Self driving cars may fix our traffic problems:

[Milton Platt]

I would prefer self-driving, electric, public transportation. Its compact and there is no polution to speak of.

Now that I think of it, we should also remove suburbs and simply make buildings in cities taller, therefore taking up less space horizontally. This would encourage walking and improve overall health.

Ooh, we could also install solar panels on the roof and have green houses 10 stories tall! Although I'm kind of getting carried away...

I admire and to a large degree share your enthusiasm. But a multistory greenhouse would supply sufficient sunlight to only the top floor.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

It is not the ultimate cure-all. Any system can be overloaded. The article tells us that one of the positive features of the coming self-driving car is that they will be able to put more cars on the existing systems.

Yes: that's the first-order effect, just like, say, adding a lane to an existing road. But that's not the end of the story:

Roadway expansion impacts tend to include:

• First order. Reduced congestion delay, increased traffic speeds.
• Second order. Changes in time, route, destination and mode.
• Third order. Land use changes. More dispersed, automobile-oriented development.
• Fourth order. Overall increase in automobile dependency. Degraded walking and cycling conditions (due to wider roads and increased traffic volumes), reduced public transit service (due to reduced demand and associated scale economies, sometimes called the Downs-Thomson paradox), and social stigma associated with alternative modes (Noland and Hanson 2013, p. 75)

http://www.vtpi.org/gentraf.pdf

And not only will self-driving cars, by increasing roadway capacity, cause those traditional induced demand effects, they'll tap into all new types of latent demand:

- by no longer requiring a person to be able to park where they live, people who have no residential parking available can still own cars. This will tend to reduce the number of households with zero vehicles available. Trips per household increases as the number of vehicles in the household increases, but especially for that step from zero vehicles to 1 vehicle.

- by no longer requiring a driver to be in the vehicle, it will be allowing a ton of congestion-contributing trips that don't actually transport goods or people (e.g. the return leg home after your car drops you off somewhere, or setting it to circle the block while you have lunch so you can avoid paying for parking).

In the long term, increasing capacity by adding lanes does little if anything to actually reduce congestion. Increasing capacity with self-driving cars won't do any better a job of reducing congestion, but it will create new ways to make congestion worse.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Yes: that's the first-order effect, just like, say, adding a lane to an existing road. But that's not the end of the story:


http://www.vtpi.org/gentraf.pdf

And not only will self-driving cars, by increasing roadway capacity, cause those traditional induced demand effects, they'll tap into all new types of latent demand:

- by no longer requiring a person to be able to park where they live, people who have no residential parking available can still own cars. This will tend to reduce the number of households with zero vehicles available. Trips per household increases as the number of vehicles in the household increases, but especially for that step from zero vehicles to 1 vehicle.

- by no longer requiring a driver to be in the vehicle, it will be allowing a ton of congestion-contributing trips that don't actually transport goods or people (e.g. the return leg home after your car drops you off somewhere, or setting it to circle the block while you have lunch so you can avoid paying for parking).

In the long term, increasing capacity by adding lanes does little if anything to actually reduce congestion. Increasing capacity with self-driving cars won't do any better a job of reducing congestion, but it will create new ways to make congestion worse.

The only ultimate way to end congestion is to end population growth. Until then it will be an ongoing problem. One good thing is that as nations get more developed is that the rate of population increase drops. There are other negative side effects that causes, such as our present Ponzi scheme of the next generation paying for the aging generation goes. This is only a temporary fix until the time that we get control of how many people we produce.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

The only ultimate way to end congestion is to end population growth. Until then it will be an ongoing problem.

There are other ways to deal with the problem: intelligent, non-auto-centric land use planning; walkable neighbourhoods; better transit... all sorts of ways to make it easier - or in some areas possible - to live without cars, or at least reduce auto dependency.

One good thing is that as nations get more developed is that the rate of population increase drops. There are other negative side effects that causes, such as our present Ponzi scheme of the next generation paying for the aging generation goes. This is only a temporary fix until the time that we get control of how many people we produce.

It's not a fix at all. On average, increase roadway capacity by 1% and you increase vehicle miles travelled by ~0.8-1.1%... though that's for increasing capacity ny conventional means. Self-driving cars have the potential to tap into much more demand than conventional travel.