[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.

[fps]

Shared hosting (with PHP, mod_perl and SSI) was available from thousands of providers for between $5 and $25/month. SSL required a dedicated IP, because SNI wasn't a thing yet, and so if you wanted an SSL enabled site, you were looking at closer to $100/month. But that was for managed, shared hosting, typically with access to a database and automated backup. Good enough for most businesses small-ish web presences.

Rackspace offered dedicated servers for $150/month and up. Smaller providers would rent you a server in their datacenter for around $60/month. I used a company called sagonet in the early 2000s that is still in business and still offering a similar service for about $30/month: http://www.synergyisp.com/dedicated-servers/

Most larger companies at the time contracted with a colocation provider and purchased servers for between $1000 and $4000 each, and paid in the neighborhood of $1000/month for a rack, or $500/month for a half rack, including power and network.

This was monumentally cheaper than the AWS based stack we have these days, though - no company with any complexity to their website has a $40/month AWS bill. A company with a similar SAAS offering to what I ran in 2001 for $40K up front and $500/month is probably looking at a $5000/month AWS bill at today's rates.

[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.

[oblio]

So parent's logic, as I was expecting, doesn't necessarily apply. We just started wanting more from our cars, we didn't necessarily make them cheaper. There are very cheap cars but most would consider them death-traps...

I imagine a self-driving car packs a ton of servers, I'm not sure it can be cheaper than your average mid-range car...

[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.

[mcny]

> Rail infrastructure is incredibly expensive.

I didn't know that but I assumed it would be cheaper than roads? I mean four tracks of trains (two local, two express) compared to four lanes of road?

[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).

[Piskvorrr]

...and much of the normal rail is running at Level 3-Level 4 equivalent.

[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.