Posted Jan 13, 2018, 4:03 AM
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Unicorn Wizard!
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Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 4,212
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I suppose self driving cars will have a profound impact.
Good: Reduced need for parking. Flexibility in lifestyle, you don't need to own a car to use a car sometimes. Ability to tame traffic in areas where that is a good idea. Ability for people in small cities to commute to big cities for jobs.
Bad: Maybe less demand for transit and infrastructure, more long distance commuting from the sprawliest of suburbs. Fights over who owns the street, is it a public space or a passageway for cars.
Ugly: self driving delivery vehicles will be nail in the coffin for brick and mortar retail and suburbs with a lot of big box stores will turn into vast ruined grayfields. May actually be a good thing if redevelopment is on the table.
-Ability to turn streets into commodities and put tolls and fees on the use of even the smallest lane or alley. Will pedestrians and cyclists be seen as freeloaders? If the presence of a bike rider or a pedestrian wanting to cross the street greatly reduces the throughput of toll-paying cars on a public street to an extent than can be easily quantified in dollars as an opportunity cost will you still be able to argue in favor of cyclists and peds being able to use streets? If you can charge for use of streets, will suburban developments still rely on public entities to maintain them, or will totally private developments not have public easements at all? Again, will they allow non-car users? What happens when a large share of an entire metropolitan area, like Houston or Atlanta in the future, is comprised entirely of private roads? Imagine a whole city of gated communities. They could keep out the riff raff, and concentrate it in older established areas.
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