Self driving...traffic jam?

Ok, so this is kinda interesting, and I don’t think we have discussed...

A new model suggests that self driving cars could  cause massive traffic jams. 

The same swarm programming that could give advantages such as advanced look-ahead via networking, or the ability for vehicles to safely travel together at 100 mph only 1 foot off the bumper of the vehicle in front of them, could also be used for the opposite:  massive coordinated intentional traffic jams blockading entire cities and residential subdivisions. 

NPR: self driving cars and parking

Here’s  the thinking...

In a large inner city area like NYC, parking is at a premium.  A self driving car could park in a 1 hour parking zone, and keep moving itself when the time expires  

But it doesn’t actually have to park at all.  It could drop you off at the restaurant, and keep making laps until you were ready to leave.

Since this would burn fuel, it becomes advantageous for the autonomous car to seek out slowing moving congested areas and attach itself to them.  It might only have to travel at 10 or 15 mph, which would save a lot of fuel.

But it could also seek out other autonomous cars in the same predicament and join together and CREATE a traffic jamb, to collectively save fuel.

Or, it could drive itself to the nearest residential neighborhood, and just hang out there until needed.  Your suburban neighborhood could have a bunch of cars with no drivers slow cruising the neighborhood- creepy.

And what if it got hacked?  Could 500 cars be used in unison to lock down an entire city, prevent emergency responders from accessing an area, or block traffic to create escape routes for criminals?

Intriguing...

Unintended consequences will always bite you in the ass. 

I could see autonomous cars moving towards a "use" system where you buy into having a car at your disposal. When you need one, a car comes to you. When you are done, it goes off to somebody else. this would cure a lot of the issues you speak of

mad_machine said:

I could see autonomous cars moving towards a "use" system where you buy into having a car at your disposal. When you need one, a car comes to you. When you are done, it goes off to somebody else. this would cure a lot of the issues you speak of

I agree, once they become truly autonomous and AI, then the game changes completely, instead of one owner using a car 2% of the time, 1000 owners use 30 cars 80% of the time.  The math would need work depending on peak usage, etc.  It is clear that sharing will be much easier when the car can be summoned to your door.

mad_machine said:

I could see autonomous cars moving towards a "use" system where you buy into having a car at your disposal. When you need one, a car comes to you. When you are done, it goes off to somebody else. this would cure a lot of the issues you speak of

Right. If cars are at level 5 AV then what’s the point of owning them?  They are available whenever because... they drive themselves. In a generation of two kids will think about transportation the same way they think about electricity. Thinking this is a problem is like saying the discovery of electricity will cause a lot of home fires because everyone will be keeping a huge generator and tanks of fuel in their basement. 

In reply to mad_machine :

I’m not sure I agree. 

It would cure it for the “common man”. But the residents of a place like Manhattan in NYC are not common. They are elite by the very fact that they live in that city. 

They are not gonna share a ride. And with an autonomous car, they wouldn’t even have to pay for a parking garage any more.

So, the visitors, tourists, and poor slobs like me would get to navigate a “per use” system through a city that was congested with increased numbers of vehicles privately owned by wealthy local residents.

In reply to bcp2011 :

I respect your opinion, but the computer model disagrees with your conclusion. 

Unintended consequence. 

You've been able to summon a shared vehicle to your location for 100 years. They're called taxis. The only real difference that I see between these summoned/shared autonomous vehicles and taxis today is that there's no human behind the wheel, and the money is likely to go toward corporations rather than small/medium taxi companies.

Taxis cause lots of traffic/parking problems now. Taxis are shared with whomever and summoned at will right now. I don't see how any of this improves with autonomy.

You'll still be cramming a ton of vehicles with a single passenger into a small area at the same basic times every day Mon-Fri, and then there will be less busy times/more vehicles sitting idle the rest of the time.

It is interesting, but I don't think it will be the case. I don't see any difference in this and in Taxi's. Also, it is simple to solve. Put a law in place that says if there is no human behind the wheel on XYZ roads, then there has to be a taxi medallion on it. That'd basically force them to not drive around without a human except for parking/retrieving. It is basically a very localized problem. Having never been to NYC other than that hellhole they call LaGuardia, I won't comment on that, but even in Chicago parking is never really a problem (assuming you don't mind paying).  Make it a ticketable offense to clog up the roads on purpose and the issue is solved. 

I've even heard the opposite--if there are enough of the autonomous cars out, and they can talk to each other, then they can take a time optimized route that will reduce gridlock. (robots talking, the horror)

SVreX said:

In reply to mad_machine :

I’m not sure I agree. 

It would cure it for the “common man”. But the residents of a place like Manhattan in NYC are not common. They are elite by the very fact that they live in that city. 

They are not gonna share a ride. And with an autonomous car, they wouldn’t even have to pay for a parking garage any more.

So, the visitors, tourists, and poor slobs like me would get to navigate a “per use” system through a city that was congested with increased numbers of vehicles privately owned by wealthy local residents.

Except the residents of Manhattan already share rides more than anywhere else in America... 

And no one has to work to create a 10-15 mph situation there. It's all already going 10-15 any time of day.

SVreX said:

In reply to mad_machine :

It would cure it for the “common man”. But the residents of a place like Manhattan in NYC are not common. They are elite by the very fact that they live in that city. 

They are not gonna share a ride. And with an autonomous car, they wouldn’t even have to pay for a parking garage any more.

Sorry but you're just wrong here.  I lived in the city for ten years, and as a car guy it was horrible b/c it meant I could not own a car despite having had the financial ability to do so.  Paying 1k for parking space + insurnace a month on top of car / gas / maintenance was not a wise financial decision, and most people in the city make the same choice (E.g., they don't have a car).  If you're really wealthy you have a driver, but that's far and few in between.

SVreX said:

In reply to bcp2011 :

I respect your opinion, but the computer model disagrees with your conclusion. 

Unintended consequence. 

The computer model works off of existing assumptions.  The article itself states that there may already be a solution: "Millard-Ball thinks that cities should move to create congestion pricing, as some big cities have done, where you get charged for the amount of time that your car spends on the road whether or not it's moving."

SVreX said:

In reply to mad_machine :

I’m not sure I agree. 

It would cure it for the “common man”. But the residents of a place like Manhattan in NYC are not common. They are elite by the very fact that they live in that city. 

They are not gonna share a ride. And with an autonomous car, they wouldn’t even have to pay for a parking garage any more.

So, the visitors, tourists, and poor slobs like me would get to navigate a “per use” system through a city that was congested with increased numbers of vehicles privately owned by wealthy local residents.

They're not too elite to share taxis and Uber's. You might think of people from that demographic in too narrow of a view. Lots of them currently refuse to own cars so they don't pay for parking garage space now. And a lot of them use various forms of ride sharing and fetching. Now, the cars they elect to buy into for this per use might be higher end cars but I don't see them being all "eww how dare I share a ride" when that's what they're doing today already.

Especially the "elites" in my generation.

"Not gonna share a ride"?  Ever heard of a taxi?

This recent MIT study suggests that ride sharing/autonomous taxis in large cities might be MORE expensive per mile than the current meatbag controlled taxi/public transit options.

STM317 said:

You've been able to summon a shared vehicle to your location for 100 years. They're called taxis. The only real difference that I see between these summoned/shared autonomous vehicles and taxis today is that there's no human behind the wheel, and the money is likely to go toward corporations rather than small/medium taxi companies.

Taxis cause lots of traffic/parking problems now. Taxis are shared with whomever and summoned at will right now. I don't see how any of this improves with autonomy.

You'll still be cramming a ton of vehicles with a single passenger into a small area at the same basic times every day Mon-Fri, and then there will be less busy times/more vehicles sitting idle the rest of the time.

This is a separate topic.  You're talking about throughput during rush hour, which absolutely can be improved by AV as cars will be going faster and in closer proximity, not to mention side streets freed up from less cars parked on the street (again, going off of assumption that car ownership goes way down).  Furthermore, it'll offer passengers the ability to choose to share rides, just as one could choose to now with Uber and Lyft (and many do today).  

I don’t see autonomous vehicle sharing as being a viable alternative for most families.

How many US households have ~2.5 kids that get hauled around daily to school, soccer practice, band camp, and wherever else? How many of those kids are still using forward or rear-facing seats, or boosters? Are people going to be toting their kids/seats(and everything else) in & out of a shared vehicle every time they go somewhere? Not unless it becomes the only financially-viable alternative, and certainly not without protest. 

Not to mention all people who use their personal vehicle for work, whether independent plumbers, contractors, etc. who are hauling tools & material; or just those who travel from site to site throughout the day, like salespeople. They will all still need their own personal transportation - and it’s not an insignificant number. 

bcp2011 said:

This is a separate topic.  You're talking about throughput during rush hour, which absolutely can be improved by AV as cars will be going faster and in closer proximity, not to mention side streets freed up from less cars parked on the street (again, going off of assumption that car ownership goes way down).  Furthermore, it'll offer passengers the ability to choose to share rides, just as one could choose to now with Uber and Lyft (and many do today).  

I'll concede that autonomous vehicles offer advantages over human operated ones, but I just don't think "reduced congestion" is going to be a benefit that autonomous vehicles can realistically provide unless you're putting more people into fewer vehicles like busses or trains. I don't see those types of options being discussed anywhere. So, I don't think the number of vehicles on the road noticeably changes in the autonomous future, even if the number owned by individuals does. There still have to be enough vehicles available to serve peak travel for a set population, and outside of peak travel times, demand will be lower and a bunch of vehicles will either sit or drive around unoccupied.

What if increased speed causes more congestion? When a vehicle has to slow to enter/exit a freeway or something, how does the traffic around it react? The greater that delta in speed, the more freeway traffic has to slow, and the larger the backup. If designing from scratch we can accommodate the higher speeds, but we're dealing with established infrastructure like on/off ramps and intersection design with buildings or natural features like rivers nearby. Most roads weren't intended for high speed use, and redoing every part of our infrastructure to support faster, autonomous travel seems expensive and unlikely when we still can't get decent rail travel setup for most of the country.

bcp2011 said:

SVreX said:

In reply to bcp2011 :

I respect your opinion, but the computer model disagrees with your conclusion. 

Unintended consequence. 

The computer model works off of existing assumptions.

"All models are wrong.   Some models are useful."  - my buddy James

In NYC it would be probably be practical to take a cue from Chicago's elevated trains and pick a couple streets to build an upper deck over.

Designate those for use by single or dual passenger golf cart sized AVs, bicycles, and pedestrians, with 4-6' wide lanes and some greenery and your could cram a whole city worth of transportation into 1/4 the space, even including parking. Small AVs wouldn't have to have lanes much wider than their bodywork and they could swoop down into regular traffic for pickup or drop off.  Add a couple of current parking spaces per block turned into microcar loading zones and you could get within half a block of anything without more than a couple of blocks in a tiny car surrounded by the full size ones.

In reply to AngryCorvair :

Agreed. 

I put no faith in models. It’s just a discussion with a different set of data points than are often considered. 

mad_machine said:

I could see autonomous cars moving towards a "use" system where you buy into having a car at your disposal. When you need one, a car comes to you. When you are done, it goes off to somebody else. this would cure a lot of the issues you speak of

That's called a "taxi" and it hasn't really taken off now has it?

oldopelguy said:

In NYC it would be probably be practical to take a cue from Chicago's elevated trains and pick a couple streets to build an upper deck over.

Designate those for use by single or dual passenger golf cart sized AVs, bicycles, and pedestrians, with 4-6' wide lanes and some greenery and your could cram a whole city worth of transportation into 1/4 the space, even including parking. Small AVs wouldn't have to have lanes much wider than their bodywork and they could swoop down into regular traffic for pickup or dropp off.  Add a couple of current parking spaces per block turned into microcar loading zones and you could get within half a block of anything without more than a couple of blocks in a tiny car surrounded by the full size ones.

Interesting...

bcp2011 said:

SVreX said:

In reply to bcp2011 :

I respect your opinion, but the computer model disagrees with your conclusion. 

Unintended consequence. 

The computer model works off of existing assumptions. 

You are absolutely correct.  

The Utopian perspective that traffic will be reduced also works off existing assumptions.

Aspen said:

mad_machine said:

I could see autonomous cars moving towards a "use" system where you buy into having a car at your disposal. When you need one, a car comes to you. When you are done, it goes off to somebody else. this would cure a lot of the issues you speak of

I agree, once they become truly autonomous and AI, then the game changes completely, instead of one owner using a car 2% of the time, 1000 owners use 30 cars 80% of the time.  The math would need work depending on peak usage, etc.  It is clear that sharing will be much easier when the car can be summoned to your door.

Other than the taxi system has been around for over 100 year now, the idea that so many people can own one car and share it among themselves has one big hurdle- when people need it.  You would have to make sure that each of those uses are not simultaneous for it to work- and given that everyone commutes at the exact same time- to work, to school, etc- autonomous cars are not going to really change the current flow of traffic anywhere.  Let alone the idea that we all start in the same place going to the same place- so even if I commuted from Ann Arbor to Dearborn at 7 am, and someone else does that at 9am- for just those two owners, that means the car is going back and forth to Ann Arbor 4 times a day.  Which is the same as if we each had a car.  

There are some really odd assumptions around autonomous cars that make no sense at all, and that's one that I've never heard a good solution for.