Comment by Houshalter
9 years ago
City streets have more than enough space for fast transpiration. We just don't use them efficiently. Congestion is a tragedy of the commons. It could be trivially solved by putting a high tax on cars using city streets. Then the only vehicles on the street would be those that transport multiple people or valuable goods. And they would have free reign with minimal congestion. (Also maybe put an extra tax on nonelectric vehicles, because there's much less justification for using them in a city.)
If you are willing to build entirely new infrastructure, like this project, there is so much you can do. The main reason self driving cars are taking so long is because they have to be able to do everything a human driver can do. Which is very hard. If you build tracks and sensors into the road itself, it could be much easier. You could have a city filled with fleets of small automated electric people movers.
A game I play with my kids when we're waiting at street corners is to count the vehicles' occupancy. Spotting anything > 1 is like scoring points.
We don't take the car without an explicit reason: we're late, it's far away, we're hauling stuff, it's raining.
But this is Oklahoma, and as soon as you're a block from the OU campus, pedestrians are seen as freaks. Young guys yell at you from pickup trucks. (It's not just me; I have confirmed this with other people over the last 12 years.)
We need electric cars, but we also need a cultural change. We drive, and I don't want to judge people for driving. But I wish it were seen as a fallback, rather than a default.