Not Just Bikes (on YouTube, on Nebula) just released a new video about self-driving cars and how they will destroy cities. Cars have already destroyed cities, so this is more about how self-driving cars will make them even worse. There is so much history we can use to compare how automobiles have affected cities, and I feel like we can rely on capitalism (topic of my last blog post) to predict the future of how companies will behave in this era.
I recommend you watch the video but the video is almost an hour long, so I’m going to jot down some notes in this post. I highly recommend watching the full video.
- Megacorps spend billions to lobby for more favorable laws: not reporting safety data, not allowing police to ticket them
- The first person killed by a self-driving car was mislabeled as “other” at one point (also labelled as pedestrian and bicycle)
- 42k people die every year in automobile accidents (116 every day). Lots more injured (roughly 6 million/year when I looked it up somewhere else)
- Making road safer is a non-goal of automakers–more people buying cars means more money. See capitalism
- Self-driving cars are being trained in areas like Phoenix, which don’t have many pedestrians. He fears they will be released in Europe with the same training model and that they will pressure EU countries to Americanize their streets
- Lobbying for changes in other countries to fit the self-driving car might be cheaper for these companies than retraining their model. Cities might get locked into their current design once self-driving cars are deployed.
- “Self-driving cars are really just promising to be cheaper taxis. […] Like do you seriously believe all of our urban transportation problems would be solved tomorrow, if only taxis were cheaper?”
- Cities cut public transportation budget because they thought ride-hailing services would fill the gap. “But taking an Uber isn’t cheap anymore”
- Uber raised prices when investors wanted a return on investment. Self-driving cars will do the same. See capitalism.
- It’s commonly claimed self-driving cars will reduce the amount of cars on the road and in parking lots. You could do this today with a taxi, but people don’t use taxis like this. People like being in their own car. If you own a self-driving car, “how many people want their car to look and smell like a taxi?”
- People will probably let their car cruise around the block instead of paying for parking, which makes the streets more congested
- Disabled people often require assistance to get in and out of a vehicle. Article: Robotaxis Won’t Get Us There, So Let’s Stop Being Used to Sell a Future that Doesn’t Serve Us. Article link here
- Smartphone app requirement might make it less accessible for some groups of people
- No reason to believe self-driving cars will reduce traffic congestion. See induced demand video
- Robotaxis won’t park on edge of town because a differentiating feature will be how quickly it can come to pick you up.
- Self-driving cars will allow people to live further from the city because they can multi-task while driving. They will contribute less to city (property) taxes and cities will lose tax revenue. “See Strong Towns to learn how suburbanization and car-centric development is literally bankrupting North American suburbs already.”
- Car companies future vision for elevated roadways “increased car traffic, pollution, and left municipalities with massive tax burdens and maintenance liabilities” See segregation by design.
- Historic example of how GM and related companies financed efforts to remove street car/public transportation. Autonomous vehicle (AV) companies likely to do the same playbook to reduce funding for public transportation. Another point for capitalism
- In the early 1900s the Brooklyn Bridge in NY moved over 420k people/day. In 1950s the trollies were removed and since then the bridge has never moved more than 180k people/day. Reducing in density/efficiency will require more roads and cars to transport the same number of people.
- To deal with reduced efficiency, AV companies will lobby for AV-only lanes and roads where they can have more throughput. See example “Loop NYC”. Except Loop NYC proposed turning some roads into parks but AV companies would probably want to go everywhere, so more roads.
- Parking lots will still be required to recharge fleets of AVs. Taking away more downtown space from cities
- AV companies will want to restrict pedestrian crossings further to improve speed and increase safety. See Bamberg, South Carolina, which added fences to reduce crossings to their main street. Car traffic moved quicker but no one stopped so today it’s a ghost town because all the companies on the main street went out of business.
- Queue dystopic future about having to wear lidar transponders to cross the street. Show historic footage of how people were upset about deaths caused by automobiles when they were introduced and how the death was normalized and accepted as a cost of doing business (after lobbying enough politicians)
- Mention how electric vehicles still produce pollution–tire noise and particulates
- Discuss Utrecht vs Fake London (in Canada). How they both were actually very similar 100 years ago and remained similar throughout the adoption of the automobile. But in the 90s, Utrecht changed course realizing the negative impact of car-centric development.
After all that he also provides a template for what we should do:
- Limit where cars can go (including AVs). Allow delivery trucks, emergency vehicles, and transportation for people with disabilities.
- Tear down urban freeways–turn it into parks, shops, and houses. Prohibit cars from going through cities. The most direct route should be walking, cycling, or public transit, and enforced by modal filters.
- Lower speed limits.
- Remove surface parking lots, and stop building new parking.
- Build mixed-use walkable neighborhoods. Cycling lanes should be required for new development.
- Need to increase the cost to drive, especially during peak hours.