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Will Robot Cabs Unjam the Streets?
An anonymous reader writes: The Atlantic has a story with some video of a traffic simulator showing just how the roads can be jammed up by people looking for a place to park. (You can play with the simulator too.) This has been suspected for a long time by many traffic researchers and city planners, but the simulator shows just how quickly the roads jam up after just a few of the blocks fill up with parked cars. The good news is that autonomous cars don't need to park-- they just go give someone else a ride. They could change city life forever.
They may work elsewhere but they will just get beaten up in Philadelphia.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Quite simply, it's not going to happen. While some people are comfortable sharing their stuff, the vast majority are rather possessive. They don't want to sit in someone else's filth. They don't want their car to drive off, pick up someone who has sex in it or their kid vomits or a pet shits, etc. Efficiency is all well and good but reality is people are disgusting and we generally want to keep to ourselves because of it.
>> autonomous cars don't need to park-- they just go give someone else a ride
I'm hoping "autonomous cars != end of personal car ownership." I still like to have my own passenger compartment that no one else has eaten in, thrown up in, etc. that I can maintain to my own standard of hygiene.
"The good news is that autonomous cars don't need to park-- they just go give someone else a ride. They could change city life forever."
This will not change with autonomous cars. If people didn't want to own cars, the above situation could exist _now_ -- they are or were called taxis/taxi cabs/cabs/hansom cabs/licensed hackney carriages.
The reality is that people -- especially Americans, I suspect -- want to own cars. Only banning private vehicles from the streets or levying huge congestion charges on them is going to take them off the streets.
If cab drivers are going to riot in the street and inflict personal harm and property damage, who the hell thinks an autonomous car has a snowballs chance in hell ?
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
I own a car primary for road trips, camping, and music festivals. No robot, cab or car-share business works for my needs. Renting works but is risky as hell because there is no such thing as rental insurance which is still valid after you take the rental car on a non-paved road (which is a necessity for my needs).
So... Until I can tell a robotic car to take me to an exact location which requires some off-roading or driving on non-marked, private mud/dirt roads (i.e., breaking the programming of the car), I will always have a desire to own my own 4x4.
If cab drivers are going to riot in the street and inflict personal harm and property damage, who the hell thinks an autonomous car has a snowballs chance in hell ?
There are not enough cab drivers to cause a revolution on their own, and the people aren't with them. The state has far more power and will apply it to suppress personal harm and property damage, and the public will be with the state. Thus they can slow change by various methods--most notably bribery of elected officials and regulatory capture--but they cannot stop it entirely.
Money is the only thing that would let them stop it entirely given those circumstances. (As we see with the health insurance industry which is able to largely prevent meaningful change. Obamacare came 16 years after Bill Clinton tried something bigger, after all.) And the industry doesn't have enough money to do that.
The problem of congestion caused by people circling around looking for parking has already been solved. Cities simply have to wake up to the fact that parking is both rivalrous and excludable and therefore neither a public good nor should be treated as one.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
But think about other changes as well.
Autonomous cars can be parked a lot closer than any cars that need to open doors to let people out. So think about a few parking garages advertising "robot rates" and cutting the parking stalls down to car-size+3-inches-on-three-sides. The cars drop off their human passengers and then pack themselves into the robot garages.
Alternatively, if you're worried about someone soiling your pristine car, then charge enough to have it professionally cleaned before you want it back. And insist that the customers pay electronically so that you know EXACTLY who the offender was.
I remember playing Sim City and always having traffic jams.
All you guys say this will never happen or that we like our cars too much.. This is GOING to happen.. Uber pays out 75% in labor and the econommics probablem get better than that with scale.. what happens when a $10 cab ride turns into an under $2 ride? Cheaper than the city bus for petes sake..
Why would I even bother owning and maintaining a car for general use when it's actually going to be much cheaper and less hastle to just call automated cabs..
4 rides a day x 30 days would be under $200.. shit we pay more than that just for parking in downtown Portland per month let alone the costs of the vehicle /
Do you know what else doesn't need to park? A normal taxi. A bus or a subway car. The extent that suburban Americans will go to avoid taking public transit is nothing short of amazing. Yes, let's spend trillions to develop a network of driverless cars so suburbanites can enjoy city life without coming into contact with any of the city's grubby inhabitants.
Why is it that authorities are so ignorant that they allow projects to be built when a traffic and parking issue is obvious. For example an apartment house might have to meet a basic legal requirement of having four parking spaces per rental unit if they are one or two bedroom units and six spaces for three bedroom units. A theater that seats 1,000 should be required to provide parking for 1,500 cars. I am astounded that building and zoning commissions fail to demand adequate parking for every enterprise. Those parking spaces should also have a standard size for each car and none of the super tight parking allowed at all.
Donald Shoup wrote a book on parking and its effects. In cities, lots of cars are circling for parking spots...
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
A lot of people are complaining that they do not like the idea of sharing vehicles.
What about thinking about it this way - suddenly proximity of your parking spot to where you are is a lot less important. Your personal autonomous vehicle drops you off at your destination and then goes to find a parking spot. Then, when your waiter brings you the check (for example), you let your vehicle know to come pick you up in ten minutes. The vehicle checks current traffic levels and leaves for a just-in-time pickup.
Before you go to bed you let your autonomous vehicle know what time you want to get to work. Your vehicle looks at the average commute time for that time of day and lets you know when it will pick you up. It leaves its parking spot with enough time to get you.
The drawback to this that you are spending money to pay for gas or electricity while your vehicle drives (empty) to a parking spot. I would say this is the price you pay for wanting your own vehicle. The alternative is a taxi-style service.
For everyone complaining that other people will make the car unusable, you might not have taken a cab recently. More often than not it seems like you are video recorded. In addition, the cab company (which I assume would be the same ones putting autonomous cabs on the street) would have a vested interest in keeping vehicles clean.
I used ZipCar for several years and reporting damage or a messy car was easy for the company to follow up on. The previous user had to have reserved the vehicle and paid for its use. The company has credit card on file already, it is easy enough to go after the user for damages.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
I've speculated on this before...
I expect that subscribed-to sedan services will increase in popularity as a step above taxis. Paying more than a conventional taxi and giving the subscriber the ability to report/reject cars that are in poor condition will allows the service to charge and ban offenders that mess up cars. On top of that, there are services for school buses where an on-vehicle camera system records the trip to a local disk only and overwrites the recordings after so many days unless a report is made that the footage needs to be pulled before it's overwritten, at which time it's retrieved over-the-air when the vehicle comes in for regular service at the company's garage. That system would work relatively well for a subscription car if it doesn't catch audio and isn't pulled unless there's an actual reason to pull it (like vandalism or evidence that the interior was used for a crime) so long as such conditions are made clear from the beginning.
Taxis will still be a thing, for either those that don't need a sedan often enough to justify paying for a subscription, or for those who cannot subscribe to a sedan service due to previous behavior. Used like a service they'd probably cost more, but used infrequently it wouldn't be that big of a deal. There would also be a greater likelihood of recordings being reviews more frequently.
Private car ownership will continue for people like me that have plenty of room for parking and like you, don't want to share the vehicle with unknown others. I look forward to scenic road trips where I can look at the scenery instead of always having to drive, though I would probably want the option to drive. It would be convenient when going to congested places to be able to be dropped off and let the car go find a place to park itself, or even for the car to just go home if the per-mile cost (like for an electric) is low.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If that were to become a regular problem, the law would change so that automakers would put the OBD port under the hood and the hood would be secured with fasteners like triple-square or something intentionally security-minded so that one couldn't access it without more time and tooling than is practical on the side of the street.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If the robot cabs are given laser beams and missile launchers they will. Boy will they ever.
"HitchBot 2 - HitchBot's Back, And He's Pissed!!!!!" (not suitable for all audiences, extreme violence and some robot nudity)
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
They could change city life forever.
Yeah, that's what was said at the time the Segway was introduced. That was 14 years ago. Nothings changed because of Segways, AFAICT.
my kid doesn't like buying used stuff because she says someone might have peed on it. If you're rich enough to matter your rich enough to have your own stuff.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Require more affordable parking in downtown areas.
Seriously, I live in Austin and work downtown. Most days I bike to work. The days I do drive, I spend 20 minutes circling looking for a spot that won't cost me $15. Street parking is $1/hr. Lots are typically $10-12. Garages (the most convenient) are always $15-20. They're also never full.
Cities should require all buildings have enough parking and set the rates to "reasonable" rather than "extortionate".
-Chris
By which time the cops will have been alerted by the OnStar-like tamper proofing alarm the insurers will insist on having installed, which could also quite easily photograph passengers and kill the ignition. In this scenario the only technology that doesn't already exist is the hack-my-cab device...
Blank until
These "autonomous car" flacks are really relentless. These stories always show up from an "anonymous reader" always in US prime time, always during the week (never on weekends) and always telling us how "autonomous cars" are going herald in the New Utopia.
There's not even an attempt to include any news in the story, just pure PR.
Even half-drunk and not paying attention I can see the pattern. Look for yourselves.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"The good news is that autonomous cars don't need to park-- they just go give someone else a ride."
They will only give another person a ride during peak hours, say morning rush hours and evening hours. Mid-day traffic will be lighter, and middle of the night traffic will be downright dead. At those time these Johny Cabs still have to go somewhere. The Schisters trying make a buck will want them programmed to waste the least gas possible. So unlike human cabs that often troll around looking for a fare, these Johny Cabs are likely to park immediately at the closest free spot and wait for someone to call for a ride with their smart phone.
Without enough regulation, these cabs may make parking matters worse, as they won't necessarily go back to home base every night if a few pennies can be saved on gas by parking near where they will be needed in the morning.
eom
mfwright@batnet.com
But think about other changes as well.
Autonomous cars can be parked a lot closer than any cars that need to open doors to let people out. So think about a few parking garages advertising "robot rates" and cutting the parking stalls down to car-size+3-inches-on-three-sides. The cars drop off their human passengers and then pack themselves into the robot garages.
Again, I doubt it's going to happen as people dont want to have to wait in a line for 10 minutes at a designated pickup zone for their car to come when they can walk 2 minutes to go straight to their car.
Alternatively, if you're worried about someone soiling your pristine car, then charge enough to have it professionally cleaned before you want it back. And insist that the customers pay electronically so that you know EXACTLY who the offender was.
In the model they're talking about, you wont own the car. This another reason why their utopian vision will never come true. Personal car ownership is considered a right and necessity in many places.
Autonomous cars will never be the traffic messiah people think they are. They wont be doing 200 MPH bumper to bumper because they'll be programmed to follow the road rules. They'll keep a 3 second gap, they'll never exceed the speed limit, they'll slow down for heavy traffic, pedestrians and inclement weather, they'll stop on an amber light, they'll let people in.
A lot of people will retain manual control because they're used to breaking all these rules. Imagine the average driver with a "litte richard" fuming that their car just let some jerk into THEIR lane.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
when thousands of unconscious drunk people, faces covered in felt marker writing wake up and stumble out of their cabs and collectively ask where the hell am I. And the cab says "Anchorage Alaska, that'll be $1500.00 for the ride."
At least there will be enough cabs to take them home right there.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Use internet to reserve parking : if you can not find a parking, dont drive.
changing the habit can make big different.
I can't wait for the hack kits for these autonomous cars to be posted online. Can you imagine the sheer carnage resulting from programming 20,000 cars to seek at the same time the same primo parking spaces in front of the Chipotle's restaurant on 15th and to park there NO MATTER WHAT? Can you imagine it!? Glorious.
Facetious as this post is and given the ease at which cars are found to be hackable over remote connections, AC is highlighting what is going to be a real problem with drive by wire vehicles in the future.
And a cyclist or small child dies.
Look, are robot cabs useful for: a. drunk people, b.disabled people (tremors, surgery, conditions), c. people with impaired vision or slow reactions (especially older people)?
Probably yes.
However, where we allow them and where they can operate might be different than for other cars.
And the first small child that dies it's lawsuit city, and they will never, ever, ever give up.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Now the thing is personal automated vehicles, even one per two people would still be a lot of wasted space, if the vehicles were a tiny 3m long the population density over 100m would be only 66 people assuming bumper to bumper. How about if it carried 30 -50 people in a vehicle 15m long, the population density over 100m would be between 200 - 330 people also assuming bumper to bumper. It would cause less congestion.
Of course that would mean that the vehicles would not go exactly to everyone's destination, but on routes that were suited to almost all passengers, you may have to walk. There could be multiple routes to common areas that people went, and passengers could change from route to route as required.
Of course it would not be as comfortable, but a 15 metre vehicle that carries 30-50 people and doesn't need to park anywhere but just drop people off at their destination and continue on its route for others would surely reduce congestion far more.
I can't believe its taken this long to come up with such an idea.
Call autonomous cab.
Cab shows up, you get in.
You plug your little hack-my-cab device into the debug port after removing some panels.
The car is now yours.
Huh. Another AC post that focuses on the recent development of modern cars that are hackable by remote and which will surely be a problem with autonomous vehicles in the future is down modded. Why? In what way is the post trolling or inflammatory?
Quite simply, it's not going to happen. Lol, it has already happened. You already have multiple car companies that will lease you cars for short periods of time, and the only difference is that they get parked at a drop point between customers. If the economics of owning your own car in a dense city prohibits people from owning their own cars, this will become one of the transportation models that will be widely used. Also, if you are speaking toward this never working for the public transportation, you are also wrong, since this is just basically a city bus that you don't have to share with other people. People have been using public buses for a long time.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I think that sharing robot cars might work for group homes for disabled people, and retirement communities. And even university student communities.
There you have people without a high demand for cars, but who might find the convenience of having a robot car available of great utility.
Like party hopping or going shopping.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
All you need is a smartphone now. No cables required.
Can you imagine the sheer carnage resulting from programming 20,000 cars to seek at the same time the same primo parking spaces in front of the Chipotle's restaurant
Facetious as this post is and given the ease at which cars are found to be hackable over remote connections, AC is highlighting what is going to be a real problem with drive by wire vehicles in the future.
So you've never seen human drivers exhibit the same behavior? Have you ever tried to park at Trader Joe's or Market Basket only to find that there are no parking spaces available at all, only people trolling around looking for parking? Who is responsible for this bug that causes more cars to arrive than there are parking spaces?
It's 20,000 cars that have been hijacked remotely to go to one location to park in one spot and to do so at high speed, hence the carnage. The point isn't about parking, its about the susceptibility of computer controlled cars to be hacked as was recently demonstrated http://www.wired.com/2015/07/jeep-hack-chrysler-recalls-1-4m-vehicles-bug-fix/
It'll remain an option, just more expensive as economy-of-scale slips. Some people give more-than-zero fucks about Seinfeldian hygiene, and some people give none at all. We're all Very Special in some way.
Decades of television brainwashing have convinced people to needlessly blow their paychecks on oversized overpowered motor vehicles. The military industrial complex continues to justify its existence by generating ever larger profits. The brainwashed masses plaster their vehicles with "patriotic" symbols, with the massive irony that their fuel purchases are destabilizing world politics and giving aid and comfort to those who wish us harm. The irony is lost, because the urge to own the biggest and most wasteful vehicle on the block is strong, the brainwashing is effective.
The good news is that autonomous cars don't need to park-- they just go give someone else a ride. They could change city life forever.
Of all people who commute to work in New York City, 41% use the subway, 24% drive alone, 12% take the bus, 10% walk to work, 2% travel by commuter rail, 5% carpool, 1% use a taxi, 0.6% ride their bicycle to work, and 0.2% travel by ferry.
There are 13,237 taxis operating in New York City, not including over 40,000 other for-hire vehicles.
Transportation in New York City
If you need over 50,000 vehicles on the road daily to meet existing for-hire demands, how many robo-cabs would you need to provide 25% of the city's commuter services?
The commuter car is by definition mostly idle between 9 in the morning and five in the afternoon and between six in the evening and seven in the morning.
Parked.
... and how would you have one of those? Either you'd have to have a city monopoly that just ran all the cabs that way.
You know how much you love riding on buses? Imagine if the people that brought you that lingering scent of urine everywhere you went decided to do taxi cabs as well.
Exactly.
If you gave it to one evil corporation... such as OCP... or OmniCorp... I don't know what they're called... but they're amazing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You'd at least have clean seats... though the rates are unlikely to be favorable because why should a corporation charge competitive rates if they have a monopoly?... and if you don't pay they'll probably rip your balls out through your nostrils.
But if you don't do that either then you're going to get a cluster fuck... identical to what we have now.
So... yawn.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Cities are actually demanding less parking spaces. Here in Ottawa, Canada a condo unit is going up by me. The city may not approve it unless they reduce the number of spaces available. This is to reduce traffic and encourage public transit. The city is rezoning to build up and not spread out for the same reasons.
This is also done in San Francisco.
Although, the reason is actually that they don't need the parking, because the building is going to remain mostly unoccupied.
The way this works, is you buy a building with a certain theoretical value for rent per square foot, and then you don't rent it out, because no one will pay such an insane amount of rent, and so you get to write the "lost income" off your taxes. You generally have a holding company own the build, and own the holding company instead.
Then you trade buildings like baseball cards with other billionaires, so that whoever is wiling to pay the most for a given tax writeoff gets to own the building that year. This lets you move assets and income around with relatively high liquidity, while at the same time taking the tax write-downs when they make the most sense. This works out because you're selling the company that owns the building, rather than selling the actual building, so the tax basis on the building never changes. Ain't Prop 13 great, if you are a beneficiary of the Kaiser Family Trust, and own enough commercial property?
Usually, you build these tax shelters in areas that were previously parking lots, although in there's a nice spot that used to be a green area, you can usually bribe your way into replacing it with a building, as long as you (1) promise that it's a "green" building, (2) promise to put plants on the roof (eventually), and (3) promise to contribute to the "right" campaigns for some time into the future.
It's very rare, but it occasionally happens that you have to also agree to build some low income housing somewhere, as well, usually some place highly undesirable, like over top of a Thorium Plume in the groundwater from an old General Atomics facility in the area that used to be the Navy Yard. But you can also write that off as part of your initial "sunk cost", so it's OK.
P.S.: This is mostly not a joke; this is how it works, except everyone knows the General Atomics Thorium plume lives under the townhouse down in Mountain View, at the intersection of U.S. 85 and U.S. 101, which is why the deed covenants require that you let the EPA come in and examine the monitoring equipment in your downstairs no less than every two years.
Until truly autonomous vehicles, I am not talking about lane following on highways, becomes a reality all discussions like this is navel gazing. It may take 20 or 30 years before it happens. The last 20% of the situations will take 80% of the programming to solve. We are nowhere close to completely autonomous vehicles.
According to Uber they are an information system that only connects drivers with vehicles to people who want rides. By being an information company they are not bound by taxi laws. At least that is what they preach. Gladly many jurisdiction disagree.The second Uber purchases vehicles they become a taxi company and and lose the facade completely.
Keep in mind that my time has value. The cumulative value of the time I wait could be significant over the course of a year.
linquendum tondere
"Paying more than a conventional taxi and giving the subscriber the ability to report/reject cars that are in poor condition"
Taxis are not already the standard in dense cities instead of owned cars mainly because they are too expensive and you say an even more expensive option would be the solution?
Instead of "robot cabs" how about something a bit bigger that fits more people - maybe run it on rails so it doesn't take much energy.
Lots of little things going everywhere are going to clog the streets if they are robot or not because the control system is not the problem. Robot cabs are like trying to solve the 19th century horseshit problem with a better horse instead of using a different way to get around.
So the answer, as it was in the 19th century, is to get the people who are going to the same places on some sort of mass transit and that frees things up for the people who are going to other places. It's only framed as a difficult problem because of evasion of responsibility and blame shifting.
Are you the type that won't handle money because someone else touched it before you, and maybe they didn't wash their hands first?
They will probably park to wait for the next rider, and many people will keep their cars because taxis are expensive, even if the robot is a bit cheaper
In case this was NOT crystal clear to you... this is NOT about building actual houses that anyone would ever want to live in, or commercial office space that anyone would ever consider renting, it's about dicking around with the income tax laws to shelter profits from taxation.
This is also why you have to build such big-ass buildings: in order to hide your big-ass profits as paper losses.
What are you afraid of, robot communists trying to pry your car key from your dead, cold hand? Car ownership like we have it today is an economical absurdity and an ecological disaster, and of course it will disappear one day. Not by decree but by necessity, no conspiracy will force you to sit in another man's vomit.
they're still bitching abut Uber.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I've wondered why it is that people are working so hard on something so monumentally difficult as properly working and safe self-driving cars, while we still have so many train collisions.
If we can't make safe self-driving trains that nearly drive themselves already, how can we do it with cars??
Just start your own damn blog if you want to talk about automated cars on a weekly basis.
Seriously? I don't get the hype over self driving cars, but this is nuts. Maybe just the article rather than the study, if there is one. We have practically or completely driverless transport. It's called public transport, and it costs a hell of a lot less than it would to deploy and accommodate useless driverless cars. It's a solved problem, many times over. Rail, underground rail, trams, light rail, busways (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-Bahn_Busway), driverless trains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems) etc. The answer to fixing a problem involving hundreds of cars driving to the same place is not to take the driver out of the picture, it is to take the bloody cars out of the picture.
Decent home shipping to save you from carrying your shopping home. That's the main reason people have for driving to malls. Get rid of it. It's a terrible reason, and lugging shopping home is no fun, even with a car.
Most of the world is so far behind in what's possible with public transport, that's where research should focus on. Driverless cars matter about as much as rich tycoons taking joyrides into space.
>> autonomous cars don't need to park-- they just go give someone else a ride
I'm hoping "autonomous cars != end of personal car ownership." I still like to have my own passenger compartment that no one else has eaten in, thrown up in, etc. that I can maintain to my own standard of hygiene.
They will have to pry the steering wheel from my cold, dead hands. I actually enjoy driving. I look forward to long road trips because I will get to drive for an extended period (and probably not in traffic).
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I wonder if it will be like manual transmissions. Many of us always said there will always be manual transmissions for people who care about driving. However in the US it is becoming very difficult to find cars with manual transmissions and technology is making it somewhat of an anachronism anyway. In the same way, I can see this becoming accepted over time until it is the norm.
I used to think I was a diehard: my current car is automatic but I was desperate for a new vehicle at the time and couldn't find what I wanted, plus rationalized that most of my driving is in stop-n-go traffic anyway. However for my next car, I don't expect to care. It's irrelevant to electric cars, CVT, or cars with many gears. Even many enthusiast cars are just a variation on automatic transmissions where you can press a button to have less than optimal gearing.
No. Self driving cars already exist. They're called taxis, they've been around for almost a century, and we still have traffic jams.
Tunnels are expensive to build and to maintain. A network of footbridges, skywalks and elevated decks seems much more sensible. You completely separate foot traffic from vehicular traffic while recovering space that can be used for parking or for additional lanes.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
Wide scale job losses...
Billionaires getting richer...
Soon, the whole economy will be based on just the 1%... the unjamming will be a side effect
My experience, here in the DC metro area, is people take public transportation precisely because it's the most cost-effective option. Don't forget that time is money, and part of the equation includes people factoring in the ability to get some work done while riding on the train or metro, as opposed to having to actively drive if they use their own vehicle.
In my own case, for example? I've been using public transportation for my daily commute, but I'd honestly prefer to just drive. Public transportation has historically won out for me, though, largely because I have to pay upwards of $8 a day to park my car in a public garage once I get to the office. When you add the parking cost to the cost of gasoline (not to mention the mileage you put on your vehicle which reduces its resale value, and wear/tear on tires, brakes, etc.) -- the monthly train and metro unlimited usage pass is simply more cost effective.
On the other hand? They just raised rates for the train and metro so my monthly pass now costs about $40 more, AND it seems like at the same time, service has gotten worse. (Lots of delays lately due to freight train congestion on the tracks, trains breaking down, and metro trains derailing or having various track issues.) It's making me re-evaluate my decision, and I just suspended "auto pay" on my pass renewal while I consider going back to driving again.
Public transportation is useful, sure .... but you're WAY exaggerating its abilities.
For starters, you're at the mercy of the system. You've got to schedule everything around the times it stops where you need to be picked up, and it's likely it has no way to drop you off at your destination at the optimal time for your own needs. Then, you lose a measure of control over your environment while you're riding. Want to play your favorite song at full volume while you're out and about? Hope you brought a pair of earbuds, so they won't kick you off for disturbing someone else! Need to get someplace during "peak hours"? Hope you don't mind having to stand during half the trip, packed in to the subway or train car like a sardine because all of the seats are taken.
And let's not pretend the ONLY reason for a trunk and extra storage space in a vehicle is to bring shopping home! I've owned several pickup trucks before where the idea was throwing large items back there to save me a LOT of money paying someone else to transport them for me. Moving furniture to/from a house, for example? Getting building materials to do some home repair? Hauling away bags of yard waste or other trash? And in my car, I've done on-site computer service jobs for years where I need to haul around all of the tools and spare parts, plus broken machines to bring back with me to work on at home. NONE of this is possible with public transportation.
And then you run into the high costs of all that needless parking; see e.g. the research by Donald Shoup, and yet you want *four* spots per apartment? That's going to needlessly jack up the rent, waste valuable urban land, or do both in spades. Maybe for a few fancy luxury condos where they've got swerving beamers coming out of the woodwork, and can afford such, but certainly not for every building. Why not instead of your mandated minimums (which is the present system in America, though thankfully not as bad as you propose), let the market decide how much parking there should be, and how much it should cost?
Parking minimums have been determined to be a bad idea - They promote sprawl and increases property prices (because now every property has to include land to park x cars)
Then build up, not out.
Yes, I know: you are not allowed to build over 4 stories in San Francisco without a city planning meeting, a "view impact assessment", and a number of other stupid things. So fine: live with the sprawl.
It wouldn't be a cab, more or less it would be a rental service.
I expect that the cost of insurance will eventually kill off human driven cars. I don't see any reason that personal ownership would have to go though, it might get a good deal more expensive with the amount of resources going into the production of the car.
Good thing we will soon have robots to solve our problems. Without that, we might have to rely on boring old technologies. For instance, trying to "unjam the streets" by taking bicycles, cabs, or busses. Or walking, heaven forbid! No, the only plausible solution to any contemporary problem MUST be addressed through some expensive fix that requires computers and massive government and private sector funding.
Things about DC:
- City parking is wildly expensive.
- Bus interchange is horrible.
- Buses are generally taken by people...
--- without cars OR
--- for whom the parking costs have discouraged them OR
--- have a single route from origin to destination, which has never happened for me in the 5 locations I have lived.
- Subway/LightRail parking is also expensive.
- Subway/LightRail coverage is modest.
- Subway/LightRail rush hour service is sardine-can level at least 2 days a week on most lines.
- Subway/LightRail will screw up every two months or so and give you 1-3 hours of delay with little recourse.
- According to the Washington Post, average beltway rush hour speed is 24 miles/hour.