Friday Reads – 8 February 2019

1. Does the gif in the first link mean that Baggma is a chryonista???

   (By the way, it’s very funny!)

2. The Monash University powerpoint presentation ( Lie, damned lies & AV’s” ) is a wonderfully well-put sharp prick to the bubble of Autonomous-Vehicle hype we have all been subjected to.
   Wonder if any politicians will take note?

3. @GT – Indeed, the hype curve had me LOLing. The presentation is not ‘anti autonomy’ at all though, its just putting the case against the ‘small car on demand model’ for big city mobility problems. And it points out that the most successful autonomous vehicles on the planet today run on rails.

4. I’m not sure that anyone serious ever thought that AVs would replace public transport – the road system couldn’t support even a modest increase in vehicles. What they can do, though, if combined with shared ownership, is to stop residential roads being just lengthy car parks and improve the quality of the local street environment.

5. The other thing they will do is increase the area where using taxis (PHVs, etc.) to supplement public transport is more cost effective than owning one’s own car for those trips, reducing car ownership and increasing public transport use in the inner areas of cities.

   Also, the technology will shift the balance of costs in favour of busses over trams and make existing bus routes more cost-effective, since labour costs are so much of the costs of bus services.

6. @PHILIP – If drivers can be dispensed with on buses, then they also could also be removed from trams. Rail constrained vehicles should actually be rather easier to control than buses as there is no steering to worry about, and wetware agents in the surrounding streetscape will naturally be more aware and certain of the swept paths of vehicles following visible rails than the more variable paths traced by rubber tyred buses. Automated trams should thus be easier to implement safely than automated buses. Based on similar automotive products, driver assist technology for trams such as anti-collision and speed limiting systems are already being developed and sold by various manufacturers today. These could form the building blocks for future automation.

7. @Quinlet -yes, of course, in places like central London where the modal split in road traffic is so heavily dominated by buses, but in places where the modal split is more balanced or even car dominated, (any average small city or market town, for example) you will simply be replacing like with like in terms of road capacity. The real risk from AV seems to be that we shall “accidentally” adopt an inefficient or even unworkable model because that is what suits the short termism of its commercial promoters. But it will only be after it has been adopted that we will wish we hadn’t – too late, as the damage to public transport will have been done. As the history of the American streetcar sector shows, it then takes years to reinvent the wheel.

8. Actually, in areas where car traffic predominates over bus and other traffic, the scope for AVs is very small if the whole street is capacity constrained. This makes AVs no more useful for the main radial rotes than cars are at present. The big difference may be that if AVs are collectively owned then people will only use them where they really do provide an advantage, whereas now, car owners will use a car wherever possible because the marginal cost is low (though the average cost is high). I suppose the essence is that AVs versus manually driven cars will make not much difference but collectively owned cars versus individually owned cars will make a massive difference.

9. Uber presumably are keen on AVs to eliminate the cost of drivers, so if I order an Uber it will arrive empty and when I reach my destination it will depart empty. If I own my own AV to travel to work, I might then send it back home empty for use by the family or to avoid parking fees. Late in the day I can call it up to collect me from work. Will this not lead to heavier traffic, double the commuting trips, etc with not one aboard as now, but no-one at all?

10. The expectation is that you wouldn’t personally own one, but rent the time.

    For moving a mass of people in one direction we will still need mass transport, but at least the AVs can drive closer together, or safer/smarter in mixed traffic (by the time they are allowed to do so).

11. And the Uber that leaves you empty is likely to pick up a new rider in less time than it takes your personal AV to get home.

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