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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 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.
Yet millions of people still take public transportation every day.
There is a way to make it happen, but I doubt it will fly. Korea basically did this in the 1970s and 1980s. The government knew it didn't have the road infrastructure to support every household owning a car, so they taxed cars up the wazoo. A car that might cost $10,000 would cost $50,000 after taxes ($100,000 in today's dollars). This had the effect of severely discouraging car ownership. In its place, a robust taxi industry sprang up. I remember visiting downtown Seoul and 80%-90% of the cars on the road were taxis. There were no traffic jams, and if you didn't want to wait for a bus you could hail a taxi within 15-30 seconds.
It all fell apart in 1988. One of the Democratic nominees for President (Gephardt if I remember), in a bid to win Michigan made a huge ruckus about how Hyundai was allowed to sell its cars for $6000 in the U.S., while an equivalent Ford cost $45,000 in Korea. He conveniently left out that the same Hyundai also cost $45,000 in Korea. He didn't win the nomination, but the damage was done. U.S. public sentiment forced the U.S. to pressure Korea to remove their car taxes. Cars in Korea suddenly became affordable to the average household, and Korea plummeted into two decades of gridlock.
"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.