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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

This is gold...

"So, yeah, it’s great: you hit the app, and the car shows up now in 10 minutes instead of a 35-minute wait. But now the traffic congestion is so bad that you’re sitting in that car for 20 minutes longer to get anywhere... cities now are starting to discuss and deal with: traffic congestion. The traffic congestion is so much worse.

Now, is it all because of Uber? Not it’s not...you suddenly have a new service that’s committed to just flooding the streets with cars, putting thousands of more cars on the street. Is it any surprise that now the streets are more congested?"

This is total stream of consciousness. Is Uber multiplying the taxi fleet? How can one put so many competing statements together like that and think it's coherent? Should we revert to poor taxi experience? Will that bring down traffic congestion? What's the point?

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I won't believe cities are serious about reducing congestion until they fix the traffic lights to dynamically maximize flow.

No, it isn't done already. Too often, I am in a platoon of 20 cars that has to slam to a stop so one car can cross the intersection on the cross street, and then there's yet another minute of red with nobody in the intersection.

You'd think with cameras already installed on the lights that this would be a far, far simpler job than self-driving cars.

There are also more static variants. I know that Yandex collaborated with Zelenograd [0] (city to the north of Moscow) to optimize timings of city traffic lights. Yandex has similar data to what Google does in other places, due to Yandex.Maps app, and they reported to increase average car speed at many intersections without dropping average at any other one.

On the example shown, average car speed at one particular intersection improved from 10 km/h in rush hours to 30 km/h, which is fairly significant.

For many cities which do not want to spend money to replace all traffic lights, such collaborations could be less-than-optimal, but still a great improvement.

[0]: https://yandex.ru/blog/company/38835 (Russian)

Using statistics is one way, but is suboptimal. An optimal system would use the cameras to adjust to each situation like a traffic cop would. Though I bet even a modest adaptive light system could do better than a cop, for the simple reason that lights could coordinate with their neighbors.

I think your original comment was spot-on, and far more interesting than the hackneyed discussions taking place in this thread. For a little context:

"In 1922 traffic towers were beginning to be controlled by automatic timers. The first company to add timers in traffic lights was Crouse Hinds. They built railroad signals and were the first company to place timers in traffic lights in Houston, which was their home city. The main advantage for the use of the timer was that it saved cities money by replacing traffic officers. The city of New York was able to reassign all but 500 of its 6,000 officers working on the traffic squad; this saved the city $12,500,000."

Crouse-Hinds was still getting sued in the '90s for liability in accidents at intersections. I don't know if these lawsuits are still happening, but I assume liability has something to do with why your suggestion of a more adaptive light system is not tried.

In Paris the idea is to make the city more hostile to cars (any car, your private car, taxis, ubers) by reducing the number of roads they are allowed onto.

The city voted yesterday to close the main road through the city ("quais rive droite") after the equivalent road in the other way ("quais rive gauche") had been closed 3 years ago.

I think London is thinking of doing the same (plans to close Oxford Street?)

How it will end is a mystery to me; not everyone is comfortable using public transportation (esp. the elderly). In London the subway is kind of okay... in Paris it's horrible.

I was in Rome recently and they seem to do something similar. It makes for a lot more pleasant city when you have so much less traffic and the associated noise.

Yes, London is planning to close Oxford street, it just has to figure out how buses can be redirected in a smart way to allow shoppers to get there easily. Furthermore, one of the busiest intersections (bank) will be closed to all vehicles but buses from next year on. The fact that it will even be closed to black cabs is a strong signal.

In addition to that there are also plans to revert some of the 70's car-friendly areas in the city. Mainly roads that were designed to be one-way to ease traffic flow will be made less car-friendly. This is supposed to slow down traffic which should make it safer for cyclists and pedestrians. ("The one-way system encourages high traffic speeds, which is at odds with the City's aspiration for safer streets within the Square Mile.") [0]

I'm not aware that there is any project in London at the moment that will ease congestion, it's all about making life for pedestrians and cyclists easier. As a cyclist, I really welcome that trend. The new cycle-superhighways [1] are a great thing, IMO.

[0] Project 48: https://tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/improvements-and-proje...

[1] https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/cycling/routes-and-maps/cycle-super...

Congestion in an inner city can reach a point where fiddling with the lights won't accomplish anything. But in moderate traffic areas, big improvements should be possible and practical.

After all, once an adaptive system is created, it could be installed on most intersections.

I keep thinking of adaptive car fuel injection systems that Ford uses. It's so adaptable that they're pulled off of 90's Mustangs and installed on Mopar V8's from the early 70's, despite being a completely different engine with different firing order, etc., and people have reported great results.

I never understood the interior layout of subways in Paris... they have seats positioned right at the door, where people would stand normally. It seemed to me like everyone was always stepping on each others toes, and on each stop the whole train was shuffeling around for people to get in and out.

That's because those seats are supposed to not be used when there's too many people.

This will be hard to believe but it's true: for years and years, the Paris subway authority considered that people would not accept to "be transported laterally", which means seats HAD to be either facing the front or the back of the train, NOT the side.

It still goes on today; some of the newer trains now have a few seats facing the side, but that's as far as they'll go.

This thinking, based on absolutely zero evidence but deeply ingrained, wastes an incredible amount of space aboard subway trains.

> In London the subway is kind of okay... in Paris it's horrible.

Having commuted in both London and in Paris, I would say it is quite hard to make this kind of statement.

When comparing my commute on the Northern Line to my old one on Line 2 and 1 in Paris, I can definitely say it was better in Paris.

And I'm sure that someone who could compare commuting on Line 13 versus, say, the Victoria Line, would have a very different opinion.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't hold my breath. Even Bill Gates couldn't fix this problem (literally -- who remembers TrafOData?)

Apparently, cities don't want smooth traffic flow. It's bad for their public transit agenda.

London does it. http://abstracts.aetransport.org/paper/index/id/2041/confid/... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4oeMB0tYII

The video is a bit cheesy, but it gets the point across.

Most of these points become moot with driverless cars. They can be small two-person smart cars that can drive bumper-to-bumper and wheel-to-wheel. First they'll get their own roads and then inner cities will ban manual-driven cars.

> I won't believe cities are serious about reducing congestion until they fix the traffic lights to dynamically maximize flow.

> No, it isn't done already.

Its obviously not done most places yet, but adaptive traffic control [0] is a thing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_traffic_control

That link leads to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InSync_adaptive_traffic_contro...

which is exactly the kind of system I've thought of. I didn't know it existed. Thanks for the pointer! This is great news.

Medallions (whether or not they were a good solution), were intended to restrict the number of cars on the road during peak hours, and enforce some uniform regulations on all taxis (pick up people of all races, etc.)

Uber's' innovation leads to a fleet that's easier to regulate due to constant monitoring, and pre-booking data. However, when it comes to traffic congestion, their solution is pure demand-side economics: increase prices as high as the market can bear. This means with no cap on supply, more and more cars will get put on the road to serve as part of the private fleet and it's the cities that have to bear the increased costs of road construction & maintenance.

My only hope is that rather than make cities crack down on Uber to maintain the status quo, they'll instead invest heavily in public transportation so all cities can have something on par to NYC today, and NYC tomorrow can have something on par to Tokyo.

That's not exactly true, cities can and do still have limits on the number of cars, case in point Seattle:

hhttp://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2014/03/seattle-city-cou...

That's true, and is what I meant by my worry that cities will crack down to maintain the status quo.

Doing so is easily done as a consequence of Uber being centrally controlled, with full tracking on all its cars. A city can trivially know exactly to the minute how many cars are in operation via Uber at one time.

However, regulation of that sort isn't what Uber wants, they want a situation where supply is unbounded and people only compete/control demand.

That's what the consumer would want too

Those cars are registered and taxed to the state, county, and city where the driver lives. These aren't scofflaws driving in from out of town- the municipalities are getting at least their fare share from the drivers to maintain the roads.

"fare share"

I assume this was an accident, but it's actually better.

Ha, Freudian slip I guess.

The creation of medallions had nothing to do with the number of cars on the road at peak hours, or regulations about race. They were created during the depression in NYC to protect jobs for taxi drivers.

Taxi licensing has been around since before cars. The "medallion" system with tradable permits may be from depression era New York for all I know, but just about every locale in the world has come to the conclusion that there needs to be a limited set of permits.

You can push the prices down a little with unlimited competition, but the few dollars you save aren't worth the indirect costs associated with taxi driver desperation: tax fraud, gouging, barely running cars, outright extortion, etc. (Of course, if the municipality decides to pad their coffers by auctioning the permissions/medallions, you get all that in addition to lower competition.)

http://www.nyc.gov/html/media/totweb/taxioftomorrow_history_...

just about every locale in the world has come to the conclusion that there needs to be a limited set of permits.

Any city that is allowing Uber or Lyft hasn't come to that conclusion, or is changing their mind. And so far, I don't see barely running cars, i see nicer cars, free water, price predictability.

> And so far, I don't see barely running cars, i see nicer cars, free water, price predictability.

Because the new ride services are using VC money to subsidize operations cost to build marketshare. The experience you are reporting is essentially a massive marketing promotion, not a sustainable service.

>and it's the cities that have to bear the increased costs of road construction & maintenance.

So raise taxes on cars to disincentive this behavior.

This is the tip of the iceberg. What do you think will happen with self-driving cars on the road, or self driving trucks and other commercial vehicles? Parking lots will be long-gone as people's cars endlessly circle the blocks. The highways near storage depots will be filled with self driving trucks endlessly looping back on to and off of the highway in lieu of having the costs of a paved lot. There will be MORE cars, not less, as the total $$$/mile costs start a race to the bottom. The road's condition will deteriorate as the numbers of cars/minute/foot skyrockets, causing more construction and lane closures. It will be a glorious time for junk car dealers as the cars become as disposable as Abercrombie shirts. I can guarantee that someone with no friends or close family will set their car to circle the block and then die in the middle of their manicure. This car will not be 'valet'd' for and will just circle, drive itself to a recharge station, and then continue to circle until it catches on fire or is blockaded by thieves and left as a 'navigational' hazard for pedestrians. It's windows blown out, a headlight dangling, covered with graffiti, and filled with dusty pine needles and empty beer cans, it continues to circle the nail salon like some Flying Dutchman of the 21st century. That or it's tires blow out and it yelps at the roadside for it's dead owner to put it down. There will HAVE to be a lot of regulations as cars turn into public goods like PG&E or AT&T. Google, Uber and Lyft will conglomerate their businesses into GL&U, and the robber baron nature of capitalism takes over. No, these self driving cars will be scourge as car subscription services become like so many lite beer brands; all offering the same thing, so a race to the bottom for costs ensues. Quality falls down to the question of what a 'car' is legally allowed to be, and we are inundated with ever smaller, ever cheaper, and ever less safe "cars" to the legal minimum. It will be a nightmare for the climate and all of us. Keep your keys close and your state rep's number closer.

That's still about 50 years away.

>This is total stream of consciousness. Is Uber multiplying the taxi fleet? How can one put so many competing statements together like that and think it's coherent?

It might actually be multiplying the taxi fleet. I personally use uber to go to work every day and before I'd just use the subway.

This graph on reddit, suggests uber creates a lot of demand rather than just converting it from taxis. https://i.redd.it/1s8w5uqjkvnx.png

This explains why Uber is valued so much more than the taxi industry. Because it's growing the industry.

Exactly the part where I stopped reading

I still went ahead and stopped at the following:

> having a few self-driving cars on the public streets of Pittsburgh looks to me like an act of desperation — come on, what a joke: a few cars driving around Pittsburgh, and the human “non-drivers” still have to be sitting in the drivers seat? This is supposed to be a sign of progress?

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