Who Wins More From The Google Car: Cities or Suburbs?
forbes.com
forbes.com
Imagine how much cheaper shipping becomes when you have truck drivers that can run 24 hours a day, have fewer accidents, never strike, and cost $0.30/day in "wages". Sure, there are going to be about 300,000 layoffs practically overnight, but such is life with automation.
The shipping industry is poised to change radically and, like it or not, they will have Google to thank for it.
But what does it matter? The companies who hire shipping companies or run shipping departments are themselves run by number counters -who don't care-.
Companies like Wal-Mart will have a huge interest in slashing shipping costs to gain competitive price advantage, and they historically have exerted powerful control over their supply chain. Same with companies like Amazon or FedEx.
What is a shipping company going to do when their customers are opting for new companies that are automated/cheaper? Adapt or go out of business (or attempt to regulate but shipping is no Wall Street so I doubt they have the clout to use government to stifle innovation).
[1] http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/10/21/why-taxi-me...
Edit: Typo.
with a driver there is someone to get a signature/payment/paperwork whilest a driverless vehicle would need something else.
who's responsible for damage inside the back of a truck when it made 3-4 deleiveries?
how easy would it be to stop and steal the contents of one of these vehicles if it can be stopped on a quiet road with a rolling roadblock?
my brother has done 90% of his work on the road in many service/delivery jobs. he reckons at least here in ireland there will always need to be somebody on board to load/unload/handle paperwork/report problems . or if not need to be it might for a long time be cheaper to be.
The driving is the skilled labor. Handling the load/unload/handle and paperwork/report issues costs a lot less labor-wise
In Crystal City VA they have a significant underground walkway / mall that spans ~15 city blocks, and connects to the DC Metro (subway system).
Between the two options I prefer the underground walkway, but either option completely change how long it takes to get around. Rather than trying to accommodate both cars and pedestrians if you just separate the two both benefit. Cars can make turns easier and avoid accidents, people don't need to stop at intersections.
Look around the world. Desirable places strongly correlate to people walking at street level, because this allows people to pass shops, cafes, etc. and easily go in. It's the core of city life.
Crystal City is one of the least nice places close to downtown DC. Above ground it has huge streets, little street life and few people walking around. Compare that with Dupont Circle, where the city is full of life (this is where I work).
Raised or underground walkways are a great way to kill a city. Skybridges are a very 1970s idea and they are being torn down. Where I live, Downtown Silver Spring (not far from Crystal City), sky bridges are expressly forbidden in the CBD.
There are some areas way up North (upper Midwest, Canada) where there are underground walkways due to the weather in the winter. Most places, including the DC area, are fine in the winter.
There is a lot of writing about Skybridges out there. Here is a start: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/654/skybridges-dont...
I agree, most Skybridges are terrible. But, it's a density and network effect question, when you can walk 6 blocks without going back to street level AND the shop you want to get to is also up/down there AND you take your elevator / escalator to that level then it works. The Crystal City underground suffers from making the underground path a lot longer so you can often get someplace faster at street level. However, I have both lived and worked in the area and used it all the time.
PS: Dupont Circle greatly benefits from being part of a much larger city, it is walk-able with a well connected subway system. However, it's a low density area and driving around there sucks. If live in that area or take the metro it's great, but you can't sustain that when building get taller and people still want to drive.
Paris is largely mid-rise buildings or lower. Paris is denser than NYC and not that far behind Manhattan in terms of density (54,000 people per sq mi in Paris versus 71,000 for Manhattan and 27,000 for NYC as a whole). DC density could be greatly raised without taller buildings by filling in missing teeth (abandoned lots of unused buildings on otherwise built streets) and by urbanizing the large swaths of the City that are suburban. Narrowing some streets to allow for wider buildings would also help.
Ultimately, I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't think elevators or escalators really belong in an urban setting. I do agree that being able to get to a store that you know you want to get to via underground tunnels can have its benefits. But one of the things that I like about living in an urban area are all my unplanned walks, where I walk around, check out the shops, grab a coffee, maybe go into a few stores. A lot of urban life is unplanned and when we remove people from streets, we begin to lose that.
Paris is denser than just about any US city and it is largely low and mid rise.
Faster cars would not benefit the core users of cities -- people on foot.
However, autonomous cars should be much safer as they have senors to avoid collisions. Car drivers often come onto sidewalks to avoid hitting cars. So yes, to avoid a minor car accident, car drivers kill people on sidewalks.
The biggest benefit to autonomous cars will be that we will go from 40,000 people dying a year to almost none. That's a huge win.
And if that's all we get, wouldn't that be awesome?
Autonomous cars, however, should allow people to better car share and require less parking spaces. Perhaps most exciting, we could get rid of cab drivers who are some of the most unsafe drivers around.
Loads of bus routes will become viable when they can be serviced with a driver-less minivan. That's essentially formalised car pooling. That will make car-less suburb living much more practical.
Want to stop car crashes and reduce fatalities? It's dirt simple. Stop driving cars.
How exactly do you expect people to move furniture?
Thinking has to change, lifestyles have to change. People must become more resilient and do business locally. This isn't optional. It's the imminent economic and ecological reality.
Arable land may become a valuable economic engine for many cities as peak oil and climate change realities break our current modes of distribution.
Building more roads and tacky exurban houses destroys this valuable land we all may need, and only a few benefit from it (and everyone will pay more in taxes). Think about it.