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3,000 Ride-Sharing Cars Could Replace Every Cab in New York City, MIT Study Says (theverge.com)
All 13,000 taxis in New York City could be replaced by a fleet of 3,000 ride-sharing cars if used exclusively for carpooling, according to research published today by MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). From a report: Instead of hailing taxis, passengers that use ride-sharing services for carpooling may lead to reduced traffic congestion, pollution, and fuel use. The CSAIL researchers used public data from NYC taxi rides published by the University of Illinois to develop the algorithm. They calculated that 3,000 four-person vehicles travelling to similar destinations could meet 98 percent of taxi demand in the city with an average wait time of 2.7 minutes. Perhaps the most important part of the system is a dynamic repositioning of vehicles based on real-time demand, which makes the system 20 percent faster.
The major selling point of a taxi is that the backseat is all mine. Now I have to share a car with two other people, or a van with how many people?
No thanks.
I don't want to travel with other people. They smell and insist on conversation. The fuckers.
One car, no conversation, straight to my destination. I can pay a large premium, as can many in NYC.
If NYC people want to carpool, there is a fast, reliable, inexpensive carpool service. Its called the subway.
"I like New York, but I can't stand New Yorkers" --
Mahatma Ghandi
This makes a ton of sense in NYC which is already saturated with high capacity rail systems. If you made these car share vehicles self driving and electric, you have the potential for an amazing last leg solution.
Ride sharing (zip cars, and eventually automated vehicles) will be the future, but people do need to be aware in such a future, people will most likely not "own" cars any longer. But for this to work, they can only be a last leg. Ride shares and self driving cars will NOT solve the transportation gridlock problem. Cars simply do not have the capacity of real public transit:
http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the-transportation-problem/
People don't want to carpool with strangers, or else they'd just take the subway.
The person at MIT who came up with this idea needs to be expelled for exposing themself as a moron. Makes the whole school look bad when they say dumb things like this.
"All 13,000 taxis in New York City could be replaced by a fleet of 3,000 ride-sharing cars..."
Gee, I wonder how many jobs that will create in this new glorious economy.
"...if used exclusively for carpooling."
That's one hell of a caveat to put on these efficiency metrics, given the amount of times drunk people not needing a carpool to work use taxi cabs.
There's already 35,000+ uber drivers in nyc.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/11/news/companies/uber-new-york-city-union/
But how would this be arranged? I see many complications in trying to arrange it in such a way that people can leave when they need to leave, planning routes, etc. The required numbers would quickly rise. This 3000 number seems -- without RTFA or looking at how they got to that number -- only possible in theory.
"MIT Study advises Eliminating 10,000 New York City Jobs"
Sounds like they just came up with a plan to use a bunch of smaller buses to replace taxis. What a novel concept.
Everyone pointing out the invalid assumptions of this study is missing the point. This research isn't about actually improving anything. It's about someone getting their MS or PhD and a couple professors getting their names on something to keep their publication rate up. Academia has no requirement for research to be useful. MIT is no different.
Get back to me when you aren't relying on an algorithm. Such nonsense. Really getting weary of headlines that include the words, 'could', 'might', 'may', or 'should'. Monkeys *could* fly out of my ass, and I'll bet an algorithm could be created with parameters, culled from existing big data that is bullshit, that would say it's likely. Doesn't make it so.
This could work... only if people would let it. The main complaint I see is ... but I don't want to sit with a stranger. What if these 3000 cars had individual compartments... complete with a comfy chair, newspaper/video of your choice, and a coffee? That might be enough for some folks. That plus having them dynamically allocated means not having to wait long and if you miss it/run late, schedule another one to pick you up.
... or Stuff That Matters?
Honestly, I just don't see it.
If all vehicles were computer-controlled, and the same computer knew where everyone is and wanted to be going, obviously travel times could be reduced for everyone. Of course, ownership of cars would no longer matter. Big centralized computers are like working socialism. Then centralized system takes control over everyone at the potential of some little benefit for everyone - or a big benefit for the central system.
and if there is an accident your on your own even more so with the GOP healthcare plan. You where in an taxi cash why should we have to pay out you need to sue the taxi co.
"Similar destinations". Does that mean within 1 block or 6 blocks? Either way, you eliminate the door to door convenience of taxis.
"without significantly impacting travel time." (emphasis mine) Is 5 minutes significant? They state that wait time would be 2.7 minutes, why don't they give a specific travel time change?
"In 2015 Lyft reported that half of its San Francisco trips were carpools." And in 2016, Lyft killed the service due to lack of driver interest. Strange that they published that today.
Medallions cost around $1 million each. Do you really think a ten billion dollar asset is just going to roll over and play dead?
So you replace cabs with "ride-share" cars. Doesn't this just show that they're doing the same thing and, to the extent needed for safety and consumer protection, should be subject to the same regulations?
Also, assuming that all the robots/ride-shares will run full at all times is stupid - you have the same issue as with public transit where you have to plan for near-peak conditions and run near-empty at other times, on pain of stupidly long waits during peaks even with "surge pricing" which simply pushes excess demand to other modes - OK in NY where those are available, as others have noted, but not in general. In all, nice try, but no transportation system works well unless it operates with unused capacity at times.
Loosing the traditional NYC traffic industry will not happen. Politicians will never let go of those opportunities for corruption and graft even if the result is less traffic and pollution.
So I don't see a total replacement of NY Taxis. What I could see is that there would be an impact. The one thing that would be need is that the ride-sharing cars be given exclusive parking spots. And you would need a phone app to open the doors and start the engines. My suggestion is that all of these cars be Electric.
New Yorkers need to know this secret!
No thanks. I don't want to be required to have a functioning cell phone with data plan in order to be able to easily move about a city. And that doesn't even consider the likely poor security and data mining features of the related ride-calling app nor the app servers' uptime nor the network's uptime.
KISS is dying as you can't make a scale-able profit off it.
Well, let's simplify... 12,000 / 4 = 3000... Holyshit, I just figured out their entire study!
How many cars are required for the other 2% ?!?
Kind of a big deal unless you plan on abandoning people in the street.
98% of trips with 92% of the available seats. They seem to imply some empty taxis running around, seems unlikely there.
Or just divide 13,000 by 3,000 cars and make up a few percentages within a typical margin of error and save a lot of calculating ;)
We can house all the homeless there by putting up just ONE MORE building too.
so taxi cabs becoming smaller size buses
really?!
who you you most like/hate to share a cab with ? Answers below please:
The wait time is only one variable, how about the length of the trip to the destination?
I have tried Uber Pool, and will never use them again. A trip that should have been 25 minutes point to point took over one and a half hours with Uber Pool, because the pickups/dropoffs forced the driver to stay on congested streets the entire way. Public transit would have been faster and cost 1/12 as much as Uber Pool. Even if this trip was more environmentally friendly than 3 passengers taking 3 separate taxis would have been, that comparison is missing the point. As a passenger, there is no benefit to using such a ride sharing service over public transit.
Let me know when a ride sharing service will be way faster than public transit, or when it when its cost and environmental impact will be comparable to public transit. I'm simply not interested in having the worst of both worlds.
Oh, the people would let it. Most folks sure would like a stress-free ride/commute that also allows them the privacy & comfort away from strangers! But would the transportation companies allow it for long? No.
You know people will get crammed in those small seats sooner or later.
Look at vintage photos of airline & rail travel. It was a treat to ride. Later, as such rides became more affordable, the businesses decided to add in more seats- until now today you can barely sit in there. Much less have a private booth.
In summary, yes busses with compartments would be ideal and people would prefer that. But companies will cry about lost revenue when most of the space is 'wasted' per private passenger, and charge exorbitant rates as a result.
LOOK AT HOW WE USED TO FLY: and tell me what happened since.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/31/55/21/315521ff2a493e8981c5c6480e046210.jpg
http://www.timeslive.co.za/incoming/2015/01/22/sleepers.jpg/BINARY/Sleepers.JPG
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--MZ5TV87l--/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/197hfznrmdw9cjpg.jpg
http://www.wfrm.org/images/dinner.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/24/9c/56/249c56d42fda6f1dc1b8379e140c08d3.jpg
http://www.instroagogo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/kuva3.jpg
http://www.gabvine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/old-airplane-food.png
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/3a/7c/58/3a7c585ee2398eea7217695984929e04.jpg
It was great, if you were part of the elite and could afford it; but most peons like you took the bus or if you were a fortunate enough to have train service you could take the train.
Since you're obviously not part of the elite, you have no clue as to what First Class International is really like today, (Domestic FC is really a joke and not worth the upgrade cost because flights are so short).