Could driverless cars cause more congestion in urban cores?



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With the approach of the era of driverless cars, a new Boston-based study suggests that vehicles could increase congestion in city centers, as more and more people prefer public transport. The studies conducted by the World Economic Forum and the Boston Consulting Group are based on a simple premise, supported by 10 months of research and one of the most specific surveys conducted on the autonomous areas. Cars: As the cost of using services like Uber and Lyft decreases because companies no longer need to pay drivers, people who use public transit will opt for door-to-door service rather than for the bus or the subway. If it's the same price or just a little more, the more I do not have to walk to the train station, I do not have to worry about wearing an umbrella , I do not have to check the schedules, I do not have to log in, why someone would take rain, "said Augustin Wegscheider, one of the report's authors.

Why could this cause 5.5% more congestion in downtown Boston? Because the vehicles of the raid fleet will begin to replace private cars.


Waymo autonomous vehicles are posted at the Google I / O 2018 conference at the Shoreline Amphitheater on May 8 in Mountain View, California. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

"You could have fewer vehicles on the road, but the vehicles driving on the road run 12 hours a day, "said Wegscheider." The average car in Boston is used for something like 12 mi nudes a day. "

The study points out, he said," that if you put the right policies in place to actively manage the adoption of [autonomous vehicles] congestion could actually worse. The answer to this question, according to the study, is that these policies should encourage people to share autonomous vehicles provided by traveling companies. Bring more people into the car. Wegscheider said. "If you ask consumers," Would you do that? They say, "No, I'm not going to share a car with strangers," but if it costs $ 2 instead of $ 7, they say, "Okay. "

The situation will be very different in most suburbs, according to the study, where road transportation services will primarily replace the use of personal cars rather than public transit, and travel time will decrease by 12.1%. "

"There, the compromise is to sit in traffic for a 10-mile trip and treat it myself and pay $ 30 for city parking every day, I could invest that $ 30 in the ride and use time, "said Wegscheider

And the public transit service against the road transportation service that will apply in urban centers will not obstruct the suburban streets

" If I take the train for an hour.The price went from $ 80 to $ 40 [for the same trip] it's still a trade-off between $ 40 and $ 6, "he said." People will continue to take the train. "

The study also revealed that the advent of autonomous cars abroad that in the United States, where a deeply rooted automotive culture born breeds skepticism about the abandonment of the steering wheel.

The report surveyed 5,500 drivers in 27 cities worldwide, noting that just over half of Americans say they want to ride in a driverless car. In two counties where the number of cars has exploded in recent years – China and India – 75 to 85% of people said that they would accept autonomous vehicles.

The difference, according to Mr. Wegscheider, is that the United States "Some people would go from walking or cycling to an autonomous vehicle," he says, "rather than to a person who grew up in the suburb of Detroit and who says, "I drove"

Wegscheider says he's wary of many investigations into whether people are willing to adopt driverless cars.

"You can do a study that 80% of people are afraid of [autonomous vehicles] and you can just as easily find a study that says that 80 percent of people are excited about [autonomous vehicles]. neither of them means anything, "he said. "We tried to do it, in these very specific situations," You're going to work, it's a 10-mile trip, you're traveling alone at 7 o'clock in the morning, it's raining, you have these eight options at the following costs and the next traveling experience, which one do you take? & # 39; "

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