urbanSTL

I think a small autonomous car with a limited top speed could be a nice complement to existing transit options. It'd be particularly useful in a downtown environment to get from one place to another that's not directly on a bus or rail stop.

It'd be a good thing to welcome Google to test their service in downtown STL (regardless of whether they accept or not). It could be competition for a taxi service, true. So let it be run by the MTC. Also, the limited speed would limit the perceived threat to human taxi drivers; drivers are 'faster' and can serve a larger area. There's certainly little threat of a Google autonomous car running at a max speed of 25 MPH challenging a taxi driver for taking someone from the airport to a downtown hotel, for example.

-RBB

Mercedes hopes to beat Google to it. Clip from the Today show this morning.

http://www.today.com/video/today/55372906

Intersection of the future with self-driving cars. Those are some brave pedestrians.

http://vimeo.com/106226560

Clever editing.

Here's the intersection of the past.

That is a great traffic film from the past. I notice the horses never run into each other, probably because they developed advanced visual horse-to-horse communication long ago. With 802.11p based vehicle-to-vehicle communication, we truly are going back to the future.

By the way, in the intersection-of-the-future video, there are about 12 dead pedestrians just off camera.

gary kreie wrote:The company also mentions on-demand. So the cool thing would be for a vehicle a little faster than these to pick you up at your home and take you to a metro-link station where a fleet of similar vehicles would be waiting at your end station to take you to your final destination.

Why take the train at all?

I deleted the paragraph about using a system like this on Grand to take elderly and disabled from metro link to The Fox or Powell. You, however, should walk.


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It's worth noting that the 1906 San Francisco piece was at least partially staged. If you watch closely you'll see the same cars driving through the shot several times. The Miles brothers, whose new SF studio made the fim, were trying to create a more vibrant and modern streetscape as a kind of early promotion; to help boost both their city and their new studio. There's a number articles on the thing floating around out there, several of which are in the footnotes of the Trip Down Market Street entry on Wikipedia. That said, it's still a darn fine demonstration of the way traffic fundamentally worked at the time. And still often does when it's a mix of pedestrian and slower wheeled transport. It's only when the relative speeds of the slowest pedestrians and fastest motorized vehicles become so dissimilar that more control becomes critical.

I'm personally a little skeptical that you'll ever be able to mix purely human pedestrian and bicycle with autonomous motorized transport quite that densely, as humans simply don't behave as predictably as all that. We tend to turn around instantly without thinking when we realize we forgot something at the table in the cafe and then, whoopsoedaisy, there goes your perfect robot record. (Unless you build in considerably more space.) Doesn't even really matter that it will be human error that caused it. It's always the motorist at fault, as the robot driver will have the absolute responsibility to not hit people, much the same as a human driver now. That said, that could be contemporary traffic in a lot of places simply sped up a little.

This video shows light early morning traffic at Ben Thanh Market in Ho Chi Minh. Things get considerably slower and heavier later in the day, but when traffic is moving it works like this. And the narrator does a nice job of showcasing interactions:


I have myself been both pedestrian and passenger in some of this very traffic. You can see the same circle from the scooter's eye level at about 3:50 into my own video. And we weave through traffic much like everyone you see there from start to finish. (Some heavy, some light, some early, some late.)


Anyway, the traffic isn't completely implausible, but I'd bet their footage is sped up just a little. Of course, if the pedestrians have very strict instructions to walk at a constant speed and direction, and the breaks are really quite good . . . still, I'd want more space than that. Even after having been through a fair patch of southern Vietnam many many times now.

This fall Audi is rolling out it's traffic signal countdown timers in 4 cities. Las Vegas, Seattle, Washington DC, and Portland. LA Times says LA will have to wait at least 2 years per a spokesman for Traffic Technology Services. “There are 114 agencies in the L.A. area and we have to work with each one,” he said. “Las Vegas has a single agency.” So how many agencies does our metro area have for traffic signal control? Is this another area where St. Louis will have to wait for life saving car technology because of our fractured government structure?

Here is the Audi video. Pretty cool stuff. Available now in some 4 cities.

While it is cool technology, Iit seems like an excuse to concentrate on the time down of the light and gun it when its green. Then they are no longer focusing on who is crossing the street

pat wrote:While it is cool technology, Iit seems like an excuse to concentrate on the time down of the light and gun it when its green. Then they are no longer focusing on who is crossing the street

I have witnessed this in Vietnam. There are countdown clocks at every traffic light. As soon as it get's close the engines start revving. (And someone often jumps the gun.) Pedestrians are pretty much on their own. (Even though there's a big billboard campaign trying to tell drivers to respect pedestrians.) I don't have a particularly good recording, as I was using a mediocre point and shoot camera, but you can see a little bit of it at 1:27 in a video I made of Saigon traffic:



You can're really hear the quality of hundreds of scooters and small motorbikes simultaneously revving their engines, but it's an impressive sound. A bit like living through a two stroke Sturgis Rally every day.

But with the stoplight countdown timer in the car, one would presumably slow down approaching a stoplight so it will be green when you get there, unless another car is in front of you. So you wouldn't tromps it off the line in either case.


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I do that anyway, honestly. No rush to get to a red light.

Denver planning for no parking needed in the future. http://www.denverpost.com/2016/10/15/de ... ving-cars/


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At this week’s U.S. Conference of Mayors, the assembled mayors from around the country unanimously adopted a resolution I authored to support the integration of AV technology within public transportation. Transit agencies please take note.

Among various applications within public transportation, autonomous vehicle technology could provide an ideal solution to the “first and last mile challenge,” increasing usage of new and pre-existing rail trunk lines and making public transportation a more effective and convenient option for many residents.

A municipal autonomous shuttle system would provide on-demand, point-to-point service for commuters throughout the city or any defined local area. It would take cars off the streets and in so doing would a) reduce traffic and b) save lives. But just as importantly it would increase mobility and serve the function which transit agencies, with their multi-billion dollar budgets, are actually supposed to fulfill.

A MASS system would also allow almost seamless connectivity to existing rail lines, while making public transportation a particularly attractive option for relatively short, local trips.
https://blog.connectedcarsworld.com/the ... portation/

How do AVs take cars off the streets?

Funny discussion about waymo self-driving cars in Phoenix. And what it could mean for bikes and pedestrians.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_ ... 2472048401


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^Not too bad. And when traffic slows down, because people can safely use the streets, maybe more people will take the train.

Bloomberg - Even After $100 Billion, Self-Driving Cars Are Going Nowhere

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... ng-nowhere

I am surprised Bloomberg never even mentioned vehicle-to-vehicle communication which could solve a lot these self-driving car problems.  Here is a new piece on the status of V2V in NY Times on October 5, 2022.  They're looking at 2025 at the earliest.  This may be behind the paywall.  

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/05/busi ... =share-url

or

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/05/busi ... ology.html

Context

https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/sa ... taxis.html