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The Driverless Future: Buses, Not Taxis
jfruh writes Driverless vehicles are coming. The question is: what form will they take? Uber's management has suggested that, rather than owning our own private, autonomous cars, we'll all be glad to pay Uber by the trip for a private ride in one. But an Italian consultant working on experimental driverless vehicles in Europe thinks that the future will lie with automated buses, because driverless cars, "may be able to go and park themselves out of harm's way, they may be able to do more trips per day, but they will still need a 10 ft wide lane to move a flow of 3600 persons per hour ... their advantages completely fade away in an urban street, where the frequent obstacles and interruptions will make robots provide a performance that will be equal, or worse than, that of a human driver, at least in terms of capacity and density."
Heading to Dallas, Cotton Bowl, TXJAM III. Bus, back seat, center. Driver came back to look around at a side-of-road stop. I notice the bus was rolling backwards! I said, the bus is rolling back. He said, "What?". I said, "look out the window." He RUNS up front and hits the brakes. I saved the day. Gas pumps, etc. Now would it be better without a driver?
If you go from ten single-occupancy cars to a ten-passenger bus, you've eliminated 90% of the vehicles at the (relatively low) cost of adding one more driver. Eliminating the bus driver gets you from eleven people in the bus to ten, which is probably not as important as other efficiency improvements. Also, buses are awful unless you have quite high population density -- lots of areas don't have enough prospective trip endpoints to justify mass transit.
A bus takes up a lot of room - but the 40 cars that would have to replace the bus take up far more room.
I don't think any more people will take driverless buses than take driven buses now.
The problem with buses is not with drivers/driverless. It's that people don't want to take 45 minute milk-runs, stopping 20 times, to get where they can go in 10 minutes driven directly.
This is way out there, unlikely to happen, but just maybe there will be a combination of cars and buses? Maybe if you have a similar starting location and stopping location and time as hundreds of other people you will take mass transit, and if you do not fall into an easy categorisation as everyone else you will have custom options?
I know, that is crazy. No system would ever be built like like.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I guess none of those people actually go to work by car. I'd pay a lot for the luxury of having my car drive itself to work and back every day. It would remove a lot of stress and fatigue from my days.
I don't see the link between autonomous vehicles and fundamentally changing the economies of own versus rent. Whether a bus has a driver or not, it makes the same amount of sense to use it instead of other transportation. It may lower the bus fare some, but in the scheme of operating a bus the driver pay isn't going to change things more drastically than, say, improvements in fuel efficiency. I doubt there are many people for whom the bus fare today was the factor making it unfit for their purposes.
I agree with the assertion that autonomous buses would be more bang for the buck for autonomous operation (not only the space efficiency, but having autonomous software navigate a pre-defined route is easier than navigating arbitrary routes).
Reading the article may help: they are talking about small buses which often have a dedicated lane. There is, of course, a desire to use this for regular buses.
As for the difficulties presented by public transportation, I can assure you that there are many problems presented by private vehicles. Even if you ignore the need for high capacity roads to handle an a large number of vehicles, you also have to dedicate a large amount of infrastructure to parking (may that be straight out land use or parkades). Large numbers of vehicles being operated by people with different skill levels and motivations also make roads very unpredictable places, which increases the probability of accidents. A dependence upon vehicles also radically changes the social environment.
But who is going to supervise the children and stop[ fights and bullying? I can't see a robot being very effective on typical school buses.
Or are we talking about coaches? (The long distance buses run by Greyhound and Jefferson Lines) ?
I thought the whole point of automated cars was to improve safety by taking the distracted amateur out of the drivers seat, and also permit impaired people (whether disabled, intoxicated or just tired) to have personal transportation which is necessary in most non-metropolitan USA towns.
In a future where cars drive themselves, and everyone will eventually own one or enslave themselves into the machine to own one, efficiencies of public transportation will eventually become evident sooner rather than later.
In a perf^H^H^H^Hless corrupt world, imagine the amount of investment it took for everyone to own driverless cars, city roads/highways redesigned to better meet demands of algorhythmic traffic flow, wireless internet infrastructure to support millions of transportees looking for something to do when they no longer have the burden of steering a 2 ton hunk of steel through 5-50 miles of obstacles. Imagine where we'd already be today if that amount of investment was put into a public transport system. Instead, they're a joke.
1. Timetables seem to be set arbitrarily instead of easily matching demand. Why are ratio of rail cars 2:1 for heavy:light traffic times as opposed to 5:1, 10:1 in some cities? They have the extra cars. Buses don't seem to be increased at all.
2. Rates raised to meet some sort of corporate profit model. We don't want to be in the red, because our taxpayers will not see public transportation as an investment to helping our city grow as we increase job opportunity and liquidity. It's just important that everyone doesn't see our public transportation as a burden. So instead, let's run less cars to cut costs, ignoring economies of scale and increase rates because people would be pay $100 a month for a shitty public transport pass when it would cost them $125 otherwise in gas. Some middle management guy took an econ 101 class and he learned about this thing called a supply demand graph and that's how we should model our "business", not as a civil duty we have to growing a city wide utility.
3. NIMBY assholes have enough clout to stop what should be the most obvious need public transportation has, to go where its citizens need to go. Instead of getting smacked down by eminent domain, they whine enough that an entire city needs to avoid some rich area so their white fear can be assuaged.
In your own car (being a driver) you should be watching the road, not "working" or talking (presumably on the phone). In the bus - on the other side - you are free to talk with your girlfriend, read news, answer an email, use public wifi and have a cofee (if buses are appropriately equipped).
Reading the article may help: they are talking about small buses which often have a dedicated lane. There is, of course, a desire to use this for regular buses.
Yes, dedicated bus lanes are basically the worst thing you can possibly have in a city. They have horrible utilization. For 1-2x as much money you could build rail and move up to 10x as many people. But then you have the same problem as buses, which is getting people to use them. And as long as you have "haves" and "have nots" then you will have people who have to ride the bus, and people who don't want to ride the bus with them. Hence, you will still have buses and cars unless you actually outlaw cars.
This is why I'm always banging on the PRT drum. It has actual benefits, not imaginary ones like dedicated bus lanes. It is an ideal solution to city traffic problems because it is more like a taxicab than a bus. Buses are actually horribly shitty things to have in your city whether they are self-driven or not because they completely shit on traffic patterns. You can zoom right through SF even most of the time when it's crowded except for the goddamned buses, and all the perturbations from everyone else going around them. They only make sense for places without a lot of traffic. But then, who needs massive mass transit in places like those? Those lines often lose money because they're useless anyway, they run once an hour or once every two hours and you can't actually use them to get anywhere in a timely fashion. I know, I grew up without a car.
Anyway, Buses basically never deliver their promised per-passenger efficiency, unless they are so stuffed full that you don't want to be on them. They're a half-assed solution and are utterly unsuited for our social models.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A bus can only be in one spot. 40 cars can be in 40 different spots.
The problem with busses is that anybody of means doesn't like taking them. Too many other people's stops and what not.
You are not going to convert car drivers to bus takers just because it's driverless.
A car goes on your schedule, not the other way around. Which is why driverless cars will win.
I'm not too worried about traffic. I think personal driverless quadrocopters will be possible around the mid-Century mark.
Insert clever remark about driverless vehicles on "the road to nowhere", compare and contrast, automats, vending machines, pay toilets and marital aids.
End with analogy dealing with electric underwear, Prince Alberts button fly and Apple computers. Recap and close.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
A bus takes up a lot of room - but the 40 cars that would have to replace the bus take up far more room.
Buses rarely run at full capacity, and when they do, you don't want to be on them. In San Francisco, I've just given up and walked because I know what the inside of certain buses will smell like, and I'd rather be in the rain. And I am not exactly a richie-rich motherfucker. I just take showers and wash my clothes, and I don't like to be surrounded by people who don't.
Also, 40 cars all manage to be in their lane and move more or less with the flow of traffic, buses fail both tests. They also pull out without looking, as if they had a right to do so. And in many cities they do, they had to give the buses the legal right to cut you off or they could never get back into traffic. All that pulling halfway over and fucking the traffic behind them while picking up slow passengers and perhaps wheelchairs is far more disruptive than 40 cars which are all taking the most efficient route to their destination, especially now that people can use internet-enabled routing (i.e. Google maps) to route them around traffic automatically.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
in many cities it is now an offence to impede a bus from getting back into traffic. when they've pulled out, that is. the other case is the extended curb so the bus never leaves the traffic lane but blocks it while stopped. the official line in metro vancouver is that a bus stopped in the traffic lane is NOT an obstructin to normal traffic.
.A car goes on your schedule, not the other way around.
I'm not too worried about traffic.
Contradiction.
I think personal driverless quadrocopters will be possible around the mid-Century mark.
"But soon flying cars" fallacy. Argument failure complete.
Brilliant! We need a large vehicle that slithers through traffic. It could be based on those robotic snakes from a few years ago. I could see it crawling along on a tread lined belly, making clean corners, gobbling up riders, pooping their nutrient drained husks out. Perhaps it could squeeze buildings for passengers or tankers for fuel.
That would be efficient. It could crawl over traffic jams, park in unusual places, maybe there are military applications!
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
A bus takes up a lot of room - but the 40 cars that would have to replace the bus take up far more room.
On average, a bus has 9 passengers, not 40. 40 is the number of seats. Cars average 1.3 passengers. So a bus roughly replaces 7 cars.
Citation:Energy efficiency in transportation
No one ever considers riding horses! Horses take up quite a bit of room though. Perhaps if we rode pigs instead...
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Yeah! I drive my car so I can feel superior to the bus-riding peasantry!
A month's groceries? Well I could easily just take two or three hour-long bus trips instead. Rain at the bus stop? Who cares, I like rain. Arriving at work soaked in sweat in the summer and stinking of the bus crowd? They'll adjust. Every disadvantage of riding the bus is minor. An extra 30 minutes per trip minimum? My time is free! No chance to have a cigar on the way? smoking is bad for you anyway. The only thing the bus can't give that my car can is that sweet, sweet feeling of being king as I slowly roll my 1986 Toyota wagon down the strip.
The fact that my car costs less for commuting isn't even a factor, I'm willing to pay more for the environment. Convenience? Who needs it! The bus would be the only way for me but for my damned ego. Alas. You've called me out, you have: taking the bus would be better in every other way.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
the official line in metro vancouver is that a bus stopped in the traffic lane is NOT an obstructin to normal traffic.
You can't make a turd into a rose no matter what name you give it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Without bus drivers there could be more smaller buses with shorter stops, better able to match demand.
Doesn't quite match reality does it, just about every city in the world has buses and they cope fine.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Why does the answer have to be either 'taxi' or 'bus' when it's possible to combine the two and have a sensible multi-drop scheme? This would need a decent number of users (Higher than that needed to sustain a local bus company, I'd guess), but would manage to combine the two nicely, and with computerised routing of vehicles should be practical.
Like a taxi you book from where you are, and it'll come to collect you there and drop you off at your requested destination. Unlike a taxi though there could be others riding already, and the vehicle may divert to make pick ups/drop offs on the way within reason.
The result is something which is similar to a less direct taxi, but will be a a lot cheaper as it's multi-occupant and will have passengers almost continually, similar to a bus. It also means that there are less vehicles on the road as each one is carrying more people, and this reduction would actually improve as the service became more popular- it's easier to have efficient routes when there are more options available. Vehicles would likely range from large cars to small buses, things small enough to get through residential areas (I'm in the UK where getting something the size of a full bus down a side street would be impressive) but large enough to carry a few small groups of people.
If you want to keep the 'bus' mentality too then have scheduled pick-ups over the most-used routes, so 'There will be a vehicle arriving at Easterly School every ten minutes traveling to the city center, and arriving forty minutes later'. This may also do other pickups and drop-offs on the way but will arrive more or less when it says unless there are problems.
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If busses were the answer for middle class transport we would see a luxury version of the greyhound.
You mean like the ones Google Uses?
Surely there the money is in private automobiles, but before we start jumping ecstatically about this thing, shouldn't there first be a proof of concept in a streetcar system or something? This would be ideal environment for beta testing this, because unlike undergrounds that are essentially closed systems, streetcars are not, but the system wouldn't need to care about actually steering just yet, only stay in schedule and not hitting anything.
A large proportion of people will not willingly share their commute space with others. Since people who "vote with their feet" seem to prefer to drive their own cars in privacy to sharing a vehicle, route and schedule with other people the rider may not like, it will take more than engineering to get the intended result. It will mean, eventually, either outlawing ownership of private cars in certain places or making permissions prohibitively expensive.
I see a big, expensive failure in this. Nevertheless, it will get funded by groups who are obviously against union labor: the Koch brothers, government planners, et al. Retailers like Wal-Mart, on the other hand, will be against, as they have few stores within cities, and it's hard to lug their stuff home on a minibus. Amazon and other internet sellers will see the same cost-without-benefit scenario.
The winners? Media outlets who will see an increase in revenues of "for-and-against" political ads.
An interesting thing for "drinkypoo" to say :)
My town (pop. 50K) has buses on 6 local routes that go around and around the town all day nearly empty. It is a serious money loser, but the town keeps voting to subsidize it because it symbolizes "green".
Only a small percentage of the population will have pickup and destination points close enough to these fixed routes to make it worthwhile for them to use, not to mention having to fit their schedules into the once-per-hour bus stops. So hardly anyone uses it.
What I have wondered about is whether these buses, combined with an Uber-type app, could simply service passengers on-demand, even driving to their houses. The software would plan optimal routes based on the current pickups and destinations, providing passengers with ETAs and so on. I'd probably start using it in that case, especially if the $2 fare was kept the same. Assuming many others would too, it might greatly reduce their losses.
you need a lot of unused capacity during off hours to provide the peak capacity you need.
So, it is correct when measuring energy efficiency to look at total energy expenditure averages using the statistic you cite. But when looking at capacity of a system as for example the case of rush hours, that's just the wrong number to use. And in fact, the numbers are even worse for you, buses fill up with people at peak times, cars actually don't.
Could we robotize the baggage handling system first? Driverless luggage carriers and robots won't need background checks, won't pilfer, and don't interact with third parties out in the tarmac (less likely to encounter ambulance chasing lawyers out to sue Google for fender bending).
Gently reply
I may be taking public transport, or share a car with people, but NEVER using a service provided by that company.
It would be determined by price. The price of an automated bus ride (which would go along a common route) would be significantly less than the price of an automated car ride that goes wherever you want. Busses ain't going away. Neither are taxis. Paid-for-hire drivers however, will be gone soon. Then over probably another couple of decades, most people will stop driving cars themselves as the prices of auto-drive cars get nearly as low as human-drive cars and automated taxis become cheaper and more common.
Of course, this might be slowed in some places by regulations to protect taxi drivers, and that would be mostly a bad thing. Instead, automated taxi services will hopefully be forced to buy out human drivers.
Sure, buses without bus stops. There will be a phone app instead.
If you think a bus disrupts traffic more or less than 40 cars do, you haven't thought it through.
Also, if I take the bus to work, it takes an hour. If I drive, it takes fifteen minutes. So bus passengers may be on the road far longer than motorists.
I can't think of anywhere I've lived where the bus took less than twice as long as driving.
Yes, you're right. In my experience, the middle-class left love pushing the working class onto buses through high car and fuel prices so they can feel superior every time they drive past a bus.
Which means the optimum size for a bus is smaller than most current buses. In the automated future, buses will be smaller and more of them will run the same route. Possibly, during off-peak hours some of them will function as taxis.
In the US driverless cars will win, generally because the US infrastructure and cities are built for car ownership; generally speaking US cities have a lower population density than other countries. In larger, higher density cities such as in China and some parts of South America, buses will be the way to go as they're decently clean and having too many cars in those high density cities is a huge negative. In many European cities it'll be a mixed bag; I see small driverless cars being useful in the tight streets of Paris, but some other European cities buses are more convenient. In places like North Africa and Europe, long bus rides are one of the primary methods of inexpensive commute between cities (a cheaper alternative to trains and they more easily connect places without train tracks), so buses will be much more cost efficient than cars for >1 hour trips.
It depends a lot less on the type of the technology and much more on the infrastructure in a given city as well as the type of commute/infrastructure.
Which means that minibuses make sense. 20-30 seats will seat those 9 comfortably, but still handle the other side of the bell curve nicely (don't forget, if 9 is the average, that doesn't mean that they only have 9 at peak times). The driver is a big part of the cost and the reason that they're less common. Add some more intelligent routing and the ability to just specify where you want to get on and off, and have the system readjust the routs to accommodate you.
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If you think a bus disrupts traffic more or less than 40 cars do, you haven't thought it through.
On the contrary, if you think a bus doesn't disrupt traffic more or less than 40 cars do, you haven't thought it through. When the vehicle is parked, it's not part of traffic. It's just an obstruction to it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They can be a lot faster if you live somewhere with dedicated bus lanes. The bus is starting and stopping a lot, but in between stops it can actually move, whereas the cars are stuck in traffic jams...
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Sounds pretty bad, but I don't think this necessarily applies to the experience in general.
I get the bus and cycle to work on alternate days (in Dundee, Scotland). I've never driven to work; I'd either have to pay through the nose for a parking permit and still have to find a free space or park on one of the nearby streets which would require getting there around 08:00 to get a spot, neither of which are worth the time, money or effort. And the time difference is in practice negligable. I have to leave 10 minutes earlier, big deal. In winter I'd be wasting that time defrosting and warming up the car. The busses are generally kept quite clean and tidy, and I've get to see any bad behaviour; the one time only I thought someone had bad personal hygiene it was a patient going to the hospital who was obviously using some skin medication, which allowances can obviously be made for. Rather than drive, I get 30 minutes to relax, read a book, read a newspaper, whatever, in relative warmth and comfort, which I just wouldn't get in a car. And there are usually no problems with overcrowding or the punctuality of the services, it's run pretty efficiently (I use Stagecoach and National Express routes). Honestly, I find it way more civilised and convenient than driving myself around.
Maybe there's a difference between countries here? There's no sort of social stigma in using a bus here, it's just one of the options available here, and a good one.
Regards,
Roger
If I had to bet, I'd bet on the trucking companies replacing their drivers with robots first before the bus or taxi companies do.
Buses are too messy - dealing with too many unpredictable people and vehicles in complex scenarios. Taxis would be even worse (buses have bus routes, taxis don't).
In contrast imagine being able to run trucks nonstop using robot drivers that don't need sleep, robot drivers that are safe and reliable enough to make the insurance companies to charge lower premiums. Maybe every Xth truck on the route has a human (who doesn't drive) just in case a truck encounters a problem that needs a human around. The trucking companies can pick routes that are more robot-truck friendly. Can't do that for taxis, and maybe hard for buses too.
When a robo-truck crushes a kid on a "no pedestrian" highway, that's a lot less bad PR than a robo-bus crushing a kid in a city or residential area.
Driverless electric cars that don't go faster than 20 mph don't need to be very aerodynamic. Parts of people's routes are often shared, or park-n-rides wouldn't work. Driverless cars could slowly go to assembly spots where they link up into trains, and then the trains go fast on predetermined routes to other spots where they disassemble back into cars that slowly travel the last 1/8 mile to individual destinations. It'll enact the functionality of public transport for people wealthy enough to own personal pods. The big problem is the space consumed protecting against impact from human driven vehicles.
And the "driverless" part is entirely optional. Cities with good public transportation already demonstrate how it is done.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The best is not to focus on only one solution.
I could see both as a great addition to what is already there at a different price. Also different depending on where it is. Rome, Italy will have different requirements compared to Bettles, Alaska so I do not see how only one solution will fit all.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
A bus in the UK has 9 passengers, averaged across the entire UK. One major reason for that: the UK subsidizes bus routes to small towns that are probably lucky to have 2-3 people on average taking them most of the day.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
you need a lot of unused capacity during off hours to provide the peak capacity you need.
Sure. But empty seats on big buses is an inefficient way of achieving that. Better to use small driverless vans, and increase the number of vans on the road during peak times.
You don't necessarily have to outlaw cars, just not actively provide parking for them everywhere. Many U.S. cities have minimum-parking-spot laws requiring a certain number of parking spots for various kinds of developments, regardless of whether the property owner actually wants to put them in. And the cities themselves frequently provide a bunch of free or cheap parking themselves, by allowing street parking (instead of using that lane for transportation), building lots, etc. In cities that don't require the private sector to provide parking, and don't provide much parking themselves, cars end up discouraged if the land is valuable enough that other uses crowd out parking lots. That has happened in Copenhagen, for example: it's very expensive to park in the city. It's legal to drive into downtown, but most people either bike or transit, because it's more practical.
(Another thing that helps: don't bulldoze giant freeways through city centers.)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The only time this matters is during peak times - who cares how much space a vehicle takes up when you've got plenty of extra road capacity?
It is a claim by an MP in UK Parliament, made back in 2005.
They got their number by essentially guessing. Cause there is no such number as "passengers per vehicle".
Fuel consumption estimates for buses are based on National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (NAEI) estimates combined with road passenger kilometres taken from the 2002 Transport Statistics for Great Britain.
Except there is no such value as "passenger kilometres" for buses in the source as you can't use that for buses - cause they operate by "zones" and not by destinations.
Same price for one stop as it is for three or five and passengers keep getting on and off along the way.
A ticket price is not related to the of distance that a passenger WILL BE traveling but to the MAXIMUM distance ALLOWED to travel.
So, they rounded it down to the lowest common denominator.
"9 passengers average" might be stretched as technically not a "wrong" number - just factually completely inaccurate as an average, minimum or maximum number of passengers.
It's actually the minimum number of passengers a bus must be able to carry in order to NOT BE CONSIDERED a "not-a-bus".
If it talks like a bus, drives like a bus... then it is not a taxi, which CAN be used as a bus but it is NOT a bus.
So what is a bus? Anything from 9 seats and up.
Transport Statistics Great Britain, 2002, 5 Public Transport: Notes and Definitions
Taxi industry: 5.9
A taxi, or hackney carriage, is a vehicle with
fewer than 9 passenger seats which is licensed to
âoeply for hireâ (i.e. it may stand at ranks or be
hailed in the street by members of the public).
This distinguishes taxis from Private Hire
Vehicles (PHVs), which must be booked in
advance through an operator and may not ply for
hire (taxis may also be pre-booked). Taxis must
normally be hired as a whole (i.e. separate fares
are not charged to each passenger). However,
taxis may charge separate fares when a sharing
scheme is in operation, when they are run as a
bus under a special PSV operators' licence or
when pre-booked (PHV operators may also
charge passengers separately if they share a
journey).
5.2 Bus and coach services: vehicle stock:1 1990/91-2000/01
1990/91 1991/92 1992/93 1993/94 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97 1997/98 1998/99 1999/00 2000/01
Single deckers:
Thousands
up to 16 seats 8.1 7.9 8.7 9.4 9.3 8.8 10.0 10.5 10.9 11.6 10.9
17-35 seats 11.5 12.4 13.5 14.5 15.9 16.5 16.6 13.6 14.4 13.9 15.0
36 plus seats 30.2 29.8 29.5 30.8 30.4 30.8 30.5 34.9 36.4 37.8 38.0
All single deckers 49.8 50.1 51.7 54.7 55.6 56.1 57.1 59.0 61.7 63.2 63.8
All double deckers 22.2 21.3 20.9 20.1 19.7 19.6 18.6 17.1 17.0 16.8 15.9
All vehicles 71.9 71.4 72.7 74.8 75.3 75.7 75.7 76.1 78.7 80.0 79.7
That "9 passengers average" is like saying that average number of seats for motor vehicles is 1 - because motorcycles.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
They are faster if you have dedicated bus lanes and everywhere you go is on a bus lane. As soon as you need to transfer, it's automatically faster with the car even during rush-hour. As for being stuck in traffic jams, I cannot tell you the number of times I've been stuck in a traffic jam with a bus. Even so, I still make it home a good 20 minutes before the same bus makes it there. But I don't think it's either buses or cars. If you scale a bus size down and use smart routes going where people go, not where the routes are you could get the speed that is needed to make public transit acceptable and reduce congestion.
in Europe they have free health care so if you lose your job you are ok but in the usa the union will fight like hell to keep the jobs.
. That has happened in Copenhagen, for example: it's very expensive to park in the city. It's legal to drive into downtown, but most people either bike or transit, because it's more practical.
(Another thing that helps: don't bulldoze giant freeways through city centers.)
I think you have a misstep in logic. You said that in Copenhagen it's expensive the park so people take transit because it's more practical. Try people take transit because it costs less. Cost being equal, people would drive because it's more efficient use of their time and personal (mental/physical) energy. Don't underestimate how draining public transit is. You have to be on guard for pickpockets, backpack/messenger bag theft, intrusion your physical space, body odor, contagion of flu and cold. Being on alert for that for hours every day is exhausting.
Depends how you implement them, buses don't have to have fixed schedules and routes. In a large city like NYC you can just put kiosks at the bus stop requesting people to state their destination. Good algorithms can then route to the people to the same location via the same bus, and then the bus can skip all other stops. This is already being done with elevators, instead of selecting your direction you select your destination, and the screen tells you what elevator to get, which will skip straight to your floor (and tells the others to take a different elevator). The bus doesn't have to function as a bus does today, it can become a 40 person taxi, with almost all the benefits of a taxi but at a much higher volume.
So by elimination, if I did think it through, the only conclusion would be "by precisely the same amount as".
Now I don't know as much about it as Bennet Haselton, but isn't that rather unlikely?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm thinking that Aircraft, Ships, and Trains might be even more easily adaptable for "Auto Pilot." Apologies to the movie, "Airplane"
Don't underestimate how draining public transit is.
I take public transit every day (I live in Copenhagen) and I don't find it draining at all. It's clean, safe, and efficient.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It really depends on the mode of public transport. Here in Chicago, we have three main modes - diesel passenger trains, electric rail and diesel buses. Here, the diesel passenger trains are by far the best - clean (unless you end up at Union Station), comfortable, fast, reliable. It's suburb-to-urban center transport, though - great for that transit pattern, terrible for anything else. Riding the diesels is a relaxing trip.
Electric rail (the 'El') is next down the list. Mostly connects various city neighborhoods to the downtown (and to each other via transfers). It's not as clean, not as comfortable, not as reliable, not as fast as the diesel lines, but it's more flexible. On a crowded line, it's a moderately stressful trip.
Finally, you have the diesel buses. They suck unless you're taking a trip on off hours - an empty bus driving on empty roads is fine. Any other combination sucks - dirty, crowded, slow, unreliable transport.
Yeah I agree it varies. They're all pretty good here though; I take the metro usually, but sometimes take the bus, and I don't find the bus to be too much of a problem. Slow-ish, but they have free wifi if you're going a long enough distance for it to be worth working on your laptop, and the ride is fairly smooth due to the way the stops are engineered to not usually require really pulling over.
What do you find stressful about the "El"? I've found metros stressful in Asia, but only because they're so crowded that it's just physically difficult to get on, and then difficult to get off again, and you're packed like sardines. But I've never encountered that level of crowding in Europe. Even when the metro is crowded here I don't usually find it stressful; I mostly just stand in a corner somewhere and read RSS feeds on my phone. It's better if it's less crowded, but it's still, though imperfect, better than driving. I used to commute daily by car when I lived in the U.S., and I found that very stressful, basically 30 minutes of watching for idiots so they don't hit you.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Driverless allows high efficiency very small people movers. Buses are per person mile very inefficient in energy use, pollution and especially convenience. They are only efficient in the first two when full to capacity which they are only during major commute rushes. The future of self-driving vehicles is highly flexible, electric powered, on demand minimal vehicles for the job. Anything else is nonsense.
If you owned a van would you go only shopping three times a year?
If I bought a month's groceries in one trip I'd either throw half of it away or fast the last two weeks to lose the weight I'd put on by pigging out in the first two.
Do you eat anything that's, you know, fresh?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It really depends on which branch of the El you're on and what time of day. The north, northwest and southwest branches (Purple, Brown and Orange lines) are reasonably clean and moderately quick (they have fewer stops) but get ridiculously, Asia-level crowded during the rush. If you are at the edge of one of them (and can thus get a seat), it's not bad.
The north/south (Red) and cross-town lines (Blue and Green) are dirtier, slower and less safe. Part of that is just the realities of the neighborhoods they go through, but they also have a lot more stops, so there's a lot of jostling, bumping and standing.
The El also can have some fairly aggressive panhandling and muggings. The CTA, in general, is much more laissez faire about such things - partly because they got rid of the conductors that used to patrol the trains, partly because it's politically toxic to roust "undesirables" from public transit. The Metra (diesel trains) still has conductors who police the train (the Metra uses an on-train ticketing system, so someone has to be onboard), so the ride is a lot safer and civil. The Metra even has "quiet cars" where talking on cell phones (or other passengers) is prohibited. That's a nice ride.
I rode the El daily for 10 years and the Metra for 12, so I've seen the best and worst of both. I've specifically chosen where I've lived based on convenience to public transit - in my adult life, I've never lived more than three blocks from a train station. Due to a serious injury, I've recently had to switch to driving and while I've gotten used to it (there are a few upsides to being alone in a vehicle), I'll never get used to the boredom and waste of driving a vehicle into the city on a regular basis.
Whomever wrote this is a fool.
When you need a car, truck or whatever, you need that mode of transport. If all you need is to move your ass down the street a short way, a bus is helpful. Walking works too. And In so many cases, walking is faster than a bus -- why don't you walk fool?
They are not the same, not even remotely.
what driverless cars can replace is commuter vehicles, especially outside city cores. They will be more convenient than zip cars (in the current state) or the like, after all they come to your door. A bus doesn't, unless your door is where the bus is. Owning a car may seem ridiculous if you order up one, step outside and its there for you - drops you off at your destination and goes off to help another traveller or 2.
By the way, who says it has to fit more than 1 person? or more than 2 peopel?
How often do you travel with more than 1 person? I know my answer. 1%
What's your time worth? I know my answer.
You mean the object isn't safety? And maybe labor costs? How close are we supposed to pack everybody? Let's not make this like the airlines. We need legroom!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
A bus can only be in one spot.
A car goes on your schedule, not the other way around. Which is why driverless cars will win.
I'm not too worried about traffic.
Now there's a contradiction. A car certainly starts on your schedule, but after that your schedule is determined by traffic. And places with heavy traffic would probably see driverless buses long before places with nice suburban 5mph over the speed limit the whole way commutes. Then there are costs:
The problem with busses is that anybody of means doesn't like taking them. Too many other people's stops and what not.
Look around you: That's actually not that big a problem, since it describes a small and shrinking percentage of the population (in the US, at least). Most people won't be able to afford a driverless car until quite a while after they are introduced. Ditto for driverless-Uber single passenger type services: too expensive for the daily commute. Most people will be choosing between sitting in traffic playing games on their smart device in a public or private multi-passenger vehicle, or driving their own car and not playing games on their smart device. Really the big problem with buses (driverless or no) is that it's hard for local movers and shakers to get rich off of them. They are purchased from another state/country, there aren't many big construction projects involved, and most of the money goes to labor and admin. I.e., city employees that probably won't even vote for the movers'/shakers' pet politicians, let alone give them kickbacks. Compare that to a subway or light rail: HUGE sums of cash going to local consultants/real estate interests, HUGE sums of cash going to the construction companies that "win" the bid, HUGE sums of cash going to the investment bankers that write and sell the bonds, etc. Rich people using them is pretty much irrelevant at that point.
The transition I see happening first is fewer families having multiple cars. Partial conversions, if you will.
A car goes on your schedule, not the other way around. Which is why driverless cars will win.
You say:
Really the big problem with buses (driverless or no) is that it's hard for local movers and shakers to get rich off of them.
pepty wins. How can you ignore clear public preference for cars and claim it's all about construction contracts? As it turns out, it's pretty easy to get rich off of public transportation too (light rail and other massive infrastructure projects) which I might add has a higher get rich density than highways (say as cost per unit length), but that doesn't make these modes of transportation popular or usable.
Your problem is San Francisco, not buses. In Los Angeles, even in midsummer crowded buses don't smell bad.
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How about driverless cars the size of a small riding mower, fully enclosed. Good for in-city commutes. Limiting to 30 mph means a stopping distance of 60 feet. Football-shaped bodies to make head-on collisions unlikely.
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I suspect that the line between buses and taxis will simply blur. Generally we define a bus as something that follows a fixed route and a taxi as something that will take you from point to point. Right now you can get some airport shuttles that will pick you up at your house and most taxis will allow you to share a ride with someone who has a slightly different destination.
But for me one of the most important groups of drivers are commuters. They are a huge bunch who all pile onto the roads twice a day at roughly the same two times. Then their cars sit and do nothing for most of the remainder of their existence. When people talk about driverless cars reducing the need for ownership they are forgetting that the benefit of shared ownership is that the asset is kept busy for the maximum amount of time. But if every commuter switched to a cab then either there wouldn't be enough cabs or then a huge number cabs would end up only run twice a day and the fee for supporting such a large number of assets would be roughly in line with personal ownership.
Thus any solution that economically deals with consumers will be one of the dominant uses of driverless vehicles. I suspect that it will be through the use of mini-buses doing a carpool like car share. People will arrange for a pickup and a destination and then will allow the service to figure out the optimal grouping of passengers to minimise time and distance while servicing the maximum number of passengers. These same mini-buses could be of all kinds of sizes depending upon the areas being serviced and their use during the remainder of the day.
The above does not preclude normal transit services or normal taxi services but what it does do is to potentially service a huge percentage of drivers with a service that meets their critical needs of point to point service that is very reliable for the least amount of cost.
This last bit is critical as many people forgo public transit because most transit services are notoriously unreliable or not conveniently structured and this could cost many people their jobs. So they grab their expensive chunk of metal and drive it alone to work.
Years ago I took a bus to work and it was a nightmare. It was only that my work was judged on productivity not arriving at a set time that I could do this. Quite simply the bus would often strand me with a 40 minute walk after taking 30 minutes to get me to that point. Yet in my general area there were about 6 of us going to that one company alone. This was a business park and I suspect that within a 5 minute drive of my place that there were hundreds all going to the business park. Not enough for a regular hourly bus run but ideal for some sort of car pooling system. It was only that we were incompetent boobs that we could never quite structure an effective car pool. Also the lack of a fixed start time made it even harder. But a computer run system should be able to work just fine.
So the key is to not look at this from a moving people around point of view but by asking what are people's priorities. For most I suspect that on time all the time is critical for a transit system and that the cost merely has to stay below operating a personal vehicle. But for ever little bit of unreliability in the system there will be a massive exodus as the cost of being fired will wildly outweigh the cost of a personal vehicle.
That is a microeconomic consideration but there is also a macroeconomic consideration; this is how a highly functional low cost public transit system can vastly reduce many costs and improve the economics of a city. If people aren't having to buy cars and are spending less time in traffic or on an inefficient transit system there will be more money available for local economics and higher local productivity. Plus fewer cars on the road can translate to a smaller roads budget which ideally either means more public spending on good things (parks etc) or lower taxes. Also many businesses require timely delivery of goods and thus many bu
If I bought a month's groceries in one trip I'd either throw half of it away or fast the last two weeks to lose the weight I'd put on by pigging out in the first two.
Develop some self-control. Then you, too can own a chest freezer, shop sales at the discount store, and eat well for pauper's money.
Do you eat anything that's, you know, fresh?
I personally supplementary shop. Sometimes at the actual store, but sometimes the farmer's market. But having a pantry and a freezer is wonderful. Going out back to "shop" FTW.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If busses were the answer for middle class transport we would see a luxury version of the greyhound.
You mean like the ones Google Uses?
Nope. Those are just a private shuttle. The Greyhound model is that anyone can buy a ticket. Some other countries have nicer buses like that, though. Mostly places where people can't afford cars.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The problem with busses is that anybody of means doesn't like taking them. Too many other people's stops and what not.
But with a bus you could enter your destination (as would everyone else on the bus) and it would pick a few key optimal stops. Have the phone buzz when it is your turn to exit.
Have a large party? It wouldn't cost a ton to just schedule a pick up and a bus comes over 1 block, picks you up and then continues down town or wherever else it was head.
You could optimize bus routes on the fly. Big sporting event get out? You could easily re-route a ton of busses and then put them back on normal routes.
You can easily make busses full electric, NG-hybrid, diesel-hybrid, etc which makes it more efficient. If it works I can see cities like London and NYC going completely driverless. Rail into the city. Automated busses and subway in the city.
Um, what do you do with the excess capacity of the driverless vans outside of rush hour?
Use them for package deliveries, or other services.
In contrast imagine being able to run trucks nonstop using robot drivers that don't need sleep, [...] Maybe every Xth truck on the route has a human (who doesn't drive) just in case a truck encounters a problem that needs a human around.
Sounds like you're trying to reinvent trains.
Which of course would be a step back in the right direction as far as long haul cargo does.
They're working on it.
...Silicon Valley just aint gonna come up with feasible solutions to urban and suburban transport problems. I don't know why the press are asking them about everything outside their domains of expertise. Why not ask some experts on the subject instead? You know, people who actually know what they're talking about.
Cars are not mass transit; they take too much space and are individualized. Even if they are shared they are still a waste. If you can spend the $ then I can see why so many people prefer them.
Computer managed systems will make smart hybrid solutions possible in ways people apparently are not thinking about. I bet simulations can show their benefits already.
Quite simple: high traffic areas and locations will use bus and cars will handle low volume. Beyond that you have extremely high volume areas that are predictable where subways and trains make the most sense and the TRANSFER between methods. You don't need a local station anymore - bus stops can be figured by how many people need to meet up with the taxis and seamlessly TRANSFER. As long as you combine all 3 methods of transportation and automate the group you can save a lot by shifting the whole system to meet demand at the minimum cost. Everybody putting in their destinations into a smart phone with wireless pay/transfer means you just follow directions when to get on/off the auto along with any GPS you may need when outside the system... could even tie it into walking and bikes so the bus adjusts it's route to make it easier to catch you rather than you missing your stop.
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The problem with busses is that anybody of means doesn't like taking them. Too many other people's stops and what not.
I guess all those bankers on the number 48 from London Bridge into the city are a complete hallucination then?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Better to use small driverless vans, and increase the number of vans on the road during peak times.
I disagree. At peak times, the capacity is limited by the capacity of the roads. Adding more vehicles will make things worse not better. You really want a bunch of 90 passenger busses. I looked up the numbers. In the UK at rush hour, cars have an occupancy of 1.2. On certain routes the busses are packed, which is about 90 people. They replace around 300m of lane space with about 12m of lane space in the most crowded areas.
One might be better off from an efficiency point of view switching to smaller vehicles at non peak hours but at peak times you really want the high capacity vehicles.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Your generalisation is incorrect. You'd know this if you visited a city with working public transportation. If you haven't visited somewhere like London which has a very useful working bus system then you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to busses.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
A month's groceries? Well I could easily just take two or three hour-long bus trips instead.
Or you could order 4 months worth online, and you only have to be at home for the 2 hour delivery slot. They even deliver both before and after work hours. Oh and delivery is free too, so ou save on the fuel cost and time for that car trip.
Rain at the bus stop?
If you don't have sheltered bus stops where you live, you could always invest in an umbrella.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Right after everyone has a flying car in their garage.
Will the human supervising the road train know to stop when something is wrong? How will he supervise any but the few trucks immediately around him, except by use of electronic sensors?
On rail trains there's actually quite a lot of equipment to alert the human about problems, or even to react to problems automatically, and those vehicles don't have to steer or be independently powered.
If you think the EU workers unions are going to let you put a single bus driver out of work you are drunk and on drugs. And if all you were going to do anyway was a net change of zero in the number of vehicles on the road PLUS eliminate the travel on demand aspects then you might be functionally retarded.
It's unclear why you think the two aren't complimentary. A car near your home picks you up at your door and takes you to a bus stop. A bus comes 3 minutes later and takes you near your office. Another car meets you there and takes you to the door of your office. You had to make 2 transfers, but didn't have to wait or walk, and no single-passenger cars had to transit the congested roads to get you where you wanted to be. You had to leave at the right time to catch the bus, but you didn't have to figure out when that was or wait someplace other than your home.
For some people that still will be too much work, or they'll still be put off by the "public" part of public transit, or they'll just be insensitive to price and willing to pay more for private transportation. But a system like that would certainly make me more likely to take the bus, and I doubt I'm alone.
Bus service is bad for small business? You wanna walk us through that one?
"Bus route" ceases to be a useful concept if you allow passengers to "book" travel. You could tell the bus where you are, where you are going and it would reply with a time and place for pickup and drop off. During heavy travel times it's easy enough to bundle people with similar sources and destinations -- it doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough to keep the bus fairly full and total trip times reasonable -- and during low-volume times efficiency is not very important as there are lots of vehicles available. You could even allow people to pay more if they want priority routing (to eliminate waiting/transfers) or service to a specific address (to eliminate walking) or pay less if they are more flexible, all on the same physical vehicles.
Or instead of regulating 100% one way or the other -- because to be clear, not funding buses means there are no buses, not that people have a choice to take a bus or buy a car -- we could simply ensure that both bus users and car users pay their fair share of the infrastructure costs and other externalities not currently represented in the cost of gas or bus fare. Then people could make an informed decision that is aligned with their values instead of being forced into one or other depending on who happens to be in power.
But that almost certainly means taking more money from individual car drivers, which is super unpopular (and somewhat technically complicated to account), so we can't implement that solution. So currently we "subsidize" bus service with general taxes. If you have a better solution in mind I for one would love to hear it.
"Freedom" is inherently selfish because individual freedoms are inherently contradictory. Your freedom to murder me interferes with my freedom to live.
And of course you should remember that most people who are alive today, and almost everyone born more than a few decades ago, can't "retain the freedom of just hitting the road and seeing the things you want to see" because they never had it in the first place.
We're all selfish, and it isn't necessarily terrible. But it is important to recognize when it's happening if you want to be able to keep your life in balance and avoid hurting others.
You shouldn't confuse "not allowed by law or public opinion" with "not technically possible".
Or you could just decide as a member of the public to hold driverless cars to the same standards as human drivers and allow them to potentially hit a pedestrian in the same situation. And remember the give them the bonus from the thousands of deaths related to simply driver error.
When a robo-truck crushes a kid on a "no pedestrian" highway, that's a lot less bad PR than a robo-bus crushing a kid in a city or residential area.
You're assuming the kid is a pedestrian, which seems extremely unlikely. Far more likely is some other guy is driving recklessly with a kid in the passenger seat, and it's not the robot driver's fault at all but will still be blamed for not getting out of the way.
Crime in transit - When we have automated buses there will be nobody to radio for assistance when a crime is in progress on the bus. If buses get automated, please add a button near each seat that can be pushed discretely to bring police in on a live video feed and display location. That said, I doubt in the law suit happy U.S. that we'll see driver-less buses in the next 20 years outside a few limited test cases. When they way the cost of a high tech automated bus vs. a standard bus and low paid driver, I doubt the automated vehicle will win. Private industry IMO will be likely to offer a bus that targets only the middle class, which might just be successful and it's a niche municipalities are unlikely to fill.
40 cars are not equal to one bus, because not everyone are going from single point A to single point B. 40 cars go from points A1,A2..A40 to points B1,B2..B40, but those unfortunate bus riders have to use several buses and wait for each bus to reach their Bs and get back to their As. And if you have to serve people at least 80% good as cars you much more than one bus. And of couse nobody does that and that's why public transportation sucks. Just an example: Moscow, Russia. Heavy public transportation, a lot of buses, trolleybuses and a huge subway system, often advertised as "transportation solution". Yet I had to buy a car 14 years ago, because commuting from my parent's home to work took about 15 minutes in car and an hour and a half on public transportation -- a bus to subway, subway, change line, subway, bus. A lot of time wasted in hot weather or freezing snow, waiting, waiting, waiting...
Your problem is San Francisco, not buses. In Los Angeles, even in midsummer crowded buses don't smell bad.
I don't believe you. It's hotter there, so people will be sweating more. And there's plenty of homeless down there, I've seen them. I haven't smelled them though, because it was from a distance.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I dont think self driving trucks would replace truck drivers either they still need some one in the truck to deal with the possible break downs of the vehicle or elf driving system or any other unpredicted situations and they would need some one to handle the paper work when the truck pick up and drop off their loads