Bacon's Rebellion

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Will Self-Driving Cars Promote Smart Growth?

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by

James A. Bacon
in ,

SDC

I always imagined that thinkers in the Smart Growth camp would be unnerved by the prospect of roads filled with self-driving cars (SDCs). If commuters could punch a destination into their mapping app, lean back, read email, surf the web or even doze off during the drive to work, SDCs could revive the long-distance commute and the perpetuation of scattered, low-density settlement patterns anathema to Smart Growthers. (See “A Roadmap for the Future of Self Driving Cars.“)

But it turns out that some Smart Growthers and even transit advocates are looking at the emerging technology differently than I expected. In a Friday post to the Atlantic Cities blog, staff writer Emily Badger asks, “If autonomous cars can one day better perform the functions of transit, shouldn’t we let them?”

Badger’s hope is that SDCs will reduce the number of vehicles clogging the road and hogging parking spaces:

When cars can drive themselves, they can drive off when we’re done with them. They can pick up other people instead of sitting parked outside. We’ll request them on-demand. They’ll pull up out front, take us right where we want to go, then do the same thing for a hundred other passengers, a hundred times over. They’ll behave, in other words, like sophisticated ride-share services – or like personalized mass transit.

SDCs won’t substitute for mass transit, she believes, but will complement it. The post is worth a read.

— JAB

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9 responses to “Will Self-Driving Cars Promote Smart Growth?”

  1. TMT Avatar
    TMT

    Smoking, plus inhaling. Welcome to Colorado of the East.

    I can see driverless cars coming to the market. Last summer, a Fairfax County forum on transportation included a very thoughtful discussion of smart vehicles, including driverless ones by Volkswagen USA. I can see such vehicles being a part of a transit system, just like there are private planes for rent.

    But why would people give up the freedom that car ownership brings? And the liability issues are enormous. So are the risks of damage and stolen cars. The idea of vehicle sharing falls apart when one thinks of the legal issues.

  2. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    I actually think this is the more correct vision (as if I know anything anyhow!).

    We’ve got these “uber” car services that in theory are cheaper, better than taxi’s but we have the background of the driver and the fitness of the car as two unregulated and worrisome issues.

    how about you call up a driverless car where the car is a standard iniquitous clone that self-reports error conditions?

    imagine fleets of thousands of these cars.. all the same …. like thousands of iRobot Roomba Vacuum go plug themselves in when not carrying people.

    the real danger with self-driving cars might be the threats to the self-driving cars from human drivers!

    If a system like that would “work” – it has profound implications for the current conventional forms of transit – including METRO as well as land-use patterns, and as JB points out – the implications of “massive individual self-guided transit” that can go anywhere versus fixed-guide-way transit that is the fundamental foundational premise of TOD.

    And of course I look at this in a similar way as drones in terms of truly disruptive technology – that also offers the promise of good 21st century jobs for the properly-prepared student and the States that support higher ED and K-12 standards and curriculums that provide the education needed.

    and I’m dismayed by the various right-leaning groups who are opposed to public education, academic standards, SOLs and Common Core.. who want a return to how education was delivered – 40 years ago.

    Our kids are going to end up flipping burgers and bagging groceries for foreign nationals with the proper education….

    we’re awed by the technology and it’s potential but the jobs are going to go to immigrants because we refuse to join the 21st century in education.

    grump.

    1. TMT Avatar
      TMT

      A possible way of measuring the results for our schools is the number of students pursuing post-HS education who need any remedial courses, be they in college, community college or trade school. That would put pressure on K-12 to teach courses needed to take post-secondary education classes and to teach them well. I got the idea from my daughter who is making a few bucks tutoring athletes at NCSU. I don’t think we should count tutoring as a bad mark, as it can be a good idea for any student to get some extra help. But if we are teaching remedial English, math, history and science in our post-secondary institutions, have our K-12 schools (both public and private) really doing their jobs? And shouldn’t the collective information be made available to the public?

  3. neil Avatar
    neil

    Yes! Thank goodness this view is getting more coverage.

    Firstly, being against self-driving cars will be like being against iPhones. WE can change policy, but technology will march on. AND thinking that technology dictates urban design – that we have horrible sprawl directly because we invented cars – is clearly false. There are many nice places in the world today, a world in which cars exist.

    Secondly, undermining individual ownership (because they’ll mostly be robotaxis, grown out of carshare) is great for pro-walking. Many are the anecdotes of car owners who switch to carshare and budget for more taxis and carshare use than they actually use. When you don’t have one in the drive, you’re more likely to start walking. ALSO parking debates get less heated (e.g. removing them to widen sidewalks / add bike-lanes).

    Thirdly, they’ll be more courteous and risk-averse than humans and generally slow streets down.

    Fourthly, they’ll be electric, because they can charge themselves, which is great from a climate, noise etc. POV.

    —
    As well as legal and political barriers, like uber and airbnb face, literal luddite sabotage is a real risk. Especially teamsters vs robotrucks.

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  7. DaveS Avatar
    DaveS

    To me, the question is if the recent demand for Smart Growth type developments is a reaction to long commute times. In major metropolitan areas we have had congestion and long commute times for decades. Is the recent demand for urban living really a long delayed reaction to the increasing drive times and congestion or is it because the people moving into these new communities simply prefer an urban life style. If, as I suspect, it is the latter than self driving cars will have no impact on the demand for smart growth living.

  8. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    I don’t think the advocacy for Smart Growth is coming from folks who commute long distances… but from people who think that urban areas would be better if more people supported the idea of urbanized settlement patterns and lifestyles.

    Most of the long distance commuters I know in the Fredericksburg Area – support Smart Growth – for others .. as a way to preserve their own subdivision/long commute lifestyle – the old “preserve the rural character that surrounds my subdivision” argument.

    self-driving cars are not time/space machines. The concept seems to be that if you let the car deal with congestion and can do other things while the car is driving that a long commute, even with congestion will be more tolerable.

    but you still have a pretty fundamental problem for commuting… compare a 50-passenger bus with 50 SOVs that are “self-driving”.

    what’s really changed in terms of highway capacity and congestion?

    people are thinking in simplistic terms on this – almost like a Jetsons cartoon in my opinion.

    take rush hour on a beltway. How many “trains” of cars are actually going to form to go any distance at all before they need to start peeling off for the next exit?

    how many cars bound for the SAME exit are initially coming on at different ramps and are initially hundreds, thousands of feet apart… how are they going to catch up to a “train” and link up? are we going to have some self driving cars accelerating to 80-90mpg to “catch” a train or is the whole “train” going to slow down so that cars in the back can catch up?

    what will cause a new train to form?

    these are just huge, huge issues from a software point of view even if it was not dynamic real time challenges.

    this kind of thing makes chaining traffic signals into a network – child’s play in comparison.

    About the best thing you can say about it – is that if a young person has the right kind of heavy duty science and math education – that there’ll be good jobs available for those who do.

    Not saying it will never happen… but saying it reminds me of some of the stuff in the 50’s and 60’s that would happen by 2000 – that never did happen and may never happen – at the SAME TIME – they totally missed other emerging technologies like GPS and drones that are fundamentally changing the world at almost lightening speed (in comparison).

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