Self-Driving Cars: ‘Freedom’ or ‘More of the Same’

That last post got quite a response.  It was really fun reading all the comments.  Thanks to everyone for keeping the conversation civilized and productive.

One recurring theme that kept appearing in the comments section was that of self-driving cars.  If self-driving, autonomous, driverless (whatever you want to call them) cars still seem like science fiction to you, they probably won’t seem that way for long.  I am not even going to make the argument about whether or not they are coming.  They ARE coming!  Google seems to have nearly perfected the technology behind it.   At this point, it is only a matter of sorting out the legalities of introducing millions of self-driving cars onto our roadways.

Just for fun, here is a short TED Talk on Google’s cars.  The technology is absolutely awe inspiring.

If we assume that these cars are coming, the next question is:  How will this change our driving habits and our lives?  I have two very different expectations of what will happen when Ford, Chevy, Toyota, and all the other big manufacturers start putting out self-driving cars.

First the optimistic expectation.  In the optimistic future, self-driving cars will provide a complete paradigm shift in the way we think about transportation.  If self-driving cars become the main form of transportation, there is no practical reason to own a personal car.  Think about it, when cars are in storage approx. 95% of the time, that is a wasted resource.  This is the reason that we require so much parking.  What if during that 95% of downtime, the cars were off handling other trips like driver-less taxis?  When you needed a car, you summon it and it appears Batmobile style within seconds, or at the worst a few minutes.

How great would that be?  You no longer have to worry about maintenance or parking and you get to split the cost of the car with everyone who uses it.  Parking would free up all over the city because it is no longer needed.   You don’t get stuck with a single car.  If you need a 7 person SUV, you get it.  If you need a pickup truck, you get it.  If you need a single passenger vehicle, you get it.   And since you aren’t tied to your car, you might even walk more.  Previously you would drive that 1 mile to the grocery store, now you may walk it and simply opt for a ride back.  The sunk cost of owning and operating a car would vanish.  You would only pay for what you actually use.  This might actually prompt alternative transportation use.  It is hard to justify taking the train, when I have already sunk 20 grand into my car.  If enough people exchange a few car trips for walking or transit, we may even see a return to more walkable communities.  This would, of course, lead to even more people choosing walking and transit.  I can really see some positive momentum coming from intelligently used autonomous vehicles.

Now for the pessimistic vision of the future.  Nothing changes.  It is the same model that we have now.  Every single person owns his or her own car.  We still have to store all those cars 95% of the time and the only real difference in the commute is that you can watch cartoons on the way to work instead of driving.  Granted safety would be greatly improved and maybe some increase in efficiency on the highway.  Although as long as some people are still driving themselves mixed in with the driver-less cars, not much efficiency can be gained.

What would really happen in this scenario is that urban sprawl would increase dramatically.  When people are deciding on where to buy a house, they are weighing cost per square foot against commute times.  People who currently tolerate a 45 min. trip to work in exchange for the 6000 square foot McMansion way out in the exurbs, can now really spread out.  Instead of driving 45 min. to work, you can move 2 hours away from work and sleep in your car on the way in each morning.  Hell, why not live 8 hours away and do all of your sleeping in your car. (OK maybe that is a little crazy)

 Each time a new mode of transportation is introduced (bikes, trolleys, trains, cars, highways, etc.)  our cities change shapes.  Make no mistake, self-driving cars will not be a simple improvement over our current system.  They will have a dramatic effect on the shapes of our cities.  Ultimately we will probably have a mix of both the pessimistic and optimistic views.  After all, what is pessimistic to me may be optimistic to someone else.  This is OK, as long as the net effect is an increased quality of life in the towns and cities where most of us live.

EDIT:  The blog Narrow Lanes has an interesting post on driver-less cars with more examples and a skeptical POV from someone who doesn’t want to lose the joy of driving by turning control over to machines.  It is worth a read.

Cars Kill Cities

OK, I’m finally getting a chance to make another post.  I have temporarily relocated to Mountain View, CA and have been up to my eyeballs in work, both ‘real’ work and research work.  It’s nice to get back to this blog.

Cars do not belong in cities.  A standard American sedan can comfortably hold 4+ adults w/ luggage, can travel in excess of 100 miles per hour, and can travel 300+ miles at a time without stopping to refuel.  These are all great things if you are traveling long distances between cities.  If you are going by yourself to pickup your dry cleaning, then cars are insanely over-engineered for the task.  It’s like hammering in a nail with a diesel-powered pile driver.   To achieve all these feats (high capacity, high speed, and long range driving), cars must be large and powered by fossil fuels.  So when you get a few hundred (or thousand) cars squeezed onto narrow city streets, you are left with snarled traffic and stifling smog.

Even if you ignore the pollution, cars simply take up too much space.   Next time you are stuck in traffic behind what seems like a million cars, try to imagine if all those cars where replaced by pedestrians or bike riders.  Suddenly, the congestion is gone.

60 Cars, 60 Bike Riders, and 60 Bus Passengers in Munster, Germany.

But why am I complaining about traffic?  Traffic only affects those stuck in it, right?  Once all cars go electric, essentially eliminating inter-city air pollution, then there will be no more problems for pedestrians, right?  Wrong!!  Probably the biggest problem with cars in cities is that they require huge amounts of land for storage (a.k.a. parking).  Here is a photo of Midtown Atlanta between 5th street and 12th street.  This is one of the densest and most pedestrian-friendly ares in the entire state of Georgia.  The red blocks indicate parcels of land that are 100% dedicated to car storage.

Red Squares Indicate Land that is 100% Dedicated to Parking in Midtown Atlanta

Dedicating all this land to car storage basically reduces the density by about half, doubles the average distance between locations, and reduces walkability.  Throw in the 16-lane interstate and the 45+ mph traffic on most of these streets, it becomes exceedingly hard to believe that this is one of the most walkable areas in the entire state.  Such is life for pedestrians in a car-dominated city.

It wasn’t always this way.  Atlanta, like all cities, used to be walkable and people actually lived IN the city instead of commuting 50 miles every day.  But as more people moved away from the city, the more Atlanta had to become like a suburb, being retrofitted to handle all the automobile infrastructure required by a million 40 hour-a-week temporary citizens.  The result of this retrofit is a wasteland of asphalt and isolated neighborhoods, a slow decimation that has rolled along since the innovation of the automobile.

Contrary to how it may sound, I do not want to rid the earth of cars.  I just want to use them smarter.  Do you really need a 2-ton vehicle to pickup your dry-cleaning?  Probably not.  Although I do see the appeal in loading a family of 6 into an SUV and traveling to Florida for vacation.  That is a totally reasonable use of an automobile.  What I really want  is clean, walkable, safe, affordable, and family-friendly cities and towns.  In a strange way, I kind of want to live in Mayberry.

In the next post, I promise to discuss a few ideas that may get us a little closer to this goal.

What is a street?

To answer this question, we must first realize what streets are NOT.  Streets are NOT roads.  Roads are designed to connect two places (towns, cities, neighborhoods, etc.)  They are meant for transportation, typically via a motor vehicle.  Roads do not contain, or sparsely contain, homes, stores, and businesses.

In contrast, streets are located within towns, cities, and neighborhoods, and provide much more than transportation.  Streets are lined with homes, store fronts, and businesses.  Streets are intended as a public place where people can mingle, conduct business, live, and play.  Despite what your mother says about playing in the streets, actual streets are great for playing.  If this seems like a crazy concept to you, I will point you to the following three videos.

The first video is Barcelona in 1908, you will notice pedestrians everywhere, children and adults on bicycles, stores and homes directly on the street.  This street is not the exclusive domain of cars, as we are used to.  It belongs to all citizens despite their chosen mode of transport.  Feel free to skip around these videos if you wish.  It really is fascinating to view 100 year old street life.

This was a very common sight in modern cities 100 years ago.  Here is a video of San Francisco from 1906 with a very similar scene.

Now let’s take another look at the first video.  This time with video from the present-day spliced in as a comparison.  You will see that these are no longer streets, they are roads.  There is little to no pedestrian traffic (or any traffic for that matter, I wonder if this video was shot during a holiday), and the road has become the exclusive playground for motor vehicles.  Pedestrians have been relegated to sidewalks only, and roads have been setup for high speed travel.  Personally, I would not classify this 100 year change as “progress”.

This post, and the previous post, are intended to describe some of the characteristics that I look for in healthy communities.  I look for walkable streets, a good mix of people and modes of transportation, and ease of mobility.  Future posts will begin to look at how we can address the problems of our modern cities and move toward more livable communities.  

Extra:  If you have 15 minutes, here is a Ted Talk from someone much smarter than myself, explaining the importance of separating roads and streets.

Where did you take your last vacation?

Where did you go on your last vacation?  Probably the most popular answer is the beach or some other attraction provided by nature (camping, fishing, etc.).  I am not concerned with these trips so much.  When was the last time that you took a trip a new city?  Where did you go; San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Savannah, Charleston?  Those cities are all very popular for tourism.  Why do you think that is?  It can’t be the weather (Chicago, New York, and San Francisco have notoriously bad weather.)  It can’t be exclusively for high society and culture (as much as I love Savannah and Charleston, I don’t go there for the museums or opera).  What common thread binds these cities?  The most obvious answer that I see, is that they are all old and well planned cities.

NYC bustling with a mingling of pedestrians and vehicles

When we visit places like Savannah, Charleston, San Fran. etc., we go there because they provide an escape from the drudgery of day-to-day life.  Which for many of us consists of lengthy commutes between suburbs and distant work places.  We live in homes where there is no street life or culture, and we travel to soul-less office buildings in downtown areas that shut down after 5pm.  We do all of our shopping at big box stores, fighting for parking spaces and spending a large percentage of our lives waiting in lines to purchase our weeks’ worth of groceries.

Savannah, GA's beautiful historic district.

This is a far cry from those cities listed above.  They all have street life, easy walking between hotels and pubs, restaurants, and grocery stores.  They are laden with parks for people watching and interacting with strangers.  I submit that the street life and walkability of these places is what makes them so attractive as vacation destinations.  It is the only common attribute shared among the cities that I mentioned.

If we are attracted to these places due to their walkability, accessibility, street life, and charm, why do we choose to live in places that lack all of these features?  I’m sure there is whole list of excuses that we can come up with for why we choose to visit these places on vacation, but somehow ignore their design when deciding where we will live the bulk of our lives.  But, is there really any reason that every town, city, or suburb in the USA couldn’t offer many of the same attractive features of these popular vacation destinations?

Perhaps I am being overly romantic and not practical.  After all, if we all lived in places like San Francisco and Savannah, where would we park our cars?