Autonomous cars will lead to more sprawl -- WSJ

Love to get the board's take on this article, especially this section:

But according to Robert McDonald, lead scientist for the Global Cities Program at the Nature Conservancy, there is something akin to a law of nature about new transportation technology: The faster humans move, the bigger and more sprawling our cities become. Researchers from New York University and the University of Connecticut examining a global sample of 30 cities found that population density has been declining between 1% and 1.5% a year since 1890. Not coincidentally, this is the era when electric street cars were introduced in major cities.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/driverle...awl-1466395201

But wait, you might say, don’t millennials prefer to live in cities? That is widely believed, but not true, according to Jed Kolko, former chief economist at real-estate site Trulia. Not only do 66% of millennials tell pollsters they want to live in the suburbs, they are moving there, as population growth in suburbs outstrips growth in cities.
“Millennials with kids in school, that’s children 6 and older, are actually less urban today than the same age group was 15 years ago,” says Mr. Kolko.

Yes, automated vehicles are going to lead to more sprawl, more traffic congestion and an increase in the number of vehicles sold. They will cause another huge employment shift. Another source of semiskilled employment will just disappear to the robot. No more bus, cab and truck drivers.

I have doubts that mass transit will survive the onslaught of automated vehicles. Urban transit will transition to automated on-demand Uber like services.

There is a revolution in mobility that is really taking off and I think it may be too early to assess the effects. Yet clearly concepts of automobiles and transportation are undergoing huge disruptions.

I have just finished reading Mary Meeker’s latest Internet Trends report which now suddenly has a large section on the automotive topic. The automotive part starts here: http://www.slideshare.net/kleinerper...016_PAGE146Car

There is a convergence of the internet, ride sharing services, self-driving vehicles, app networked drivers and vehicles [think Waze], robot manufacturing and pooled vehicle ownership.

Regarding BankruptcyGuy’s point, the second to last of the conclusions of the Meeker report on mobility lend support to suburban living - although it doesn't account for the innate boredom of the burbs :).
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Don’t know if any of you have used ride-sharing services like Lyft or Uber, still in their infancy, but this and other new mobility conveniences have even me wondering if I will even need a car, let alone two as my wife and I have.

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Originally Posted by BankruptcyGuy

Love to get the board's take on this article, especially this section:

But according to Robert McDonald, lead scientist for the Global Cities Program at the Nature Conservancy, there is something akin to a law of nature about new transportation technology: The faster humans move, the bigger and more sprawling our cities become. Researchers from New York University and the University of Connecticut examining a global sample of 30 cities found that population density has been declining between 1% and 1.5% a year since 1890. Not coincidentally, this is the era when electric street cars were introduced in major cities.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/driverle...awl-1466395201

But wait, you might say, don’t millennials prefer to live in cities? That is widely believed, but not true, according to Jed Kolko, former chief economist at real-estate site Trulia. Not only do 66% of millennials tell pollsters they want to live in the suburbs, they are moving there, as population growth in suburbs outstrips growth in cities.
“Millennials with kids in school, that’s children 6 and older, are actually less urban today than the same age group was 15 years ago,” says Mr. Kolko.

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First, saying cars for create sprawl is like saying handguns cause shooting deaths. Cars, freeways, and mortgage interest deduction make sprawl easier, but the real problem is that people want what the suburbs offer. IMO, newer homes, public safety, yards for kids, typically better schools, lower taxes.

Second, that urban cores are doing well can be true at the same time that the suburbs are doing even better. Like in India, the poverty rate is declining while the total number in poverty is increasing.

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Originally Posted by Lowell

Regarding BankruptcyGuy’s point, the second to last of the conclusions of the Meeker report on mobility lend support to suburban living - although it doesn't account for the innate boredom of the burbs :).

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There's plenty of innate boredom in most of the neighborhoods of Detroit too.

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Autonomous cars will lead to more sprawl

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It will lead to obnoxiously cheerful robots. LOL!

Johnny cab clips from Total Recall

A few points:

1. Sprawl has as much to do with intentional policies to encourage or prevent it as with the simple presence of any given transportation technology.

2. Major urban centers are simply too dense to ever be served by cars, autonomous or not. But there will be pressure on mass transit as seniors, disabled, kids, etc. all gain access to autonomous car transportation.

3. At the same time, autonomous vehicles means not only cars but also buses. Once you eliminate the labor cost of the driver, cities may well be able to run twice as many autonomous buses, leading to better mass transit service overall. If an autonomous taxi costs twice as much as riding the autonomous bus, and the bus comes every ten minutes 24 hours a day, buses might still do fine.

4. [[2) and [[3) will probably play out in different ways depending on densities, population demographics, etc. in individual cities. Hard to say whether we will see net increases or decreases in transit demand and service.

5. The "Millennials all want to live in cities" claim, or even "most millennials want to live in cities," is really a strawman. The actual claim is "millennials want to live in cities more often, relative to previous generations." I'm pretty sure that's true compared to their parents. And, obviously, that would be enough to drive an increased demand for urban living.

I think it will allow people who want to live in suburbs to do it more conveniently, but I think it is an open question how much that will increase sprawl--sprawl is more than just people living on bigger lots; it is also big parking lots surrounding every office and retail building, and that should diminish a lot with autonomous vehicles, not to mention that the number of retail establishments will be constrained by the continued growth of online shopping and delivery by autonomous vehicle.

It should also make living in cities easier, but that isn't going to make living in cities something that everyone wants, just as it isn't going to make living in the suburbs something that appeals to everybody.

Personally I feel that autonomous cars will lead to LESS car ownership. Why have two cars in a family when one single car can take the kids to school, return home on its own, take you to work and return again to pick up your wife for work?

Better yet, why own at all? An autonomous car can earn money 24/7 while you're at work or asleep so why not just summon a car or truck or limo on demand, specific to your errand instead of owning one, single purpose car like a sucker?

And time is the biggest problem with long commutes and this does little to fix that other than syncing cars to keep traffic flowing but even that is only once they're widely adapted...

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Originally Posted by Wesley Mouch

First, saying cars for create sprawl is like saying handguns cause shooting deaths. Cars, freeways, and mortgage interest deduction make sprawl.

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1. It's pretty hard to have a shooting death without a gun. Unless you can throw bullets really, really hard. Still, it wouldn't be defined as a shooting.
2. You just admitted cars create sprawl, after all you can't have freeways without cars [[well, you can but that would be silly) and you can deduct mortgage interest in the city too. The deduction isn't specifically to encourage sprawl.

I don't see automated cars reducing the number of parking spaces needed.

If you have 150 people in a store, you're still going to have almost that many cars waiting outside to take them home. It will be more efficient for the cars to just wait, than it would be to release a car from the store only to send another car back in 15 minutes. If the stores don't have parking, the cars will just go round in circles on the streets near the stores causing huge congestion.

Cars are still going to need a place to park both near a users home and near their destinations. You're going to see huge parking lots/decks pop up with charging stations to keep all those cars juiced.

Automated cars are going lead to huge congestion issues as the cars make almost 50% of their trips empty.

If a family is going to try to survive with one car, that car will take bread-winner to work, comes home empty, Takes kids to school, comes home empty, Goes to store empty, Drives home with ice cream cake and bag of potatoes in drivers seat. [[placed there by robot at store. Potatoes too heavy to be delivered by drone aircraft) Car then has to collect kids, and collect bread-winner using 4 more trips.

You may be able to live with one car, It's lifespan in years will be seriously shorter than it is now. Cars have about 250,000 miles in them, this will only slowly increase.

We'll also see the effect of surge pricing at commuting time. It will probably be cheaper to buy your own car, if You want to get to the office the same time everyone else does. Rides to work and school will be more expensive at rush times if you don't own your vehicle.

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Originally Posted by ndavies

I don't see automated cars reducing the number of parking spaces needed.

If you have 150 people in a store, you're still going to have almost that many cars waiting outside to take them home. It will be more efficient for the cars to just wait, than it would be to release a car from the store only to send another car back in 15 minutes. If the stores don't have parking, the cars will just go round in circles on the streets near the stores causing huge congestion.

Cars are still going to need a place to park both near a users home and near their destinations. You're going to see huge parking lots/decks pop up with charging stations to keep all those cars juiced.

Automated cars are going lead to huge congestion issues as the cars make almost 50% of their trips empty.

If a family is going to try to survive with one car, that car will take bread-winner to work, comes home empty, Takes kids to school, comes home empty, Goes to store empty, Drives home with ice cream cake and bag of potatoes in drivers seat. [[placed there by robot at store. Potatoes too heavy to be delivered by drone aircraft) Car then has to collect kids, and collect bread-winner using 4 more trips.

You may be able to live with one car, It's lifespan in years will be seriously shorter than it is now. Cars have about 250,000 miles in them, this will only slowly increase.

We'll also see the effect of surge pricing at commuting time. It will probably be cheaper to buy your own car, if You want to get to the office the same time everyone else does. Rides to work and school will be more expensive at rush times if you don't own your vehicle.

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ND, I think you're wrong on the pessimistic side, but where we can agree is that we really don't know what the future will hold -- and how its gonna unfold. That's the wonder and horror of markets. They sort out what's efficient, and what's not.

If any car is making empty trips, then its not going to be efficient. But if your car can make some revenue when it otherwise would be parked, it would then be more efficient than sitting idle.

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Originally Posted by Wesley Mouch

ND, I think you're wrong on the pessimistic side, but where we can agree is that we really don't know what the future will hold -- and how its gonna unfold. That's the wonder and horror of markets. They sort out what's efficient, and what's not.

If any car is making empty trips, then its not going to be efficient. But if your car can make some revenue when it otherwise would be parked, it would then be more efficient than sitting idle.

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What does efficient mean? If only buying one car and then sending it home empty to let other people in my household take trips saves me the price of a second car, that's more efficient for me personally. But it does raise congestion for everyone else - a textbook negative externality.

I think a lot of people will not want to send their cars out to pick up strangers and carry them around. Some will. But many won't. If you define efficiency as "maximizing earnings," lots of people are perfectly willing to behave in inefficient ways to avoid having their property trashed by strangers or unavailable when they need it themselves.

As has been pointed out before, we pay for things in either money or time. Autonomous cars could reduce the time cost of driving to zero - send the car to the store to pick up a grocery order, send it to get the kids, etc. But also send it back to the store when you realize you forgot milk, or send it out to get some flowers for your wife because you thought of it right after you got home, or sign the kids up for an extra after-school activity because, hey, I won't have to take them. When costs go down drastically, usage will go up drastically. As you rightfully say none of us know exactly how these things will play out, but there is potential for very bad congestion if people begin to use such cars in these ways.

Autonomous vehicles won't eliminate public transport for the same reason why Uber won't. Sometimes it's more convenient to have a car pick you up, and other times it's easier to take a train. Traveling across the length of a city will probably always be easier by train. There is no way autonomous vehicles will be able to replace trains in cities such as London, New York, Tokyo or other sprawling megacities. There is simply not enough room on the road, even with efficiencies gained by automation. Moreover, even if these vehicles are non-emission/electric they can still be disruptive to walkable neighborhoods [[try crossing busy street of self-driving cars)!

Yes, maybe suburbs will function much more efficiently with autonomous vehicles, but many people will always desire to live in cities, which remain the most expensive places in the world to live [[obviously Detroit is an exception). Suburbs may be a growth area, but one reason is the expense of living in cities, not to mention the ill effects [[especially in american cities) such as crime and pollution which are not inherent to cities themselves, but rather effects of a greater socioeconomic context.

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Originally Posted by casscorridor

Autonomous vehicles won't eliminate public transport for the same reason why Uber won't. Sometimes it's more convenient to have a car pick you up, and other times it's easier to take a train. Traveling across the length of a city will probably always be easier by train. There is no way autonomous vehicles will be able to replace trains in cities such as London, New York, Tokyo or other sprawling megacities. There is simply not enough room on the road, even with efficiencies gained by automation. Moreover, even if these vehicles are non-emission/electric they can still be disruptive to walkable neighborhoods [[try crossing busy street of self-driving cars)!

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It's never easier to take a train than a car. Especially if you add another person.

What you're forgetting is autonomous cars will be able to form into trains. They will take up less space than individual cars would. Since they will talk to each other they won't need the huge following distances cars need today. Think of a train where the car could separate from the train pick you up and then reform with the next train. It leads to car like door to door convenience with mass transit like bulk.

Traffic lights will disappear as the vehicle will negotiate crossings with one another.

I can envision subway systems track ripped out, paved and turned over to self driving cars. You'd end up with way higher throughput in those tunnels. Just think how fast the subway would be if you weren't worried about the line your on since the car would always go point to point.

Envisioning future transportation systems is not something I do myself but
I really appreciate those designers that think about this kind of thing.

Since I'm not a designer, I forget who it was that envisioned the up/down/
sideways/whichever way elevator to make getting around dense urban areas
easier. This concept could be merged with the autonomous vehicle concept.

Near term, I foresee GPS systems [[maybe Wi-Fi systems) getting better so
as to continually assess and give feedback on one's safety as a driver, along
with assessing other drivers nearby. There are non-GPS systems that do this
but GPS has the potential to be better.

I guess I should throw in here that back in the 80's my Dad used to love to
dream up transportation systems in his spare time but when he ran his
particular pet idea past his GM managers they pointed out to him that
reducing the number of cars in use was not one of the company goals.

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Originally Posted by ndavies

It's never easier to take a train than a car. Especially if you add another person.

What you're forgetting is autonomous cars will be able to form into trains. They will take up less space than individual cars would. Since they will talk to each other they won't need the huge following distances cars need today. Think of a train where the car could separate from the train pick you up and then reform with the next train. It leads to car like door to door convenience with mass transit like bulk.

Traffic lights will disappear as the vehicle will negotiate crossings with one another.

I can envision subway systems track ripped out, paved and turned over to self driving cars. You'd end up with way higher throughput in those tunnels. Just think how fast the subway would be if you weren't worried about the line your on since the car would always go point to point.

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I like the idea of organizing cars into trains that can separate as needed. And building tunnels for them to speed unimpeded through cities. I think that will someday happen.

But today trains [[the rail sort) are much faster than cars in dense cities [[New York, London, Paris, Madrid, Tokyo, São Paulo -- the list goes on). And while most would agree it's more comfortable in a car as a passenger than on a subway, many would prefer a subway to the stress and expense of car transportation as the driver, especially in those congested cities. So it depends how you measure "easier". I find subways and other trains are much easier most of the time, but not all the time.

And rail trains greatly reduce congestion, which makes life in cities easier overall. Each New York City subway car has an advertised capacity of roughly 250 passengers [[they get more crowded than that during rush hour). Most trains have 10 cars. That's 2500 people [[or more) moving relatively quickly from place to place in a space that is approximately one street lane wide and just over 600' long. A 2016 Prius is just under 15' long and seats 5. You can string 40 of them along a space as long, bumper-to-bumper, and have the capacity to move 200 people. New York without its subway and rail systems could not be the dense, walkable place that it is.

Tomorrow's driverless cars can be smaller than a Prius and still provide a much more comfortable ride than the subway, door-to-door. But not small enough to deliver the kind of efficiency possible from a good old 20th Century metro, measured in quantity of transportation delivered. Missing from the comparison so far are all the wide gaps between today's trains we won't have between tomorrow's driverless cars. But since we're talking about tomorrow and we'll have technology to reduce the gaps between cars, shouldn't we imagine we'll have technology to reduce gaps between trains too?

That said I'm really looking forward to driverless cars and think they will play an important role in our transportation future. Eliminating the need to drive will reduce stress and recapture driving time for other activities [[like commuters on regional rail already enjoy). Maybe they'll reduce travel time and cost too [[we'll have to wait to see). But I expect rail transit will continue to play a crucial role in our dense cities fairly long into the future. At least measured in technology years. :) It's speed and efficiency is hard to beat and will only get better [[too). If we invest in it.

Here's an article about how crowded NYC subways have gotten recently. Embedded in it is a 1930 short film from the NYC Health Commissioner addressing the problem of overcrowded trains that existed back then. Yes, comfort can [[still) be improved:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/04/ny...-to-limit.html

Here are some specs on one of today's NYC subway cars:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R160_%..._Subway_car%29

I have always looked at driverless car functionally as a safer and "more affordable" taxi or Uber. A suburbanite could hypothetically take a tax everyday to work today, though for most everyone it would be cost prohibitive. A driverless car becomes your own personal taxi, with the ability to sleep, work, or eat while on the move.

Practically, as like today, some people will prefer the urban experience of walking places, and others the suburban experience of more acreage. Just as today where both living styles can co-exist, so can they co-exist tomorrow.