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The world is on its way to ending traffic, and that’s in part thanks to the pioneering work of transportation researcher and thought leader David Levinson. In this episode, we discuss how autonomous vehicles and other breakthrough tech will affect the future of transportation, and how infrastructure policy can keep up with the coming changes. We also discuss whether America has reached peak car ownership, if human driving will be eventually banned, and if we are culturally ready for a driverless future.
David Levinson teaches at the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Sydney, he’s an honorary affiliate of the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, and he serves as an adjunct faculty at the University of Minnesota.
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That’s just wrong, man.
The first part of the discussion was about applying technology, not to reduce traffic congestion, but to charge drivers more for scarce road resources and to penalize drivers who don’t pay. That’s not really helping.
Then Levinson champions prohibiting people from driving their own cars. For society.
And then at the end he goes back into charging money.
So overall, he wants to take money from people, lock them up if they try to drive, and if people complain they’ll get used to it, else the US will be left behind Europe. ‘Got it.
We are currently seeing several technological developments in transportation — electric cars, autonomous cars, and ride sharing. None of these has any effect on traffic or traffic congestion.
There was a discussion of “reaping the advantages of autonomous vehicles” to minimize the “spacing between vehicles”. That would have such a small effect that it would be unmeasurable.
Traffic apps (Apple Maps, Google Maps, Waze, etc.) are already a far superior tool. And they work, not by charging drivers, but by rewarding people who stay clear of congested routes with a better trip. And they’re free.
I have a very good solution for traffic congestion; intelligent autonomous traffic signals. I describe it in depth here:
Because someone had to do it:
As a person who has spent nearly 20 years in Transportation and now Automotive Manufacturing as well, I find his assumptions far fetched to say the least.
Let us remember that Tesla is facing a bottle neck of trying to get 150 cars a month out and has yet to ramp up to 1500. I work at one plant and we are making 2200 cars a month.
Sounds like Jim needs to get you on his podcast!
I have always wondered what is the government going to do with all this new revenue if they start charging for car usage. Being a pessimist, I’m afraid they won’t replace all the taxes and fees that go into car ownership/consumption with a driving fee. Then the government will just use it as a new revenue stream to pay for stupid social welfare like they do in my hometown, Austin, TX, with public utility fees. That’s why I get nervous at schemes to get rid of all free street parking downtown or in other commercial districts.
If reformers can promise a fair tax swap, then I would be much more comfortable with the idea of usage fees based on demand like how Uber operates.
Well, I’m not exactly a traffic expert, but I do have an extensive electrical and software engineering background, and so to me, cars running along streets look an awful lot like current running through a circuit, and optimizing the paths of cars around a city is an awful lot like optimizing compiled code. So I look at traffic situations and I’m in very familiar territory.
Car pool lanes, for instance, turn out to be misguided. Theoretically, fast-tracking the vehicles carrying more passengers should increase the overall throughput. But in practice, restricting lanes ends up increasing congestion, increasing fuel consumption, and greater exhaust emissions, the very things it was supposed to reduce. Oh, and it turns out not to encourage carpooling. But between virtue signaling, and the feds paying for it, we’re stuck.
Pravin Varaiya, an electrical engineering (!!!) professor at UC Berkeley has done a lot of research on this:
Varaiya: What We’ve Learned About Highway Congestion
He’d be the guy. (Have me on also, just so I can talk with him.)
This is what I keep pointing out to people about bike lanes. But people are convinced that they are getting rid of the car. But all the houses are separated from the job centers by zoning laws.
And they wont allow private buses to compete against public bussing. So we cant have competition for bulk transport of people.
I will take traffic signaling over virtue signaling any day! Thanks for posting that article. I’m sure they have even more useful data since 2005.