Exactly. Self-driving cars will be the suburbs' renaissance.
The Metro has faced years of neglect, but it is still a functional system that moves hundreds of thousands of people daily. Despite all of the investment in roads, traffic is still a terrible mess from Gainesville and Fredericksburg to the District line.
> They've had fatal accidents, and they're ridiculously slow because they single-track the trains so much.
In the same year the DC Metro killed one person, 26 people died on DC's roads. Virginia and Maryland have their own traffic fatality reports.
The single tracking is mostly a weekend issue. It's terrible, and makes the system useless on weekends half the time, but the commute is generally good. They have a railcar shortage that is currently hurting reliability partly caused by the Japanase tsunami delaying new equipment, but once that's solved the numbers will increase once again. Weekends will remain terrible until someone competent takes the reigns.
For starters, it is highly unlikely the urban planning mistakes of the 60s where downtowns were flattened with freeways will be repeated. We're already seeing cities tear down or bury existing freeways to correct these mistakes. Cities from LA to Atlanta are investing in mass transit and are working on getting more walkable and dense.
I predict that self driving cars will actually be a big boon for cities themselves as it would now be easier for city dwellers to visit transit inaccessible destinations or shopping trips that require a car. Zipcar, Car2Go, Enterprise's car rental club and the like are already bridging the gap, but self driving cars would help those who can't drive such as children or the elderly or even those who never learned to drive.
Buses though, are mostly failures. If you look at the numbers for buses, you see they are traveling empty far too often. I think it makes more sense for public transit to operate on a fleet of smaller vans. You go to a stop, hail a ride, and a shared ride pulls up and takes you to your destination, making stops along the way. I think fixed routes running even when there are no passengers is ripe for an upgrade.
Major causes of congestion could be almost entirely eliminated (breakdowns and accidents)
Vehicles could be routed more efficiently, and dynamic road tolls used to keep traffic flowing on popular routes.
On-street parking could be eliminated, as fewer people will own their own cars, or their cars will be able to park themselves elsewhere.
Meanwhile the absence of human drivers (and exhaust emissions, once we move to all-electric vehicles) will see a step-change in the take-up of cycling and walking in urban centres.
This is just scraping the surface. Self-driving cars are going to change everything.
Then my wife and I decided to have kids and so when our lease was up on our apartment, we took the plunge and bought a house in the 'burbs. We had two kids and I adjusted to living on the edge of the city. The unthinkable happened - I love it in the suburbs. I don't think I could live in an apartment again.
In your view, shared by many technocrats, is that the SDC solves the negative problems of cars now: time now spent driving in an SDC can be spent reading, working, having breakfast, ... there's also the reasonable assumption that future cars will be electric, so the negative environmental effects of suburbs will be reduced. And SDCs will use the road more efficiently, reducing congestion, be safer, etc.. etc.. The way people lead their lives is more or less the same, but the SDC makes it better.
Many urbanists hold - paradoxically - the opposite view. The SDC will kill the suburb. They assume that the SDC will operate on a rental model. SDC's will basically be taxis. The reasoning is, that when people no longer own a car, they have no need for a garage. So why live somewhere that is completely designed for cars? Parking minimums will no longer be required and safer (and slower) SV traffic will make being out&about on a bike or two feet much more pleasant. The quality of city living, in other words, will hugely improve because we don't need to dedicate so much effort/time/money in storing and maintaining a car. Cities can be scaled around humans again, and not around cars sitting idle for 90% of the time. The role that suburbs serve - a place that's convenient to own a car - will no longer be necessary. Plus, the SDC does not really solve the major problem of the suburb; the long term financial commitment (public&private) to maintain the infrastructure required to support sprawl.
Both are positive predictions, so win-win?
The outcome will probably be somewhere in between, but IMO the SDC won't save the suburb. The popularity of the suburbs is particular to certain historical factors that likely will not repeat; (1) urban renewal and the willful destruction of downtowns to accommodate cars, (2) school flight of young families. For (1), only the old guard in fly-over country still thinks more infrastructure is better. They're almost dead. And (2) has been played out. City schools can only improve, and suburban schools will lose their competitive advantage once the affluent start moving back closer to downtown.
I also expect the real effect of the SDC will not be felt in the trendy coastal cities where urbanity was preserved. It will happen in all the mid-size metros where the core has emptied out and ended up basically 95% strip mall. For example, drive-till-you-qualify is hilariously irrelevant in many US metros. A lot of opportunity for an inversion of the dynamics.
In my experience, people in the suburbs own cars because they have to in order to live in the suburbs. They don't move to the suburbs because they own cars, and want somewhere to store them.
The traditional appeal of the suburb (or the 'countryside') will endure. More space, lower crime rates, fewer neighbors, more privacy, better schools, a stronger sense of community, etc.
If anything, the self-driving car will make the suburbs more attractive, as fewer cars will litter the place, paved-over front gardens can be returned to nature, etc.
Unless you can live in one of the rich suburbs, there's very little "countryside" in the suburbs I know. Traffic yes, noise yes, plus houses are generally not even that far away from each other so all there isn't much privacy. If anything, you're on display more than anything. You arrive at home, and everybody has heard it, and seen it.
But certainly, you might be right. Suppose telecommuting and flex time gets adopted more, absolutely, it's possible the SDC saves the suburb. But the car has ruined city life for more reasons than just creating crappy commutes. The appeal of the suburbs is precisely because city streets being are so wretched due to being giving over to the car. Hence the appeal of a quiet cul-de-sac. Once the city is no longer lined by sewers for high-speed noisy, stinky, dangerous cars, the appeal of the city increases, and the appeal for the suburb correspondingly decreases, that's my bet (and many others' whose view I only parrot here, basically any new urbanist, traditionalist, most under 40 planners)
I would say that Cities have 100 times more community. I grew up in the Burbs and my friends live there now. I ask them who their neighbors are and they all say I don't know and I don't care.
I'm in a suburb that is pretty stable - people moving in or out is pretty rare. Because I've lived beside the same people for so long, I know them well (I have keys to 5 houses on my street). We have a couple of block parties every year. Families take vacations together. There's community softball, basketball, soccer, tennis, golf, swimming, and running groups or leagues. Any given day of the week my kids might be eating at a friends house or we might have extra kids at our house. If somebody finds out that you play an instrument, you will start getting invitations to meet up and play. There's an organized bike ride every Sunday where people meet and ride to a cafe or diner for brunch. If I leave my garage door open when I'm working on my motorcycle, it's pretty common to get a person or two to wander in and end up helping or just hanging out.
I have also lived in neighborhoods with none of that. When I lived in the city, I was young (20's) and I lived around a lot of people my age and I loved it as well. Lots of stuff to do and lots of people to do it with. Back then I would have not fit in the suburb I live in now just like today, I think I'm happier being where I am now.
I think either situation can be good or bad.
I don't really see a big tension between city and suburb dwellers. I think they mostly just look for different things in their lives. At least for me, I live in the suburbs because I enjoy it more, not because there's any big problem with the city. I like having a big garden, I like having a couple of chickens, I like space between me an my neighbors (even though I get along great with them), and I like living close to work. A few years ago, we built an outdoor kitchen and there's pretty much nothing I enjoy more than sitting back there at the start and end of my day. This year my wife is building me a workshop behind our house that I'm excited about.
If I lived in the city, my life would be different, not necessarily worse.