https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/22/us/traffic-commute-gridlo...
They can also, if Level 5 becomes a thing, reduce traffic collisions. And if they all end up electric, through route optimization they can significantly reduce energy consumption requirements for vehicle usage.
Self driving cars can plan the whole exchange, negotiate (or be directed by an intersection controller) to decelerate, align, merge, and maintain high throughout at low latency. ATC does this for planes already; we have the coordination technology. It’s just about getting drivers to listen to precise instructions without deviation. For everywhere I know of, that’s going to take automation.
Reading up on standing waves taught me a lot; you might like adding that wrinkle to your model.
So if AVs can't increase the throughput of city streets, I'm skeptical that they can increase the throughput of off-ramps which are bounded by city streets, or urban freeway segments which are bounded by the off-ramps. And even imagining that significant (2x?) throughput is achieved, it's not going to meet the induced demand ceiling; there would be the same amount of congestion, only with more cars.
L5 is dead on arrival as congestion-mitigation technology and I hope at least some of the billions earmarked to be spent on researching and deploying it are redirected towards better walking, cycling, and transit amenities instead.
Neither would they have to operate at artificially handicapped speeds, as no human operator would really be able to keep up regardless with the 10,000 or 100,000 cars running around.
Part of reacting and mitigating acute issues is being able to reroute traffic early enough, or slow cars down early enough, to minimize disruption (instead of a traffic slinky blocking everyone up).
There's no reason so far here that self-driving vehicles can't improve traffic and overall throughput, and it's a bold claim to declare L5 dead on arrival.
That's only going to work on roads that are AI-only.
I don’t see an AI requirement to be a huge hurdle for those cities.
Imagine highway where everyone drives 80mph with 5ft of distance between cars. No one suddenly changes lanes, no one suddenly slows down for no reason.
Here is illustration from Waymo testing facility: https://youtu.be/hKfEivMfDPU
https://www.geotab.com/blog/traffic-congestion/
Given the same number of cars on the road, a self-driving fleet would eliminate many mechanical failures and many human failures, and be able to adapt to sub-optimal infrastructure at a network-wide level.
Infrastructure would also be easier or more efficient to improve, because you'd have removed much of the human variability that makes identifying choke points difficult.
They might even Uber to the train station then Uber from the destination train station to work. Lots of ways of cutting traffic!
The people who are driving, or at least a significant portion of them, pick driving over public transport because of perceived privacy and control.
I don't think uptake of shared mobility is going to be so popular where that becomes the norm.
Also I drive because it's faster, and because once you go from A->B getting to B->C is probably easier. Not for privacy. Most people just need to get to work or school or their kids to school for the bulk of their car use. Kids to school might work by sharing with other parents you know.
- selfishness eg stopping or parking in no parking zones, driving aggressively
- error eg causing accidents
- ignorance eg not knowing the traffic flow in an intersection, driving slowly to find your bearings.
Also, if we have fewer cars, but higher utilisation of vehicles then we will require less parking.
AI doesn't really have the power to change that, and might actually be worse depending on how it reacts to pedestrians and cyclists.
Half of the work on "self"-driving is actually traffic dispatch.
