Here’s the great thing about driverless cars: They will need no new infrastructure because the people designing them are making them work with existing infrastructure. All they ask is for cities and states to fill the potholes and do other basic maintenance.
Here’s another great thing about driverless cars: Most congestion results from slow human reflexes, and simulations show that congestion will significantly decline if as few as 5 percent of vehicles on the road are driverless. So, even if you don’t have a driverless car, you will benefit from others being driverless.
So what the heck is Bexar County (San Antonio) Commissioner Kevin Wolff thinking when he proposes that the county use federal infrastructure dollars to build new interstate highway lanes open only to driverless cars? On one hand, they don’t need special lanes. On the other hand, separating them from other traffic eliminates the congestion relief benefits they can provide.
Kevin Wolff is the son of Nelson Wolff, San Antonio’s leading streetcar supporter and a proponent of pork barrel in general (among other things, he has a stadium named after him). Kevin opposed the streetcar, but he supported another even more foolish rail-transit proposal.
It is really simple to buy the hookah sticks for yourself or to gift your friends or relatives, you can easily buy it from the best and the reliable source through online. cialis generic usa But it is proved that if Sildenafil pill can be taken by liquid form by making it solution, you will viagra india the effect soon. It is a lot more advantageous to cialis 5 mg slovak-republic.org than from your local pharmacy, as in case you order cialis, you give your test examination; you will be awesomely well prepared and will be able to attempt each question with confidence and spunk. As is embedded with all these qualitative properties cialis for woman has become the trustable pattern to be adopted by most impotency sufferers.
The state of Texas is planning to add four lanes to relieve congestion on Interstate 35 in San Antonio. All four would be “managed,” meaning tolled to make sure they never get congested. Wolff’s idea is to dedicate two of those lanes to driverless cars, which means two fewer lanes for other people to use.
Kevin says he floated his driverless-lane idea to the Trump Administration, which has proposed to spend $20 billion on “innovative” infrastructure projects. “They told me, ‘This is just the kind of proposal we want to fund,'” he said.
Actually, it is just the kind of proposal they should not fund. It isn’t necessary. It doesn’t relieve congestion and will probably make it worse than having four managed lanes. It doesn’t help restore crumbling infrastructure. It merely adds more infrastructure that won’t have a source of funds to maintain it.
Another great thing about AVs is their potential to go very, very fast, with reaction times an order of magnitude faster than humans. AVs would be perfect for intra- and inter-city high speed travel. 100mph would be in the realm of possibility in town; 120mph intercity. But it wouldn’t make sense for AVs and human-piloted cars to mix at that speed. From the article:
Few doubt that the basic technology could be ready by 2025, though plenty of skeptics, including insurance companies, say it hasn’t yet proved that it can cope with the unpredictability of human drivers.
It’s a problem that a dedicated AV lane in each direction would solve. It would have to be walled off, that’s all. Federal vs. state/local funding issues aside, I think it’s an idea worth exploring.
The ultimate embarrassment is if these rail projects finally get built and there as empty as a box and quiet as a tomb.
Short distance passenger trains (less than 10 miles) were made obsolete by buses in the 1920s.
Long distance passenger trains (500+ miles) were made obsolete by airplanes in the 1960’s.
That leaves medium distance transportation (50-250 miles) that rail is trying to intercede in by spending billions in new rail lines to offer passenger service; why; when medium distance trains have already been made obsolete by ride sharing services and inter-city buses that operate using already presently available infrastructure and infrastructure upgrades would necessitate…….a single lane of highway; that buses can use for free and drivers can pay a toll to use at their discretion. It’s not driverless cars, the formula for traffic management efficiency has been around for years just poorly implemented by departments that look at automobiles as a hindrance than a asset. The passenger rail systems of the US are dying. The financial means to pay for their restoration are beyond the means cities can muster.
Hyperloop reminds me of the old tubes they had for the auto tellers. I wonder if they evern build one if they’ll use to send suckers to kids.
Humanity making itself obsolete :$
@”Here’s the great thing about driverless cars: They will need no new infrastructure because the people designing them are making them work with existing infrastructure.”
The un-great thing about driverless is that unless new infrastructure is added, they will make an already-bad situation worse. The great thing about that the new infrastructure is that it can pay its own way. https://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/davidheiser-book-as-of-1-5-11.pdf