[ChuckMcM]

The actual study is a bit more detailed and it suggests some interesting things.

One is the evolution of work and jobs over time. As a pretty relevant example, the migration of shopping to "online" vs in store means two things; First you don't need the goods in a metro area, and second you need to get them to the customers. If you replace all current "shopping" traffic with "delivery" traffic it really cuts into the buyer's experience (waiting for delivery) but drone delivery allows the delivery component to scale. Of course drone delivery has to be reasonably local, but needn't be closer than a 10 miles or so, that means a "town" outside of the city that is well served by cargo container delivery can then provide the point where bulk delivery switches to individual delivery. That implies a economies with the movement of containers above and beyond the current system of trains and trucks. Either additional rail networks or lots more trucks. If those trucks are automatable, well that helps as well.

So if we imagine some "delivery only" roads where only robotic trucks are allowed, that lead to warehouses where end product dispersal is done, to smaller warehouses where local delivery can be queued/expedited. Walk that backwards to figure out the things you need in order to deploy that.

At which point it would be interesting to evaluate the energy efficiency of that system over the current one to make sure what you get back in efficiency by automation you don't spend on additional energy.

[orkoden]

> we imagine some "delivery only" roads

This is possible but unlikely. There have been numerous plans in the past to build such large infrastructure. Like large pneumatic tubes to every house for deliveries. It usually turned out to be too expensive to build.

[ChuckMcM]

The trick though is to understand the economics of what you're trying to do before you implement it. Additional rail lines are quite expensive, one lane roads not so much.

Starting small, consider an autonomous truck that uses electricity like a city bus to move a container along a single lane protected from other traffic. You have one end in the port of Oakland (busy container terminal) and the other in a distribution warehouse outside Livermore (lots of open space, access to freeways and rail). Now one has to price out the cost savings of having containers appear automatically in a transhipping location without burning diesel or getting stuck in traffic.

You save a bit on the driver, you save more on the gas, and you take roads off the freeway which will help you to encourage local municipalities to give you easements for your autobot trucks to drive on.

It would be fun to sit down with a trans-shipper and find out their costs and whether or not you could save them time and effort.