[landryraccoon]

> Car usage will go up by an order of magnitude because a major cost of driving isn't the dollars, but the time.

This is why I think self driving cars will make traffic worse, not better. The more comfortable it is to be inside a car and the less people mind long car rides, the more people will drive (self driving or otherwise). If road infrastructure is the same, that necessarily means a much higher density of cars on the road. It's possible that self driving cars will be more space efficient on the road, but ten times more efficient? I think it's more likely that there will just be way more cars on the road and traffic will worsen considerably.

[chiefofgxbxl]

To detail one particular addition of traffic to the roads: students - with self-driving cars, students from K-12 may much rather want to have the independence to hop in a car rather than ride a "stinky school bus". Parents may end up loving it, especially those who already drive their kids to school. And I'm sure the school districts would love self-driving cars, because it means they can pass the travel expenses onto the parents to pay for those cars, instead of having to buy tens of millions of dollars worth of buses, pay bus drivers, liability and insurance, gas, etc. (where I grew up a single school bus cost the district over $1m; we had a fleet of maybe 40-50 buses)

In my home-town of 30k people, nearly 2,000 of those are high school students alone, plus probably another 1,000 elementary school kids, and maybe 800 middle school. No doubt they'd all want to use the cool tech to ride to school instead of taking the school bus. Add 4,000 more cars to the road please. (And as for ride-sharing, that may be fun once in a while, but why do that when I can get an entire entertainment pod all to myself?)

[kjksf]

The self-driving platform will financially nudge you in the right direction.

Currently Uber charges more during rush hour.

It's rather obvious that self-driving operator will implement similar price discrimination e.g. $10 if you drive alone, $5 if you share with one or more people.

And the more they want you to share, the bigger the surcharge e.g. if $10 vs. $5 doesn't have desired effect then maybe $20 vs $5 will.

It's a win-win during rush hour (operator makes much more money from the few people who don't care about money and minimizes over-all traffic by packing more people into a single car).

[semi-extrinsic]

Still, traffic will be worse when you compare one bus with 50 people vs. 12 self-driving cars with 4 people each. A bus is 14-15m long, whereas even a small car like the Chevy Bolt is over 4m. So parked bumper-to-bumper the cars produce >3x as much traffic, and then you add some gaps for actually driving you're up to 4x.

Personally I'm very skeptical of both the claim that a) self-driving cars will see huge adoptation at the cost of car ownsership and that b) self-driving cars will give less traffic, less pollution and be significantly cheaper than owning a car.

On the latter point, we have basic economic theory: say the average American today spends $600/month total on owning a car. Why would anyone price a self-driving service at $200/month? No, they'd go for an initial price of $400/month for a couple of years to get customers, then sneak back up to $600/month once they've caught most of the market.

[IanCal]

> On the latter point, we have basic economic theory: say the average American today spends $600/month total on owning a car. Why would anyone price a self-driving service at $200/month? No, they'd go for an initial price of $400/month for a couple of years to get customers, then sneak back up to $600/month once they've caught most of the market.

That's assuming a monopoly.

> Why would anyone price a self-driving service at $200/month?

Because if they priced it at $400 then a competitor could price it at $300 and make more money.

[semi-extrinsic]

No, that's not what happens. This is a classic situation with a stable Nash equilibrium where the best for all competitors is to keep the price high. They know the current price is affordable enough that people will keep paying.

Think about gasoline prices back when crude oil prices suddenly fell off a cliff. Did gas prices at your local station drop? No, not one cent. All of the competing stations kept the prices roughly where they were and raked in increased profits.

[IanCal]

> Think about gasoline prices back when crude oil prices suddenly fell off a cliff. Did gas prices at your local station drop?

Petrol prices in the UK definitely have dropped (30% over four years, not including inflation) http://www.racfoundation.org/data/uk-pump-prices-over-time

[scrumper]

I know it’s not the main point you’re making, but gas prices near me (north east USA) absolutely did drop a lot when oil plummeted.

[LrnByTeach]

> say the average American today spends $600/month total on owning a car. Why would anyone price a self-driving service at $200/month? No, they'd go for an initial price of $400/month for a couple of years to get customers, then sneak back up to $600/month once they've caught most of the market.

In year 2000, in order to run a medium web site as a company you need 2 Servers one for each Database, WebServer. People bought each server box for $5000 and server capacity used is only at 15%

Come to 2012, Amazon AWS charged for the same Servers only $40/month . Amazon know It costs lots for website owners, why they offer all the server capacity for $40 ???

[beojan]

> People bought each server box for $5000 and server capacity used is only at 15%

So why do they need 2 servers?

Also, I'm pretty sure VPSes and shared hosting were available in 2000.

[shiftpgdn]

VPSes did not exist as a commercial product in 2000. Back then you likely purchased and colo'd your hardware or leased from a provider. You could get shared hosting with CGI access but that was about it.

[oblio]

Are cars comparatively cheaper than in the Model T era?

[dagw]

I think a Model T was about $22k-$25k in today's money.

[chiefofgxbxl]

The only way I see limiting the impact of traffic increases on self-driving cars is for municipalities to pass laws ahead of time limiting the amount of self-driving cars on the road to a specific number, much like Singapore [0] (or tie it to a percentage of the town population, say 10%)

A town could say, for instance, "we will only allow 3,000 self-driving cars to be actively driving within our borders". If transportation needs are not met, then it's time to start thinking about other improvements like walkability, biking, buses, etc. Realistically though, this would never happen in the United States. Either people would sue to get that law repealed, or every time the cap was hit those in charge would just raise it to keep their constituents happy...

Without strict agreements ahead of widespread self-driving car adoption, I think it's just going to be a free-for-all with lots of car companies freely pushing their products into towns, and the people of course are going to welcome it.

[0] http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/24/news/singapore-car-numbers-l...

[adrianN]

They could build small self driving busses.

[mcny]

Someone said a few weeks ago that buses that run very often on the same route is just a very expensive train.

I think for self driving to realy work well, we have to ban humans from driving (and perhaps make it a felony to interfere with a self driving bus the same way we cover assault on a bus driver).

I thought it would be easier to implement self driving trains than to implement self driving cars. Who is working on that?

[adrianN]

Having worked with trains I'd guess that frequently running busses are actually very cheap trains. Rail infrastructure is incredibly expensive.

[beojan]

> I thought it would be easier to implement self driving trains than to implement self driving cars. Who is working on that?

We already have self-driving light rail systems (London's DLR for instance).

[bryondowd]

Wouldn't the route inefficiency compensate somewhat for the rider efficiency of the bus? If you break one bus route that snakes around town hitting a dozen or more stops with 12 cars each hitting one or two close together stops and going direct to the school, you've potentially saved some driving mileage and certainly decreased the amount of time the kids are on the roads. Dependant on timing, this could be used to like traffic impact.

[Johnny555]

Why would the self-driving car vendor charge $20 if you ride by yourself or $5 if you share with one other person? They'd be getting less revenue for a longer, more time consuming trip due to the need to pick up and drop off the 2nd passenger.

I could see them charging something like $10 for one person and $7 each for 2 (which is close to actual Lyft pricing). That way they give a price break to the user, while they themselves also make more money, so they have an incentive to offer that pricing even if the trip takes longer, or they can't find a 2nd rider.

[mschuster91]

> where I grew up a single school bus cost the district over $1m

What? Per year or once? If per year I wonder what amounts of corruption must be going on. A simple 31-seater bus from Mercedes costs approx. 285.000€ to buy new (https://www.busplaner.de/omnibusmagazin/omnibustest/10035/Me...), which means over a 5y life it's 57k/y... add the same for insurance premiums and the driver, and still I can't get anywhere close to that figure of 1M/bus per year.

[illirik]

In the US, school buses are typically 70-80 seaters; when I was in high school ~4 years ago, I rode a Blue Bird Vision (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Bird_Vision). These will get around ten miles to the US gallon of diesel and cost around $110,000 US. The lifespan of these buses is typically around 20 years; each school day, they might be driven a hundred miles or more. $1m over 20 years seems reasonable.

[mschuster91]

Yeah, over 20 years 1M sounds reasonable - wasn't really recognizable what timespan was meant from parent's post...

[cardiffspaceman]

I live near an elementary school and I seldom see school buses on the road in the morning, even if I drive in front of the school. I do see fleets of SUVs. The question is, are these cars dropping off kids because the kids like it or because the parents like it? Is it because of class/status or stranger danger? If it is stranger danger, is the parent going to entrust their kids to multi-passenger Lyfts? Or even to single-passenger Lyfts?

If it is class/status, what is the view of a public conveyence like Lyft vs the personal car?

[greedo]

Our city in it's infinite wisdom doesn't have public school buses except for special needs kids. So everyone drives their kids to school unless they are close enough to walk (most aren't). The school district uses full size buses for the special needs kids. It's insane. I'd gladly pay higher property taxes, or even a flat fee to have school buses.

[aburner]

There is no shortage of Uber, at least, outside any fancy place that serves $16 cocktails at closing time. And they already have nicer cars for those who want to pay more

[sandworm101]

And if the cars are self-driving, the school doesn't need parking. The kids can be dropped off and the car will drive itself home. Of course that means a doubling the total number of physical trips, but that isn't the school's problem.

I'm waiting for the ability to, rather than pay for parking, have my car circle the block while I eat lunch. The cost of running an electric vehicle for a few hours is far less than paying to park.

[fps]

The "drop off lane" at my local elementary school is already a 30 minute traffic jam, and that's with parents in the cars hurrying the kids along and school staff directing traffic. You think a robot car is going to get a kid out of a seat with their backpack and lunch faster than a parent? The pick-up line is even worse, as the kids are individually dismissed after the driver has been authorized by the school staff. The current breed of self driving cars would flip out trying to navigate an elementary school parking lot with kids running all over the place and crossing at random spots. The idea of a robot car delivering my kids to school so I don't have to is appealing, however I can't imagine a worse application of the technology, given the reality of the situation.

[njarboe]

If you can allow your kids to "free range" just a quarter mile, then they could be dropped off in a much less crowded place.

[greedo]

Yeah, forget autonomous vehicles having to cope with snow/ice etc, if they can deal with my schools parking lot at the start and end of the day, they'll be able to handle anything.

[Gustomaximus]

> self driving cars will make traffic worse, not better.

I definitely see your logic towards higher density with things like 'office cars' so people do more travel. Or sleeping cars but that would be outside typical peak hours. But would self driving increase volume that much? Possibly if people stopped getting trains/busses but this should be remain cheaper and faster via priority lanes most cities have.

Also in general;

Freeways; most traffic jams are caused from someone breaking and then the next person breaks a bit more and so on creating a jam. With self driving car the computers will be able to talk and do a 'everyone accelerate on this mark' and get the flow happening even on very crowded roads. And ideally accident reduction that often creates traffic jams.

Cities: Algorithms will start making little efficiency improvement to driving. All the little things like removing unnecessary lane changing. People double parking to drop something off. And like those futuristic car intersection scenes where cars dont stop at lights but all go through an intersection from every direction reducing traffic back-ups.

We will need to make rules to adapt and keep the flow, e.g. stop people have cars driving around the block rather than parking. Ensure we have 'road neutrality' so the wealthy dont pay a premium for faster trips where other cars in the fleet move aside and slow everyone else type deal.

Anyway, I dont profess to know the answer. Its all a guess! I do suspect the benefits will outweigh additional trips people might take. Besides, who knows, maybe by then we'll have the 'Boring company' or equivalent making private roads so only the plebs use public roads anyway....

[doikor]

> With self driving car the computers will be able to talk and do a 'everyone accelerate on this mark'

This won't even be necessary as the self driving cars will have vastly superior reaction time when compared to humans. Especially if the cars are electric and thus have almost instant power to the wheels.

Especially if you use tricks like radar underneath the car in front of you so you can react to what the car one car ahead of you does etc.

Also a lot of the highway traffic jams are caused by too small distance between the cars. A self driving car should be much more efficient in keeping enough distance between the cars to keep up the flow.

[nkoren]

> But would self driving increase volume that much?

Absolutely. Not even accounting for induced demand, you'll see ~30% more vehicle-miles due to empty-vehicle repositioning.

As you say, accelerations and decelerations can be synchronised, accidents reduced, and standing wave behaviours eliminated, all of which will indeed help traffic flow more efficiently. But this is not by any means enough to compensate for empty-vehicle redistribution, much less induced demand.

> And like those futuristic car intersection scenes where cars dont stop at lights but all go through an intersection from every direction reducing traffic back-ups.

That's only possible in environments where there are no pedestrians or cyclists -- eg., segregated motorways/freeways, which already have no intersection conflicts. At best it represents a space saving, not really a time saving.

[randycupertino]

> This is why I think self driving cars will make traffic worse, not better.

Yeah, of course self driving cars are going to make traffic way worse! Who even thinks otherwise? Suddenly you are going to have millions of disabled and homebound seniors wanting the cars to take them to do grocery shopping and errands, kids being driven around to and from from school and practice, and low income residents sleeping in their cars commuting to work in higher income areas of the country. Self driving cars will make traffic exponentially worse.

[wiz21c]

another climate apocalypse... 'cos even if all of these cars are electrical, they still need quite a lot of energy to be built and, after a while, destroyed...

[lallysingh]

One mitigating factor for that is that service cars will have much higher duty cycles (80%+?) than private cars currently do (5%).

What might be interesting is how they deal with peak usages like commute hours. Would swarms of cars try to hop over to the next time zone when it's easy?

[mcny]

I feel the same way but I feel a little guilty for feeling that way. It feels like saying climate change will get way worse if poor people can afford to eat beef (because cowd fart and stuff).

[modeless]

You are absolutely right, and this is not widely understood yet. I expect people to live farther from work and spend more time in cars and in traffic. On the other hand, need for parking will plummet and that should free up a bunch of space in cities, increasing density. I wonder if there is money to be made betting on this in the markets? Which companies will benefit, or lose, from these shifts?

[rickycook]

that’s very true. i read somewhere that something crazy like 30% of traffic in city areas are people looking for car parking. don’t have a source on it, but the parking situation definitely shouldn’t be ignored, at least as far as the most built up/problematic areas are concerned

[greeneggs]

> i read somewhere that something crazy like 30% of traffic in city areas are people looking for car parking.

Without a source, this is just a made-up statistic, i.e., worthless.

Here's a source for you, though [1].

> Sixteen studies of cruising behavior were conducted between 1927 and 2001 in the central business districts of eleven cities on four continents (see Figure 1). ... About thirty percent of the cars in the traffic flow were cruising for parking. The data varied widely around these averages, however; on some uncrowded streets no cars were cruising, while on some congested streets most of the cars were cruising. Cities have changed since these observations were made, and the data are selective because researchers study cruising only where they expect to find it.

[1] "Cruising for parking" by Donald Shoup http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/CruisingForParkingAccess.pdf

[xbmcuser]

If we have self driving cars the roads in cities will get a lot wider as no side parking in many streets many 2 lane or 1 lane would become 3 or 4 lane streets as well. Would allow for dedicated bus lanes as well so traveling by bus could also become a lot faster.

[dragonwriter]

If we have self-driving cars that aren't parked the same way as human-driven cars, but instead drive unoccupied to park somewhere else, then the extra space from reduced roadside parking will largely be occupied by extra traffic lanes to accommodate the added deadhead traffic.

[theptip]

I agree that traffic will be "worse" in some sense, in that there will be more of it. But maybe not "worse" in the important sense of how annoying it is, since we won't be consciously piloting a machine through it.

Instead we could be sleeping, playing video games, working on laptops, etc.

I think that vehicle design will shift a lot once we start optimizing for these new use-cases, and this might make a big difference to how tolerable road journeys are.

This is all very hard to predict though...

[oasisbob]

Agree that it's going to be harder to predict, and probably dependent on the individual.

When it comes to commuting in the Pacific Northwest, for most of the year an extra half-hour of available daylight at the end (or start) of the day is the difference between getting out climbing during the work week, or not.

Personally, I'd trade a comfortable commute for that extra time, no question. Of course, maybe a self-driving car could allow for working during the morning commute, and getting off earlier... Hmmm.

[theptip]

> maybe a self-driving car could allow for working during the morning commute, and getting off earlier

That's what I'm hoping for. It's already sort-of possible in the special-case of commuting on a bus like Google/Apple/etc. offer in the Bay Area.

Can we reach the point where working while in transit is as productive as being on site (face-to-face meetings notwithstanding)?

[gboudrias]

> for working during the morning commute, and getting off earlier

Surely you mean turning your 8 hour shifts into 10 hour shifts?

[itissid]

The economics of self driving cars make any such assumptions sort of up in the air.

Maybe self driving car fleets will be so numerous, they will optimize via carpooling in busy urban pockets. Maybe people will stop driving there own self driving car to work and use these. Maybe people will own/ride in really small self driving car that network to optimize and self park.

> The more comfortable it is to be inside a car and the less people mind long car rides.

This may not be generally correct. People also like to commute quite a bit by rail in certain areas. Living on the east coast I can tell you this because of #of people using NJ Transit and Amtrak is big. Cars take much longer to get to NYC already. Commuting to city via subway trains is so that there is shortage of housing right in manhattan where no one goes by cars.

[kbenson]

Traffic might be worse, initially, but once people are okay with sharing seats in a van, you might see a massive rise in ad-hoc ride-sharing/carpooling. These services know where you're getting picked up and where you're going, so there's no reason that can't route close vehicles/riders designating as okay with sharing to have a higher rider ratio per trip. Even with increased total per-person trips, we might be able to achieve a relatively low per-vehicle trip increase.

Couple that with the ability to reclaim a lot of space designated for parking, and forward thinking cities might make themselves much more walkable as well.

[seanp2k2]

  once people are okay with sharing seats in a van

That's going to be a long wait in the US! People would rather pay 10x to sit in their own luxury bubble in traffic and have everyone see how fancy their luxury bubble is vs. /gasp/ sharing it with others. Most people here don't want mass transit, they want their big truck / SUV to haul 1-4 people ("it's safer for my kid").

[dheera]

> People would rather pay 10x to sit in their own luxury bubble in traffic

I think it has a lot less to do with the bubble factor than the fact that public transportation in the US just sucks, period.

My 3-mile commute from Menlo Park to Palo Alto would take

- bus: 58 minutes (2 minute walk from home to bus stop + 12 minutes average wait for ECR bus + 10 minutes on ECR + 12 minutes average wait in Palo Alto Transit Center for bus 22 + 15 minutes on bus 22 + 7 minutes walking to work)

- train: 51 minutes (4 minutes walking from home to station + 30 minutes average wait till next train + 5 minute train ride + 12 minutes walking to work).

- running: 35 minutes end to end

- bike: 15 minutes end to end

- Uber: 13-20 minutes

- driving: 8-12 minutes

I bike, but I can see why others would drive. Public transportation is basically defunct here. I can run faster to work than taking public transportation. That says something about seriously how bad it is.

[gambiting]

I live in a UK city with fantastic public transport options, and I would get to work faster by taking public transport than by car about 90% of the time. And yet I still drive, because I just don't like sharing the space with strangers, I can sit in comfort at the temperature that I like and listen to music/podcasts that I want without using headphones. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this.

[Piskvorrr]

Typing this as I exit the world's fifth best public transit system: the exact same sentiment exists here - for a commute of 45 min by public transport, 120 min by bike, and 90 min by car (morning traffic+cruising for a spot), people still pick the car option, as it's "more comfortable".

So, while the efficiency of public transport might be a concern, car-as-a-status-symbol seems to be near-universal.

[nindalf]

I use the 3rd best in the world and I dunno, sometimes at the end of the day or end of a long-haul flight you're really tired and you don't want to jostle for a comfortable place to stand on the tube. I'd understand why people prefer getting a cab in such a situation.

[Piskvorrr]

I do understand and do have those use cases, but aren't they exceptions? Moreover, I was referring to driving, not taking a taxi (perhaps I should have been more clear). What I meant was "driving my own car is my primary, everyday mode of transport, regardless of congestion: hour and a half there, an hour back, never mind that I could have made the round-trip an hour faster by public transport. I'd rather be dead than be seen on the tube, EVER."

[endless1234]

People certainly pick a car anywhere, but in areas with great public transportation the percentage who do is greatly reduced, even if the reasons why those that do remain largely the same.

[endless1234]

>train: 51 minutes (4 minutes walking from home to station + 30 minutes average wait till next train + 5 minute train ride + 12 minutes walking to work).

Do the trains really not go on a timetable there, instead arriving completely randomly?

[dheera]

They do, but:

- The signs about which train is actually arriving are frequently wrong, resulting in boarding the wrong train

- The time I need to be at various destinations is fairly uniformly distributed. with a bike I can just leave for work exactly 20 minutes before my first meeting, allowing 5 minutes to freshen up.

[C14L]

Why wait for a train or bus? Install an app that tells you when you need to leave your place to get to the station just in time.

[dheera]

Okay, so instead of waiting at the platform 30 minutes, it becomes waiting at my destination (e.g. restaurant, office, whatever) 30 minutes for everyone else to arrive or for the meeting/event to start because it is unprofessional to arrive late, so I must arrive 0-60 minutes early, dictated by the train schedule. Doesn't change the fact that I have to waste 30 minutes on average either way.

In many cases, running, biking, driving would all waste less time because I can leave on-demand, even if the actual transit time takes longer.

Public transportation needs to be either frequent enough (e.g. Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, New York, etc. where rush-hour trains arrive about every 1-2 minutes, non-rush-hour every 5-8 minutes or less) or on-demand (e.g. UberPool, autonomous cars) to cut the time waste.

[zimpenfish]

That implies 1) the train or bus arrives and leaves at the station exactly according to the timetable and 2) you get from home to the station exactly according to the estimate.

In my limited sample group of one (1), these are rarely true.

[stijnstijn]

The train usually doesn't arrive exactly on time where I live, but delays aren't so bad that I have to wait 30 minutes on average. And if it's a 4-12 minute walk to the station, as OP says, I'm sure they don't need a huge buffer to get there on time. Personally, I just make sure I have a five-minute leeway and I'm good.

There certainly must be places in the world where trains are so unpredictable that the average delay is 30 minutes, but (not having been there, I should say) Menlo Park and Palo Alto sound like places where trains should be a bit more punctual than that?

[kbenson]

I think that depends quite a bit on the people in question, and quite a bit on what types of vehicles come to market to support this usage. Compartmentalized vehicles with shutters of some sort might find quite a bit of use. People that don't own a car and want to get around cheaply might find quite a bit of use. Designated child-only vehicles for school shuttling might see quite a bit of use. A small stretch vehicle with lots of doors would be perfect.[1]

1: https://jalopnik.com/5344758/six-door-prius-limo-totes-kids-...

[LrnByTeach]

Road Traffic won't worsen as you mentioned, let me explain why ? Increased capacity utilization.

I assume, you are a technical person. If you look back at year 2000, In a typical IT company there is a server Box for each category. A Database server box , a WebServer Box ( physical machines ) etc.. very few people used viruvalization etc.. Physical Machines capacity utilization is around 15% . Come to 2017, with Amazon AWS cloud is providing on demand servers to thousands of companies, all of them TIME Sharing tens of thousands of Servers.

Same thing applies with self-driving cars. Higher utilization by ride sharing leads to FEWER cars on the Road. Today average occupancy in a car may be 1.3 with Self-driving RIDE sharing, if it goes to 2.6 that is HALF the CARS on the ROAD compared to today.

Doubling the average people in car from today is much EASIER, since that BEHAVIOUR of Sharing is tied to FINANCIAL gains to people. If you ride by yourself , 1000 miles/month SUBSCRIPTION cost is $500 vs. If you Share it is $200/month, that motivate people to SHARE and leads to LESS cars.

[oh_teh_meows]

OP's probably referring to induced demand [0], or something similar to Braess's paradox [1].

But I see your point though. If people are incentivized to share a car then that might reduce the load.

That said, my suspicion is, once you take the driver out of the equation, you can do so much more than just ferrying people. E.g courier/shipping services, or mobile food stalls (food truck that sells food while moving on the highway, once engineers figure out how to safely and autonomously speed match two cars), etc. The induced demand may be greater than the savings from ride-sharing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox

[LrnByTeach]

Yes, the financial incentives for sharing the RIDE , coupled with Induced demand make Autonomous cars so cheap like $200/month for 1000 miles/month SUBSCRIPTION, the adoption goes exponential at this point .

I will give you one great example of 'Exponential adoption' happened in recent history of technology.

In the year 1998, at the early days of Internet, we used have only WIRED Broadband Router. Everybody has a 100 Feet CAT 5 cable in the home, when you need to connect a different computer/laptop you change that CAT 5 to that ROOM from Router. 100 Feet CAT 5 wire used to cost $75 those days.

When Wireless ROUTER are released in the next 10 months, at the cost of $100 every body bought, it is no brainer instead of Buying couple of CAT5 100 Feet wires which each cost $75 and still inconvenient .

In my memory this is the most RAPID adoption in a matter of one year , whole USA moved to Bought WIRELESS Routers.

Same thing will happen with , Electric Self-driving on-demand summon CARS where it costs $200/month using it any time vs. owing CAR costs $400/month ( insurance , Gasoline , etc.. )

[FabHK]

You can emphasize things by surrounding them with asterisks. No need for all CAPS.

[Johnny555]

You're ignoring the time cost (or assuming that other people don't care) -- if the ride takes 20 minutes by myself or 30 minutes by the time the car finds another passenger going my way, and then takes an earlier exit ramp to drop off that passenger, next time I'm not going to select the shared ride option.

That's the only thing that keeps me from using something like Uber Pool today -- I don't want to spend extra time picking up/dropping off another passenger.

[flukus]

> The more comfortable it is to be inside a car and the less people mind long car rides

There are places with comfortable public transport today but it seems most prefer would prefer a 40 minute drive than a 1 hour train ride even though it frees up their time.

[taneq]

> it seems most prefer would prefer a 40 minute drive than a 1 hour train ride even though it frees up their time.

A train ride frees your time up less than an autonomous car ride because on a train you have no personal space. You always have to be aware of people around you and where your own belongings are, watch for your stop, etc. In a car you can focus on whatever you're doing.

[tlrobinson]

I agree, in the short term.

In the long term a critical mass of well-behaving self-driving cars may be able to regulate traffic much more efficiently than humans currently can.

In the medium term we may also see dedicated self-driving car lanes with higher speed limits.

[paulie_a]

But will it be worse than taking public transportation?

In my experience Public transportation sucks. It's fine for getting around locally, but is terrible for commuting.

For a short 3 month period I found uberpool to be far superior to taking a train. Some days it cost a dollar more. Some days it cost less. The travel time was pretty much equivalent plus it was more comfortable.

I hate driving in rush hour traffic but as a passenger I didn't mind.

[halflings]

You are probably judging public transportation from an American point of view. The vast majority of public transport systems in the US are greatly under-developed compared to what is done elsewhere. A small European city such as Toulouse has orders of magnitude better public transport than Los Angeles or San Francisco for example.

[orasis]

This can be fixed quickly with congestion pricing.