Should cities be building new transit infrastructure when driverless cars may be just around the corner? That’s the question asked by a New York Times article last Friday. The answers provided by a range of experts were far more balanced than a previous Times article about transit, which took for granted that transit was good and anyone skeptical of it was bad.
Last Friday’s report was far more broad minded. “Don’t build a light rail system now,” it quoted a venture capitalist as saying. “Please, please, please, please don’t” until we see how driverless cars “plays out.”
The article also quoted driverless car supporter Brad Templeton, who has promoted “robocars” for years, arguing that driverless cars can move people far more efficiently than forms of transit. Templeton claims that transit supporters are people who “just believe there is something pure and good about riding together, that it must be the right answer.”
Apparently contradicting Templeton, the article cited an Uber researcher saying that “No system of autonomous cars could be more efficient than the New York subway.” This got translated into a photo caption attached to a picture of light rail saying, “Rail remains the most efficient way to move large numbers of people, despite the promise of driverless cars.”
What do they mean by efficient? It cost an average of $2.07 to move one passenger one mile by light rail in 2016. Human-driven cars cost only 25 cents per passenger mile, and no one thinks that driverless cars will cost much more than that — some think it will be less. So the photo caption is just plain wrong.
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I think what the Uber expert meant was that driverless cars on surface streets won’t be able to bring as many people into Manhattan as subways. Templeton, who advocates replacing subway rails with pavement and trains with electric driverless cars, would disagree with that. I’m willing to leave that an open question, but contrary to the photo caption there is no way that light rail can be more efficient than autonomous cars. So kudos to the Times writer, Emily Badger, but not to whoever writes the photo captions.
While many people are still skeptical about whether driverless cars will be successful anytime soon, Waymo is driving its autonomous cars a million miles a month. It took Google six years to rack up the first million miles in its driverless cars; now it is driving them 25,000 miles a day.
Another company, Zoox, has raised $800 million to start up its driverless car operations. The company’s goal is to build cars from the ground up so that, for example, they will be equally adept at going forwards or backwards. While it will take a lot more than $800 million to accomplish this, it shows that venture capitalists are willing to place bets on more than just Waymo and GM.
Right now, it doesn’t really matter whether driverless cars take over urban transport by 2021, 2025, or 2050. Even without competition from autonomous ride hailing, transit ridership is rapidly declining. In the face of such declines, not to mention the fact that we can’t afford to maintain the transit systems we have, it is foolish to spend more money building new transit infrastructure.
If robocars happen, and that’s still a big IF, ___mass__ transit is toast. The transit industry will move to co-opt the robocars as their own to justify the tax dollars. The industry will survive, the mass part of it will not.
“it is foolish to spend more money building new transit infrastructure.”
But let’s give it the old college try anyway!
The Antiplanner wrote:
Right now, it doesn’t really matter whether driverless cars take over urban transport by 2021, 2025, or 2050. Even without competition from autonomous ride hailing, transit ridership is rapidly declining. In the face of such declines, not to mention the fact that we can’t afford to maintain the transit systems we have, it is foolish to spend more money building new transit infrastructure.
Allow me to suggest a variant on that idea.
it is foolish to spend more money building new rail transit infrastructure, but new highway lanes that are correctly priced to offer free-flow traffic conditions at all times can provide ideal routes for new and upgraded transit bus routes.
Brad Templeton is one of the prime example of an “diot savant”, that is, someone who excels at his own area of expertise, but utterly fails in common sense and things he doesn’t understand. In Templeton’s case, his expertise is information technology and the work he did in establishing the Electronic Freedom Foundation.
But he utterly fails in his predictions about robocars and most other areas of transportation. Based on one of his latest blog posts, he also utterly fails understand to understand the highly unfavorable economics of demand-responsive transit.
Then there is the credulity of the New York Times in giving Templeton any credibility on transportation whatsoever. The Gray Lady (sic) simply isn’t what it used to be.
As for many of the posters here, they are simply intellectually dishonest. For example, refusing to acknowledge the huge subsidies to driving in the U.S. from so-called “free parking” which is several hundred billion per year, or $0.20+ per urban auto passenger mile. Or the fact that the only serious opposition to rail transit on the planet is in the U.S., and hardly anyone else. The idiots on this topic are in the U.S.; no one in Europe, Asia (China, India, Japan), Africa, South America or even English-speaking counties such as South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The anti-rail idiots in the U.S. are the real intellectual freaks. Freaks and morons! if you don’t like reality, please go f— yourself.
Another quality contribution from microsetty. Still living with big sis out on that transit friendly ranch in Napa?
The anti-rail idiots in the U.S. are the real intellectual freaks. Freaks and morons! if you don’t like reality, please go f— yourself.
Someone needs a bottle and a nap.