Lyft president John Zimmer: Car ownership will 'all-but end' in cities by 2025

[131071]

Lyft president John Zimmer: Car ownership will 'all-but end' in cities by 2025
https://medium.com/@johnzimmer/the-third-transportation-revolution-27860f05fa91#.302mpztd2


What are your thoughts, Mustachians?  As a car-free millenial with a family in a city, I think he gets many things right in this article - pointing out the ridiculous inefficiencies of autos that spend 96% of their lifetimes dormant and are typically 20% occupied at maximum,  highlighting the absurd amount of space dedicated to private vehicles, etc. 

However...my experience with Uber and Lyft is still relatively minimal.  We chose to sell our autos and spend more on cost-of-living so that we'd be closer to work, grocery stores, parks, and in a walkable neighborhood.  Uber/Lyft fares still don't make sense for the majority of our trips - the old fashioned bicycle, or moving by foot do.  Even our ~15 mile Costco runs can be accomplished with a Cargo bike and/or trailer with relative ease.

Moving by human power a couple of miles a day has innumerable benefits to us and our neighbors.  If/when we are able to reclaim the space in American cities that automobiles have claimed for generations, I would hope to see that space dedicated to increasing active transportation options, building additional housing supply (in an effort to make housing in cities more affordable), and increasing public space and parks.  That future invites people to walk, bike, and take transit for short trips, rather than jumping into an (autonomous) "gas-powered wheelchair."

I'm curious to hear the thoughts of those in this community - particularly those others who are car-free currently, or have been or hope to be at some point in the future.

[Northwestie]

I think it car ownership will go down - but what if you want to go to the mountains or beach with the kids, or pickup several pieces of lumber and paint at Home Depot, or other bulky items.  It gets pretty expensive to rent a car or use something like Car-to-Go if you want to go hiking or mt. biking. 

[Nick_Miller]

Super interesting article!

I wish we could move towards more energy efficient mass transport, but yes I know building the surrounding infrastructure (rails) takes a TON of money, and plus the rails can only go so many places.

This guy, who obviously has a bit of a financial incentive on seeing this vision come into reality, is saying we'll have a bunch of robot/tech-driven vehicles zipping around, picking us up and dropping us off whenever we'd like with a subscription service, AND I'm guessing auto accident frequency would go waaaaaaaaaaaaaay down.

Wait... -ponders- as a personal injury attorney with 90% of my cases stemming from auto accidents, this could be VERY bad for me!   -hoards more money now!-

And there will be a TON of other losers too...

current Lyft and Uber drivers

taxi drivers

auto mechanics

insurance companies like State Farm, Allstate, etc.

auto manufacturers (would have to deal with huge company as consumer on other side instead of dealing with individual consumers)


How many millions of people would lose jobs? And who would actually gain jobs? Uh....I'm struggling to think of anyone.

[dividendman]

Hrm, I made a similar claim here: http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/uber-ridesharing-and-self-driving-cars-big-decline-in-auto-industry/

Glad to see I'm not alone. Time to short the auto companies! (joking... I don't short anything or do any fancy investing)

[Pigeon]

I'm not a city dweller, I live in suburbia in a land of nearly no public transportation, so maybe I just have a hard time putting myself in a position where this is even thinkable.  I think he's overstating things and his timeline is too short.  There are still a host of issues to be worked out around self-driving cars, and many of the issues aren't going to be settled overnight, especially when industries hire legions of lobbyists.  Once laws change, there will still be a long period for issues to be resolved in the courts after the inevitable barrage of lawsuits.  I'm sure a certain percentage of urban dwellers who have to pay dearly for a parking space will make the shift, but many will not.

One of the problems I have with the repetitive emphasis on cars being parked all but 4% of the time is that while perhaps that's true, rush hour is rush hour because the majority of people have to get to work and back at the same time.  Lyft or Uber aren't going to change that.  While it is true that telecommuting is available for some people, for most people it's not an option.

[seattlecyclone]

I think it car ownership will go down - but what if you want to go to the mountains or beach with the kids, or pickup several pieces of lumber and paint at Home Depot, or other bulky items.  It gets pretty expensive to rent a car or use something like Car-to-Go if you want to go hiking or mt. biking. 

Right now most Americans own a car because there's no practical alternative for some large fraction of trips they take. Once you have already sunk the money into the vehicle and insurance, the marginal cost of driving it for a few extra miles is rather low. That makes things like trips to the mountains seem cheaper than they really should be if you take depreciation on the vehicle into account. That's why services like Car2Go seem so much more expensive than driving a car you already own: because these services do need to take total cost of ownership on a per-mile level into account when setting their prices.

All this is to say that while you might balk at the cost of renting a car to go to the mountains, the cost difference is an illusion. If you actually amortize the car's purchase price across all the vehicle miles it takes to get there and back, perhaps the rental isn't more expensive after all.

One of the problems I have with the repetitive emphasis on cars being parked all but 4% of the time is that while perhaps that's true, rush hour is rush hour because the majority of people have to get to work and back at the same time.  Lyft or Uber aren't going to change that.  While it is true that telecommuting is available for some people, for most people it's not an option.

I have one word for you: carpools. Yes, the number of people who need to get to work at typical hours will not change, but there's no reason that the number of vehicles driving at that time must remain constant. Right now few people carpool, because people see it as too constraining to perfectly synchronize your schedule with a group of other people. With robo-taxis, you wouldn't need to coordinate with anyone else. You'd just order the ride when you need it, and if someone else was doing a trip along the same general route at the same time, the system would put them in the same vehicle as you. Widespread use of this type of on-demand carpooling could cut the number of cars on the road in half or better.

[Papa Mustache]

I think it car ownership will go down - but what if you want to go to the mountains or beach with the kids, or pickup several pieces of lumber and paint at Home Depot, or other bulky items.  It gets pretty expensive to rent a car or use something like Car-to-Go if you want to go hiking or mt. biking.

If I rent a people mover (minivan) to spend a week at the beach then I tack on $700 to my vacation expenses. That's two months of car payments. Or a whole year of insurance for one of our cars and some gas money.

Just drive oldish cars and reap the savings.

My car might be parked 95% of it's life but the more I drive it the more often I need to replace it. I don't want to utilize my car 50% of the time. I want it to be a 20 year old 150K mile sedan that gets the job done looking respectable and worth $1500.

Will self-driving cars make private ownership obsolete for city dwellers? Possibly. Not for us in the rest of the country. 

[gooki]

I think he's pretty spot on, but they've got to hit the sweet spot price wise.

In my opinion there will be room for two-three major players in this market. If each autonomous transport provider is backed by a single car manufacturer, then there's going to be some significant losers. The race is on.

[Kyle Schuant]

I wish it were so, but it will not be so.

[rosaz]

I think he's probably right... at least if self-driving cars do make the leap in the next few years.

The US has an estimated 8,000 square miles of land devoted to parking (https://persquaremile.com/2011/01/20/800-million-spaces-and-nowhere-to-park/), or an area the size of New Jersey. If we took some small fraction of that parking (much of it public and free, basically cities and towns giving away that land while necessitating higher property taxes on each parcel of land that is privately owned) and turned it into... safer biking lanes? Rapid buses (that have their own lane and so don't get stuck in traffic)? Just higher density so there were a lot more options for living near work, play, etc.? (where I live, a lot of transit-friendly development is shot down because "BUT... PARKING??!!") Fewer people might use cars during rush hour, and those that do would then get there a lot more quickly, considerably easing the rush hour shared-car crunch.

For those of us in cities, where land is at a premium, it's easy to forget the baked-in costs of parking, because most of us don't have to pay for them directly. My apartment building has a huge parking lot - more land than is used for the apartments themselves - that I pay for even through my rent even though I don't have a car, simply because they assumed everyone would. What if they used most of that land for something else, keeping a fraction of the spaces and renting them at fair market value? Then the cost analysis of car ownership vs. borrowing as needed could shift towards the latter (again, speaking only for people in cities).

[tonysemail]

thanks for sharing.
there were a few new ideas I picked up in the article:
- TAAS - gotta learn my acronyms!
- subscription based model, like pay $x/month for some number of rides or miles
- i assumed that inertia would make cities very slow to transform themselves.  it's great to see the cited examples where that's not the case.
- tearing down city blocks for freeways divided cities

[TheDude]

How many millions of people would lose jobs? And who would actually gain jobs? Uh....I'm struggling to think of anyone.

How about service jobs? I think I heard the the alcohol industry anticipates 1 billion more to be spent on booze. That means more people to bar tend, serve, and doctors for liver disease.

Jobs change, every one was worried when cars replaced the horse and buggies. I think the extra money people have from no longer owning a car will make up for a lot of the job loses. After all consumption is the key to our economy. More free cash more computation!

[dividendman]

How many millions of people would lose jobs? And who would actually gain jobs? Uh....I'm struggling to think of anyone.

How about service jobs? I think I heard the the alcohol industry anticipates 1 billion more to be spent on booze. That means more people to bar tend, serve, and doctors for liver disease.

Jobs change, every one was worried when cars replaced the horse and buggies. I think the extra money people have from no longer owning a car will make up for a lot of the job loses. After all consumption is the key to our economy. More free cash more computation!

Why does everyone always worry about job loss with technological disruption? Yes, it's going to happen. The world will continue to improve, new jobs will be created, basic incomes will be introduced and a star trek like utopia will eventually unfold. Worry not!

I wonder when the first guy was putting a plow on the back of an ox, if he thought: "damn, all these people who have been plowing my farm by hand are gonna be out of work!"

[seattlecyclone]

Just higher density so there were a lot more options for living near work, play, etc.? (where I live, a lot of transit-friendly development is shot down because "BUT... PARKING??!!") Fewer people might use cars during rush hour, and those that do would then get there a lot more quickly, considerably easing the rush hour shared-car crunch.

For those of us in cities, where land is at a premium, it's easy to forget the baked-in costs of parking, because most of us don't have to pay for them directly. My apartment building has a huge parking lot - more land than is used for the apartments themselves - that I pay for even through my rent even though I don't have a car, simply because they assumed everyone would. What if they used most of that land for something else, keeping a fraction of the spaces and renting them at fair market value? Then the cost analysis of car ownership vs. borrowing as needed could shift towards the latter (again, speaking only for people in cities).

So very much this. Seattle had minimum parking quotas in new developments for decades citywide. We're starting to move away from them in certain parts of town, but neighbors are fighting that change tooth and nail because they had grown accustomed to there being so much parking available in most neighborhoods that nobody would think to charge for it.

Minimum quotas are insidious because they raise the baseline cost of building anything. With the quotas in place, nobody had the option of building just an apartment building; instead they needed to build an apartment building and a parking garage. With so much parking in the neighborhood already, the parking garage could not be expected to generate meaningful revenue. Instead the cost would be passed along to building residents whether they owned a car or not. This has had a predictable effect on market rents.

[cube.37]

I've been telling my wife, who's very impressed by the teslas and was thinking we could own one one day, that I don't think we'll ever have to buy another car after our 8 year old honda dies (i think less than 20k miles...)

I think cars will be like ubers, with varying sizes, possibility to pool, ability to schedule a pickup in advance.

In terms of price of parking, when I was buying a house in boston 1.5 years ago, our agent ran comps for parking spaces and in our area they were 50k for a parking spot...(we had the option to purchase a new construction we were looking at with or without garage parking)

[seattlecyclone]

In terms of price of parking, when I was buying a house in boston 1.5 years ago, our agent ran comps for parking spaces and in our area they were 50k for a parking spot...(we had the option to purchase a new construction we were looking at with or without garage parking)

I've read that underground parking can cost upwards of $50k/space to construct, so it makes sense that this would be about the going rate in a built-up area where there's no more room to just put down some asphalt to park another car. That means when you prohibit the construction of housing without attached parking, you increase the minimum possible rent by whatever the mortgage + taxes + maintenance on that $50k parking spot costs.

[GuitarStv]

or pickup several pieces of lumber and paint at Home Depot, or other bulky items

Since it's only a few km down to the local HD, I bike down, rent their truck for about 10$, take the bulky stuff to my house, drop the truck off and bike back.

I finished my entire basement (drywall, 2x4s, buckets of drywall compound, etc.)  doing that about three times.

[radram]

As driver-less cars expand in scope, they will effect things little thought about yet.  Parking for example.  Why would anyone pay $50,000 to park.  Even if you own the car instead of share it, just have the car keep driving, or drive to a free space at Wal-mart(or anywhere) 30-60  minutes away.  The car will get to know your schedule and be where it needs to be at the right time.  Some smart horses used to do the same thing.

Even if you do pay for on-street-parking, cities will no longer get  revenue for parking tickets, since the car can just move before time expires, or before your car see's a parking checker and drives away.

Some things will get way cheaper, other items will need to increase in order to offset the loss of revenue.  Electric cars are the same thing.  No money collected for gas tax, so other taxes will increase to pay for roads.  Overall, I welcome the change.  I am very impressed with the success of driver-less cars thus far.

[GuitarStv]

There should be radically reduced need for parking entirely if vehicles aren't sitting around doing nothing 99% of the time.

[seattlecyclone]

Indeed. Off-street parking may not really even need to exist anymore. After all, once essentially all of the cars we need fit on the road at the same time, they can just park on the road as well when demand is lower.

[dividendman]

C'mon folks! We're smart. How do we make money off of these inevitable trends?

Less roads, less parking, less car ownership, etc. There has got to be a way!

[Pooplips]

Indeed. Off-street parking may not really even need to exist anymore. After all, once essentially all of the cars we need fit on the road at the same time, they can just park on the road as well when demand is lower.

I was thinking the opposite. Maintain the off street parking and shrink all the existing roads to lower the infrastructure expeses.

[radram]

C'mon folks! We're smart. How do we make money off of these inevitable trends?

Less roads, less parking, less car ownership, etc. There has got to be a way!

Internet is full of ideas.  Here is one:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyhamed/2015/01/21/driverless-stocks/2/#30eb391e1b59


Of course the question lies in how much their future growth is already built in to the current price.

[tonysemail]

some counter points I was thinking of this morning:
- if my daily commute was using TAAS, it would drive me nuts to pay surge pricing every freaking day. 
hopefully the subscription based model would be a remedy for this.
- I can make an analogy to the home owning vs renting choice.
owning a car, I benefit from fixed and deterministic cost for the life of my vehicle.
using TAAS, I'll be subject to the whims of inflation and market supply/demand
- we still need huge multi-story parking lots with inductive charging to re-fuel the electric cars
it will be many times more efficient than today's excess of parking lots.
but i think cities will still have parking infrastructure in the far future.

[hoping2retire35]

or pickup several pieces of lumber and paint at Home Depot, or other bulky items

Since it's only a few km down to the local HD, I bike down, rent their truck for about 10$, take the bulky stuff to my house, drop the truck off and bike back.

I finished my entire basement (drywall, 2x4s, buckets of drywall compound, etc.)  doing that about three times.

/\Badas$$.
I don't think this will change that much. it will basically be an expansion of public transit(light rail and buses) into personalized trips by automobile. Thats it. If you are not on the cusp of using public transit now you probably won't use this in 10 years.

[Northwestie]

Just higher density so there were a lot more options for living near work, play, etc.? (where I live, a lot of transit-friendly development is shot down because "BUT... PARKING??!!") Fewer people might use cars during rush hour, and those that do would then get there a lot more quickly, considerably easing the rush hour shared-car crunch.

For those of us in cities, where land is at a premium, it's easy to forget the baked-in costs of parking, because most of us don't have to pay for them directly. My apartment building has a huge parking lot - more land than is used for the apartments themselves - that I pay for even through my rent even though I don't have a car, simply because they assumed everyone would. What if they used most of that land for something else, keeping a fraction of the spaces and renting them at fair market value? Then the cost analysis of car ownership vs. borrowing as needed could shift towards the latter (again, speaking only for people in cities).

So very much this. Seattle had minimum parking quotas in new developments for decades citywide. We're starting to move away from them in certain parts of town, but neighbors are fighting that change tooth and nail because they had grown accustomed to there being so much parking available in most neighborhoods that nobody would think to charge for it.

Minimum quotas are insidious because they raise the baseline cost of building anything. With the quotas in place, nobody had the option of building just an apartment building; instead they needed to build an apartment building and a parking garage. With so much parking in the neighborhood already, the parking garage could not be expected to generate meaningful revenue. Instead the cost would be passed along to building residents whether they owned a car or not. This has had a predictable effect on market rents.

The fallout of this, in Seattle however, is parking congestion.  Go talk to any of the business owners in Fremont of Seattle and they will tell you the same thing.  The difference between what is utopia from the city's planning perspective  - having no requirements for on-site (underground) parking and the reality.  Maybe a SMALLER proportion of the young folks filling out the new condos there and in Ballard have cars, but many do.  The result? A clusterf*&^% parking situation on side streets that make it all but impossible to quickly park, stop in and shop, and leave.

Not everyone can bike (I do) and public transportation east and west of the I5 corridor is lethargic.  Go talk to Wright Brothers bike coop for instance - though a public transportation advocate he'll gladly tell you the affect of the lack of parking on his business.

In the future - I don't know.  But the current reality is not matching the hype.

[seattlecyclone]

Parking "congestion" is only a thing when the parking is priced below its fair market price. In each of the neighborhoods you mentioned, there's plenty of parking available if you're willing to pay for it. The days of abundant, free parking in urbanized areas of this city is coming to an end. If you want to drive a car around town, nobody's stopping you. However it is you who will have to pay for the cost of the infrastructure to accommodate that choice, not the tenants in the new buildings in that neighborhood.

[Northwestie]

Parking "congestion" is only a thing when the parking is priced below its fair market price. In each of the neighborhoods you mentioned, there's plenty of parking available if you're willing to pay for it. The days of abundant, free parking in urbanized areas of this city is coming to an end. If you want to drive a car around town, nobody's stopping you. However it is you who will have to pay for the cost of the infrastructure to accommodate that choice, not the tenants in the new buildings in that neighborhood.

Yea - but the folks moving into those condos have cars and are parking on the street for free as they have a neighborhood sticker.  Thus the available parking for businesses has been reduced.  To compensate now the city has metered much of the area so spaces flip.   But even with limited two hour parking it is grim trying to park there and businesses are affected.   The tenants are paying no cost for bringing in their vehicles for parking - the businesses are the ones affected by the externalized cost.

The idea that all urbanites don't want to own a car is not penciling out in reality.   Thus public transportation, parking, and traffic flow suffer.  Heck - I ride my bike to work every day, but that's me.   Many folks don't have that luxury.  The main problem, IMO, is that we are not charging developers fees for the effect they are having on infrastructure, transit, and parking.  Lately the city is just saying "have at it" to developers.  And nevermind the lack of density offsets - these buildings are butt-ugly.

[Doubleh]

I think much of the problem here is one of chicken and egg. In a foreseeable future with plentiful and cheap public transport to address the rush hour mass movement of people and autonomous car service to fill in other trips as needed, very few people will need to own a car - at least in large cities.  The money, land and resources freed up by not needing cars will more than cover the new public mass transport infrastructure - but at the moment all the money is tied up in idle cars and parking spaces. The future high speed bus lanes, segregated bike lanes and light rail tracks are all full of bumper to bumper traffic. So how do you transition from the present to the future?

Ride sharing has the potential to act as a catalyst, breaking the cycle by reducing dependency on cars so that first early adopters can give up their cars. As more do this, traffic will reduce, and economies of scale and technological development will reduce the cost of ride sharing. This will reduce the tipping point at which it becomes viable to get rid of your car, pulling more people into the future in a virtuous cycle. Eventually once the majority have moved past private car ownership society will change its view of owning a car, and the holdouts will end up carrying more of the true cost of he infrastructure they are tieing up, accelerating progress still further.

[Northwestie]

Just curious here - I see how some of this might play out successfully for direct work commutes.

But what do you do if you want to go visit someone or someplace for the weekend and want mobility while you are there.  Or if you just want to park at a trailhead and have the assurance that you have transportation back at the end of a weeklong trip? 

While folks may reduce ridership in urban areas it's a challenge in the 'burbs and rural areas.  So I guess if the point is to reduce snarls in urban areas, this idea might have a change. Maybe.  But even urban dwellers want to get out of town now and then.

[seattlecyclone]

Yea - but the folks moving into those condos have cars and are parking on the street for free as they have a neighborhood sticker.  Thus the available parking for businesses has been reduced.  To compensate now the city has metered much of the area so spaces flip.   But even with limited two hour parking it is grim trying to park there and businesses are affected.   The tenants are paying no cost for bringing in their vehicles for parking - the businesses are the ones affected by the externalized cost.

I don't really agree with the concept of "neighborhood stickers" where neighborhood residents (and only neighborhood residents) get to park on the public street as long as they want for very little cost. The public streets should be available on an equal basis to every member of the public. Someone who works in a neighborhood should have just as much right to buy a parking permit as someone who lives there. The number of issued permits should be limited so that there are always a few open spaces for non-permit-holding visitors to park on a time-limited (possibly metered) basis. Right now there is no limit on these permits, and the price is set to a nominal amount that barely covers the cost of administering the program, not at a true market level. That's why the street space fills up.

Indeed, businesses can be affected by this state of affairs. When they extended metered parking hours downtown into dinnertime a few years back, restaurant sales increased. When you have to pay for the spot, you don't spend as much time in it. This increases turnover and leaves more opportunities for business customers to find a spot where they need one.

The idea that all urbanites don't want to own a car is not penciling out in reality.   Thus public transportation, parking, and traffic flow suffer.  Heck - I ride my bike to work every day, but that's me.   Many folks don't have that luxury.  The main problem, IMO, is that we are not charging developers fees for the effect they are having on infrastructure, transit, and parking.  Lately the city is just saying "have at it" to developers.  And nevermind the lack of density offsets - these buildings are butt-ugly.

Reducing parking requirements is not about forcing people out of their cars. It's about decoupling the cost of housing from the cost of parking. When people see how much it actually costs to own a car in the city, some (not nearly all!) will reconsider. That's nothing but a good thing for traffic. The roads aren't getting wider.

[hoping2retire35]

Could this also mean more people will move the suburbs? If those are cheaper, and automobile commuting is cheaper while being able to completely zone out for the commute, why wouldn't you move out? Less parking but more roads!

[seattlecyclone]

Could this also mean more people will move the suburbs? If those are cheaper, and automobile commuting is cheaper while being able to completely zone out for the commute, why wouldn't you move out? Less parking but more roads!

Hard to say. Suburbs are cheaper now in large part because the commute to the city is annoying. If the commute became more of a relaxing time and less of a stressful one, perhaps the price difference would decline.

[alsoknownasDean]

Or, how about building better public transport networks to the suburbs? Instead of driving straight to work, drive (or walk) to the train/bus/light rail station.

If one removes the need to commute, there'll be less of a need for second or third cars.

Maybe a more achievable goal is more families in suburban areas being able to own just the one car, commuting via public transport where possible, and use ridesharing for the occasional trips where a second car would otherwise be needed.

Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk

[oldladystache]

I bought a new car this year and I'm expecting it to be my last one. I generally keep a car about ten years. Things will be very different in ten years. Just think how different things now are from ten years ago.

[Northwestie]

Indeed, businesses can be affected by this state of affairs. When they extended metered parking hours downtown into dinnertime a few years back, restaurant sales increased. When you have to pay for the spot, you don't spend as much time in it. This increases turnover and leaves more opportunities for business customers to find a spot where they need one.

Well this is all theoretical and I don't have the time to go point to point - but I will use the link you provided as an example of the flawed use of data to make a point.  That article by the bicycle activist sight notes that sales receipts in the quarter following the extended parking hours went up. 

Ummm, yea.  But it was moving in an upward trend, there is no accounting for seasonality or tourism, and the typical low-grade trap is used - that somehow correlation is causation.  You can take any number of random variables - say the production of titanium bicycle frames and the incidence of breast cancer in 20-year-olds.   Because cancer rates have been increasing and so has the number of titanium bicycle frames does not mean that production of these bicycles causes cancer.  Sorry -- but that is a very poor example.  Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of applied statistics would laugh at that article.

[seattlecyclone]

You're right that the data presented in the article is far from sufficient to prove that parking meters are good for business. Perhaps restaurant sales would have increased slightly faster if parking was free. Perhaps not. What this does show is that introducing parking meters in a previously underpriced area is far from the business-killer that some feared. Where some customers might now be turned off by having to pay a few bucks to park near the restaurant where they're about to spend $20 per person (or whatever), others might have been turned off before by the fact that the parking was too full when it was free and they would have had to circle the neighborhood forever to get a spot.

At the end of the day, the total amount of parking didn't change. What did change was the way it was allocated, favoring shorter stays. It seems hard to argue that most businesses are worse off when the parking turns over frequently than when a few people get to monopolize the space for the whole day.

[Northwestie]

Actually the data presented shows nothing of the sort.

Sigh - for this example or other future references to "data trends" keep this in mind for a critical analysis. 

The author shows a graph of spending by quarter - where each quarter goes up and the last quarter goes up a bit more - then announces that the difference from the third to the fourth quarter is a trend due to raising parking meter times at night.

--one data point is not a trend - never
--the author has no idea if this is a statistically significant difference - that is, is it just due to random variation or is it due to an influencing variable?
--since no statistical test was performed - this is nothing but speculation
--for a true analysis you would need a wider sample - just conducting a one-tailed statistical test on two data points would give you a huge standard error and make results meaningless.
--if interested in the difference in spending between the 3rd and quarter you would need to look at the same patterns going back 5 to 10 years and compare them with the current year.
--simailarly, to direct if there is a true trend you would need to compare the 3rd to the 2nd, the 2nd to the 1t quarter over the course of the data set - which might best be set up using an analysis of variance.
--are the data normally distributed? If not you could transform them for a more commonly used statistical test.
--how is the study designed, what are the bounds of the areas used for calculating spending vs that used for designating the metering study area - the same?
--how are the economic data collected?  Is this a sample all is it based on all tax receipts of all food establishments in the area?  Is there a definition of what is considered a food establishment?
--importantly - let's say you went thru this exercise, your data were good, and the test shows a the difference between this year's 3rd and 4th quarter shows a difference that is statistically significantly different than those between the same quarters in your 5 yr set. Assuming it is significant at a decent probability (say 95%) - then, and only then can you say the difference is due to some influencing variable or set of variables beyond a random variation.
--Now the crux of the statistical test that considers human behavior patters - in this case, spending.  This could be caused by any number of factors - sporting events, concerts, school breaks, going back to school for kids, on, and on and on.
--One would either have to make a good faith effort to look at the competing factors - or conduct a sophisticated analysis of variance on those variables that you could quantify - say the extra number of people downtown for a particular event.
--it would be more appropriate to look at this data after several more quarters

So in this case - or any case where someone flashes a bar graph to make their point - be skeptical.  Better yet, take an introduction to statistics class. Cheers.

[acroy]

Fun article, but nah, we're not going to see a huge change by 2015. Maybe by 2050. Things change slowly. I believe miles/person is already declining. Per capita auto ownership is declining. I expect those trends to continue, slowly slowly.
(It'll be great for us motorheads - cheaper cars! cheap gas! less traffic! whoo!)

[music lover]

Sure, parking congestion may be reduced, but the on road congestion increases because every non-owned car must first drive to pick up the person, then drives the trip needed, and then drives more miles going somewhere else after the trip is over.

[radram]

Fun article, but nah, we're not going to see a huge change by 2015. Maybe by 2050. Things change slowly. I believe miles/person is already declining. Per capita auto ownership is declining. I expect those trends to continue, slowly slowly.
(It'll be great for us motorheads - cheaper cars! cheap gas! less traffic! whoo!)

I agree car ownership might be a slower transition, but the driver-less automobile technology will be rapid in scope and market rollout.  Of course time will tell, but seeing the progress in this technology leads me to believe this might be one of the fastest transitions in transportation history.  The technology is so far superior to human driving and human error.

It would not at all surprise me if my daughter's future children (hopefully 10+ years from now) are not allowed to drive on public roads since by then driver-less technology will have proven to be so much safer.  My great grandchildren most likely will have never heard of a human driver.

I would LOVE to see a driver-less NASCAR compete  today.  Anyone else?

[Shane]

Our local government is currently in the process of spending upwards of $8 billion dollars to build a light rail line that will only really benefit a minority of people if it's ever actually completed.

The government's reason for building light rail is supposedly to cut down on traffic. Right now, I look around at vehicles on our highways and almost every single one of them has only one occupant, the driver. It seems to me like, before we borrow billions of dollars and raise taxes to pay for it, it would be worthwhile for the local government to at least try partnering with companies like Lyft and Uber to to see if maybe they could come up with a creative, out of the box solution to traffic congestion that wouldn't require a massive construction project. Unfortunately, rather than looking towards the future and innovative new companies like Lyft and Uber with their fresh new ideas, our government is, instead, choosing to support the entrenched taxi and construction industries which give big donations to politicians' campaign funds.

Government could help out by giving incentives to encourage drivers to carpool, e.g. you can't get on the freeway during peak hours unless there are at least 2 or 3 people in your car. That would cut down on traffic by 1/2 or 2/3 without requiring that we build any new infrastructure. Innovative, young companies like Lyft and Uber could contribute by improving and continuing to expand the platforms they've created to facilitate ride-sharing to include car-pooling, which apparently they're already doing in some big cities.

During and after college I lived for several years in a big city in Europe where it was EASY to live well without a car. My apartment was only about 2 blocks from a major subway line and I always had a monthly mass-transit pass, which made it simple to hop on the subway to go anywhere I wanted to in the city within minutes. On weekends we often took one of the subway lines to the last stop and transferred to a streetcar or light rail line which took us to the outskirts of the city and within easy walking distance of trails that led up into the mountains.

I look forward to the day when a combination of improved public transportation and  networks of driverless cars will free Americans from our current bondage to automobiles.

[gooki]

But what do you do if you want to go visit someone or someplace for the weekend and want mobility while you are there.  Or if you just want to park at a trailhead and have the assurance that you have transportation back at the end of a weeklong trip? 

You pre book it.

Or you order one on demand 15-30 min before you're ready to leave (assuming you're out in the wilderness somewhere).

Or you book a car for the whole time you're there. Much like a rental car today, except it comes to you. There will be a price premium for this.

[gooki]

Or, how about building better public transport networks to the suburbs? Instead of driving straight to work, drive (or walk) to the train/bus/light rail station.

In my opinion, multimode transport for commuting, is one of the main reasons public transport isn't in higher demand.

Drive to station, pay for parking, pay for train, wait for train, get out of train, walk to office. Is a crap experience compared to get in autonomous vehicle, get out of autonomous vehicle right outside office door.

[gooki]

- if my daily commute was using TAAS, it would drive me nuts to pay surge pricing every freaking day. 
hopefully the subscription based model would be a remedy for this.

- we still need huge multi-story parking lots with inductive charging to re-fuel the electric cars
it will be many times more efficient than today's excess of parking lots.
but i think cities will still have parking infrastructure in the far future.

Surge pricing will largely go away once the fleet size is sufficient, provided you are willing to share the vehicle with other passengers. If you want exclusive use at peak times, yeah I'd expect they'll charge more.

Correct, but the car parks/recharge facilities do not have to be centred downtown, freeing up a lot of valuable realestate. That and increased utilisation 4% vs 20% means five times less storage required for vehicles.

My belief is local governments should be working with the industry now to determine the optimal location of the recharge/parking facilities for autonomous vehicles, so when they hit the market, they'll be more efficient.

[gooki]

Sure, parking congestion may be reduced, but the on road congestion increases because every non-owned car must first drive to pick up the person, then drives the trip needed, and then drives more miles going somewhere else after the trip is over.

It's all optimised to reduce zero person trips. Increase the number of passengers per journey by pricing shared service lower, so instead of 1 person per car during the commute, you average 3 people. Now there's only 1/3 the number of cars having to exit the downtown area, and they'll be optimised to pickup the shift workers/other folk going in the opposite direction.

[gooki]

Our local government is currently in the process of spending upwards of $8 billion dollars to build a light rail line that will only really benefit a minority of people if it's ever actually completed.

This is just bonkers, sure 20 years ago it was a good idea. But not now, consider the construction timeframe is 10-15 years away at best, they'd be better of investing 8 billion on a public fleet of autonomous vehicles.

8 billion buys 250,000 autonomous vehicles. If each vehicle averages three people per trip, and six trips per day that's 4.5 million individual journeys per day. And that's door to door service.

It's scalable (you don't need to buy 250,000 cars on day one). The ROI is much quicker too, start small, use the income generated to expand, rather than borrowing 8 billion and saddling all taxpayers with the cost.

It has redundancy, if a car breaks down enroute there are 249,999 others available to pickup the slack.

[alsoknownasDean]

Our local government is currently in the process of spending upwards of $8 billion dollars to build a light rail line that will only really benefit a minority of people if it's ever actually completed.

This is just bonkers, sure 20 years ago it was a good idea. But not now, consider the construction timeframe is 10-15 years away at best, they'd be better of investing 8 billion on a public fleet of autonomous vehicles.

8 billion buys 250,000 autonomous vehicles. If each vehicle averages three people per trip, and six trips per day that's 4.5 million individual journeys per day. And that's door to door service.

It's scalable (you don't need to buy 250,000 cars on day one). The ROI is much quicker too, start small, use the income generated to expand, rather than borrowing 8 billion and saddling all taxpayers with the cost.

It has redundancy, if a car breaks down enroute there are 249,999 others available to pickup the slack.

Yes, but that doesn't do a lot about this:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_9F9_RUESS2E/S7tbclwxiPI/AAAAAAAACmw/uI1bCpNuKNA/s800/picoftheday0012-space-60people.jpg

A fleet of autonomous minibuses could work to fill in the gaps, but in larger cities, the heavy lifting will continue to be done by trains, trams/streetcars and buses, because they can carry far more people.

Why else are cities around the world building/expanding metro systems?

[Villanelle]

Or, how about building better public transport networks to the suburbs? Instead of driving straight to work, drive (or walk) to the train/bus/light rail station.

In my opinion, multimode transport for commuting, is one of the main reasons public transport isn't in higher demand.

Drive to station, pay for parking, pay for train, wait for train, get out of train, walk to office. Is a crap experience compared to get in autonomous vehicle, get out of autonomous vehicle right outside office door.

If the public transportation is good enough (which really means "has enough stations", which really means "we spend the zillions of dollars necessary to make that happen"), you aren't jumping from mode to mode to mode.  In Japan, I could walk to a train station and take a train just about anywhere and be within 10 minutes walk of my destination.  It's slightly less convenient now, and I do have to either drive and park to get the the station, take a cab (super expensive here), walk a couple miles, or bike (and then figure out where to park my bike), but it's still doable and only 2 modes of transport.  It seems to work pretty well for millions of Japanese people.  Those who live further out do need to use busses or bikes (rarely cars) in addition to trains.  But it's also important to note that buses here are clean and run on time.  Similarly, in Germany, the busses weren't scary or late or disgusting.  We lived about 3 miles from a train station, which was too far to walk if it was part of a larger errand, but the busses were fine.  For some trips, I would go entirely by bus, and for others I'd bus to the train station.  Easy and reliable. 

On a semi-related note, in Japan, one actually has to go to the police station and give them the location of one's parking space, as well as the type of the car, so the police can go measure the parking space to make sure that it exists and that the car will actually fit. No place to park?  No car. 

[Papa Mustache]

Just curious here - I see how some of this might play out successfully for direct work commutes.

But what do you do if you want to go visit someone or someplace for the weekend and want mobility while you are there.  Or if you just want to park at a trailhead and have the assurance that you have transportation back at the end of a weeklong trip? 

While folks may reduce ridership in urban areas it's a challenge in the 'burbs and rural areas.  So I guess if the point is to reduce snarls in urban areas, this idea might have a change. Maybe.  But even urban dwellers want to get out of town now and then.

Maybe the effort to use networks and smart phones to summon cars ought to be used to build spontaneous carpools. I need to go downtown, who is already on their way downtown and would like to have their expenses covered by picking up a few passengers along the way?

Also - the idea of rent out your self-driving car unsupervised - who would want to do that without vetting the passengers? I've given rides to friends I like who fiddle with the radio too much, slam the doors too hard, run the windows up and down out of boredom, etc. One friend that I'll never forget nearly burned the window motor up in my brand new car b/c he kept idly clicking the window switch in the up direction and the window was already up. Who does that to a person's new car? (year and years ago) When I realized what he was doing I silently reached over and locked out the windows (child lock button).

No way I'd pay $50K for a self-driving car and then "loan it out" to strangers - if they were unsupervised.