>
More traffic = more transportation services provided, so the first point isn't inherently bad.And as he points out (@29:56), more traffic would mean a push for more roads, which is inefficient and wasteful: it takes over a dozen lanes of highway to move less people per hour than a signal lane-width of subway. E.g., (@32:11) more car traffic caused the elimination of the trolley/tram/streetcar on the Brooklyn Bridge so that another car lane could be added which decreased the services provided:
> If the job of the Brooklyn Bridge is to move people between the two boroughs, the reallocation of space from transit to cars has been disastrous. In 1902, one year before the photograph was taken, the Brooklyn Bridge moved roughly 341,000 people a day across all its modes, according to the Federal Highway Administration. It hit its peak capacity a few years later, with 426,000 people using it each day in 1907.
> Today, 125,000 motor vehicles cross the Brooklyn Bridge each day [PDF], as do roughly 4,000 pedestrians and 2,600 cyclists. For the bridge to carry as many people as it did at its peak, each of those cars would need to carry more than three people, but they do not. In 1989, when the city counted around 132,000 motor vehicles crossing, the FHWA estimated that 178,000 people crossed the bridge daily.
* https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2011/04/11/the-efficient-past-an...
Every mode of transportation needs space to operate, and by focusing on cars for private transportation it has decreased route capacity compared to every other mode, even walking:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_dif...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_capacity
> The noise and pollution concerns call for building robotaxis that are quieter and lighter-weight, which seems like what's actually occurring.
Noise is a function of speed, so any vehicle travelling >50 kph will cause noise: is there a desire to restrict speeds? If we're going with EVs for our future, the mass of the batteries for a given range can hardly be reduced.
> I admit his shallow dismissal of mass traffic fatalities as "marketing" and "corporate profits" immediately destroyed all credibility in my eyes.
And his other point (@13:02) that if American road designs were similar to (e.g.) Swedish road designs there would be a 80% drop in fatalities with current technologies? No (possibly) pie-in-the-sky tech needed. Perhaps there could be benefits to autonomous vehicles (AVs), but mass traffic fatalities can be reduced now if the actual desire is there, e.g., Hoboken, New Jersey, has had zero traffic deaths over the last seven years:
* https://apnews.com/article/hoboken-zero-traffic-deaths-dayli...
And as he points out (@29:56), more traffic would mean a push for more roads, which is inefficient and wasteful: it takes over a dozen lanes of highway to move less people per hour than a signal lane-width of subway. E.g., (@32:11) more car traffic caused the elimination of the trolley/tram/streetcar on the Brooklyn Bridge so that another car lane could be added which decreased the services provided:
> If the job of the Brooklyn Bridge is to move people between the two boroughs, the reallocation of space from transit to cars has been disastrous. In 1902, one year before the photograph was taken, the Brooklyn Bridge moved roughly 341,000 people a day across all its modes, according to the Federal Highway Administration. It hit its peak capacity a few years later, with 426,000 people using it each day in 1907.
> Today, 125,000 motor vehicles cross the Brooklyn Bridge each day [PDF], as do roughly 4,000 pedestrians and 2,600 cyclists. For the bridge to carry as many people as it did at its peak, each of those cars would need to carry more than three people, but they do not. In 1989, when the city counted around 132,000 motor vehicles crossing, the FHWA estimated that 178,000 people crossed the bridge daily.
* https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2011/04/11/the-efficient-past-an...
Every mode of transportation needs space to operate, and by focusing on cars for private transportation it has decreased route capacity compared to every other mode, even walking:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_dif...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_capacity
> The noise and pollution concerns call for building robotaxis that are quieter and lighter-weight, which seems like what's actually occurring.
Noise is a function of speed, so any vehicle travelling >50 kph will cause noise: is there a desire to restrict speeds? If we're going with EVs for our future, the mass of the batteries for a given range can hardly be reduced.
> I admit his shallow dismissal of mass traffic fatalities as "marketing" and "corporate profits" immediately destroyed all credibility in my eyes.
And his other point (@13:02) that if American road designs were similar to (e.g.) Swedish road designs there would be a 80% drop in fatalities with current technologies? No (possibly) pie-in-the-sky tech needed. Perhaps there could be benefits to autonomous vehicles (AVs), but mass traffic fatalities can be reduced now if the actual desire is there, e.g., Hoboken, New Jersey, has had zero traffic deaths over the last seven years:
* https://apnews.com/article/hoboken-zero-traffic-deaths-dayli...