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"amazing fast" was still decades to fully replace horse and cart and longer for trams and the like and like I said, I'll likely be gone before it happens.
http://www.thecascadiacourier.com/2014/08/from-horses-to-cars-in-seattle.html
"In 1912, traffic counts in London, Paris and New York all showed that the car had overtaken the horse. A Seattle traffic count in 1915 quantified traffic going to West Seattle and showed that horses still held market share in delivery functions but were losing out to street cars and motor vehicles for hauling people. From 5 AM to midnight on that November day, 291 street cars carried 11,699 people, 692 automobiles carried 1,501 people and 203 motorized taxis carried 744 people. Just 155 horse-drawn vehicles carried 187 people."
By the 1920s motor vehicles had completely replaced horse drawn carriages on the roads of New York... By 1925 the price of a Model T had fallen to under $300--- from $850 in 1908 and $500 in 1915.
Keeping to NYC.. and electric cars.. It is curious to note that by 1899 the vast majority of all Taxi cabs were electric. At this time most cars on the road of NYC were electric-- steam had a larger market share at this time than gasoline. It was a double knockout of price (by 1915 an electric car cost as leat 3x a Model T) and range--- to use the emerging highways -- that eventually killed the electric car...
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I'll bet you this shit won't be implemented in anything other than small test towns (and Dubai).
The technology of smart traffic control is almost already there. Self-driving cars are already there with a couple to problems to solve.. Car sharing is already there.. Fast on demand car sharing inclusive driver is, albeit crude. already there (Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, Curb, Flywheel). Legal framework is already in the works.. Insurrance industry too have been getting things ready.. Climate targets are real and the pressure to shift towards electric cars from gasoline is massive.. Solar cells and cheap electricity is real--- the problem these days is local oversupply and distribution. Aldi, for example, has started in Germany to mount cells on the roofs of all their buildings and is providing free charging for electric vehicles and selling on their excess..
https://unternehmen.aldi-sued.de/de/verantwortung/betriebsablaeufe/erneuerbare-energien/
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Horses don't tend to live as long as cars though.
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http://ausbcomp.com/~bbott/cars/carhist.htm
As I said, decades.
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The technology of smart traffic control is almost already there. Self-driving cars are already there with a couple to problems to solve.. Car sharing is already there.. Fast on demand car sharing inclusive driver is, albeit crude. already there (Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, Curb, Flywheel). Legal framework is already in the works.. Insurrance industry too have been getting things ready.. Climate targets are real and the pressure to shift towards electric cars from gasoline is massive.. Solar cells and cheap electricity is real--- the problem these days is local oversupply and distribution. Aldi, for example, has started in Germany to mount cells on the roofs of all their buildings and is providing free charging for electric vehicles and selling on their excess..
Smart traffic control = light phasing changes = big deal
Self-driving cars = limited trials only
Car-sharing? Err, technology. You can share a horse.
I don't care if they are electric or petrol, I was referring to self-driving cars on these special roads you were talking about. -
Horses don't tend to live as long as cars though.
Environmental legislation and an impending price explosion for insurrance alone will drive the nails into the automobile's coffin. How many people will be prepared to spend instead of $2000/year upwards of that per month for insurrance coverage? New auto technology are already having a profound disruptive effect on the insurrance industry and this will intensify when autonomous vehicles start to take over the road..
http://www.iii.org/issue-update/self-driving-cars-and-insurance
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Environmental legislation
You mean things like this..
"The U.S. has said “no” to any binding emission-reduction targets in the closing minutes of COP21" -
Some people will, not most but some and that'll hinder the self driving only roads. You still get people on horses knocking about now and there are more private cars about now than there were ever horse based transportation. I could see new roads being purpose built and bigger ones being adapted but, at least for a good few decades, most roads will remain multi purpose. Plus the difference between driving a horse drawn buggy to driving a car is smaller than that between driving a car and being driven. Some people, probably the twats that are worse at it, prefer to be in control of what's moving them about. I can't wait for the robocar revolution bit I think it'll be something that works more as a mixed system for longer than you reckon, or at least has the ability to so it can cater to people who want to rag their car up to the next red light.
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Even a shire would struggle.
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Some people will, not most but some and that'll hinder the self driving only roads.
Just as car sharing lanes (2+) on the freeways and highways was quick to be established I see no reason why legislators won't in the name of evironomental efficiency and public safety declare lanes for self-driving vehicles. As demand for these lanes increases it would be expected that the remaining lane capacity would be quickly erroded.
In California already we have http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/carpool/carpool.htm Green Clean Air Vehicle Decals that allow low emitting single occupant cars to use the high occupancy lanes. -
http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/02/01/wepod-driverless-car-traffic/
The result is a new kind of public transport concept that offers the convenience of a personal vehicle, without the hassles of car ownership.
Although the vehicles are running on a fixed route for now, the WEpod team hopes other cities will adopt WEpod technology once the trials are complete. The system will start operations in May.
“Autonomous, on-demand transit systems like WEpod have the potential to revolutionize our cities,” said WEpod Project Manager Jan Willem van der Wiel.http://wepods.nl/
Safety
Cameras, radar sensors and laser sensors provide the WEpod with correct information on its surroundings so that it can anticipate necessary actions. Various on-board computers combine all the data and give commands, including to the braking and steering systems. In this way, the vehicle can respond to other roads users and sudden changes. An operator in the control room receives a signal at certain pre-defined points and if the vehicle stops. The operator then examines the situation with the vehicle and initiates the appropriate action. While inside the WEpod, passengers can also contact the control room at any given moment. -
Another reason to stay in the EU:
http://www.sciencebusiness.net/news/77444/EU-urges-industry-to-speed-the-arrival-of-self-driving-cars -
Just as car sharing lanes (2+) on the freeways and highways was quick to be established I see no reason why legislators won't in the name of environmental efficiency and public safety declare lanes for self-driving vehicles. As demand for these lanes increases it would be expected that the remaining lane capacity would be quickly eroded.
Most certainly. Not only that, but as enclosed motorised carriages will acquire even more of the nimbus of the 'universal transportation tool', other modes will increasingly be sidelined. (The myth of the universal tool is one of the main problems with car use.)
Also, there would be a renewed impetus for more highway capacity again. Greenwash around electric cars, the promise of largely crash-free environments (which I think is questionable at best) and the fact that people would probably be able to use the time spent travelling for other activities would soon cause people to forget about the real problems with driving, that they will spend even more time being inactive, and the social separation and isolation they're most likely going to increase, not to mention the dire consequences for land use patterns.
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I largely agree. I'm uncertain, however, to what extent these autonomous vehicles will be compatible, resp. unsuited, to rider pooling. Given the urban density of places like London and the compactness of destination distributions, there is no other course, I think, than rider pooling. Road capacity has, irrespective of the size of the vehicles that use them, limits. The higher the level of congestion, the slower the means of transport and the higher the negative economic impact. As long as people commute to centralized workplaces policy makers will be ultimately forced, just as with today with car pooling lanes to legislate passenger pooling and perhaps a cap on the number of vehicles allowed and perhaps even their integration under a public utility not much different from today's TfL. With high levels of pooling and perhaps transfers these vehicles become little more than smart busses. And vehicle permits? Taxi medalions 2.0? The ultimate question will be to what extent big corporate interests--- which are already ramping into the gate-- will be able to replay last century's methods of subversion..
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I largely agree. I'm uncertain, however, to what extent these autonomous vehicles will be compatible, resp. unsuited, to rider pooling. Given the urban density of places like London and the compactness of destination distributions, there is no other course, I think, than rider pooling. Road capacity has, irrespective of the size of the vehicles that use them, limits.
True, but self-driving vehicles 'solve' one of the biggest restrictions on motor traffic capacity, namely that there is a time delay between drivers setting off from a stop in a queue at traffic signals. It has long been a dream of traffic engineers to have the whole queue start moving at the same time, with regular distances between all the vehicles. Moreover, while traffic signals were not invented for motor traffic (there was congestion caused by operators of horse-drawn vehicles long before that came along, and the inspiration was taken from railway signals), they became widespread because early drivers generally proved unable to successfully negotiate priority at junctions with other road users. However, traffic signals greatly reduce motor traffic capacity. With self-driving cars, so the theory goes, a lot of signal control can be abolished and motor traffic capacity increased. As you say, of course, there will still be limits, and I also believe they will be hit very quickly, getting us back to square one concerning congestion and capacity. What self-driving cars will not be able to solve will be the great complexities of an urban street system, how all the junctions interact, etc.
The higher the level of congestion, the slower the means of transport and the higher the negative economic impact. As long as people commute to centralized workplaces policy makers will be ultimately forced, just as with today with car pooling lanes to legislate passenger pooling and perhaps a cap on the number of vehicles allowed and perhaps even their integration under a public utility not much different from today's TfL.
Yes, over-centralisation is the biggest problem here. Policymakers will, of course, initially hope that computer-controlled traffic movements will enable them to reduce levels of investment in public transport, which are an unsustainable burden (e.g., in London and surroundings radial public transport mainly serves to increase land values (caused by whence it enables people to travel to where economic activity takes place), which causes more impetus to fund more public transport, and so on).
With high levels of pooling and perhaps transfers these vehicles become little more than smart buses. And vehicle permits? Taxi medallions 2.0? The ultimate question will be to what extent big corporate interests--- which are already ramping into the gate-- will be able to replay last century's methods of subversion..
There are all sorts of variables that are unpredictable. It's certainly true that car makers are seeing this as their best chance to get a large chunk of the market for public transport, and companies like BMW have already been investing in that.
Christian Wolmar told me that he had re-researched the usual story of the 'subversion' of American urban public transport and found quite a lot that was wrong with it. I can't remember in which of his books it is, though. I think it may be this one:
http://www.christianwolmar.co.uk/bookshelf/great-railway-revolution/
I'm only a short way into his books and I generally don't know much about railways, so can't really comment.
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More dystopia:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/comment/how-self-driving-cars-could-turn-into-a-nightmare/"I walk everywhere in the city now because traffic is worse than ever. Who needs parking spaces when you can send your driverless car around the block while you do your shopping?"
...
"Traditional carmakers needed sales to stay afloat, whereas Apple and the other tech companies making driverless machines did not. With account balances bigger than most Western governments’ and countless entertainment products on the peripheral market, they could afford to run a loss leader. They undercut the entire insurance sector by self-insuring their machines and within a year the cost of insuring a self-driver went through the roof."--- Ben Collins looking back from 2025
http://www.ptua.org.au/myths/robotcar/
"The big downside comes in robot cars’ likely effect on traffic volumes. Simulations and thought experiments alike tend to agree that a move from human-driven to robot cars will add traffic to the roads rather than reduce it. This follows in large part from the (otherwise positive) effect on parking behaviour: individually-owned cars will drive home empty and return empty when summoned later, while shared cars will travel empty between bookings or circle the streets in anticipation of bookings to be made. The most optimistic scenarios assume robot cars carry multiple passengers as a type of demand-responsive bus service, but still predict an increase in traffic. More pessimistic scenarios assume individualised robot car service replaces public transport use, and predict a doubling of traffic or worse. The Fehr & Peers study splits the difference, forecasting a 25% to 35% increase in traffic with a fully autonomous car fleet."
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An "interesting" google car crash. They were edging out into another lane but expected a bus to give way and it didn't http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/29/google-self-driving-car-accident-california The solution seems to be that they will add code to suggest that larger vehicles won't necessarily give way
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Robocars - Autonomous Drive, Self-driving, Driver-less cars
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