[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.