The road to tomorrow: streets need to be as smart as the cars driving on them
It’s not enough for future vehicles to be shared and self-driving – a smart upgrade of our cities and streets is also required
By LUKE DORMEHL
07 Nov 2016
wired.co.uk
excerpt:
Autonomous vehicles promise to have a much bigger effect on our roads than simply giving individual drivers an easier commute. "We are very interested in how autonomous cars could have an impact at the city scale," says Carlo Ratti, director at MIT's SENSEable City Lab, and co-author of The City of Tomorrow: Sensors, Networks, Hackers, and the Future of Urban Life.
"Our position is that they promise to have a dramatic impact, because they could blur the distinction between private and public modes of transportation," he says. "'Your' car could give you a lift to work in the morning and then, rather than sitting idle in a parking lot, give a lift to someone else in your family, your neighbourhood, your social-media community, or city."
How much of an impact would this have on city congestion? More than you think. One recent paper published by MIT suggested that the mobility demand of a city such as Singapore could be met with 30 per cent of its existing vehicles, were there a publicly accessible fleet of self-driving cars. That number could be slashed a further 40 per cent if passengers on similar routes shared a vehicle. "This implies a city in which everyone can travel on demand with just one-fifth of the number of cars in use today," Ratti says.
much more at the link on "smart streets (cities)"
But I just want to focus her on this part of it: driverless cars/autonomous vehicles will not only put drivers out of work, but also auto workers. And auto companies.
We are so not ready for where technology is taking us. |
