One way driverless cars might help is that they reduce the amount of land that has to be given over to carparks, especially in the US.
Where towns in Europe would build a multi-story carpark to serve a shopping mall, municipalities in North America may simply cover acres upon acres of land around a mall with asphalt (take the Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, or the Fairlane Town Center in Dearborn, MI), in the process creating an almost lifeless zone.
You wouldn't need that much space for parked cars if everyone arrived in a driverless Uber.
(Apparently, US parking lots cover an area of around 25,000 square miles, about twice the size of Switzerland:)
The US could also generally stop mandating such a ridiculous amount of parking. Parking minimums are scarcely different than soothsaying, “oh great book of zoning rules, tell us how much parking this bowling alley needs”. And the book is just made up, based on everyone else’s book which was ultimately based on a guess from 60 years ago.
There is a small development on previously industrial land near me with a Best Buy and a Kohls, facing each other with some parking in the middle. Half surface lot, half there story parking garage. On a busy day, maybe 60% of the surface lot will be full. The garage is useless, but required for X amount of retail square footage. A monumental waste of money and resources.
We don’t need self driving cars, we need to pull our heads out of our asses and change the absurd, baseless rules we build our environment around.
Seems like it'd be so easy to solve with all the data we have now. Just pay some youngsters to count cars and empty stalls for awhile and record what type of businesses are nearby and then give it to an analyst.
Autonomous buses. Or mini buses which apparently exist in LA already. Similar to Uber but the only option is to share with other riders. You won't get there quite as quick but it'll still be convenient and we won't need as many.
> Where towns in Europe would build a multi-story carpark to serve a shopping mall, municipalities in North America may simply cover acres upon acres of land
Couldn't you solve this issue without self driving cars by just building multi-story carparks like Europe?
Or using the same space to build shopping streets with multiple stores and some onstreet parking? That way it's a bit more social and scenic as well.
Multistory parking lots are more expensive, and ultimately unnecessary if you don't need parking in the first place.
First, determine how much you can eliminate car related infrastructure and implement infrastructure that are more efficient and are actually necessary.
Dollars that don't have to be spent on expensive and unnecessary infrastructure can be spent on making spaces more livable or increasing amenities.
I definitely agree, I live in the Netherlands and love the infrastructure philosophy here.
I just thought that in America the car dependecy was partly cultural and partly due to zoning laws which push the broader philisophical shifts beyond the control of individual design companies and contractors. The solutions I put forward above were meant to be read within that context.
Where towns in Europe would build a multi-story carpark to serve a shopping mall, municipalities in North America may simply cover acres upon acres of land around a mall with asphalt (take the Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, or the Fairlane Town Center in Dearborn, MI), in the process creating an almost lifeless zone.
You wouldn't need that much space for parked cars if everyone arrived in a driverless Uber.
(Apparently, US parking lots cover an area of around 25,000 square miles, about twice the size of Switzerland:)
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/sep/27/cities-elimin...