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The Simple Solution to Traffic

Slow reaction times are the main cause of traffic congestion...
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Slow reaction time is a human flaw, not a vehicle flaw. It occurs whether you are in the driver's seat or on the bicycle saddle.☺

Too many cars is the main cause of traffic congestion
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Too many vehicles is, whether those vehicles are cars or bicycles.☺

CGPGrey should realize that road capacity isn't infinite
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Neither is bicycle lane capacity.☺

[...] classic concept of induced demand. If [...] more people use them, that initial time savings will eventually be eaten up,and we'll just soon end up with congestion again. It's the same scenario ofwidening/building more roads.
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Which is applicable to bicycles and bicycle lanes.☺


Bicycle congestion:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2011/sep/09/copenhagen-cycling-congestion
 
Regardless of any other benefits, it comes down to moving one person in two tonnes ofmostly empty space. It's inherently inefficient.
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Personal automovil s will still be by far the least efficient method of moving people through cities.
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Insofar as mechanical efficiency and travelling from A to B in space, yes absolutely. But that is not the full story.

With an average car, I get EDIT: privacy, freedom of movement, detachment from physical strength, /EDIT, weather protection, heating, air conditioning, airbags, crumple zones, cargo space, and the ability to increase my travel diametre three dozen-folds without breaking a sweat... for me and four others simultaneously.

Is it worth it to sacrifice efficiency for other needs? Each of us gets to answer that question freely according to his/her circumstances... and voluntarily, ban-free.
 
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brainfreezed said:
Regardless of any other benefits, it comes down to moving one person in two tonnes of mostly empty space. It's inherently inefficient.
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Cars, like any other thing on earth, are inefficient at some things, moderately efficient at some and highly efficient at others.

There aren't that many situations where vehicle weight / passenger is relevant metric of efficiency. In fact, most of that added weight is going to safety, fuel efficiency and passenger comfort features which make cars more efficient in other ways. Tradeoffs.

Also, FWIW, a subcompact car (eg. Nissan Micra) weighs ~1,000kg versus 34,000 kg for a subway car. A car w/2 passengers would have similar weight/passenger to a subway car with all its seats taken.
 
I think the inefficiency of cars is mostly about use of space. Not just the roads, but all the parking space as well. A car-dependent city has much lower density than a transit-dependent city. And lower density increases the distances that people have to travel as well.
 
Do I wish cars would simply disappear? Sure, I would love a world where we could take trains everywhere. But that just won't happen. It's not feasible in the society we've built. And thats okay. Cars do some things very, very well. Just as an example, I like to hike. A train is never going to take me to the places I like to hike, as they're relatively remote. Cars will always have a place in our society. But we are at a point where people are coming around to the idea that maybe transit isn't just a "poor people thing." Good transit makes life better, for everyone. It allows for more walkable, vibrant communities to form around it. It makes it easier to live without a bottomless money pit car in your driveway.

My fear with autonomous cars is that they will undo all that. Everyone knows we've built ourselves into a big mess - congestion, fatal crashes, etc. And what would be better than a magic fix that takes all of those negatives away? My fear is that people will see autonomous cars and think "Transit? Screw that, by the time that new rail line is built, congestion will be a thing of the past!" I've already seen comments like that on Reddit, and its not a good option to have.

For a few reasons.

One, we don't actually know if autonomous cars will be that magic fix. Lets assume we get 100% penetration of autonomous cars - so no one is driving manually anymore. Sure, our roads will have a much larger capacity, but the rule of induced demand should still be in effect. Autonomous cars increase the capacity of the roads, but not to infinity. So once those roads fill up with people, everything will have to slow down. Maybe not as bad as today, but I think we will reach a point where congestion rears its ugly head again. This is especially true on city roads, where you get down to one or two lanes in each direction. A highway 5 lines across brining in cars to city streets one or two lanes across will always lead to a capacity issue - its not technology, its geometry.

But lets also assume that congestion does not return. Wouldn't that be perfect? Well, no. Because of two things: The green belt and the Oak Ridges Morraine.

Our society is a sprawling mess. We consume beautiful, valuable farmland and put up copy and paste suburbs in their wake. Is that how we should continue? I don't think so. Thankfully, those lands are protected, so we will run out of room. We don't just want to densify, we need to. Cars promote sprawl. Cars promote the same type of "City" that we have been building for decades. And that is not a good thing. It is so incredibly wasteful by every metric, and we are finally breaking out of it. So the question of autonomous cars isn't just about the cars. Its about the society we want to live in.

Autonomous cars will change the world. But we need to direct that change in a smart way, or pretty soon we'll be right back where we started.
 
An autonomous car would always be moving - after they finish serving one user they will serve a different user - and so they will be parked less often and much less parking space would be required to accomodate them.

The most inefficient thing about cars today is how much space they take up becauyse they are parked most of the time. To make travel by a car possible, parking is needed at both origin and destination. With autonomous cars, those parking spaces would no longer be required. With less demand for parking, autonomous cars could actually make cities more compact and higher density, which would make transit and walking more viable and reduce the consumption of farmland.
 
doady said:
An autonomous car would always be moving - after they finish serving one user they will serve a different user - and so they will be parked less often and much less parking space would be required to accomodate them.
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Yeah, most early autonomous fleets would function essentially as the Manhattan cab service has for decades; roaming up and down streets hunting clients.
 
You realize what was missing in that video, right? Pedestrians. Not one mention of pedestrians, cyclists, or transit. How are pedestrians and cyclists going to cross streets without traffic signals? And isn't getting people out of cars when possible the best solution to traffic?

I expected better from CGP Grey.
 
doady said:
An autonomous car would always be moving - after they finish serving one user they will serve a different user - and so they will be parked less often and much less parking space would be required to accomodate them.

The most inefficient thing about cars today is how much space they take up becauyse they are parked most of the time. To make travel by a car possible, parking is needed at both origin and destination. With autonomous cars, those parking spaces would no longer be required. With less demand for parking, autonomous cars could actually make cities more compact and higher density, which would make transit and walking more viable and reduce the consumption of farmland.
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That's only if you assume that autonomous cars eliminates the public's desire for a private mode of transportation. No one knows that autonomous cars will eliminate the need or want for car ownership. In fact, many planners are warning that autonomy will not do anything to reduce traffic or the number of vehicles on our roads. Keesmat has touted this several times in the last few years too.
 
Good afternoon,

There doesn't have to be a contradiction: a city can be transit dependent and still have room for cars; it's just a matter of priority: public transit must be expanded, incentivized and encouraged.
Cars should have a place because they offer qualities that neither public transit nor active transportation can match, and therefore they fulfill needs and fill gaps.
Now that we know the problems that the personal automobile presents, we are able to design properly for it and keep it under control... because the problem was never the car itself, but the way we perceived it.

It's almost always the fault of the human perception of a certain (x), not the fault of that certain (x) itself.
I see (x) as something novel and become enamoured with it, skewing things in favour of it and rolling the red carpet for it over all else. Then, when I discover that (x) was not perfect -- just like everything else in this world -- or that (x) was manipulated by human agenda, I rebel wholly against it and try my best to debase and shut it down, painting it with one broad, sweeping brushstroke. There is no middle ground.

Let's stop this polar and emotionally-invested, pendulum-swing approach where we either go to one extreme trying to excessively indulge and accommodate something on the expense of everything else, or we go to the other extreme trying to monolithically ban and punish it on the expense of everything else. This pendulum approach is an overarching human characteristic so EDIT m̶u̶l̶t̶i̶d̶i̶s̶c̶i̶p̶l̶i̶n̶a̶r̶y̶ interdisciplinary /EDIT and pervasive, it permeates all aspects of life and applies equally well to a mode of transportation as it does to an economic system or an entire religion. And I gladly confess to possessing it.

I see some careless drivers killing people, and I emotionally dash to label the automobile as an evil killing machine with no place in the future.
I see some irresponsible corporations engage in deceptive marketing, and I rashly stamp Capitalism as an immoral system with no place in the future.
I see some devious priests molesting children, and I vociferously generalize Catholicism of being an abusive cult with no place in the future.
I see some brainwashed terrorists carry out a suicide attack, and I readily bolt to pigeonhole Islam as a violent dogma with no place in the future.

This is facile and naive.

There are, in my opinion, certain (x)'s that we have the right to categorize as absolutely bad and worthy of outlaw... that we are undoubtedly better without and must dispense with and evolve past... like nuclear weapons, fossil fuels, smoking, gambling, and pornography, to name a few... and I know we shall... just like we have rid ourselves of slavery, restricted suffrage, and absolute monarchy in the past, to name a few. But this is done with the low simmer of time and consensus cooking slowly all the way through, not with the quick boil of a revolutionary ban, scorching the surface and leaving the inside raw. We've tried that before with a little thing called science, and it didn't end well... so let's not repeat the same mistake with the car.
 
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The problem we have in Toronto is the transportation department (roads) who see buses, streetcars, and light rail as single vehicles, instead of the numbers of people onboard them. They see the one hundred people onboard a streetcar as being equal to the single-occupant automobile.
 
Tuck said:
Our society is a sprawling mess. We consume beautiful, valuable farmland and put up copy and paste suburbs in their wake. Is that how we should continue? I don't think so. Thankfully, those lands are protected, so we will run out of room. We don't just want to densify, we need to. Cars promote sprawl. Cars promote the same type of "City" that we have been building for decades. And that is not a good thing. It is so incredibly wasteful by every metric, and we are finally breaking out of it. So the question of autonomous cars isn't just about the cars. Its about the society we want to live in.
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ShonTron said:
You realize what was missing in that video, right? Pedestrians. Not one mention of pedestrians, cyclists, or transit. How are pedestrians and cyclists going to cross streets without traffic signals? And isn't getting people out of cars when possible the best solution to traffic?

I expected better from CGP Grey.
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Amen to both.
 
Tuscani01 said:
That's only if you assume that autonomous cars eliminates the public's desire for a private mode of transportation. No one knows that autonomous cars will eliminate the need or want for car ownership.
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Autonomous cars don't have to eliminate anything. If autonomous cars reduce car ownership by only 20%, that is still beneficial.

Tuscani01 said:
In fact, many planners are warning that autonomy will not do anything to reduce traffic or the number of vehicles on our roads. Keesmat has touted this several times in the last few years too.
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I think if autonomous cars reduce parking, it would make cities more compact and thus indirectly promote transit, walking, cycling. If you look at MCC for example, parking is the #1 barrier to new development now (especially office development).

But autonomous cars could also have a direct effect on the number on cars because they would be able to identity carpooling opportunities and automatically arrange for people to carpool together .

So for the average user, they would save money on parking and fuel, save money on buying car and insurance, but still enjoy the flexibility and convenience of car. So what would be the benefit of car ownership for them?
 
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