{"id":2278,"date":"2012-05-16T20:44:29","date_gmt":"2012-05-17T00:44:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/?p=2278"},"modified":"2012-05-16T21:02:30","modified_gmt":"2012-05-17T01:02:30","slug":"driverless-cars-dont-change-geometry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/2012\/05\/16\/driverless-cars-dont-change-geometry\/","title":{"rendered":"Driverless cars don’t change geometry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Via the Streetsblog Network<\/a>, I came across this Salon piece from Michael Lind<\/a> praising our future driverless car overlords. \u00a0Angie Schmidt at Streetsblog did a nice job to take down some of Lind’s loaded language, particularly the bits about “rigging markets” (which rings just as hollow as the cries about “social engineering” – as Timothy Lee notes, there’s no such thing as an intervention-free infrastructure policy<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Those issues aside, the biggest thing that Lind misses isn’t about technology at all – but rather about geometry, land use, and the relationship between transportation and the built environment. Lind writes:<\/p>\n

As the white windmills fade from the picture of the future, so do the bullet trains speeding past them. \u00a0Even before the end of President Obama\u2019s first four years, unrealistic fantasies about high-speed passenger rail had collapsed. \u00a0Federal funding for high-speed rail demonstration projects has been minuscule and symbolic. \u00a0State and local governments continue to conclude that the costs of high-speed passenger rail outweigh the alleged benefits.<\/p>\n

In the longer run, robocars may be fatal for fixed-rail transportation, at least for passengers rather than freight. \u00a0Google has been test driving self-driving cars in California and Nevada has become the first state to legalize driverless vehicles. \u00a0No doubt it will take several decades for safety issues and legal arrangements to be worked out. \u00a0But high-speed trains might find competition in high-speed convoys of robot cars on smart highways, allowed higher speeds once human error has been eliminated. \u00a0And the price advantage of subway tickets over taxi fares in cities may vanish, when the taxis drive themselves. \u00a0Point-to-point travel, within cities or between them, is inherently more convenient than train or subway journeys which require changing modes of transit in the course of a journey. \u00a0Thanks to robocars, much cheaper point-to-point travel everywhere may eventually be cheap enough to relegate light rail and inter-city rail to the museum, along with the horse-drawn omnibus and the trans-atlantic blimp.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Paraphrasing Jarrett Walker<\/a> (aside: his recently published book<\/a> is an excellent read), technology does not change geometry. \u00a0A driverless car is still a car, the geometry that governs the car is the same regardless of who (or what) is at the controls. \u00a0Despite predictions about how this technology could change everything (see a whole<\/a> series<\/a> of GGW<\/a> posts<\/a>), I find the\u00a0possibility\u00a0for change to be marginal. \u00a0Driverless Johnny Cabs, Total Recall-style<\/a> might decrease the cost of providing taxi service, but that won’t fundamentally change the inherent capacity limitations of taxis compared against a subway system.<\/p>\n

The choice of the taxi as a demonstration for the technology is interesting. Most taxis operate in big cities, and big cities tend to be dense. \u00a0Density helps support high levels of transit service and ensures that lots of potential trip destinations are easily reached by foot or by transit, thereby diminishing the market for these automated taxis. \u00a0Cars, regardless of who’s driving, don’t have an advantage in point to point travel over pedestrians, transit, or other modes in cities.<\/p>\n

The other point Lind makes is in investment priorities for government-funded infrastructure (hence the earlier comment about “rigging markets”). \u00a0Lind seems to view the built environment as static, rather than an evolving system that changes in concordance with the changes to the transportation infrastructure. \u00a0New York’s subways fueled its dense development, and that density in turn provides the market for high capacity rapid transit. \u00a0Given growing populations and constantly changing cityscapes, these infrastructure investments in transit are step along the process of letting out cities continue to grow.<\/p>\n

(semi-related sidebar on growth patterns: check out this article in Scientific American on the patterns of growth<\/a> among subway networks around the world. \u00a0The authors concluded ”\u00a0that the geometries of large subway networks are guided by simple, universal rules.” – reminiscent of Geoffrey West<\/a> et al<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via the Streetsblog Network, I came across this Salon piece from Michael Lind praising our future driverless car overlords. \u00a0Angie Schmidt at Streetsblog did a nice job to take down some of Lind’s loaded language, particularly the bits about “rigging markets” (which rings just as hollow as the cries about “social engineering” – as Timothy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[341,342,456,474],"class_list":["post-2278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-driverless-cars","tag-geometry","tag-land-use","tag-transit"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pHcGQ-AK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2278"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2283,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278\/revisions\/2283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}