In a comment on one of the many transportation-related posts that have circulated Village 14 this week, Councilor Jim Cote suggested that we post the article from the Boston Globe Magazine which takes the stance that self-driving cars will make the T obsolete. Titled Why Self Driving Cars will Kill the T, Tom Keane makes the implication is that investment in public transit is a waste of money.
Given the choice between an AV and public transit, who wouldn’t choose the faster, more convenient, and lower-priced alternative? That’s the predicament the T will face. As AVs quickly gain commuters’ favor, fewer will take public transit. Fare collections will decline, requiring either higher fares — which would drive away even more riders — or more subsidies. Eventually, we’ll simply conclude that trains and trolleys are things of the past. Like the horses, buggies and stables of old, they’ll become relics.
And honestly, the article could be a predictor of the future. There is a future scenario in which people just order up electric automated vehicles and get door-to-door service. It’s a scenario that can get horrifying when you take it to its logical conclusion, in which people are isolated in cocoons and travel becomes a low-cost, low-complexity endeavor. In that world, a 60-mile commute, in which you spend your time watching a movie, reading or doing work, alone in your cocoon that drops you right at your door, becomes nothing at all. Worse is when the sidewalks become clogged with smaller AVs delivering packages to people who aren’t even venturing out to the grocery.
There is an alternate future in which cities take control of their own roads and start to charge AV companies for operating on them. In that world, using licensing, planning and free market levers to encourage different uses are entirely possible.
As an example, it’s easy to see people going to a Red Sox game in an AV and entirely bypassing the Green Line. I mean, why be shoved in and stand for 30 minutes, only to have to walk a few blocks to get to the game? People do it today, in part, because of cost. It’s cheaper to pay the T fare than to spend lavishly on parking AND sit in the traffic on the way out. Also, if you’re taking the T you can probably have that extra beer.
So what if Boston made it more expensive to take your AV right up to Fenway? Maybe they geofence a half-mile to a mile around the park and implement a 4x surge price during the hours before and after the game. They could even provide exemptions to those who are disabled. We already do this with parking, so it’s not inconsistent with existing policy. Now you’re using policy and the free market to help encourage a different choice.
What if we charged AVs to use our streets and then earmarked some of that money to subsidize public transit? What if we lowered speed limits on our roads to keep those AVs from moving faster, making the T and public transit a faster alternative?
The implications of these vehicles is pretty staggering. Think about the parking lots that will no longer be needed, how do we use them? Consider how we come go from our houses today (many of us use backdoors or garage entrances that are close to our cars) and how that changes when your primary point of entry is the street. Are we going to want our homes built closer to the curb? What do we do with those garage spaces? How are they best utilized? How do we rethink density requirements when the increase in traffic isn’t about privately owned vehicles but self-driving cars?
The future isn’t all that far off, think about how the iPhone changed our lives in less than a decade, or how the horse and buggy gave way to the automobile in about the same time. We can stand still and let the AV companies dictate the future, or, as a city, we can look for policies that make sense.
I agree and disagree with your position. We agree on the likely result in parking. AVs will mean much less parking being required.
I disagree that AVs will reduce traffic. I think the opposite is true. I bet the rise in AVs will increase traffic.
The first point is on mass transit. Buses and trains move many more people in a much compact space. AVs merely replace cars already on the road.
The Mass Pike through Newton has 58,000 vehicles coming through each day. See page 8: ftp://ctps.org/pub/Express_Highway_Volumes/17_I90_Mass_Pike.pdf AVs would merely replace those cars.
The Worcester/ Framingham line has about 10,000 rider inbound each day. See page 78: https://d3044s2alrsxog.cloudfront.net/uploadedfiles/documents/2014%20BLUEBOOK%2014th%20Edition(1).pdf Since that line runs parallel to the Pike I assume those people would end up in AVs. That 15% increase in traffic would crush the Pike. Add in another few thousand people opting off the Mass Pike buses (see page 50) into AVs to turn the Mass Pike into a parking lot. That means the streets feeding into the Mass Pike will be clogged even more than they are today. We need to make mass transit faster and more convenient, not replace it with AVs.
The second traffic problem is the lack of drop off and pick-up zones in commercial districts. Those AVs mean a whole lot more double parked cars dropping-off and picking-up passengers to snarl traffic. I’ve already seen this with the rise of Uber and Lyft in Boston. Our current street and building interfaces are not designed for picking-up and dropping-off passengers in mass. They are designed for walking and parking. We can fix a lot of this issue by eliminating on-street parking to be replaced with drop-off/pick-up designations. That’s assuming you can get through the traffic to get to your destination.
First off, there technical and policy issues associated with AVs are far different and way more complex than that of cell phones. So, the iPhone analogy is not even close to appropriate.
Second, Mr. Tanowitz seems to be conflating his view of how he thinks people should live with the development of policies that comport to the manner in which people want to live. If they want a future where AVs provide people with a low cost and low complexity means of transport the it is the role of government to see that these desires are met. One thing is however quite certain: if public transport is not significantly improved in terms of convenience, cost, and reliability then it will surely be pushed aside as the future unfolds. The USPS is providing a nice example of this dynamic.
Realistically, reducing the volume of cars and pricing will require a Autonomous Mini-Bus. Would love for Newton to take the lead and purchase a small bus to give free autonomous rides around Newton only to seniors for the first 2 years. Would make a huge difference in their lives…
@bugek– It’s been tried, although not with an AV. The bus was called “Nexus.” It was empty more often than not, and a complete waste of money.
bugek…as a friend pointed out, who is going to help us old folks in and out of the bus?
Mike,
Why was it empty? Poor schedules, expensive, too many stops.
An AV would be on demand and having several would optimize the least number of stops. Or perhaps the real demand is to shuttle people who live far from the T, back and forth between Boston downtown only
Bugek– I’m not sure why Nexus wasn’t popular. I just recall that it wasn’t. There’s no question that AV’s change the transportation landscape. I understand the appeal. But personally, I view most artificial intelligence [AV’s or otherwise] as far more alarming than promising.
Three quick observations.
1. The problem with Nexus was that not very many people ever used it. I don’t know if the problem was the lack of demand or something else, but I never saw more than 1 or 2 passengers riding a Nexus bus.
2. The problem with the Green “D” Line is that it was designed as a commuter rail system that took people into Boston and no further. I first took the D line in the late 1950’s commuting to Tufts during my freshman year. Today’s D Line T is essentially the same one I rode on in the 50’s. It’s not going to change because it can’t change. No amount of increased demand from high density housing is going to change that fact because the D Line could only take so many riders before the peak hour commute itself would become even more intolerable. It can only handle so many commuters already because of chronic breakdowns. There are four separate Green Line routes that all funnel into one dysfunctional tunnel that twists and curves because it was built before there was engineering technology that would have allowed for a straight and wide tunnel system. It would have been far better if Boston hadn’t been the first American city to have a subway system because we might have been able to build a tunnel system that didn’t contain those flaws.
3. Chuck is to be commended for putting this discussion before us. I think he is, at least, pointing in the right direction. My gut feeling is that flexible, demand based and environmentally sensitive vehicle technology is the only way we will achieve our transportation and commuting needs because where people have to go is far more complex and dispersed than it was even 60 years ago. Even the promising bus programs described in earlier posts are constrained because they still have to operate on fixed routes that aren’t flexible enough to get a lot of people who commute all over the place from home to work expeditiously. The fixed rail and trolley systems will always have their place here, but they just aren’t equipped to meet current and future challenges. I wish they were because I’ve always been partial to them; but in fact, they are not.
I brought this subject up during the mayoral debates on transportation planning. I put forth that AV was coming sooner than most people knew and that planning and discussion needed to start now.
60 mile commutes would not be mostly single passenger AV service. There will be AV Mega-Busses fed by short run single passenger service. You still get door to door service, but roughly 50 miles of that commute will be by bus, which makes the trip more economical.
Human beings are Terrible drivers and are incredibly inefficient at managing routes during high traffic density. AV controlled vehicles will not have that drawback. One lane of highway restricted to AV only can handle the traffic density that needs 4 lanes today.
AV doesn’t even really need AI to make it work, that is reserved for more complex problems. Moving vehicles around only needs redundant sensors, servos and software that tells the vehicle how to react to any given situation. AI is a threat to our future, but automated vehicles isn’t one of the big worry areas where it will be deployed.
There will be accidents and we need to worry about the potential that hackers could gain control of vehicles and perhaps fleets of vehicles.
But even with the potential for problems, since we already have thousands of fatalities each year on our roadways, the most conservative estimates point toward safer results and a dramatic reduction in highway deaths once AV becomes the norm.
Regarding the T and public transportation – of course that system will also be AV and will find its place. It will adapt, not disappear.