Quote:
Originally Posted by logan5
Hatman - Observing how inefficiently people use city streets, especially intersections, I tend to think the capacity improvement will be closer to 10x, which would render all other forms of transit obsolete, even in the densest cities.
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With our current cities, you may be right.
Looking at the economics of it, an autonomous car by Google's calculations (see earlier in this thread) can turn a profit for its owner by charging its rider 50 cents per mile.
I live in Salt Lake City, where Utah Transit Authority is the transit provider, and I'm most familiar with them. According to them, they can run their busses -
when full - for about 35 cents per passenger mile. They can also run their light rail trains for about 5 cents per passenger mile - again, when the vehicle is full.
But will economics be enough to sway people towards transit over riding in autonomous cars?
Right now, no - not for the (vast) majority. And in the future, probably less so:
(imagine commuting in that!)
In the USA we seem to go by the general assumption that all people will travel by car if given a choice. Cars take you anywhere you want on your schedule. Even more so for autonomous cars. But if there are many cars going to the same place at the same time, it becomes more efficient to combine all those individual trips into one. Hence, transit. Transit is not for everyday living and mobility as it is about consolidating trips that otherwise would be redundant.
This is why I think that no matter how efficient autonomous cars are - and I agree with you that 10x the current efficiency is perfectly feasable - there will always be a need for transit. Maybe less than there is now, but maybe more.
Without a need for wide streets, without the need for surface parking lots, without the need for an easily navigable system of car-roads, perhaps the cities of tomorrow, the ones built up around the premise of autonomous cars, will be
denser than they are now. Perhaps in the future when roads are not viewed as places people to drive, but rather a place for robots to transport people, perhaps then people will consider roads an irritation, a hindrance to their dense pedestrian cities and want roads moved out of sight, the way most people want train tracks out of sight right now. Perhaps in the future, with autonomous cars more easily tracked and charged for miles traveled (and at which peak hours and over which congested and pricier roads), maybe then autonomous cars will be much more expensive than 50 cents per mile, and people will more readily switch to transit for economic reasons.
Or maybe transit agencies will use autonomous cars as first-mile/last-mile modes for their rail transit passengers, combining the efficiency and economy of rail transit with the door-to-door convenience of autonomous cars.
All just ideas. I like pouring over the possibilities.