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> Moving the same number of people with fewer passengers per car increases traffic. The overwhelming majority --overwhelming-- of cars, SUV's and trucks on the

> Moving the same number of people with fewer passengers per car increases traffic. The overwhelming majority --overwhelming-- of cars, SUV's and trucks on the road have exactly one passenger, including the guy commuting to his office job in an F-250.

vel0city 1mo ago
You're right, but that still puts the minimum at 1. Even with the many, many vehicles with single passengers as 1, the average is still always higher than 1. An autonomous vehicle doing a deadhead drive has a passenger count of 0. 0 < 1. You start tossing in a lot of miles with 0 in there on top of the vast majority of your trips being 1, and suddenly now you're less than the cars you're theoretically replacing. A lot of these AVs at the moment at least are still roughly minivan/midsize SUV. On top of that, with safe distances adding another foot of the car to a highway scenario really doesn't increase the percentage of the total space that much. You need a lot of follow space ahead/behind the vehicle. Maybe if they were like single person pods that teleported to their pickups and managed to group tightly together in packs on the road, but until then they're just another SUV on the road driving around sometimes with zero people in the car.
- robomartin 1mo ago
  I don't necessarily disagree with you. I think single person AV pods would be amazing and is likely one version of the future. However, this kind of change takes time, a lot of time. AV or not, if you have to share the road with monster trucks being driven by humans who are too busy looking at pictures on their phones, well, you are going to eventually want to be in something at a similar scale. That's why interesting options like Smart cars never made it here. Whatever this will become, it will be a matter of decades and a real modernization of our traffic laws and other infrastructure. I will not pretend to know what form that will take, my crystal ball stopped working a few decades back. There are so many questions. Just looking at a place like Los Angeles, I regularly drive right next to massive trucks moving containers and all kinds of cargo. Can we be more intelligent about this? An automated cargo monorail operating down the middle of every highway? Sure, as an idea and a fantasy. In the real world you'll have to contend with myriad issues spanning a range between our inability to build anything anymore in this country with how you are going to deal with millions of people losing their jobs if you automate cargo transport and clear large trucks from the highways. Etc. It's nice to have these visions about the future. What will actually happen is a different matter. I am placing my bet on self driving cars as the first practical phase of a transition into something more sensible that will likely require three to five decades. The equation is very simple: Atomos are expensive and hard to move. Conventional cars and trucks manufactured and purchased today are going to stay on the roads for at least a decade. A mass transition to a different paradigm is measured in units of decades after the last conventional vehicle is manufactured and sold. Hence my five decade estimate for transportation utopia.
  - vel0city 1mo ago
    I wonder what the logistics and costs look like having to maintain a fleet of single-seaters along with multi-seater vehicles. I realize a high percentage of rides are solo rides, but there's still like 20-30% of rides with >1 passenger. Is it really easier for the transit companies to manage multiple fleets of vehicles with various seating sizes? Is it actually a better experience for riders? > An automated cargo monorail operating down the middle of every highway? There's already cargo freight rail practically all across the country. Loads on trucks are on trucks because of the desired flexibility and point to point response time as opposed to having to load/unload rail. Also, unless you're talking some really long distances, having rail in the middle of a highway doesn't always make much sense. You're not going to have the depots or stations in the middle of the highway after all. The train then needs to weave back and fourth across the highway to get to the places its routed to. Far better to just figure out its own right of way rather than stick it in the middle of a complicated place.

vel0city 1mo ago

You're right, but that still puts the minimum at 1. Even with the many, many vehicles with single passengers as 1, the average is still always higher than 1. An autonomous vehicle doing a deadhead drive has a passenger count of 0. 0 < 1. You start tossing in a lot of miles with 0 in there on top of the vast majority of your trips being 1, and suddenly now you're less than the cars you're theoretically replacing. A lot of these AVs at the moment at least are still roughly minivan/midsize SUV. On top of that, with safe distances adding another foot of the car to a highway scenario really doesn't increase the percentage of the total space that much. You need a lot of follow space ahead/behind the vehicle. Maybe if they were like single person pods that teleported to their pickups and managed to group tightly together in packs on the road, but until then they're just another SUV on the road driving around sometimes with zero people in the car.

robomartin 1mo ago
I don't necessarily disagree with you. I think single person AV pods would be amazing and is likely one version of the future. However, this kind of change takes time, a lot of time. AV or not, if you have to share the road with monster trucks being driven by humans who are too busy looking at pictures on their phones, well, you are going to eventually want to be in something at a similar scale. That's why interesting options like Smart cars never made it here. Whatever this will become, it will be a matter of decades and a real modernization of our traffic laws and other infrastructure. I will not pretend to know what form that will take, my crystal ball stopped working a few decades back. There are so many questions. Just looking at a place like Los Angeles, I regularly drive right next to massive trucks moving containers and all kinds of cargo. Can we be more intelligent about this? An automated cargo monorail operating down the middle of every highway? Sure, as an idea and a fantasy. In the real world you'll have to contend with myriad issues spanning a range between our inability to build anything anymore in this country with how you are going to deal with millions of people losing their jobs if you automate cargo transport and clear large trucks from the highways. Etc. It's nice to have these visions about the future. What will actually happen is a different matter. I am placing my bet on self driving cars as the first practical phase of a transition into something more sensible that will likely require three to five decades. The equation is very simple: Atomos are expensive and hard to move. Conventional cars and trucks manufactured and purchased today are going to stay on the roads for at least a decade. A mass transition to a different paradigm is measured in units of decades after the last conventional vehicle is manufactured and sold. Hence my five decade estimate for transportation utopia.
- vel0city 1mo ago
  I wonder what the logistics and costs look like having to maintain a fleet of single-seaters along with multi-seater vehicles. I realize a high percentage of rides are solo rides, but there's still like 20-30% of rides with >1 passenger. Is it really easier for the transit companies to manage multiple fleets of vehicles with various seating sizes? Is it actually a better experience for riders? > An automated cargo monorail operating down the middle of every highway? There's already cargo freight rail practically all across the country. Loads on trucks are on trucks because of the desired flexibility and point to point response time as opposed to having to load/unload rail. Also, unless you're talking some really long distances, having rail in the middle of a highway doesn't always make much sense. You're not going to have the depots or stations in the middle of the highway after all. The train then needs to weave back and fourth across the highway to get to the places its routed to. Far better to just figure out its own right of way rather than stick it in the middle of a complicated place.