I am optimistic that self-driving technology and electrification will go along way towards addressing the negative externalities (safety, pollution, congestion, noise) of motor vehicles in the coming decades.
In the mean time, the real problem with urban speed limits in the UK is that there is very little enforcement. Speed limits are meaningless because they are widely ignored.
This blog post suggests that might be about to change, at least in Birmingham.
As a driver, pedestrian, and cyclist, I think that's a very good thing.
I don't know about enforcement frequency, but what I have seen here is that there is a lot of traffic calming, and deliberately engineered chokepoints where traffic must slow down considerably or stop for cars heading in the opposite direction. This isn't just central London, either, but in the suburbs.
The complex junctions with multiple islands for pedestrian crossings (often carefully fenced such that you _have to_ cross at the zebra stripes proper) are another difference from the US, and structurally contribute to this effect.
Be careful what you wish for. In the US, small-town cops use speeding tickets as a way to get funding that simply won't appear from its tax base. It's extremely common to see police cars at speed changes to catch people who dont see or slow down in time.
While I do think that drivers that speed should be ticketed, I have to note that it is a really expensive and ineffective way to reduce speed. A simpler and more effective solution is to alter the roads in such a way that people simply do not drive faster than x k∕h. You can do it by narrowing the road, adding a roundabout, elevated crosswalks, a bike-lane separated with pretty flower pots, etc.
Every time people get a realistic economical option, they majority choses to live in their own spacious dwelling. The utopia of crowded cities where people stack on top of each other, just for the sake of walking / biking everywhere, is just that, an utopia.
Self-driving technology will make extreme commutes common. Too expensive to live in Mountain View? No problem, get a nice 3000sqft house in Santa Rosa, hop in the self driving car, handle emails / some tickets, get into the office for the usual team bonding rituals, hop into the car, do some solo coding, then enjoy a quiet evening with the kids.
I'll actually be shocked if this doesn't happen where jobs are in expensive congested areas whether because people want cheaper housing or just want to live somewhere quieter and closer to nature. You don't even need door-to-door self-driving. Just on highways would be sufficient for a lot of routes.
There's obviously some upper limit. But a driving commute in heavy traffic that most would consider pretty hellish today (say 1.5 to 2 hours each way) becomes a lot more palatable if you can read/work/etc.
It's pretty much Economics 101 that if you make something better/cheaper/easier you get more of it.
surprizingly it's actually safer than cycling on country roads! Most drivers in London are polite and vigilant whereas they will actively try to kill you in the country.
Cycling (and driving) in the city is safer in part because the cars aren't going very fast. They aren't going very fast because they can't. There are simply too many obstacles in the city, whether speed humps, narrow roads, crosswalks, four-way stops, or heavy traffic. I believe this is why DC has the lowest traffic fatality rate in the US [1], despite the near-universal belief that driving in the city is dangerous.
Most drivers on country backroads where I live (Cotswolds, UK) are safe and respectful. The dangerous places are provincial towns/cities - worked and cycled in a large Staffordshire town for six years, it was horrid - and rural A roads, but any decent cycle route planner (ie not GMaps) will keep you off the latter for the most part.
The dangerous part is a car coming over a hill or around a bend and not seeing the slow cyclist in front of them until it's too late. Not that the drivers are actively looking to injure the cyclists, but that the speed differential between bicycles and autos leads to terrible accidents.
A car has more function than just going about your daily life. It gives you freedom to go wherever you please as long as there is a road. You as an individual might never use this freedom but it is there and many people take advantage of it. Same with a horse or a bicycle but with a car you can go further and with few restrictions.
Giving this up because of the temporary convenience of self driving cars even if we assume the technology is here is a poor trade because as we have seen repeatedly with technology comes obsessive surveillance and control. And busy bodies love to impose rules and restrictions once it becomes possible. And these will be on the free movement of people.
So its important to consider the ramnifications and tradeoffs and move carefully and with societal consensus rather than because some VCs are bullish on self driving technology or because the technology exists.
Americans take their freedoms for granted. We Americans haven't experienced war on our soil within living memory. In general, America is safe and individuals have enormous freedom. I worry that the younger among us are ushering in more and more technology, and, as you stated, with that technology will come surveillance and an easier means for corporations and government to inspect, analyze, and control our lives. Hand-waving these concerns is naive and demonstrates a lack of knowledge and understanding of history and just how evil people in positions of power can be.
Mobile phone penetration is at 80% in the US. The surveillance potential of mobile phones is bigger than of self driving cars, in my opinion: most mobile phone users have their phone with them every waking minute.
That doesn't mean that your concern is invalid, but it looks like the majority of the population doesn't care that much.
I also see the upsides of self-driving electric cars as more important: fewer traffic victims, less space dedicated to cars, less pollution.
> A car has more function than just going about your daily life. It gives you freedom to go wherever you please as long as there is a road.
Agreed. The way I understand it, a self-driving car will offer you the same freedom - you'll just tell it where to take you instead of driving it yourself.
I view driving as a kind of bad habit. I mean it's very easy to see the appeal. You get to travel long distances at great speed in your own private sitting room. They are amazing tools.
I think the real issue is we overuse them and develop a huge dependency on them. And people in general are completely blind to their downsides.
I'm mostly tired of reading all the self-driving hype by now- I know it's coming and its gonna be great. But I had never thought about the ramifications for police forces before! I think a decent amount of government revenue will be lost and not as many officers required nationwide. Most people's only crimes end up being driving-related. And many arrests start with being pulled over too- dui's, drug possession, outstanding warrant etc.
Many people don't realize how much of government has been crafted to support the automobile industry, effectively a subsidy. The obvious one is building roads, but we should also consider how laws have taken rights away from pedestrians and pedestrian-friendly builders. For example, many cities won't allow a new building without a parking lot moat.
That's not true. The parking lot moats discourage density and make walking a real chore. The lack of density makes public transport less economical. Allocating enormous amounts of space to parking virtually guarantees that more people will drive.
Chicken and egg. You can't have one store decide to not have a parking lot, because no one would go there. You could require all stores to be densely packed with no parking lots, but you can't force existing businesses to move or rip out their parking lots, so that would fail too.
Believe it or not, we actually have businesses that are so dense that walking between them not only makes sense, it's the only way to get around. They're called "shopping malls" and everyone hates them.
Shopping malls aren't disliked because they're dense - though the crowds don't help. Shopping malls are artificially constructed and specifically designed for discomfort, to force people to shop. Public seating is kept to a minimum, and benches are designed without backs, or otherwise to be uncomfortable, so people can't rest for free. Every available viewpoint is covered with shopping opportunities, in a consumerist assault on the senses. However much inspiration malls had from European town centres, commercial imperatives altered the construct fundamentally since.
Luckily, there are some developers with deep enough pockets that they can plan an entire district. It's been wonderful for revitalizing many blighted neighborhoods.
I think we should start removing those regulations that require large parking lots for new construction. It's a little forward-thinking, but if the next shopping center/strip mall/whatever was built only with pickup/dropoff spots and not park-while-you-shop spots, that would both encourage people to ride share today and also build for the future.
It would most likely result in people simply avoiding the next shopping center/strip mall/whatever because it's such a hassle to go there. Just as I rarely go to downtown areas today where parking is a hassle.
Ah yes, this of course is why urban cores nationwide are so cheap and empty!
Honestly though, this is your experience and nearly decade of car-hostile planning has paid dividends in cities across the country, even if it doesn't work for all use cases. The suburbs and car-centered world only work in a single use case.
Las Vegas casinos have started charging for parking after decades of being known for not doing so. This occurred after the newest large projects were built without large/any parking to accommodate drivers visiting those projects. I cannot speak for the impacts on locals visiting the Strip as this is still a new thing, but I do know that:
- The casinos are making an additional $7+/day from every vehicle parking on their properties (those who haven't found a way to get free parking, including being on a higher than lowest gaming tier).
- MGM Resorts started the trend, and within months Wynn and Caesars followed suit. The increased revenue in MGM's case was to fund an additional paid parking garage.
- All future projects will probably follow suit and limit the amount of spaces.
Throughout all of this, the only big improvement in public transit discussed has been some kind of rail option going down the Strip in the future. Otherwise, it seems to be that locals will pay more by either paying to park or using ride hailing/taxis. In other words, not necessarily moving us forward in transit efficiency and additional revenue to the benefit of a few companies.
This caught me by surprise the last time I was in Vegas for an event although, as it turned out, my rate included parking. I don't know enough about Las Vegas dynamics to know all the rationale behind this. I do know that gaming has dropped percentage-wise as a revenue source.
I imagine the impact on visitors isn't that great. I know I won't rent a car unless I'm going outside of the city and it's just cheaper/easier to keep it while I'm staying on the strip. For locals, I imagine it will make some pay more and some switch to off-strip casinos but the higher gaming tiers still get comped anyway.
ADDED: I've been told that one of the issues was increased freeloading by people going away on trips and parking at strip hotels, especially Mandalay Bay but I'm not sure how much to credit that given other solutions that don't involve charging everyone for parking.
What about the businesses themselves in these malls/centers...would they survive the transition? In can't be just the design of the mall that is considered, but the entire area around the mall....everything should work together.
Absolutely the entire area should be thought about. Removing the regulation to require a parking lot doesn't seem harmful today. I'm not advocating a restriction or a tax on parking lots here, just removing the requirement that every new construction have a certain number of parking spots.
Yet nobody considers the possibility of upgrading the way the financial system works in particular how money is created and disposed of, which is restricting our ability to innovate on a grand scale. At the moment only major investors have this ability, yet are they the best decision makers to say what project gets funding just because they can make money in order to reinvest?
If Govt's wanted to drive standards properly, how about keeping cars below a certain weight as weight takes energy to move, that would help keep emissions down globally as the number of vehicles on the road continue to increase. How about cars have to be no bigger than XYZ dimensions? A 1930's UK house with a garage couldn't even house todays Mini such is the increase in vehicle size, fair enough humans have got bigger and many roads in Europe were designed to not only skirt landowners boundaries which is why some countryside roads have many twists and turns, but are not always that wide either.
Whilst electric vehicles can move emissions from the road to the power station, the electrical grid still loses power whilst increasing demand on the grid not always at the times planners hope for, and whilst cars can reduce emissions with things like stop start technology, intelligent town planning including co-ordinated city wide traffic lights and designated vehicle routes to handle rush hours would also greatly reduce vehicle emissions and congestion. Lets face it with our smart phone trackers, if an agreed standard was in place you could remove a lot of congestions from towns & cities simply by ignoring the speed limits with multi lane roads and other restrictions that road signs that currently hinder traffic flow.
And then nearby residents sue the city and the developer for encouraging customers to park on their residential streets.
So, in Dallas, the parking requirements for restaurants depend on the amount of seating the restaurant has. A few restaurants got around that by building giant patios with several times the seating as inside, because the regulation doesn't consider outside seating as seating.
Residents complained about people parking on their streets and blocking their driveways, and they threatened massive lawsuits. The city council caved and passed a new regulation counting outdoor seating as seating, with no grandfather clause. Now these restaurants have to either build massive parking garages or close their doors.
Then when grandma comes to visit, she gets a parking ticket because she didn't get the right permit?
No, the better option is for shopping centers to have enough parking for the customers they anticipate having. Maybe giant parking lots suck, but a business shouldn't be able to destroy a residential neighborhood like that.
I've lived in plenty of places where the stores were above the parking garages, and no one from the street could tell there was any parking at all. That's always an option.
Many neighborhoods that enforce parking permits have a card you can give your guests. Alternately, there may be paid parking nearby.
> business shouldn't be able to destroy a residential neighborhood like that.
Indeed, but I'd rather our laws and enforcement target the harm (non-residents taking your parking spot) and allow the nearby business to decide whether to offer parking or not. I've lived in and visited many large cities. All my favorite neighborhoods have solved this problem and for the most part the businesses chose to have very little parking, if any.
We have a system like this and for us it means borrowing a car is a PITA: You only get a permit for a vehicle registered in your name. So when we borrow a car, we are not allowed to park it outside our own house.
It might be considered a sort-of subsidy, but ultimately, the people who own land fronting on a road are the main beneficiaries.
I also cannot frame a disparity in mass as "taking away rights." It only gets worse if this is identity politics.
Don't get me wrong - people commuting alone in a car an hour or two a day is simply obscene.
The article does a great job of identifying that the experiment in making all people drivers has failed, though. As long as I live, I'll never understand how people can be so blase about such high risk behavior.
> cannot frame disparity in mass as "taking away rights"
I'm guessing you're referring to the difference in the mass of an automobile and a person. Right-of-way laws are only one of the policies that I'm referring to, but that in particular was/is in fact taking away rights. Pedestrians had the right to cross the street at any place or time until automobile manufacturers ran marketing campaigns (such as inventing the term "Jay walking") and lobbied to change laws.
Of course there should be some compromise, to promote safety and convenience, but perhaps we erred too much on the side of the automobile.
"Walkability" is inherently political ( goes to land use ) , and it's strongly correlated at least with people's identity.
Cars have been about for 100 years, but it's only recently that there's been any writing to the effect of there being conflict. I think the basic mindset of drivers is a lot the problem, but it should be clear that as a pedestrian, you cannot trust car drivers to be very aware. There's only so much gain to be had there with things like rule changes.
I see this as an extension of "everything is a college campus" but maybe that's just me.
Government workers unions will not allow anyone to be laid off.
Since the dawn of modern governance at about the turn of the last century, governments everywhere have been going in one direction: expansion.
So they'll find other things for cops to do :)
On day, about 2030, a Scandinavian country will 'ban human driving' citing safety risks. Then California, and NYC.
In 2070, you'll sneak your grandchildren into an old Buick in and take them for a spin around some old parking lot - and your daughter in law will freak right out and get seriously pissed at you, threatening to call the police. 'Those crazy old people who actually think they can drive' ...
Sorry, but I, personally, enjoy cars and driving, observe speed limits, and you, good sir, can take my steering wheel from my cold, dead hands.
If you want cooperation and understanding from us drivers, you'd want to stop patronizing, negging and insulting us. Otherwise, you'd be ignored at best.
I've been in the most horrifying accident most people can think of... rollover at 80mph because some random guy chased me down down the highway and rammed me off the road.
I was scared for a while, but I still love driving. More things will be electric in a few years, sure. Maybe we need more stern punishments for distracted driving. Maybe we need some more assistance to prevent us from going off the road when we are sleepy. But I think people will enjoy driving for the same reason they enjoy tube amps, it's not perfect, but it has a warmth and human element of imperfection to it and people might just like that.
>But I think people will enjoy driving for the same reason they enjoy tube amps, it's not perfect, but it has a warmth and human element of imperfection to it and people might just like that.
Agreed. I enjoy the feel of a combustion engine, the sounds, and the drama. Particularly so from forced induction engines. I know electric is coming, and in many ways is already better, but it lacks the personality that I enjoy in driving (for now, at least).
The government. The government stops a lot of people from doing a lot of things they enjoy because those things pose a danger to society. That's like 90% of the reason the government exists.
>who is going to fix the broken tires when it happens?
Mechanics. Just like they do today. There's nothing different about the tires on a self-driving car than on any other car.
65 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 88.8 ms ] threadIn the mean time, the real problem with urban speed limits in the UK is that there is very little enforcement. Speed limits are meaningless because they are widely ignored.
This blog post suggests that might be about to change, at least in Birmingham.
As a driver, pedestrian, and cyclist, I think that's a very good thing.
The complex junctions with multiple islands for pedestrian crossings (often carefully fenced such that you _have to_ cross at the zebra stripes proper) are another difference from the US, and structurally contribute to this effect.
Self-driving technology will make extreme commutes common. Too expensive to live in Mountain View? No problem, get a nice 3000sqft house in Santa Rosa, hop in the self driving car, handle emails / some tickets, get into the office for the usual team bonding rituals, hop into the car, do some solo coding, then enjoy a quiet evening with the kids.
There's obviously some upper limit. But a driving commute in heavy traffic that most would consider pretty hellish today (say 1.5 to 2 hours each way) becomes a lot more palatable if you can read/work/etc.
It's pretty much Economics 101 that if you make something better/cheaper/easier you get more of it.
[1] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit...
Giving this up because of the temporary convenience of self driving cars even if we assume the technology is here is a poor trade because as we have seen repeatedly with technology comes obsessive surveillance and control. And busy bodies love to impose rules and restrictions once it becomes possible. And these will be on the free movement of people.
So its important to consider the ramnifications and tradeoffs and move carefully and with societal consensus rather than because some VCs are bullish on self driving technology or because the technology exists.
Wrong tense. This has already happened. What 'will come' is more of it.
That doesn't mean that your concern is invalid, but it looks like the majority of the population doesn't care that much.
I also see the upsides of self-driving electric cars as more important: fewer traffic victims, less space dedicated to cars, less pollution.
Agreed. The way I understand it, a self-driving car will offer you the same freedom - you'll just tell it where to take you instead of driving it yourself.
My city has short-term bike rentals to get around, but plenty of people still own their own bikes.
I think the real issue is we overuse them and develop a huge dependency on them. And people in general are completely blind to their downsides.
This is just sensible town-planning.
Believe it or not, we actually have businesses that are so dense that walking between them not only makes sense, it's the only way to get around. They're called "shopping malls" and everyone hates them.
Luckily, there are some developers with deep enough pockets that they can plan an entire district. It's been wonderful for revitalizing many blighted neighborhoods.
Honestly though, this is your experience and nearly decade of car-hostile planning has paid dividends in cities across the country, even if it doesn't work for all use cases. The suburbs and car-centered world only work in a single use case.
- The casinos are making an additional $7+/day from every vehicle parking on their properties (those who haven't found a way to get free parking, including being on a higher than lowest gaming tier).
- MGM Resorts started the trend, and within months Wynn and Caesars followed suit. The increased revenue in MGM's case was to fund an additional paid parking garage.
- All future projects will probably follow suit and limit the amount of spaces.
Throughout all of this, the only big improvement in public transit discussed has been some kind of rail option going down the Strip in the future. Otherwise, it seems to be that locals will pay more by either paying to park or using ride hailing/taxis. In other words, not necessarily moving us forward in transit efficiency and additional revenue to the benefit of a few companies.
I imagine the impact on visitors isn't that great. I know I won't rent a car unless I'm going outside of the city and it's just cheaper/easier to keep it while I'm staying on the strip. For locals, I imagine it will make some pay more and some switch to off-strip casinos but the higher gaming tiers still get comped anyway.
ADDED: I've been told that one of the issues was increased freeloading by people going away on trips and parking at strip hotels, especially Mandalay Bay but I'm not sure how much to credit that given other solutions that don't involve charging everyone for parking.
If Govt's wanted to drive standards properly, how about keeping cars below a certain weight as weight takes energy to move, that would help keep emissions down globally as the number of vehicles on the road continue to increase. How about cars have to be no bigger than XYZ dimensions? A 1930's UK house with a garage couldn't even house todays Mini such is the increase in vehicle size, fair enough humans have got bigger and many roads in Europe were designed to not only skirt landowners boundaries which is why some countryside roads have many twists and turns, but are not always that wide either.
Whilst electric vehicles can move emissions from the road to the power station, the electrical grid still loses power whilst increasing demand on the grid not always at the times planners hope for, and whilst cars can reduce emissions with things like stop start technology, intelligent town planning including co-ordinated city wide traffic lights and designated vehicle routes to handle rush hours would also greatly reduce vehicle emissions and congestion. Lets face it with our smart phone trackers, if an agreed standard was in place you could remove a lot of congestions from towns & cities simply by ignoring the speed limits with multi lane roads and other restrictions that road signs that currently hinder traffic flow.
So, in Dallas, the parking requirements for restaurants depend on the amount of seating the restaurant has. A few restaurants got around that by building giant patios with several times the seating as inside, because the regulation doesn't consider outside seating as seating.
Residents complained about people parking on their streets and blocking their driveways, and they threatened massive lawsuits. The city council caved and passed a new regulation counting outdoor seating as seating, with no grandfather clause. Now these restaurants have to either build massive parking garages or close their doors.
No, the better option is for shopping centers to have enough parking for the customers they anticipate having. Maybe giant parking lots suck, but a business shouldn't be able to destroy a residential neighborhood like that.
I've lived in plenty of places where the stores were above the parking garages, and no one from the street could tell there was any parking at all. That's always an option.
Many neighborhoods that enforce parking permits have a card you can give your guests. Alternately, there may be paid parking nearby.
> business shouldn't be able to destroy a residential neighborhood like that.
Indeed, but I'd rather our laws and enforcement target the harm (non-residents taking your parking spot) and allow the nearby business to decide whether to offer parking or not. I've lived in and visited many large cities. All my favorite neighborhoods have solved this problem and for the most part the businesses chose to have very little parking, if any.
But if you drove to a WalMart in a suburb, there would be 20 checkers open with ten or twenty people queued up for each.
I also cannot frame a disparity in mass as "taking away rights." It only gets worse if this is identity politics.
Don't get me wrong - people commuting alone in a car an hour or two a day is simply obscene.
The article does a great job of identifying that the experiment in making all people drivers has failed, though. As long as I live, I'll never understand how people can be so blase about such high risk behavior.
I don't know what you mean by that.
> cannot frame disparity in mass as "taking away rights"
I'm guessing you're referring to the difference in the mass of an automobile and a person. Right-of-way laws are only one of the policies that I'm referring to, but that in particular was/is in fact taking away rights. Pedestrians had the right to cross the street at any place or time until automobile manufacturers ran marketing campaigns (such as inventing the term "Jay walking") and lobbied to change laws.
Of course there should be some compromise, to promote safety and convenience, but perhaps we erred too much on the side of the automobile.
"Walkability" is inherently political ( goes to land use ) , and it's strongly correlated at least with people's identity.
Cars have been about for 100 years, but it's only recently that there's been any writing to the effect of there being conflict. I think the basic mindset of drivers is a lot the problem, but it should be clear that as a pedestrian, you cannot trust car drivers to be very aware. There's only so much gain to be had there with things like rule changes.
I see this as an extension of "everything is a college campus" but maybe that's just me.
Perhaps you should do a more thorough literature review.
The NYT reported, "Nation roused against motor killings" in 1924.
http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/murder-machines/
Since the dawn of modern governance at about the turn of the last century, governments everywhere have been going in one direction: expansion.
So they'll find other things for cops to do :)
On day, about 2030, a Scandinavian country will 'ban human driving' citing safety risks. Then California, and NYC.
In 2070, you'll sneak your grandchildren into an old Buick in and take them for a spin around some old parking lot - and your daughter in law will freak right out and get seriously pissed at you, threatening to call the police. 'Those crazy old people who actually think they can drive' ...
If you want cooperation and understanding from us drivers, you'd want to stop patronizing, negging and insulting us. Otherwise, you'd be ignored at best.
I was scared for a while, but I still love driving. More things will be electric in a few years, sure. Maybe we need more stern punishments for distracted driving. Maybe we need some more assistance to prevent us from going off the road when we are sleepy. But I think people will enjoy driving for the same reason they enjoy tube amps, it's not perfect, but it has a warmth and human element of imperfection to it and people might just like that.
Agreed. I enjoy the feel of a combustion engine, the sounds, and the drama. Particularly so from forced induction engines. I know electric is coming, and in many ways is already better, but it lacks the personality that I enjoy in driving (for now, at least).
And if men enjoy driving, who can stop them ?
The government. The government stops a lot of people from doing a lot of things they enjoy because those things pose a danger to society. That's like 90% of the reason the government exists.
>who is going to fix the broken tires when it happens?
Mechanics. Just like they do today. There's nothing different about the tires on a self-driving car than on any other car.