Who Wins More From The Google Car: Cities or Suburbs?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2012/05/24/who-wins-more-from-the-google-car-cities-or-suburbs/

by thebigdeluge • 14 years ago

18 31 14 years ago

bitslayer• 14 years ago

"Making cars extremely fast won’t make them much more dangerous." Once again, car advocates don't seem to realize that there are other things out there in the street. Sure, they won't be more dangerous to other cars. In dedicated roadways that makes perfect sense. But in city streets? The life of the street require them to remain multiuse, and the constant push for higher speeds has been extremely destructive to that fabric.

Retric3• 14 years ago

If you go to the Baltimore MD Inner Harbor they have a raised pedestrian walkway covering several blocks it completely changes how you treat walking though that part of the city.

In Crystal City VA they have a significant underground walkway / mall that spans ~15 city blocks, and connects to the DC Metro (subway system).

Between the two options I prefer the underground walkway, but either option completely change how long it takes to get around. Rather than trying to accommodate both cars and pedestrians if you just separate the two both benefit. Cars can make turns easier and avoid accidents, people don't need to stop at intersections.

pwthornton5• 14 years ago

No, only cars benefit from this. The idea is to remove people from the streets to allow more cars to move. This has the effect of making that area less desirable.

Look around the world. Desirable places strongly correlate to people walking at street level, because this allows people to pass shops, cafes, etc. and easily go in. It's the core of city life.

Crystal City is one of the least nice places close to downtown DC. Above ground it has huge streets, little street life and few people walking around. Compare that with Dupont Circle, where the city is full of life (this is where I work).

Raised or underground walkways are a great way to kill a city. Skybridges are a very 1970s idea and they are being torn down. Where I live, Downtown Silver Spring (not far from Crystal City), sky bridges are expressly forbidden in the CBD.

There are some areas way up North (upper Midwest, Canada) where there are underground walkways due to the weather in the winter. Most places, including the DC area, are fine in the winter.

There is a lot of writing about Skybridges out there. Here is a start: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/654/skybridges-dont...

pwthornton5• 14 years ago

THIS.

Faster cars would not benefit the core users of cities -- people on foot.

However, autonomous cars should be much safer as they have senors to avoid collisions. Car drivers often come onto sidewalks to avoid hitting cars. So yes, to avoid a minor car accident, car drivers kill people on sidewalks.

The biggest benefit to autonomous cars will be that we will go from 40,000 people dying a year to almost none. That's a huge win.

And if that's all we get, wouldn't that be awesome?

ryandvm• 14 years ago

This guy doesn't even touch on the impending changes in the freight handling industry that will result from driverless vehicles.

Imagine how much cheaper shipping becomes when you have truck drivers that can run 24 hours a day, have fewer accidents, never strike, and cost $0.30/day in "wages". Sure, there are going to be about 300,000 layoffs practically overnight, but such is life with automation.

The shipping industry is poised to change radically and, like it or not, they will have Google to thank for it.

rmATinnovafy• 14 years ago

You talk as if the truckers will let this happen. They will fight it, even to the point of blocking the distribution centers. This will cause a lot of problems. You just can't expect these people to react as if they were corporate drones being layed off. They will rebel.

betterth• 14 years ago

Every industry does everything possible to prevent itself from having to change.

But what does it matter? The companies who hire shipping companies or run shipping departments are themselves run by number counters -who don't care-.

Companies like Wal-Mart will have a huge interest in slashing shipping costs to gain competitive price advantage, and they historically have exerted powerful control over their supply chain. Same with companies like Amazon or FedEx.

What is a shipping company going to do when their customers are opting for new companies that are automated/cheaper? Adapt or go out of business (or attempt to regulate but shipping is no Wall Street so I doubt they have the clout to use government to stifle innovation).

TwiztidK• 14 years ago

So will the bus/taxi drivers or chauffeurs. Honestly though, we can't just stop progress because a group of people will lose their jobs. If we did there would still be elevator and switchboard operators, chimney sweeps, etc. And then where would we be?

Edit: Typo.

moylan• 14 years ago

i'm beginning to think that the biggest problem may now be legal.

with a driver there is someone to get a signature/payment/paperwork whilest a driverless vehicle would need something else.

who's responsible for damage inside the back of a truck when it made 3-4 deleiveries?

how easy would it be to stop and steal the contents of one of these vehicles if it can be stopped on a quiet road with a rolling roadblock?

my brother has done 90% of his work on the road in many service/delivery jobs. he reckons at least here in ireland there will always need to be somebody on board to load/unload/handle paperwork/report problems . or if not need to be it might for a long time be cheaper to be.

checker• 14 years ago

The cost of a driver vs someone who sleeps in a truck and gets people to sign papers might still be a substantial cost savings. Who knows? If there needs to be a human, maybe 'truckers' end up riding along in an autonomous vehicle for low wages. Some may watch tv while others may work another job online between stops.

ytNumbers• 14 years ago

Arranging to have someone at the destination to unload the truck is easy. Everything else could be handled by someone at the central office using Skype video or similar. Having a human along for the ride is a huge waste of time and money.

malandrew• 14 years ago

True, but automating the driving part goes a long way to making the driver irrelevant. Instead of having someone from the shipping company spend 60 hours a week with a truck, they trucking company now just needs someone in each destination to meet with the truck for a few hours a couple times a week. And even that will only be necessary until that is automated as well.

The driving is the skilled labor. Handling the load/unload/handle and paperwork/report issues costs a lot less labor-wise

lmm• 14 years ago

When the article says "inter-city", that's the opposite of what it means, right?

Symmetry• 14 years ago

You'll be able to make your cities and built up suburbs much denser if you don't have to have as many parking spaces.

archetypical4• 14 years ago

The Google car is a truly clueless idea with no imagination. We don't need automated cars, what we need as a society is to reduce our dependence on cars.

Want to stop car crashes and reduce fatalities? It's dirt simple. Stop driving cars.

protomyth5• 14 years ago

What mode of transport can actually replace cars in the USA with its current infrastructure and rural / suburb / city living?

archetypical4• 14 years ago

Bicycles and trains. The current infrastructure of roads and highways should not be sustained, nor will it be affordable to taxpayers indefinitely.

EliRivers• 14 years ago

If that's the goal, we can reduce fatalities to zero by all being sterilized. Once we're all dead, there will be no humans left and the human death rate drops to zero, permanantly.

pwthornton5• 14 years ago

Autonomous cars will not replace public transportation, unless people magically start carpooling. An underground train with hundreds of people on it sitting close together moves a lot more people than a car with one person in it (how most people get to work).

Autonomous cars, however, should allow people to better car share and require less parking spaces. Perhaps most exciting, we could get rid of cab drivers who are some of the most unsafe drivers around.

mseebach• 14 years ago

> unless people magically start carpooling

Loads of bus routes will become viable when they can be serviced with a driver-less minivan. That's essentially formalised car pooling. That will make car-less suburb living much more practical.

Who Wins More From The Google Car: Cities or Suburbs?

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