Traffic jam: the infrastructure may eventually change. Have a first car drive to to a nearby train or subway station, and a second car to your destination from the train. In the meantime, you may have more traffic jam.
Energy: when you don't need to own your car, you can use the best car for the job. A commuting car doesn't need to be able to carry 5 people around. It can be much smaller. Again, the transition period likely won't look good.
Harsher economic times: this is good old technological employment, where productivity rises faster than demand. My 2 cents: self-driving cars will significantly contribute to technological unemployment, and that's good, provided we manage it well. An obvious measure would be to generalize a 32 hours work-week, over 4 days. It would mean less unemployment and less overwork. Workload will reduce anyway. We might as well share this reduction, instead of giving it all to the unemployed.
I think you overestimate the ability of self driving cars to make a long commute tolerable, since driving in a car for an hour (or more) each way is no fun even if someone else is driving.
Getting quality work done is tough if you're at all prone to motion sickness while working on a computer in a moving vehicle, and it's hard to get in quality sleep even in a fully reclining seat.
My wife and I commuted together (45 - 60 minutes) for almost a year and while I could get some work done while she drove, it was not nearly the same as when I'm working from home. Likewise, sleep was not an option, the timing wasn't right (it's hard to wake up, get ready for work, then catch a short on the way to work).
While parking may be less of an issue if your car can go park itself, traffic will become a much bigger issue because all of those cars driving around looking for parking (or another passenger) after dropping off their passengers are going to double downtown congestion (i.e. instead of you driving to your parking garage and leaving your car there, your car is going to stay on the roads until it finds a place to park, perhaps outside of the city)
I have been thinking this will change as self driving cars becomes more prevalent. Commuting by car is very inefficient since all the time spent driving is wasted (compared to public transport were you can potentially work on the way to work, or cycling/walking were you get exercise). Self driving cars that are sufficiently good to handle the commute most days would change this and allow you to live further away from work in places that lack public transportation.
But self-driving cars will enable a sort of ad-hoc, on demand carpooling style 'mass' transit: something like ten-passenger vans that deliver commuters from similar downtown areas to similar home neighborhoods. If only ten percent of commuters switched to that method, taking ten cars off the road and replacing it with one van, the volume of traffic drops immediately to 91% of what it was. That alone, plus significantly smarter, denser, more efficient, networked AI driving, will hugely reduce gridlock.
And at some point as more jobs get automated, and the jobs that remain human-accessible become more knowledge-based and less presence- and specific time-based, we'll move away from the huge spikes in traffic at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., spreading traffic volumes more evenly out across the day.
I fully agree: most rational nations have invested in public transportation to solve this problem. The US has a myriad of problems that has made public transportation an afterthought and not viable for most of the country.
I also agree that telecommuting or flexible hours would work well. But again, for most office workers in the country and world, there is significant inflexibility: they must arrive at their appointed time, leave at their appointed time, and take breaks at appointed times. My statement was intended to be broad and to apply to all workers instead of just for the high-tech industry.
So I see self-driving cars as a backdoor solution to the above problems: replace regular cars with self-driving cars, maybe with car-sharing, and now a country that has so much invested in the car suddenly is able to significantly reduce the latter's influence on society without realizing it. Well, one can but hope anyways.
That will be nice, but it's still not a sufficient trade-off for duration in your day, unless your time spent in the autonomous car counts as part of your work day. I liked the idea of taking the train into the city instead of driving to my current job, partially because I had this fantasy about how I would be able to use my time on the train productively, as opposed to just driving.
But, the thing is, the train trip into the city is 1 hour, and the drive is 30 minutes. And the train schedule is dictated by people who work 8 hours in the office; taking an off-schedule train is a much worse proposition. So even though I gain the time on the train (which is probably not as valuable as I think it is) I still lose out on the rest of my life for having 1 hour less per day to spend completely electively.
So, yeah, I'd like it if my car drove me into work so I was free to do other things. But I would still value a 30 minute autonomous drive much more highly than a 1 hour autonomous drive.
1. You could gain a few hours a day of leisure with an autonomous car.
2. Sounds like you won't use that train in this scenario.
3. I am sure someone will figure out safe autonomous kids->school delivery.
4. Perfect case for hitting the 'large truck' button in an app. Or more likely, stores will have delivery well sorted out.
5. Longer term rentals seem like another thing that will get easily sorted out.
You might always need longer distance transit, but it seems unlikely you will continue needing to drive.
While lot of people are thinking about how the self driving cars will effect commute specially to work. We really don't know how the workplace is going to change. I think the conventional workplace is ripe for change. Will there will be more need to commute to work as opposed to more remote working with say virtual workplace with better virtual reality. Obviously some of the jobs can't be done unless you are physically present, but I am would like to think these jobs will get lesser and lesser. If I have to go to workplace lesser, I as well might leave far off from workplace. Also with self-driving cars will be lot as stressful as driving. I would assume self-driving cars will give us the chance to work farther from workplace. And less dependent on near to prime location.
I suspect that commuting traffic will increase to eliminate this advantage. Already in major metros, long commutes suffer low speeds due to congestion during rush hour periods. Without a commensurately vast increase in infrastructure investment, I do not foresee a significant change in commute experiences from self-driving cars.
I predict that most people would not elect to live 2 hours away from offices despite being able to have access to entertainment and work while commuting.
The evidence is already here: various tech companies run shuttles to far-flung areas (Google has shuttle service from Stockton to Mountain View), yet employees aren’t moving to these lower-cost areas in large numbers.
Workers with families will have upper bounds to how long a commute they’ll endure. Their families are more important to them than being able to have entertainment, and meeting times limit the amount of time that can be used for work done while commuting. At that point, it’s approaching remote work, which is a promising idea, but isn’t a solution for long commutes by itself.
I see self-driving cars changing last-mile and replacing hub-and-spoke commutes as a replacement to taxi services and short-distance shuttles.
1) Public transport works today. True self driving is an unknown amount of time away, and IMHO it is a foolish mistake to assume it is definitely very soon or definitely very long before it works. It could be a year away or decades.
2) Even with self driving, there would be some efficiency gains from a bus, especially in places dense enough that there just isn't space for a car per person, like Manhattan. It would take adding something like 50 lanes of highway across the Hudson River to replace the capacity that trains currently provide for people to enter Manhattan from the mainland, IIRC. Neither electricity nor self driving in any way reduce the amount of space a car takes up. In fact self driving increases traffic by making it easier to go for a drive -- perhaps even send a car out for a 0 passenger cargo pickup trip.
But when they're used, most of them are used at the same time - rush hour traffic. If everyone wants to go to work in a car at the same time, you'll still need about as many cars.
What's needed is a diversification of working times: if half of the workforce started work an hour later, it would have a huge impact on traffic density and would also make things like shared self-driving cars more realistic.
Self-driving cars will of course increase congestion because it will be possible just to chill out and do something else while car is driving itself. In Silicon Valley normal story will be “I worked in the car for 3 hours while commuting to the office”.
Some interesting points, but I think robotic cars will/would be a bigger enabler for exurbs than for actual city dwelling. Get yourself some acreage at the edge of some teeming metropolis, have 60-90 minutes of uninterrupted time each way in your little cocoon to do as you please, have face time in the office once you get there.
Use the commute time to telecommute and shorten (or extend!) your in-office work day, or spend it pursuing solitary leisure activities and work a normal-length day at the office.
Lots of factors to look at in how this plays out in very dense and transit oriented cities like NY and large European cities. There is the potential for major problems with traffic as people move from taking transit to riding in a self-driving car. The subway infrastructure moves a lot of people, and if you move a lot of them up to the street level, the streets may not be able to cope. A lot of plusses and minuses come to mind.
1. Until all cars are self-driving, we will still need traffic lights, and so intersections will still be a big bottleneck.
2. Self driving cars may be able however to maintain closer following distances since they have quicker reaction times.
3. Jaywalking has the potential to cause huge traffic problems because pedestrians will know that self driving cars won't hit them.
4. Parking can be made more efficient by sharing cars. This is already happening in Berlin and other cities with floating carsharing systems.
5. Parking can also be made a lot more efficient if there are self-driving parking lots or areas marked off on the street, and the self-driving cars have a protocol to cooperate with parking. Parallel parked cars can be parked bumper-to-bumper, and they all just scoot out of the way to let someone out. In a lot, cars can park much more closely packed left-right since doors don't need to open, and the driving lanes can be reduced or eliminated if cars cooperate to get out of the way when one has to leave. This may free up street area to add extra driving lanes.
6. More people will probably share rides with a self driving Uber Pool/Lyft line type model.
7. If cars are shared, a lot of the fleet can be very small two or even one seat cars that take up less space in the road and parking.
8. Car interiors will resemble an office workstation. With mobile internet, very long commutes will be acceptable if the car is a fairly comfortable mobile office.
Lamenting that people need to commute for their jobs doesn't really change or help anything. People work within their systems of incentives.
Driverless cars will be an enormous help in many ways, even to traffic congestion.
Having many small buses are a distinct possibility. They could be basically boxes filled with standing people with the motors and batteries underneath. They could be be much more granular and recharge on their own. They could even turn their wheels selectively to get around smaller spaces. Even a small one could hold 6-8 standing people.
You have to realize that there is a lot more to an advancement like this then just 'now you can take your hands off the wheel'
In terms of self-driving cars, I think one of the major opportunities there is mobile devices, but in a slightly different context. People will still have their commutes, but now they'll be time to fill. Which will probably happen via mobile devices.
Many people want to be without the company of strangers in their commute => a self-driving car will, on average, not carry more passengers than cars do now.
Most people want/have to arrive at work in a relatively short timeframe (7-9 or thereabouts)
Combining that with a 30 minute commute, the average autonomous car will be able to drive 2-3 people to and from work each day. It also will have to drive 1.5-2.5 times the distance per passenger (into town, back to pick up the second passenger, into town again for two passengers, another round trip for the third)
I think that will be a net win, but it will be less than that 95% idle figure hints at.
That net win will decrease traffic jams tremendously, though. It is anybody's guess what that will mean. On the one hand, ride times could go down, and automated cars could be able to make another round trip during peak hours.
On the other hand, people could move farther out into the suburbs, offsetting that. That is a serious possibility, as you could start working/shaving/brushing your teeth/reading/playing on your Xbox during your commute. If that happens, chances are that those who can afford it will want to own their own self-driving car, so that they can stock it with things they may want to use during their commute.
I think the latter is a serious possibility. Because of that, I am not sure we will see a decrease in the number of cars.
I know this is meant to be a short article, but there are several points that I think are more complicated in reality.
> The promise of a relaxed, comfortable commute to work could even make some people move farther away from their workplaces and accelerate suburban sprawl trends.
At least where I live (suburbs outside of NY), more self-driving cars will not likely lead to more people commuting from farther away. The road capacity is already maxed out. Everyone I know either takes mass transit. In most other cities where I have coworkers, the roads were not built for the number of commuters, and again whether it's comfortable or not, people would rather not be commuting an hour and a half by car each way. This is especially true now in a world where we've all gotten used to a commute of walking down the hallway.
> it’s unlikely to evolve that way on its own.
They don't really explain why. They mention the idea of having shared fleets of cars, which would greatly reduce the cost of ownership and which become more plausible when cars are driverless. It seems like most people would have sufficient financial incentives (saving hundreds of dollars per month) to move in that direction.
The article also doesn't explore the downstream impact from moving to shared fleets, and how great that would be for the environment. We dedicate a huge amount of resources, both real estate and financial, just to parking. If we have fewer total cars in existence, we would have less need for parking. There's also environmental impact of battery production [1], and as we move to electric vehicles having fewer total cars on the road will mean we need to produce fewer batteries, creating fewer mines for metals needed and using up less water which is needed by mining processes.
Energy: when you don't need to own your car, you can use the best car for the job. A commuting car doesn't need to be able to carry 5 people around. It can be much smaller. Again, the transition period likely won't look good.
Harsher economic times: this is good old technological employment, where productivity rises faster than demand. My 2 cents: self-driving cars will significantly contribute to technological unemployment, and that's good, provided we manage it well. An obvious measure would be to generalize a 32 hours work-week, over 4 days. It would mean less unemployment and less overwork. Workload will reduce anyway. We might as well share this reduction, instead of giving it all to the unemployed.
reply