… we won’t need traffic lights at all (or stop signs, for that matter). Traffic will constantly flow, and at a rate that would probably unnerve the average human driver. The researchers have modeled just how this would work, as you can see in the animation below.
You have to admit the patterns are mesmerizing even if the whole idea still seems far-fetched. The yellow cars pausing at the intersection in this simulation are old-timey human-driven vehicles that haven’t yet caught up with the future (because while we may all be riding in driverless cars one day, that day won’t arrive overnight):
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Notice anything missing?
No sidewalks, no bike lanes, no pedestrian crossings, no driveways, no bus stops – just technology and 12 lanes of roadway in a world designed only for moving vehicles “efficiently, freely and rapidly” – as the first edition of the Traffic Planning Handbook (1942) defined the goal. And which the motordom-heads think is still the point of the exercise, no matter what the cost or ultimate consequences.
UPDATE: David Alpert explores the Hell, and some of the implications.
I think robocars make transit and carsharing so much more convenient that they seriously undermine individual car ownership. They’ll also be the killer app for EVs: Modo’s EVs take themselves off to charge somewhere when not in use.
Interested readers should see Brad Templeton’s thorough thinking-out-loud of some implications and the roadmap.
My favorite “what if” for Vancovuer: in 2025, today’s bus drivers are all employed as ticket spot-checkers for a much larger fleet of smaller, more frequent robo-buses. Labor is the biggest impediment to more frequent transit; frequency is the biggest impediment to an attractive system. You never wait more than 2 minutes for a robo-bus. Increased revenue with reduced operational costs could even mean less subsidy.
Here’s another one: whistlecars (see Templeton) finally make car-sharing feasible in the burbs.
Biggest barrier: our public servants. Theoretically, a robot should only need to be better than the worst human driver granted a license. Politically, unfortunately, the robot will need to be better than the best human driver. Templeton’s “school of fish” test.
Cash-strapped Arizona has amended its laws to let google test locally. BC should let its struggling mining towns should do the same for UBC’s EV and robotics teams. They’re working on autonomous mining vehicles at the moment. Why aren’t they working on getting suburban drinkers home safely in areas with insufficient taxi coverage? Where is the 1%er capitalist entrepreneur seeding this world-changing business?
Automated vehicles are a total game changer that will fundamentally change pretty much everything it ways that are pretty hard to imagine now. They have the potential to address many of the extreme energy, resource, economic and land ineffeicencies in our transportation system both for people and goods. They can enable both the efficient sharing of vehicles and many other items dramatically lowering resource consumption.
Shared vehicles means that people no longer need heavy expensive energy wasteful vehicles capable of servicing high speed collisions for short trips around cities. This makes small light-weight electric vehicles far more practical for urban trips. When the batteries run out, you just switch to another one that has a full charge. For long trips, people can just rent a car, fly or take a high-speed train.
As far as safety goes, it is reasonable to require that no one is killed in collisions with driverless vehicles. That means low speeds in cities and other measures to eliminate fatties and reduce injuries.
For transit, as electric (driver and driverless) and human powered vehicles can accommodate most short trips, investments in transit should be focused on medium and long distance higher speed rail.
“eliminate fatties”
I don’t know, we may need to encourage more walking and cycling for this.
All the yellow cars turn white in the intersection in the video. The video is not unlike cycling videos from the Netherlands showing everyone weaving through each other.