Cars congest cities. Articles like this encourage policy makers to target users of ride sharing, while ignoring the obvious broader problem.<p>If cities build appropriate multi modal transportation networks and restrict the amount of space allowed for vehicle traffic, people will walk, bike or take the train rather than drive. All three are preferable to being stuck in traffic.
Autonomous fleet parking has all the 3D density advantages of robot parking structures[1], but at dumb concrete prices. There's no aisle because there's no "random access" of a particular vehicle. No extra headroom (because they're identical) extra width (because they're precise), ventilation (because they're electric), or even lights. It's the best of both worlds.<p>Where land is cheap, simply drive the cars along a space-filling curve in a parking lot. One possible path is a double-spiral. Picture these lines[2] as the curb (except there's no curb, or even painted lines).<p>The spiral path is simple enough to calculate. One can rotate the whole spiral as viewed from above, growing and shrinking it and "wear leveling" across the entire paved surface. And the technique should generalize to any shape parking lot.<p>I expect writhing double-headed masses of autonomous cars near urban centers soon.<p>This design eliminates entirely any 3D architecture, at the small expense of some wasted space in the center determined by the turning radius[3].<p>Anyone know the most efficient shape would be in 3D (geometrically and structurally)? A helix is the obvious extrapolation, but I'm not convinced it's optimal.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_parking_system" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_parking_system</a><p>[2] <a href="https://openclipart.org/detail/216988/double-linear-spiral" rel="nofollow">https://openclipart.org/detail/216988/double-linear-spiral</a><p>[3] edit: now that I think about it, you can park cars there too
Perhaps carpooling hasn't been incentivized enough: the current in-app economics for 'pooling' appears to be an increased time to destination but decreased fare (+/- social interactions with driver and passenger(s)). If congestion is a function of cars on road, car size, number of passengers, and path to destination, then perhaps shorter rides with more passengers in smaller cars should be incentivized more. This seems to lend itself to toll-roads/congestion-charges for different locations; this may be a gateway to a managed congestion area that is served exclusively by human-driver ride-share vehicles - could this improve congestion in those areas?<p>“Why get on a bus with 50 people when you can get into a car and maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll be the only person in it?” Demand for "personalized" transport is here to stay.
This result is not surprising at all. When these taxi service becomes much more affordable, more people will use them instead of other transportation and more people will be stuck in traffic. Uber has been giving me tons of discount last year, making it even cheaper than Muni, so I’ve been taking Uber a lot more than necessary.<p>The reduce congestion, we need much better train system like those in east Asia so that people would love to take trains. Trains can also go much faster and they are much more predictable during busy hours
This makes total sense. Uber & Lyft lowered the barrier to entry for private transportation. Instead of paying $20,000 for a car, I only need $10 and I can ride in comfort from lower Manhattan to Brooklyn.
I'd like to propose the following: public-private ride share. In short, US Federal Gov't buys or finances the development of ride-sharing software and licenses it to cities. Cities act as Uber does now, skimming a (much smaller) percentage of their revenue as a tax, adjusting the variables in favor of local interests (e.g. incentivizing carpooling or service in lower-income areas), and studying the ways that ride sharing can complement existing transit options.<p>I know that's a socialist longshot in capitalist America, but I really think that going forward the government is going to have to take a larger stake in tech in order to avoid the types of conflicts we've been seeing between private companies and public interests.
This is fairly obvious because it generates extras trips while drivers are en route to pick up someone and don't have a passenger. If everyone had their own car and infinite parking existed, these trips wouldn't exist. And those additional trips as to traffic.<p>These services have advantages, but reducing the number of cars on the road isn't one of them.
Can confirm with intuitive certainty. For 2 days in Q4 of 2017 here in Bangalore, India, the ride sharing companies (Uber and Ola) were on a strike and those 2 days were the best in terms of traffic (or the lack of it) for us. I'm sure a small segment of the population decided to work-from-home, but since it was bang in the middle of the week, I'm sure most of them availed public transport like buses or used their two wheelers. Of course, some of them used their own cars, but even if they did, it did not reflect in the form of enhanced or even the usual amount of traffic. I've been thinking about this ever since and it feels bittersweet to read this. The validation is good, but the fact that it's actually true to some extent and not just in my head, is sad.
Kind of surprising they didn't mention Waze Carpool at all, since it is operating in a similar space and could help cut down on congestion. Since it doesn't pay as much as Uber/Lyft, it's likely to only encourage true carpooling—where people who were already planning similar trips end up riding together. Uber and Lyft are different because even if you have multiple riders going in the same direction, there's always a driver who goes to pick them up, idles while waiting for riders, etc.<p>Related note: what would happen if Ubers/Lyfts/taxies couldn't use HOV lanes unless they had multiple passengers? It's always struck me as odd that a taxi can go HOV with one passenger, since the whole point of HOV is to encourage carpooling.
Can driverless taxi and quadcopter technology have a risky love child already and let us hurtle towards a future where roads are rare, landing pads are ubiquitous, and the swarm of rush hour commuters blots out the sun?<p>C'mon Elon, get on it!
I experienced this first hand in Bangalore last year, when Uber and Ola (a company offering similar services) drivers went on strike for a week or so. Roads were much less congested during that time period.