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Smartphones May Help Reduce Traffic In the Near Future
crazyvas writes "From the New York Times: 'Experts say services that use smartphones to connect drivers and passengers could help end the reign of single-occupant cars (and unending traffic) in Los Angeles.' One would hope that combined with a recent article from Time stating that Generation Y doesn't think car ownership is cool this might pave the way for less car traffic, more efficient public transit, more pedestrians and bikers, even leading to a healthier population?"
Here's an updated link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/13/us/In-Los-Angeles-Where-Car-Is-King-Smartphones-May-Cut-Traffic.html
"If they had to pick between a smartphone or a car, they would pick the phone." What sort of choice is that anyway? They aren't comparable. A phone is a few hundred dollars. A car is thousands. Why would you have to choose between them? The second article is also riddle with 'Gen Y would'. Didn't hear from an actual Gen Y person. Just a bunch of old fuddy duddies trying to predict a future market, acting like they are in the know. That always works out. Some old guy telling you what kids think...
"Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin." --Teddy Roosevelt
and subject to licensing when they start to affect public transport services.
If I am in an urban enough place that this would work, then there is absolutely no way I am risking my life by riding with strangers
For nearly all of us, buying a car is throwing away money and lots of it. Insurance, registration,maintenance, gas, parking (and maybe interest on your loan.) On top of that it pollutes and doesn't help the fight against climate change. Both of the current comments on the source link cite this as part of the reason why they don't own a car.
So unless there is some necessity, people are analyzing their needs and determining that the payoff for owning a car is not very compelling.
http://analienmind.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/28_att00031.jpg
Meanwhile, using a smartphone while driving causes traffic accidents.
I'd choose a pocketknife over a jackhammer.
but then thats because i drive old junk... no loan, low maintenance, cheap insurance.
Did you RFTA? It doesn't say they don't *drive* - It says millennials don't care about *owning* cars. They're fine with car sharing, car co-ops and using alternate transportation methods. My wife has a large circle of younger cousins (Catholic family) and they're all like this - All in their 20s and not one of them owns a car.
I don't drive to impress others, I drive because it's necessary. Give even the most pretentious hipster the choice between a one hour drive and a three hour bus journey to work (and back) each day, and we'll soon see how "cool" cars become.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
A car sharing company promoting the meme that car ownership is not popular with their target market to promote it. How surprising
I'm a Gen Xer, but at the very tail end, and I don't own a car. I live in a major city (not New York), take the bus to and from work, walk to stores, etc. If I need a car, there's Car2Go, Zipcar, Uber, taxis, etc. Somehow I manage to survive.
Do you have kids? I know Slashdot trends towards no kids (or only one kid), but it's often the arrival of children that becomes the catalyst for my non car-owning friends to bite the bullet and start browsing Craigslist to buy a ride.
i clicked the first link but i got error:
Page Not Found
We’re sorry, we seem to have lost this page, but we don’t want to lose you.
The link to the second page works though
1) As I recall skimming in an article, in one city (SFO?) the taxi-drivers unions and lobbyists are fighting this tech tooth and nail. Given our predilection today for legalistically protecting the rights of the 'buggy whip makers' (as long as they donate consistently to the right legal campaigns) I'm not sure that there isn't going to be some Byzantine bizarre legal moratorium placed on such apps.
2) humans are still not "safe". I can quite easily conceive of a system like this being spoofed in order for a predator to defer the arranged pickup, and show up instead to offer a ride to that lovely 19 year old coed that 'just needs a lift down to school this morning' - her brutally-raped and murdered body washing up in some meltwater creek months later. There's a reason we still tell our children to watch out for strangers, and if adults think they're somehow inherently safer at maturity, they're sadly mistaken.
-Styopa
I agree fully, with 2 kids I couldn't imagine not having 2 cars my wife and I are a little on the old side at 31 and 32, but we've had 1 car at least since our teens. I'm a smartphone junky but if forced to choose between phone and car I choose car. I think people who are unfortunate enough to be stuck in big cities without access to places outside of said cities don't realize the freedom a car can bring. I spend 2-3hours in my morning commute every day. but when I get home at night to my big yard with kids playing outside and know that by the time I'm 40 I will be debt free. it is well worth the drive. These same people who did the car survey I ask when they plan to move out from their parents houses?
People driving while texting/updating their FB/watching movies etc crash and are injured or killed and therefore not driving anymore, therefore less drivers and less traffic.
Takes a while though, and not reccomended to be on the road in the meantime'
My wife has a large circle of younger cousins (Catholic family) and they're all like this - All in their 20s and not one of them owns a car.
How many of those can reasonably afford a car? Because I didn't have a car either in my 20s until I was making enough that payments/repairs/gas wouldn't take most of my income.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Actually, what is 'cool' is pretty damn important since, getting away from people who have a specific need, one of the reasons cars are so common and so heavily used in the US is because of their cultural connections. Cars have massive symbolic value to a great deal of the population, meaning far more people own and use them then actually need them and people actively fight effective alternatives both in terms of projects and associating stigma with them.
If society trends away from that 'cool' factor cars have into 'uncool', then you would probably see a decrease in the already artificially high usage.
Courtesy of NSA code generously donated to the the manufacturer.
Google Maps and the like presumably use feedback from smart phones (among other data sources) to build their real-time congestion maps.
I use my smart phone's map app to decide what route to take and whether to delay my trip.
So, even today, smart phones are helping reduce congestion even if they aren't actually reducing traffic.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
And how many have enough money to buy themselves a car in the first place?
How many of those can reasonably afford a car?
Could they afford to pick up a used Civic or Focus on Craigslist? Sure. They just choose not to.
If you think of a used car only in terms of the initial sales price, you are silly.
Read my post again, if the car is taking most of your income (it will on minimum wage), that doesn't count as reasonable.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Point of interest: pretty sure the decline in teenagers with driver's licenses is more due to graduated licensing laws making it legally impossible to drive one's friends places. In Connecticut, you have to wait 6 months before you can drive with blood relatives who aren't over 20 and have had a license for at least four years, and another 6 months before you're okay to drive anyone at all. So if you get your license at the end of your junior year of high school, then unless you turn 18 (which of course voids all of this) during your senior year, you can never legally drive someone. And if you get pulled over with someone in the car whom you're not supposed to be driving... well, say good-bye to your license. Not that people don't break the law -- it's just not worth the risk if you don't have a good reason to get a license.
I've heard that other states have similar laws, where a driver's license is essentially useless for some time after getting one. This, more than the uncoolness of car ownership, is probably what's causing teenagers to not get their licenses. So yeah, we're gonna pick the smartphone -- because an iPhone doesn't lock down its data connection for six months after you pay a few hundred bucks for it.
Eh. I couldn't imagine being unfortunate enough to have to trade 2-3 hours a day [*] sitting in a car for a yard to take care of when there's a well maintained city park across the street -- not to mention all the other amenities the city provides. I'm sincerely glad what you have is working for you but don't believe that city dwellers all feel "stuck."
[*] 2 hours/day x 5 days/week x 45 weeks/year x 10 years is 4500 hours, pretty much a full 1/2 year of dead time in the period you're talking about. Even if my public transportation commute were that long, I'd have been able to read, say, 450 books in that time.
"Give up MY right to drive alone?! You'll be hearing from my lawyer!"
Just stick them on your bike. One seat on the handlebars and one in back. Or get a cargo bike. Most young parents around here seem to manage fine.
This is, if I'm reading it right, just hitchhiking. Safe 99% of the time, which means you'll probably only get raped/mugged/beaten and left for dead once every 100 trips or so - maybe twice a year. Less if you actually die.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It says millennials don't care about *owning* cars. ... My wife has a large circle of younger cousins (Catholic family) and they're all like this - All in their 20s and not one of them owns a car.
Is it that they don't care about owning cars, or is it that owning a car is too expensive for young people in a tough job market?
My sense is that in walkable/bikable areas (like large cities in the Northeast U.S.), many people don't own cars. This has been true for generations. And for those who do, they don't tend to buy one until they are older, have a family, become more established in their jobs, etc. With kids, they find a greater need for a car sometimes, and with a steady job for a few years, they might be able to afford insurance, maintenance, loans, etc. for a big purchase like a car.
When I lived in such a place for a while (and was in my 20s), I ended up getting rid of my car when I moved in with my wife. To family members and friends who lived elsewhere in the country, they thought this was a little weird if not insane -- "You won't have your own car anymore?" But my wife and both had cars, and the cost of insurance and maintenance for two cars in a walkable city just didn't make sense. So why would I keep owning one, let alone buying a new one?
Also, I really think the family angle needs to be highlighted -- for single "millennials" (or even couples) in their 20s, living without a car can seem easy. Once you're in your 30s or 40s and have kids to haul around, it can become a lot harder to live most places without a car. Single people I know in big cities often don't own a car, even in their 50s or 60s.
Maybe we're just seeing a trend where young people are putting off purchasing a car, even if they don't tend to live in a big city, for similar reasons in tough economic times. Rather that just "buy an old junker" like kids might have a generation or two ago, they just wait until they have the money and/or need it (like when they have a family).
Let's wait a decade or so until millennials actually "grow up" and see whether owning a car still is "not cool" to them.
A car sharing social network would make a great plot device for CSI:NY. And by great I mean stupid.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Didn't think it was possible to misspell acronyms, but ...poor little article being subjected to abuse...
When I was a young, feckless 20-something, I went out and bought an older Honda Accord on a loan from a credit union. The credit union, of course, required full insurance on the property used to secure the loan (the car). Insuring my $2500 Honday cost $255.00 a month - more than I was paying in car payments, and a significant chunk of my income.
I wonder where they got their polling data. If it was all in the cities it would make sense. Head a few miles outside of a major city and you NEED a car to do anything
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I would guess that cars are less popular because they are expensive and terrible investment. A result of young people don't have a lot of money and can do math.
I live in a suburb about 35 miles outside of Los Angeles. I put an ad in local web site offering a free chest of drawers. The people who came to get it came all the way from downtown LA, they were living together and she had some tattoos. They seemed like a nice young (early 20s) couple and the gal was a little fastidious. I asked she why they drove so far and she said they had been looking for a long time. The chest of drawers was not in particularly nice shape but she did not care all she wanted to know what that the drawers worked.
The couple drove up in a brand new small hactchback. They checked all the gen y buttons and yet they had a brand new car.
Actually I, at 52, would love to live car-less. To be able to walk to everything, have the lifestyle where I could walk to everything.
As near as I can tell for any trend, in most cases, follow the money......
But outside cities this sort of thing is even more perfect. Brings small towns back together and helps people get around more easily. Need a lift across town? Maybe Jimbo is headed in for groceries and can give you a lift. This sort of thing is what the internet is SUPPOSED to be for: Communication and connecting people to make more efficient use of resources. Instead, it's being hobbled by unions and legal bullshit. I mean, come on... one death every 18 MONTHS in ALL of Los Angeles for cab drivers? That's an incredibly safe track record if you ask me, and that was back when crime was much higher in LA!
I say, get the F out of the way Mr Government so we can actually see some more efficiency.
Yes, I live in Los Angeles.
-
Being without a car might be cool, same with the fixie bike, but there is one bad thing about it:
It decreases mobility. My older brother's generation virtually all had cars, and on weekends, they would get the heck out of town, head to the coast, head to a city 300 miles away, head to a farm out in the country. My generation had cars, and we would drive 100-150 miles into rural areas for a decent rave.
With the pride at being car-free, it means one is stuck in a city core, getting a Zipcar (possibly not an option) or at best having to parasite off of someone who has a vehicle. Public transportation is fine in some spots, but in most of the US, it is woefully inadequate, plain and simple.
Once you get past the "party-hearty" years, you start realizing that cities are not safe places to raise children. One moment of inattention, and a low-life will have the child thrown into the back of a van. Parks are the property of the local gangs. There is no going out of an apartment complex after dark. Police protection is them handing out report forms after the incident happened. Inner city schools are a guarentee of future failure for the child, unless one wants a gangbanger or a prison inmate. Finally, with the fact that most of the US is under the thumb of private prisons, it doesn't take much for one's kid to be arrested.
The millennials will learn that cars are useful when they have kids and find that the same streets that are great for hitting the coffee shop, then getting wasted at night are completely unsafe for kids.
Other countries have livable cities. Here in the US, that isn't the case, and if you value your life or family's well-being, you get to the suburbs or rural areas where either the police are responsive (the city funds them and not the big sports stadium), or you are allowed to defend yourself.
I think once millennials start having children, if they value them at all, they will be high-tailing it out of the inner cities. It isn't cool to emulate parents, but if they want their kids to play in parks without syringes buried in the sand by the swingset, eventually they will get cars.
This is why I'm excited about the future with automated driverless cars. I can reclaim those hours reading, sleeping, watching the news, talking or texting safely, putting on makeup (for the womenfolk)... whatever, just not having to pay attention to the road.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Just stick them on your bike
Just got back from Costco with my 2 year old and 5 year old. Back of the station wagon's full of provisions. Explain to me again how that works on a bike?
It doesn't. You go to a local store on your way from work and pick up supplies for the day. Not for the whole month. Leaving out unhealthy goods like soda and milk will seriously cut down on the amount of hauling you have to do. To be fair, this probably is easier when you aren't stuck in a suburban sprawl. If you are, you have my commiserations.
A car is a necessity in LA because public transportation sucks. Public transportation sucks because people have, until now, valued owning a car and the freedom it provides. Up until now, had the city of LA invested in a high-quality public transportation system, it would have gone largely unused due to the priorities of the populace.
But stories like this show how public sentiment is changing along demographic lines. If this is legit and the trend continues, there will be more demand from the populace for public transportation systems that allow people to get rid of their cars or even drive less. Public transportation can be very successful, even in cities as large as LA (Tokyo, for example, has an excellent and highly utilized metro system and has an area larger than LA). But part of having a successful public transit system is the public's willingness to use it.
Demographic shifts like the one in this story presage construction of the systems necessary for a Los Angelino to live without a car.
Who cares what Gen Y thinks about cars??? Half of them can't drive yet! Cripes. Slashdot is getting nuttier by the day, I swear it.
You go to a local store on your way from work and pick up supplies for the day.
I leave work at 5. I get home at 5:45. That just give me time to help make and have dinner with the kids (with maybe a trip to the park afterwards) before we start pajamas, teeth brushing, stories and bedtime.
...and as for healthy stuff, I brought a mess of organic strawberries, blueberries and rasberries home from Costco, as well as other tasty stuff.
No way I'm gonna eat into that time in some Mayberry fantasy world of stopping by the Piggly Wiggly on the way home.
Great, more trips out. My commute is one thing, having to ride in crowded streets every day for groceries with very hostile, aggressive drivers where hit and runs are extremely common?
No.
I have had to help with too many ghost bikes as it is (a ghost bike is a bike spray-painted white that is there due to a death.). At least I can get a week's worth of stuff with a car, and limit my time where I'm vulnerable on my bike to commutes on roads where cars have to go onto sidewalks to cause injury.
Too dangerous in my neck of the woods, even with minimum feet passing zones by law. Plus, every wreck I have seen with a car/bicyclist has turned into a hit/run, because they will not stop, period.
So when he's sitting on property worth 200k plus minimum and only paying 4k annual in taxes, where will your savings be?
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Generation Y doesn't think car ownership is cool because they can't afford to buy a damn car. As far as California goes, that place will always be a shit hole as long as the state keeps misspending the road taxes on everything else but the roads.
The property we bought for retirement is in downtown New Orleans, so probably -- in the most literal sense -- "underwater."
Didn't your mom teach you to look at the person you're talking to? At the very least you could move your hair out of the way so I can tell if you are or not.
And get a fricken job already!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm researching the casual carpool setup in the San Francisco bay area to find ways to make it work better. I do *not* nescecarily think this needs an app, in fact I'd be happy if this project didn't result in one, but one thing I've found is currently, there are none. No ride-sharing apps to facilitate casual carpool (or slug-line as they call it on the east coast). Kind of crazy right? If anyone out there is working on a similar project I'd love to share notes. I have some publicly funded studies in hand, and a small team of people working on their own time on the project. This is conceived as a free beer and speech project not commercial. Message me here, I'll remember to check sometime next week, or find dana dane on fb.
closed minded is as closed minded does
What is more likely is that these apps encourage people to use cars more. Especially the ones that pay drivers to work like taxi drivers. This just puts more drivers on the road, driving empty to pick up passengers.
Did you RFTA? It doesn't say they don't *drive* - It says millennials
I stopped reading at that word.
Its used by crotchety old men in dying print media to deride people under 20 because they cant think of a legitimate complaint but wish to complain about those "utes" anyway.
In the more congested US and European cities owning a car is impractical because there's nowhere to park and you take the bus to work anyway, here people tend to hire cars by the day when they need them. But in most of the country in the western world car ownership amongst under 20's is relatively common. Certainly in Australia, most people will have their license and first car by the age of 20 (you can sit your driving test at 17), many will be onto their 2nd car by 20.
I suspect motorbike and scooter ownership to rise (or already has risen) as a response to congestion.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
If you think of a used car only in terms of the initial sales price, you are silly.
Read my post again, if the car is taking most of your income (it will on minimum wage), that doesn't count as reasonable.
Yes, and cars are not that expensive to own unless you're a complete idiot.
My first car was a EK Civic, it got 7L/100 KM in the city, doing 250 KM a week when petrol was A$1.40 a litre I bought about 18 litres it was A$26 a week on fuel. Registration was $420 a year. Maintenance was 2 yearly services at $200 a shot. A set of tyres set me back A$500 and trust me, the US gets tyres for a lot less than we do. If you're spending more than $2500 on running a car, you're doing it wrong, if you're really cheap you could run it on less than $500 (read, you drive it until it dies then buy another $500 car).
If you're frugal like me, you learn to do a lot of things yourself, I changed my own brake pads (which I learned to do by watching some videos on YouTube), air con filters, head unit, buffed out scratches. If you go onto YouTube you'll find a lot of video's explaining how to maintain your car, all you need to do is search for the model of car you have and the task you want to perform.
Now owning a sports car, that's expensive (I just paid A$600 for performance brake pads) but a student or low wage earner will not be buying a sports car.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
You're pretty amazing. If you're making minimum wage, $2,500 is a huge chunk of change that you could spend on something else.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
so you live in one of the biggest cities and you are trying to convince me that where i live (10 miles from anything) that I dont need a car???
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Universal single-occupant car ownership and use is a product of the US not getting the living crap bombed out of it during World War II. Notice all those nice transportation systems in Europe? Well, those were a combination of necessity and opportunity. You have a lot of free rein in, say, devastated Japanese cities to run roads, tracks, and whatever else you want after a war than you do in pristine postwar Houston. In fact, since the non-destroyed cities aren't in reconstruction, the idea of a major project that would displace existing things and change stuff will be a tough sell in the first place.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!