First we need to shut down the OMB. Then, if developers don't like the municipal's plan, they won't mess it up.
I'd say the exact opposite, the OMB should become the de-facto planning body for the province. We need more density, especially near transit stations, which municipalities fight tooth and nail. There's no consequence for municipalities not making their targets.
Any municipality that fails to meet a certain target (say 80% of development in built-up areas, within 1 km of a rapid transit line) would automatically have all development permits handled by the OMB. That would be a good incentive for them 1) to stop rubber stamping greenfield development and 2) to build more rapid transit, and to not reject 100% provincially funded lines (à la Brampton, or almost Hamilton), so that they allow more development.
Perhaps I am of the wrong generation, and have admittedly been fairly wrong on the advancement of technology in the past, but I just can't envision ubiquitous fully autonomous vehicles roaming random routes, in our climate, in even the mid-distance future. I have read, but cannot cite, reports from experts in the field - not proponents - that they are decades away. It would seem financial folly to design current transit infrastructure with them in mind. Some thoughts on some of the ideas raised:
-if AVs were privately owned, then it seems that the doubling of trips between home and transit hubs would seem to ring true.
-if they were 'on call', then who would own them? Tesla, Uber, GM, etc. don't own fleets. It would seem that something more akin to a taxi service would be more comparable. Under this scenario, there would be a need for large corrals to accommodate on and off peak needs. Would they be owned by commercial entities, with competition, or some public monopoly.
-I don't see the connection between AVs and ride sharing.
This article discusses the impact of driverless cars, basically boiling down to a best-case and worst-case scenarios.
Best case:
- People mostly stop owning cars, instead using ride-hailing apps to form spontaneous "jitneys." Vehicle occupancy rises, less parking is needed because the fleet size is smaller (currently there are on average 5 parking spaces for every vehicle in the US).
Worst case:
- People own their own cars, send their cars to drive around frivolously since the cost is marginal to them (e.g. to avoid paying for parking they just circle, they send their car to pick up take-out food, laundry). People live further away because they don't care about their commute anymore since they can just do whatever they want in their cars.
-the issue of liability would be significant. Liability would not shift significantly to the vehicle, it would have to shift completely. As passengers, we would have no role in the conduct of the vehicle. We don't need insurance coverage to ride a bus or a train. That cost would have to rolled into whatever the cost would be using the service.
This is actually one of the biggest benefits of self-driving cars. Currently, if someone dies in a collision, police do an investigation, point fingers. Newspapers call it an "accident", if it even gets coverage, and there is no kind of change (either in infrastructure, laws, etc.) to prevent it from happening again. It takes about a dozen deaths per intersection before the city even starts considering doing any kind of engineering changes to the road.
As soon as people in self-driving cars get into collisions, there will be NTSB investigations, reams of data from the car, and a full-fledged investigation and round-the-clock news coverage. The approach will be more like train or plane crashes. Collisions will actually result in lessons learned, and changes that move forward into new software updates! There will be a systemic investigation of root causes! Preventative measures will actually be taken! And you will have the full financial weight of large automotive companies trying to mitigate these risks, since the manufacturer would be at fault, you can't point fingers at the driver.
-the concept of banning, by law, manually-driven vehicles, would be an interesting moot court debate of constitutional law for a law school. Many things in life are regulated but comparatively few are prohibited, and they have an established public health and safety rationale (at least according to the courts). The argument might be advanced that it within the power of the province to regulate traffic but I'm not convinced it would be successful. And I'm unsure if the concept would be to prohibit manually-driven vehicles regionally, provincially or nationally. Under my understanding of the Constitution, I'm not sure how the state could prohibit something solely on the basis of social efficiency or convenience. If those were the criteria, the same state could tell us where to live and perhaps where to work. I recall that was tried someplace else with less than stellar success. And, of course, such a concept could not even be considered until all manually-driven vehicles are naturally out of service, unless it is proposed that the state get into seizure.
There are 37 000 traffic deaths in the US last year. That's like twelve 9/11s worth of carnage, every year. It's actually the number one cause of death of anyone in the age from 16 to 25, and the top 10 cause of death in the United States. That's a pretty solid public health rationale to (eventually) ban manual driving.
We are in the hype cycle for AV technology. Give it a few years and the buzz will fade. The future of AV roaming the streets without drivers is a myth. It wont happen in our life-times. Remember when they said hovercrafts would be a thing? AV has it's place and the technology will greatly advance over the next few decades and for targeted fleets like trucks and buses it maybe significant savings in labour arbitrage for companies and public monopolies. However, I doubt people will stop owning their own cars or governments be allowed to ban manual driving cars.
Yep, it's the hype cycle
Personally, I think that self-driving cars are at the confluence of so many technological trends (AI, big data, machine learning) and have such a big payoff (driving is the #1 job for men) that it is inevitable that it will mature very rapidly. But for sure, there is a lot of hype involved.
