 districts of 25-30,000 people who are all within a short walk of facilities supplying everyday needs (schools, grocery stores, churches, hairdressers, GP and dentist, recreational space, library etc) with the facilities that do need a larger population (community theatre, places of worship for smaller religions, specialist stores and recreational activities etc) within reach either in a central area or as part of the facilities of other districts.
Is it mass transit ? Is a high-frequency tram system only viable where there are concentrated land uses (a central business district, rather than 25 x 24 different travel demand vectors ?)
You probably would need to think carefully about mass transit; de-emphasise a spoke-like pattern serving a central district to also include circular routes that directly connect the peripheral areas without (necessarily) also serving the centre. Many of our towns and cities are laid out with ring roads for cars, why not also have bus or light rail follow similar circular routes?
I'm with you there Alan. I had a student summer job placement in London some decades ago and I had to take a Picadilly line tube half-way to the centre before taking another branch to where I wanted to go. Also the ticket zone model is expensive if you're not doing a 'spoke' journey - something I suffer from here in semi-rural area where going by bus to the nearby big town is cheaper than going to a closer peripheral town.
Only during certain hours, if then. Buses are subsidised. In capitol costs and in operating costs. Not to mention infrastructure repair.
Those certain hours are the hours at which congestion is the biggest problem. Public transport fits more people per square foot of road space than personal transport, by quite a large factor. The fact that buses are subsidized doesn't change their size, nor does it change the size of private vehicles.
If you move people out of buses and in to individual pod-transports, they'll take up more space at peak hours. If you already have a congestion problem, you just made it worse.
It isn't either or, it can be both. Just as you do not take an aeroplane to the market, you wouldn't use the same method of transport for every situation. Simply because a bus is full doesn't mean it has to be. Frequency is an issue in some communities or areas.
Higher capacity vehicles for heavily used routes during peak times, smaller ones for the other places. Working that out wouldn't even require a computer. the problem is the initial costs and the transitional periods.
It's been hypothesised that driverless cars will actually free up considerable space for other purposes, as fewer car parking spots are needed and/or the way parking is arranged changes significantly.
The cars will spend more time on the road actually being used. And while peak times are an issue for capacity, the crucial element is that you don't actually need a car to be near you for all the time you don't need transport. Your car doesn't need to be sitting in a garage/carport at your home all night. If it needs to be parked, then it can be with some other cars in a local depot.
It's been hypothesised that driverless cars will actually free up considerable space for other purposes, as fewer car parking spots are needed and/or the way parking is arranged changes significantly.
The cars will spend more time on the road actually being used. And while peak times are an issue for capacity, the crucial element is that you don't actually need a car to be near you for all the time you don't need transport. Your car doesn't need to be sitting in a garage/carport at your home all night. If it needs to be parked, then it can be with some other cars in a local depot.
I've also heard that people have, or would, have their driverless car circle the block while they shopped or banked or whatever. Thus increasing the net cars on the road in urban areas.
I love to drive. I FUCKING LOVE TO DRIVE!
But personal transport needs to go, or at least be greatly diminished. Personal driverless cars are, at best, a stop-gap.
Your car doesn't need to be sitting in a garage/carport at your home all night. If it needs to be parked, then it can be with some other cars in a local depot.
One of the things that car ownership buys you is opportunity. My car is parked at my house, so if I want to go somewhere, I can just go. I don't have to think about it, or plan for it - I just do it.
Similarly, when I'm at work, my car is waiting for me. When I'm ready, I can leave. If I need to stay an extra 20 minutes to finish something off, it's easy to do that.
Replicating this ease of travel with a driverless taxi system, or public transport, is hard. How far in advance do people have to order the car to come to them? Is there a guarantee that there are enough cars, or do I have to plan for the possibility that I might want to go somewhere, but all the cars are in use? Perhaps in practice that's not all that different from "there's a lot of congestion so your journey takes a long time" but it feels a bit different.
That feeling is important to consider. Airlines do not board in the most efficient manner. The most efficient manner would cause more frustration in passengers than the current, inefficient ones
I have looked at the local car share scheme, but the annual subscription is too high to justify it for the very few times I want to use a car when Mr Dragon has taken ours somewhere else. We're very lucky that this is one of the best cities in the UK for public transport.
When we were house hunting one of my absolutely essentials was no longer than 45 minutes on public transport to get to work. I get my season ticket at a reduced rate through a travel to work scheme, so I only need to pay if I have to use one of the other operators, which is not very often.
Living in Northern California known for its wild fires, I see my car as an escape vehicle and would not dream of not having one, even if I could walk everywhere and had great public transportation. The hills are on fire, when does the schedule say the next bus will arrive? People in cities near us have also had to escape.
My Facebook feed today included this app with a discussion of difference in journey times by public transport and car. But, it'll also show you what would be included within a 15min travel distance from anywhere you wish to enter ... but, maybe see how far from a 15min city your current home is (I confess, slightly less than I'd assumed based on the fact that it put the 15min walking distance at a point I could manage in about 10mins, maybe I walk too quickly?)
My Facebook feed today included this app with a discussion of difference in journey times by public transport and car. But, it'll also show you what would be included within a 15min travel distance from anywhere you wish to enter ... but, maybe see how far from a 15min city your current home is (I confess, slightly less than I'd assumed based on the fact that it put the 15min walking distance at a point I could manage in about 10mins, maybe I walk too quickly?)
It's a bit ambitious on bike though. It reckons it's an hour to where I work, which it is, but that's getting a wriggle on on a lightweight road bike using the fastest (if hostile) roads.
It's a bit ambitious on bike though. It reckons it's an hour to where I work, which it is, but that's getting a wriggle on on a lightweight road bike using the fastest (if hostile) roads.
I think it must assume that cyclists don't stop at traffic lights.
It's a bit ambitious on bike though. It reckons it's an hour to where I work, which it is, but that's getting a wriggle on on a lightweight road bike using the fastest (if hostile) roads.
I think it must assume that cyclists don't stop at traffic lights.
My Facebook feed today included this app with a discussion of difference in journey times by public transport and car. But, it'll also show you what would be included within a 15min travel distance from anywhere you wish to enter ... but, maybe see how far from a 15min city your current home is (I confess, slightly less than I'd assumed based on the fact that it put the 15min walking distance at a point I could manage in about 10mins, maybe I walk too quickly?)
It's a bit ambitious on bike though. It reckons it's an hour to where I work, which it is, but that's getting a wriggle on on a lightweight road bike using the fastest (if hostile) roads.
Having had a look, I'd agree. It seems to assume an average speed of about 15mph, very difficult to manage in most places for normal people (ie: me - looking at several places on the 15min border from here it shows I'd struggle to average 10mph even if I didn't get stuck at traffic lights).
My Facebook feed today included this app with a discussion of difference in journey times by public transport and car. But, it'll also show you what would be included within a 15min travel distance from anywhere you wish to enter ... but, maybe see how far from a 15min city your current home is (I confess, slightly less than I'd assumed based on the fact that it put the 15min walking distance at a point I could manage in about 10mins, maybe I walk too quickly?)
I was very confused about how my "15 minute drive" map could have a couple of exclaves, until I realised they were centered around motorway junctions
Comments
Because people are expensive.
Autonomous vehicles are very expensive to develop, but the marginal cost of production is not so high. In terms of parts, it's not really more than an extra $1000 in bulk - and if it's truly autonomous, you can scrap the driver controls, so you get some back. So to what degree is "a more expensive vehicle" true? It depends on your point of view - right now, there is no suitable production autonomous car. In 30 years time, every car might be autonomous, and the marginal cost to the user will be small.
But people are expensive, and will get progressively more expensive.
(A self-drive taxi would identify the vomit with its internal cameras, automatically charge the user's credit card for cleaning, take itself out of service and return to base for said cleaning, and copy the full video of the journey to the legal department in case the customer disputed the charge.)
No, they don't - but if you're the only person that wants to make a particular journey, a taxi is the best option. You want public transport for popular routes, and personal transport for unpopular routes. Long journeys might include both.
The thing that useful, affordable taxis let you do is not own a car, which is where the battle is. Once someone owns a car, the marginal cost of using it is almost always going to be lower than any other form of transport. But if I have some kind of taxi available for my oddball journeys, then I don't need to own a car, and so there's no temptation to not use public transport for common journeys.
True. I suppose it depends on what timescale you're thinking - are you trying to get something going in the next couple of years in existing towns and cities, or are you planning the construction of a new town?
(Although I think from the point of view of town planning, it doesn't matter. Unless you are imagining the sort of personal transport system that needs dedicated roads, the needs of a fleet of self-driving taxis and human-driven taxis are pretty much the same.)
And, I agree that the infrastructure needs for private cars and taxis (whether or not with a human driver) are largely indistinguishable with the exception of car parking requirements - fewer private cars significantly reduces the needs for car parking (of course, many of those older urban developments have inadequate parking facilities for the current private ownership needs so reducing that need is beneficial without leaving loads of unused parking capacity). At the moment we need to significantly reduce private car use, that means not investing in increasing capacity. So investing in new roads for (driverless) taxis would be counter productive.
The big issues with driverless cars (whether used as taxis or otherwise) are that this is predicated on the assumption that the current town layouts based on car use are not going to change and that we can continue to build very low density inefficient housing estates (and, we do need to be moving towards higher density more efficient housing), and that it's another example of "we don't need to change, we'll just develop new technology to solve our problems" - which is a dangerous route to take, we need to do what we can with existing technology and consider new tech a bonus.
I don't believe that you can replace all private travel with public transport, nor do you need to. You need to replace the majority of private travel with mass transit. There will always be a long tail of unusual journeys, where personal transport is appropriate (because only one person wants to go there). If taxis, or car-share services, can meet that need (both in terms of availability and affordability) then you remove an incentive for people to own a car.
It's a cool sf-type idea, but I think these suffer from the same congestion issues that @KarlLB mentioned. You've still got a lot of overhead in each pod compared to the size of a person. Buses and trains at rush hour are pretty efficient at packing people into a small space.
Tram travel after 7pm in our previous city..... was a nightmare.
Were we have ever stayed, I would have passed my driving test.
I once had the misfortune to travel from Manchester to London on a train full of football supporters returning from a match. They weren't bad guys, by any means - they were a load of guys having a good time - but the good time they were having wasn't consistent with the good time I wanted to have. Which was a problem because of our shared space.
This isn't a problem unique to public transport - it also occurs in blocks of flats, and anywhere else where people are trying to live in close proximity to other people.
Perhaps it's worse on public transport because it's usually strangers you need to be considerate of you, rather than your neighbour.
Those certain hours are the hours at which congestion is the biggest problem. Public transport fits more people per square foot of road space than personal transport, by quite a large factor. The fact that buses are subsidized doesn't change their size, nor does it change the size of private vehicles.
If you move people out of buses and in to individual pod-transports, they'll take up more space at peak hours. If you already have a congestion problem, you just made it worse.
Not necessarily, because a lot of the folks who live off the bus routes would otherwise just drive, not take the bus. And, unlike buses, the tractor units could pick up and set down while moving, improving the flow of traffic and improving journey times.
What happens when someone in the middle of the tractor’s pod train wants to stop but all the people behind them don’t?
I was imaging it as have a telescopic "spine" that pods could lock on to. As the pods can move independently the pod would simply increase its motor speed to match the tractor and detach itself to take whatever junction it needed. This would be made easier by journeys being pre-planned so most of the time the next pod needing to leave would be at the rear.
Not necessarily, but I'm probably not explaining the idea very well, and it's far enough of in the future in terms of technology and cultural change to not be spending too much time on.
I'm with you there Alan. I had a student summer job placement in London some decades ago and I had to take a Picadilly line tube half-way to the centre before taking another branch to where I wanted to go. Also the ticket zone model is expensive if you're not doing a 'spoke' journey - something I suffer from here in semi-rural area where going by bus to the nearby big town is cheaper than going to a closer peripheral town.
Higher capacity vehicles for heavily used routes during peak times, smaller ones for the other places. Working that out wouldn't even require a computer. the problem is the initial costs and the transitional periods.
The cars will spend more time on the road actually being used. And while peak times are an issue for capacity, the crucial element is that you don't actually need a car to be near you for all the time you don't need transport. Your car doesn't need to be sitting in a garage/carport at your home all night. If it needs to be parked, then it can be with some other cars in a local depot.
I've also heard that people have, or would, have their driverless car circle the block while they shopped or banked or whatever. Thus increasing the net cars on the road in urban areas.
But personal transport needs to go, or at least be greatly diminished. Personal driverless cars are, at best, a stop-gap.
One of the things that car ownership buys you is opportunity. My car is parked at my house, so if I want to go somewhere, I can just go. I don't have to think about it, or plan for it - I just do it.
Similarly, when I'm at work, my car is waiting for me. When I'm ready, I can leave. If I need to stay an extra 20 minutes to finish something off, it's easy to do that.
Replicating this ease of travel with a driverless taxi system, or public transport, is hard. How far in advance do people have to order the car to come to them? Is there a guarantee that there are enough cars, or do I have to plan for the possibility that I might want to go somewhere, but all the cars are in use? Perhaps in practice that's not all that different from "there's a lot of congestion so your journey takes a long time" but it feels a bit different.
When we were house hunting one of my absolutely essentials was no longer than 45 minutes on public transport to get to work. I get my season ticket at a reduced rate through a travel to work scheme, so I only need to pay if I have to use one of the other operators, which is not very often.
It's a bit ambitious on bike though. It reckons it's an hour to where I work, which it is, but that's getting a wriggle on on a lightweight road bike using the fastest (if hostile) roads.
I think it must assume that cyclists don't stop at traffic lights.
Ha fucking ha.
I was very confused about how my "15 minute drive" map could have a couple of exclaves, until I realised they were centered around motorway junctions