The practical problem with this is that individual transport is (1) horribly space-inefficient, (2) doesn’t scale well at all. Self-driving vehicles improve both slightly, but it still sucks ass compared to a light rail line. It also sucks from the environmental perspective, putting microplastics from rubber everywhere, overproducing hundreds of tons of lithium-ion batteries, etc.
There are other issues too.
You call up a ride on your phone.
What if you don’t have a phone for whatever reason? E.g. it’s dead or you’ve lost it?
With public transit, if you have some cash or a plastic card, you can board. And I’m a proponent of making public transit free (at the point of use) in cities, so you don’t need anything at all to travel.
One immediately drops out of traffic
How would a pedestrian cross this “traffic”? Do we cover everything in crosswalks and stoplights, making the system grind to a halt at rush hour (just like cars), or do we force everyone to take those pods? In any case this is just awful urbanism.
No human behavior caused traffic jams or accidents
… instead we will inevitably get much worse outages because someone hacked the control system or the internet is down. I’ll stick with human tram drivers thank you very much.
You still need a phone to board. Or you have to cover the city in terminals where you can order that taxi thing. At that point might as well build the public transit stops.
Who says public transport can’t coexist in this imagiunary world?
But that’s still not answering the main question: why do we need the system you’re proposing in the first place? If we just start building more public transport and phasing out cars alltogether, it would result in better cities with faster commute times for everyone.
bridges for pedestrians or tunnels for vehicles.
Bridges are expensive. Tunnels are even more expensive.
They slow down pedestrian traffic massively, while it should be encouraged at any cost because it’s the best way to make short trips.
They break up cycle paths, while cycling should be encouraged at any cost because it’s the best way to make medium trips.
Bridges simply don’t fit on city streets.
Lots of people have a stroller, or are in a wheelchair, or have heavy luggage, or are old, or have some other reason they can’t climb up stairs. Adding an elevator on either side of the bridge explodes the budget.
There’s a reason why almost all crossings in cities are level crossings. And level crossings fundamentally slow down car traffic, whether it’s self driving or not is irrelevant, and at rush hour it means huge traffic jams.
because nobody can hack the streetlights. The internet is already everywhere. Luddites are irrelevant.
Hacking streetlights has very few consequences. Cities are well-lit regardless. It just makes it a bit harder to walk around. It might result in a few broken bones due to tripping on stuff, and a slight increase in instances of robbery.
But hacking the main way of transportation in a city would be disastrous. Thousands of people will literally die because of ambulances being stuck among millions of dead cars, and fire trucks not being able to make way to a fire.
Some things just don’t belong on the internet. This will become more and more clear as techbros try to stick AI and IoT everywhere. After enough deaths we will learn.
In general, what you’re proposing will not solve any problems that cities have (because it’s fundamentally just cars, which are the main problem of modern cities) and will introduce a dozen more.
@balsoft@farbel I think your imaginary city describes how the citibikes and ebikes work in NYC now - you pick one up and ride to your destination, then dock it again. This augments the transit and coexist well with pedestrians.
In terms of street level crossings and coexistence, you want to switch to the european model where cycleways and sidewalks are continuous and have priority, and cars yield to them, using roundabouts more when an intersection is necessary.
@farbel@balsoft that’s a real non sequiter. If weather is affecting visibility and traction there’s even more reason for slowing vehicular traffic to safer speeds
@farbel@balsoft I do indeed. I recommend a good rain cape - I have one of these https://cleverhood.com/products/urbanaut-cape and it works great. I may need to get some waterproof trousers for very heavy rain. Snow and ice is harder, yes, but it’s not persistent enough where I live to need to switch to studded tyres.
@balsoft@farbel with properly phased lights, level crossings don’t slow down car traffic; what slows it down is too many cars being used, as they are very spatially inefficient. Congestion pricing in London, New York and other cities has increased traffic speeds by replacing car usage with transit, walking and cycling.
@KevinMarks@balsoft In Tucson, where I lived and drove most of my adult life, timed traffic signals are useless, because people are too stupid to understand how they work. All it takes is one person rushing to be first in line at the next red light to gum up the works.
The practical problem with this is that individual transport is (1) horribly space-inefficient, (2) doesn’t scale well at all. Self-driving vehicles improve both slightly, but it still sucks ass compared to a light rail line. It also sucks from the environmental perspective, putting microplastics from rubber everywhere, overproducing hundreds of tons of lithium-ion batteries, etc.
There are other issues too.
What if you don’t have a phone for whatever reason? E.g. it’s dead or you’ve lost it?
With public transit, if you have some cash or a plastic card, you can board. And I’m a proponent of making public transit free (at the point of use) in cities, so you don’t need anything at all to travel.
How would a pedestrian cross this “traffic”? Do we cover everything in crosswalks and stoplights, making the system grind to a halt at rush hour (just like cars), or do we force everyone to take those pods? In any case this is just awful urbanism.
… instead we will inevitably get much worse outages because someone hacked the control system or the internet is down. I’ll stick with human tram drivers thank you very much.
@balsoft Also, this whole system could also be free (i.e. tax funded)
You still need a phone to board. Or you have to cover the city in terminals where you can order that taxi thing. At that point might as well build the public transit stops.
@balsoft 1 - Who says public transport can’t coexist in this imagiunary world?
2 - bridges for pedestrians or tunnels for vehicles.
3 - because nobody can hack the streetlights. The internet is already everywhere. Luddites are irrelevant.
But that’s still not answering the main question: why do we need the system you’re proposing in the first place? If we just start building more public transport and phasing out cars alltogether, it would result in better cities with faster commute times for everyone.
There’s a reason why almost all crossings in cities are level crossings. And level crossings fundamentally slow down car traffic, whether it’s self driving or not is irrelevant, and at rush hour it means huge traffic jams.
Hacking streetlights has very few consequences. Cities are well-lit regardless. It just makes it a bit harder to walk around. It might result in a few broken bones due to tripping on stuff, and a slight increase in instances of robbery.
But hacking the main way of transportation in a city would be disastrous. Thousands of people will literally die because of ambulances being stuck among millions of dead cars, and fire trucks not being able to make way to a fire.
Some things just don’t belong on the internet. This will become more and more clear as techbros try to stick AI and IoT everywhere. After enough deaths we will learn.
In general, what you’re proposing will not solve any problems that cities have (because it’s fundamentally just cars, which are the main problem of modern cities) and will introduce a dozen more.
@balsoft @farbel I think your imaginary city describes how the citibikes and ebikes work in NYC now - you pick one up and ride to your destination, then dock it again. This augments the transit and coexist well with pedestrians.
In terms of street level crossings and coexistence, you want to switch to the european model where cycleways and sidewalks are continuous and have priority, and cars yield to them, using roundabouts more when an intersection is necessary.
@KevinMarks @balsoft prioritizing bikes and pedestrians is all well and good when you don’t take weather into account.
@farbel @balsoft that’s a real non sequiter. If weather is affecting visibility and traction there’s even more reason for slowing vehicular traffic to safer speeds
@KevinMarks @balsoft I take it you bike and walk in the rain all the time?
@farbel @balsoft I do indeed. I recommend a good rain cape - I have one of these https://cleverhood.com/products/urbanaut-cape and it works great. I may need to get some waterproof trousers for very heavy rain. Snow and ice is harder, yes, but it’s not persistent enough where I live to need to switch to studded tyres.
@KevinMarks @balsoft Good on you. Seriously. Most people would not.
@balsoft @farbel with properly phased lights, level crossings don’t slow down car traffic; what slows it down is too many cars being used, as they are very spatially inefficient. Congestion pricing in London, New York and other cities has increased traffic speeds by replacing car usage with transit, walking and cycling.
@KevinMarks @balsoft In Tucson, where I lived and drove most of my adult life, timed traffic signals are useless, because people are too stupid to understand how they work. All it takes is one person rushing to be first in line at the next red light to gum up the works.