Should the coming self driving revolution cause us to rethink transit plans?

[fuji]

Toronto is setting out to spend hundreds of millions on new transit lines: light rail and/or subway lines. We have had the light rail vs subway debate many times, but are they both wrong?

Are we building transit for the 20th century instead of the 21st?

Self driving vehicles seem certain to revolutionize transportation. They aren't just a little bit different than what we have today. They are a LOT different.

They will result in a totally different way of thinking about transportation just as these hugely expensive projects come fully online--twenty years from now.

Twenty years is a long time. Technology is moving fast.

Self driving cars will change the way we think about car ownership. It's going to become a leasing model for a lot of people, like a ZipCar that comes to you when and where you want it. Like Uber, but without a driver.

Drivers are the big operating cost in public transit, whether we are talking about buses or taxis, It's the cost of the driver that is usually the limiting factor in how many are on the road.

Or flip it around. Assuming ALL cars can self drive, why wouldn't you send YOUR car out to make some money while you aren't using it? YOUR car spends most of its existence unproductively parked. Wouldn't it be better if it could go drive around for Uber for a few hours earning some fares while you are at work?

Instead of paying for parking, you'd get paid.

So what are the implications of that:

1. No more street parking. Nobody will ever park. Their car will drop them off and drive away, maybe to pick up other people. Maybe to park somewhere else.

2. Ride sharing replaces GO train, subway, and buses. Why take any of those things when you can get door to door service? A self driving minivan can pick up and drop off a few people on a common route to work and do so cheaply.

Maybe we will build a hugely expensive subway system and no one will ever take it because it will be obsolete before it's even built.

Maybe instead we should begin investing in self driving infrastructure. Traffic controls that can talk to a computerized car, upgrades to the highways to make them easier for computer driven cars to navigate, off street parking designed for self driving cars to go stow themselves until needed--Wi-Fi enabled so they can receive your call to come pick you up.

By eliminating all street parking we gain a lot of capacity on the roads. Maybe we don't need trains.

 

[Insidious Von]

Ok, I'm going to entrust my life to a stupid computer - that makes sense. Driverless cars are a big hoax, I'll believe it when I see it.

Careful fuji, that bandwagon is driverless.

 

[fuji]

Ok, I'm going to entrust my life to a stupid computer - that makes sense. Driverless cars are a big hoax, I'll believe it when I see it.

Careful fuji, that bandwagon is driverless.

Easily done:

You can get a ticket to Pittsburgh relatively inexpensively where you will find self driving Uber cars already on the road. Seeing is believing!

 

[Insidious Von]

Still not buying it my good friend fuji.

Automotive infrastructure is decaying faster than we can repair it. Computers are not adaptive nor sentient enough to figure out the construction sites and detours, there would be endless smash ups. To make it work we would need to build roads similar to light rapid transit lines and who's going to fork out the money for that, you?

 

[james t kirk]

There will still be just as many cars on the road (Average Annual Daily Traffic).

The key is to get cars off the road.

Congestion will be the same if not worse because the computer software that drives the vehicles will be inherently cautious and won't make the kind of moves necessary to get into traffic. Imagine the 401 at rush hour with 5 car lengths between each car. You will be sitting on the on ramp all day.

Add to that, I really don't think anyone over 30 will buy the damn things anyway.

 

[Phil C. McNasty]

Lets say fuji is right for once (which he isnt), if all cars would become self-driving tomorrow it would destroy the sports car and prestige car business almost overnight. What would be the sense in owning a Corvette, Ferrari or BMW if you're not really driving the car yourself??

 

[bishop]

I am all for this, when self driving features appear in popular cars like the civic, accord, camry, I will definitely buy one. More problems would be solved than it would create, overall it is be a huge boom to the economy.

 

[saxon]

I am all for this, when self driving features appear in popular cars like the civic, accord, camry, I will definitely buy one. More problems would be solved than it would create, overall it is be a huge boom to the economy.

I would think the opposite, with self driving vehicles you would add hundreds of thousands of people to the list of the unemployed. Think of all the cab drivers, truckers and public transit workers who will lose their jobs virtually overnight.

 

[Bored123]

While great conceptually the self driving car takes away from what for me is the best thing about driving. The certain passion and excitement the a perfectly executed shift give u, or perfectly hitting an apex on an off/on ramp. I also don't see a self driving car perfectly revving a beautiful inline 6, or giving me the satisfying growl of a flat pan V8. Anyways all this to say as much as I'd like my car to drive me home after a night on the town and a few too many drinks I'm not quite ready to lose the sense on passion and thrill that a great car can give me. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Keebler Elf]

Self driving vehicles are coming and they're coming soon. Deny all you want, you're just one of the naysayers who can't deal with change.

As for the OP, I don't think we can stand idly by and do nothing while waiting for self-driving vehicles to become the norm. The projected population increase to Toronto (almost 10 million by 2040) will mean total gridlock if we don't do something now.

Personally, I think self driving vehicles will result in greater efficiencies but those will be swallowed up by a growing mass of people. And at the end of the day, self driving or not, mass transit is more efficient than individual vehicles.

 

[Bored123]

Self driving vehicles are coming and they're coming soon. Deny


I'm not denying at all, I fully realize that this revolution in the transport industry is coming. I'm simply saying that we will be losing what I consider passion in the name of efficiency. And that makes me sad.

 

[Phil C. McNasty]

Self driving vehicles are coming and they're coming soon. Deny all you want, you're just one of the naysayers who can't deal with change

How do they plan on navigating a million cars in a big city like New York on a daily basis?? And without causing a massive amount of car crashes everywhere??

You would need the mother of all super computers.
And what happens if this super computer encounters a little bug??

 

[james t kirk]

Self driving vehicles are coming and they're coming soon. Deny all you want, you're just one of the naysayers who can't deal with change.

As for the OP, I don't think we can stand idly by and do nothing while waiting for self-driving vehicles to become the norm. The projected population increase to Toronto (almost 10 million by 2040) will mean total gridlock if we don't do something now.

Personally, I think self driving vehicles will result in greater efficiencies but those will be swallowed up by a growing mass of people. And at the end of the day, self driving or not, mass transit is more efficient than individual vehicles.

Uh, I don't see Toronto's population increasing to 10 million in 24 years.

There's no way.

Toronto is currently 3 million or so. I don't see a 300 percent increase in 24 years.

As to self driving cars, they may be coming, but it doesn't mean they'll work.

Also, I imagine that they will have an over ride which will allow for conventional driving and most people will stick to that. I just don't see people opting for auto pilot. My car has adaptive cruise control. It's very limiting and I have had it disabled. It does not work in either the rain, or snow for example as the optical sensor in the front grill is no longer able too obtain the necessary information.

The only time I would opt for a self driving car is when I'm so tired, I can't keep my eyes open. Other than that, forget it

 

[fuji]

How do they plan on navigating a million cars in a big city like New York on a daily basis?? And without causing a massive amount of car crashes everywhere??

You would need the mother of all super computers.
And what happens if this super computer encounters a little bug??

Step 1, replace every one current bus/streetcar with a dozen self driving minivans that pick up and drop off customers door to door, automatically plotting efficient routes to pick up and drop off several people in a loop. This service costs no more than a current transit fare because there is no driver's salary to pay and thus no need for superlong vehicles.

Step 2, eliminate all parking lanes instantly doubling the capacity on many roads. Self driving cars can self park elsewhere if at all. Your car comes to you, no more need for you to go to your car.

Step 3, most people opt not to own a car since one can be more conveniently and economically summoned on demand, turning a zillion parking lots into productive space. Parking lots turn into offices. People renovate their homes to turn their car parks into rec rooms, home gyms, extra bedrooms, etc.

Step 4, rip up the current train tracks and use it instead to create high speed corridors for self driving cars where linked chains of cars, like a train, are sent at high speed on long trips in lock step, managed completely by the system to achieve speeds much higher than are possible on highways shared with human drivers

Step 5, rip out the subway track and turn it into a corridor for self driving cars to rapidly cross the city, again in lock step and at speeds not possible for a human driver. Imagine cruising across downtown in a former subway tunnel at 200kmph. Stations are turned into cloverleafs for vehicles to enter and exit. Electric vehicles only please, to avoid fumes in the tunnel.

Steps 4 and 5 might be limited to city managed fleets that have been properly maintained and with the right systems installed to ensure proper behavior in the higher speed, fully automated driving environment.

 

[nottyboi]

Ok, I'm going to entrust my life to a stupid computer - that makes sense. Driverless cars are a big hoax, I'll believe it when I see it.

Careful fuji, that bandwagon is driverless.

you do that with Airplanes already... and trains rely on computers to manage rail lines, and traffic lights are computer controlled...

 

[nottyboi]

Toronto is setting out to spend hundreds of millions on new transit lines: light rail and/or subway lines. We have had the light rail vs subway debate many times, but are they both wrong?

Are we building transit for the 20th century instead of the 21st?

Self driving vehicles seem certain to revolutionize transportation. They aren't just a little bit different than what we have today. They are a LOT different.

They will result in a totally different way of thinking Scott transportation just as these hugely expensive projects come fully online--twenty years from now.

Twenty years is a long time. Technology is moving fast.

Self driving cars will change the way we think about car ownership. It's going to become a leasing model for a lot of people, like a ZipCar that comes to you when and where you want it. Like Uber, but without a driver.

Drivers are the big operating cost in public transit, whether we are talking about buses or taxis, It's the cost of the driver that is usually the limiting factor in how many are on the road.

Or flip it around. Assuming ALL cars can self drive, why wouldn't you send YOUR car out to make some money while you aren't using it? YOUR car spends most of its existence unproductively parked. Wouldn't it be better if it could go drive around for Uber for a few hours earning some fares while you are at work?

Instead of paying for parking, you'd get paid.

So what are the implications of that:

1. No more street parking. Nobody will ever park. Their car will drop them off and drive away, maybe to pick up other people. Maybe to park somewhere else.

2. Ride sharing replaces GO train, subway, and buses. Why take any of those things when you can get door to door service? A self driving minivan can pick up and drop off a few people on a common route to work and do so cheaply.

Maybe we will build a hugely expensive subway system and no one will ever take it because it will be obsolete before it's even built.

Maybe instead we should begin investing in self driving infrastructure. Traffic controls that can talk to a computerized car, upgrades to the highways to make them easier for computer driven cars to navigate, off street parking designed for self driving cars to go stow themselves until needed--Wi-Fi enabled so they can receive your call to come pick you up.

By eliminating all street parking we gain a lot of capacity on the roads. Maybe we don't need trains.

Yes I agree 100% with this. I thing the transit investments should be limited to low hanging fruit. Some tweaks to highway usage can get us by.

 

[explorerzip]

Uh, I don't see Toronto's population increasing to 10 million in 24 years.

There's no way.

Toronto is currently 3 million or so. I don't see a 300 percent increase in 24 years.

As to self driving cars, they may be coming, but it doesn't mean they'll work.

Also, I imagine that they will have an over ride which will allow for conventional driving and most people will stick to that. I just don't see people opting for auto pilot. My car has adaptive cruise control. It's very limiting and I have had it disabled. It does not work in either the rain, or snow for example as the optical sensor in the front grill is no longer able too obtain the necessary information.

The only time I would opt for a self driving car is when I'm so tired, I can't keep my eyes open. Other than that, forget it

Yeah, I don't think it's possible for the city of Toronto proper to have a 300% population increase in 24 years. That figure is likely for the GTA and not the city of Toronto.

The autopilot issues can be partially solved by equipping regular cars with a transponders that communicates with other cars. So they would not have to have line of sight to be able to navigate properly. The issues of course is how to get people to voluntarily put a transponder in their regular car. The technology already exists so it would have to be "downgraded" for consumer use.

 

[TeasePlease]

Lets say fuji is right for once (which he isnt), if all cars would become self-driving tomorrow it would destroy the sports car and prestige car business almost overnight. What would be the sense in owning a Corvette, Ferrari or BMW if you're not really driving the car yourself??

How many Ferraris, corvettes and other enthusiast cars do you see on the road? BMWs promote their "driver experience" (which is, admittedly, great!). But, I'd also wager that most of their customers are in it for the status symbol more than the performance.

Most people don't drive because they like to. They drive because 1. They prefer private transportation, and 2. They can afford it.

On that basis, Fuji is right. When shared, autonomous transport can promise (and deliver) private transportation on demand, it will fly.

 

[Aardvark154]

When perhaps five years have gone by without a single driverless car collision having taken place then perhaps this conversation will be needed. Further, I'm not sure that the economics of running a car most of the day will make sense - automobiles are not commercial aircraft. Likewise I'm not sure that people will want to have their automobile just out driving other people around -- just to raise one point you are a non-smoker and your prowling around driverless Ubber car picks up someone who smokes in your car (after all no one is there to say no).

 

[Keebler Elf]

Uh, I don't see Toronto's population increasing to 10 million in 24 years.

http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/economy/demographics/projections/

The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is projected to be the fastest growing region of the province, with its population increasing by over 2.8 million, or 42.9 per cent, to reach almost 9.5 million by 2041.