Self-driving cars and public transport

[chris_gerrib]

I was reading this article which claims that self-driving cars will reduce the amount Americans use public transit. Thinking about my own recent use of public transit, not so much.

Last week, I had to go into downtown Chicago for the day. Not wanting to fight traffic and pay through the nose for parking, I took Metra. The advantage of Metra is cost and a low-stress ride into and out of downtown. The disadvantage is parking.

I have to drive to the nearest Metra station, and parking near said station is scarce, especially if you don't have a daily permit. But with a self-driving car, the car could drop me off, go home, and come pick me up.

I also think that, for downtown areas, the train will still be attractive. In Chicago, the downtown grid of streets is narrow and the feeder roads are at their limits. I don't care who's driving, taking a car into or out of downtown during the rush hour will be slow, and it's very impractical to use a car downtown during the day.

Taking the train is only marginally faster than driving, but it's vastly more consistent. As I said earlier, cars will still have to deal with weather and breakdowns, two problems trains are less sensitive to. In short, you'll lose some public transit customers but pick up others.

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Coming from London, the idea of driving to a transit station is largely alien to me. People would do it where I grew up but we were 20 miles out... living anywhere within 10ish miles of the center, you'd just assume there was a rail/underground option within 10 minutes walk of anywhere you'd choose to live.

A lot of people I've known in America who dislike public transport seem to confuse implementation with operation.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm 30 miles out from downtown Chicago.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Ah, fair enough :)

Although depending on your job in London you'd also pay premiums to be able to walk to a station for that. In theory, that distance would be under an hour commute by train.

Of course, there's a bit of a rule that no matter where you live in London, it's always about an hour :)

breakdowns

[karl henderson (from livejournal.com)]

I suppose that if self driving cars were allowed to go around empty, emergency road service would need to become faster and mandatory.

Re: breakdowns

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

didn't even think of that.

Re: breakdowns

[karl henderson (from livejournal.com)]

It's an issue. Best to consider it before people freak out.