Self driving cars might not solve traffic problems but they could greatly reduce them. Problems like traffic waves and gridlock go away when all cars are driving themselves.
Self-driving cars may help with the actual weakness of transit, which is the long tail of trips. Trips on routes with too few passengers to justify good transit service, and with the trips too long for the last-mile solutions.
I'm not saying self driving cars are the solution, but they are a piece of the solution.
With furniture, you usually pay for delivery. Especially because the furniture store probably doesn't have the items you bought on site anyway.
Cars are a piece of the transportation puzzle, but groceries and babies aren't why they're needed.
If people aren’t spending $12k a year[1] to own a car, paying $50-150 to have a large piece of furniture delivered isn’t a big deal.
When there is well maintained, pedestrian friendly infrastructure, instead of a tiny uneven sidewalk inches away from 45 mph traffic, pushing your baby stroller home is not an issue.
[1] https://www.bts.gov/content/average-cost-owning-and-operatin...
This has not been my experience since moving to Manhattan last January. Subways, alone, close the gap between regional rail and most destinations astoundingly well. I haven't yet needed to use a bus (but they seem abundant, too), and I haven't even thought of taking a taxi yet.
Here, robust transit has solved the last mile problem for most people.
Here, robust transit has solved the last mile problem for most people.
https://cwhong.carto.com/viz/6dfca01c-47e5-11e6-9fd3-0ee66e2...
Weasel words are doing a lot of heavy lifting here. There is a persistent last mile issue even in NYC, even in Manhattan. You're right that in Manhattan most people can use the subway as a last mile solution. However that map hasn't changed much in quite a while. The subway deserts that exist (in Manhattan and the other boroughs) aren't going away anytime soon because building new subways is eyewateringly expensive.
The inflexibility means that even when the subway is a viable last mile solution it may not be the appropriate one. For instance I had to go from Ridgewood to JFK a few years back. I was maybe a five minute walk from the subway. But were I to take the subway from one end of Queens to the other I would've had to go all the way to Midtown and transfer to LIRR.
Hell I've generally had to rely on buses for last mile connectivity even in London which certainly doesn't suffer from a lack of subway service.
> Problems like traffic waves and gridlock go away when all cars are driving themselves.
How would that make those problems go away? It could probably slightly alleviate them in marginal cases, but any given road has a finite throughput limitation, and once it is reached, it wouldn't matter even if every robo-driver were perfectly synchronized.