Technology

Seems like they thought that ride-sharing an Uber would reduce traffic, but the cheaper prices just ended up with more people using ride-hailing services instead of public transport.

Full article text: ##Uber was supposed to help traffic. It didn’t. Robotaxis will be even worse ###Our research at MIT helped make the case for ride-sharing. We were wrong. We don’t want to make the same mistake with robotaxis Carlo Ratti, John Rossant Sep. 16, 2023

A rush of feet, a cone, and screech! The pinnacle of human technological prowess grinds to a halt.

Activists in San Francisco have discovered that they can immobilize robotaxis with nothing more than a simple orange traffic cone.

This attention-grabbing, legally ambiguous stunt has succeeded in showcasing the limits of autonomous vehicle technology. But it may ultimately miss the bigger picture.

The real threat from robotaxis is the underlying technology. Once these cars inevitably learn to get around the traffic cones and gain the public’s trust, their convenience could seduce us into vastly overusing our cars.

The result? An artificial-intelligence-powered nightmare of traffic, technically perfect but awful for our cities.

Why do we believe this? Because it has already come to pass with ride-sharing.

In the 2010s, the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where one of us serves as the director, was at the forefront of using Big Data to study how ride-hailing and ride-sharing could make our streets cleaner and more efficient. The findings appeared to be astonishing: With minimal delays to passengers, we could match riders and reduce the size of New York City taxi fleets by 40%. More people could get around in fewer cars for less money. We could reduce car ownership, and free up curbs and parking lots for new uses.

This utopian vision was not only compelling but within reach. After publishing our results, we started the first collaboration between MIT and Uber to research a then-new product: Uber Pool (now rebranded UberX Share), a service that allows riders to share cars when heading to similar destinations for a lower cost.

Alas, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Our research was technically right, but we had not taken into account changes in human behavior. Cars are more convenient and comfortable than walking, buses and subways — and that is why they are so popular. Make them even cheaper through ride-sharing and people are coaxed away from those other forms of transit.

This dynamic became clear in the data a few years later: On average, ride-hailing trips generated far more traffic and 69% more carbon dioxide than the trips they displaced.

We were proud of our contribution to ride-sharing but dismayed to see the results of a 2018 study that found that Uber Pool was so cheap it increased overall city travel: For every mile of personal driving it removed, it added 2.6 miles of people who otherwise would have taken another mode of transportation.

As robotaxis are on the cusp of proliferating across the world, we are about to repeat the same mistake, but at a far greater scale. The futuristic allure of autonomy — and the enormous profits it could generate for its creators — will be hard for governments and the public to resist. But we cannot let a shiny new piece of technology drive us into an epic traffic jam of our own making.

The best way to make urban mobility accessible, efficient and green is not about new technologies — neither self-driving cars nor electric ones — but old ones. Buses, subways, bikes and our own two feet are cleaner, cheaper and more efficient than anything Silicon Valley has dreamt up.

What’s the Cadillac of reducing our dependence on Cadillacs? The good old-fashioned bus.

This is not to say self-driving technology has no role in the future, just a different (and perhaps a bit less lucrative) one than GM-backed Cruise and Alphabet-backed Waymo seem to be currently focused on.

Autonomous technology could, for example, allow cities to offer more buses, shuttles and other forms of public transit around the clock. That’s because the availability of on-demand AVs could assure “last-mile” connections between homes and transit stops. It could also be a godsend for older people and those with disabilities. However, any scale-up of AVs should be counterbalanced with investments in mass transit and improvements in walkability. Above all, we must put in place smart regulatory and tax regimes that allow all sustainable mobility modes — including autonomous services — to scale safely and intelligently. They should include, for example, congestion fees to discourage overuse of individual vehicles.

To get new technologies right, our cities might follow the example of Singapore. Thanks to its Smart Nation program, the Asian city is now at the forefront of experimentation with autonomy. Yet, like San Francisco, it has experienced hiccups with its self-driving car pilot programs; young people have taken to confusing the vehicles by throwing balls or, more boldly, getting in front of them and dancing. The first reaction of the government, unamused, was to mull a law banning the harassment of self-driving cars.

However, unlike San Francisco, Singapore has little to worry about in the long run because it already has robust systems to control traffic — a highly efficient mass transit network and a system of Electronic Road Pricing that dynamically taxes cars to prevent congestion.

These types of measures are easier said than done. To pass even one such efficient, top-down measure in an American city would be no small feat. But this is still a gold standard we should strive to emulate.

The allure of the self-driving car is that it will liberate us: from thought, from action, from responsibility. But that is not how new technology, from the wheel to the internet, has ever worked. By unlocking new possibilities, technological progress forces us to make new, difficult choices about how to manage it. The next few years will be crucial; we all need to be alert to the unintended consequences of this technology.

Self-driving cars are coming, but it is all of us who need to take the wheel.

Carlo Ratti is a practicing architect and a professor at MIT, where he directs the Senseable City Lab. He is a co-author of “Atlas of the Senseable City.” John Rossant is founder and CEO of CoMotion, a conference and media platform focused on future mobility.