Report: Autonomous Vehicles Radically Altering Landscape In Coming Decades

You're trying to graft a suburban mentality onto urban dwellers, with whom you may have trouble relating. Millennials are moving back into large cities, public transit use is up across the board, and urban properties located near public transit continue to skyrocket in value. We need to wake up and follow that trend. We don't need autonomous cars. We need higher fuel taxes across the nation with the extra funds generated by that going into subsidies to improve public transit infrastructure in our largest cities and to subsidize car sharing services. Also on the radar in most major municipalities is bicycle infrastructure, which is great because bicycle use generates no pollution and Americans are getting way too fat. Autonomous cars hardly solve that problem. If anything they'll make it worse.

@Superdessucke You are trying to graft the dreams of urban planners onto your predictions. There is no evidence of any mainstream move back into cities (see link below). You must also be from a warm weather area, because biking in sub-zero temps, snow, and ice is never going to catch on for any but a hardy few. Even in nice to bike areas biking typically accounts for less than 2% of commuters. I would also like to see a real study of the environmental benefits of biking when the full costs are considered including more traffic congestion caused by bike lanes taking away car lanes/slow bikes impeding traffic, extra hot water for extra showers and clothes washing needed by sweaty bikers, etc. People are going to love self-driving cars and it will likely mean even more suburban living as you comfortably get driven to work while sipping coffee and playing video games. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/29/the-triumph-of-suburbia-despite-downtown-hype-americans-choose-sprawl.html

@stingray65 And undoubtedly stuffing their faces with Dunkin' Donuts and McMuffins as their car does the thinking for them. At least fast food drive thru's will be more orderly. It's true that suburbs have been thriving over the past half century, but one internet study doesn't establish your position. I can cite studies too. http://www.planetizen.com/node/64090 http://placepromotion.blogspot.com/2012/04/why-back-to-city-movement-is-not-choice.html The last article wisely points out that there has been suburban growth, but it's largely subsidized by cheap gasoline. I don't underestimate the stupidity of the American government to subsidize things that don't need subsidizing and to not subsidize the things that do. But with growth in China and India and corresponding growth in demand for energy, cheap gas may become a thing of the past.

@Superdessucke As someone that lives in a country that taxes the crap out of motor fuels and cars ($8 to $10 per gallon depending on exchange rate), the amazing thing is that the vast majority of people still drive to work, school, etc., and most urban growth continues to be in the suburbs. Don't mistake the lower US fuel taxes for suburban subsidies, it really is about allowing people to keep their own money and make their own choices on where to live and how to get around. Car taxes are high here mostly because it is a stable source of revenue to support the vast welfare state, because citizens continue to buy heavily taxed cars and gasoline(aka inelastic demand).

If you look at the economics of public transit, autonomous cars will likely be cheaper than maintaining trains/buses/trams with expensive drivers, maintenance workers, schedulers, etc. plus the costs of building/maintaining the rails, overhead power wires, etc. for the trains. Most public transit systems are already money losers and only survive on subsidies from fuel taxes on car drivers, so if you take away a significant portion of users that have converted to self-driving cars you will have even larger deficits. It will likely be cheaper to offer subsidized self-driving cars to the poor, elderly, etc. that may not be able to afford them on their own, but even these subsidies are likely to be smaller than current public-transit subsidies.

@stingray65 Public transit will never work well for most people who are outside of major cities. Just one more of the reasons is that outside of dense urban areas, most of the time busses run far short of capacity, and they are so g@dd@m slow. Even subways outside of places like Manhattan and Paris aren't that good. When I lived in DC's Brookland neighborhood, six blocks from the red line, it still took me twice as long to get to my doctor's office, downtown by subway as it did by bicycle or car (the two were equal). Getting to the National Institutes of Health by subway took close to an hour, by car, 30 minutes. Now in east Lexington, outside of Boston, I could get to Harvard Sq. by bus in probably 45 minutes-plus, walking to the bus stop and then riding in. By car, 12 minutes if there's no traffic, plus five to park the car. By bicycle, 30 minutes, 35 if I take the bike path, which is slightly less direct.