The Urban Land Institute’s Next Generation Transportation Thinkers speaker forum was held at Bunt’s downtown office yesterday morning. Thanks to ULI, Simon Fraser, and Bunt for hosting; and Gordon for moderating.
The speakers were engaging, the discussion was good, and like a good infrastructure policy geek, I was disappointed it was over so soon.
The talk inevitably veered toward autonomous vehicles; because that is what will happen when two or more transportation engineers gather in a setting. It is very much a thing right now whose impacts are poorly understood and disagreed upon, especially among experts. The diagram below explains their popularity among a particular Genus of nerd cohort.
Love for Autonomous Vehicles Explained in a Venn Diagram
Autonomous vehicles are a potentially life-changing phenomenon and transportation professionals talk about them in wistful, excited, and uncertain tones – like how Cavaliers fans talked in 2003 about this “LeBron James guy”. Dare we get our hopes up?
It would be nice if the video of the talk were made available. In the meantime I just have to shake my head at Disney’s vision of the future. The snippet of a giant freeway in the sky passing by the pyramids gives the shakes and badly as Vancouver’s abandoned freeway plans ever did.
But would one of those urban planning types reading this care to do a guesstimate of the population density of the planet as shown? The “City” looks like it would be the size of the lower mainland and house 50 000 ppl! Reminds me of that graphic showing the entire city of Florence could fit inside the space of an Atlanta Interchange! Who needs cars in Florence? See originalgreen.org/blog/costs-of-sprawl—the-speed.html
Closer to home, almost all of Burkeville can it into the airport interchange to the north:
http://www3.telus.net/arno/Burkeville.jpg
Author
https://www.facebook.com/urbanlandinstitutebc/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1017031764999276
Author
Ian, I just received a link to ULI’s facebook page on the event, fyi.
https://www.facebook.com/urbanlandinstitutebc/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1017031764999276
Author
Sorry, Ian. Looks like WordPress won’t allow me to paste the link. You can search it on FB, though.
Nothing happens overnight. It will come gradually.
We already have parking assist, lane assist, auto-speed control, distance control, NAV system with a voice telling you were to drive ..
A friend works at BMW and they use these 4 stages to explain BMW’s road to AVs:
Stage 1: foot off
Stage 2: hands of
Stage 3: eyes off
Stage 4: brain off
Many high-end cars already offer stage 1 on highways or even stage 2, but not on small very busy roads or poorly mapped roads. Oilsands firms and some large trucking firms now are experimenting with automated trucks in a controlled privately owned environment.
Stage 3 and especially 4 will take far far longer. Decades due to complexities, laws, liabilities .. see Uber. It is in many cities but not here. We can’t even get Uber done and we think AVs will be “imminent” ?
Car sharing, electric cars and AVs all come towards us in stages in the next few decades. It will be very very interesting.
I object to the misuse of language in this discussion about vehicles, particularly in regards to the use of the term “autonomous vehicles”. These machines are hardly self-governing and independent. We can think of this technology as having arrived at full autonomy only if and when a vehicle drives itself to the repair shop after self-diagnosis and pays the invoice before leaving.
NEWS STORY: AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES AND HUMOR DON’T MIX?
News articles on the future of autonomous vehicles are missing something. Humor!
This seems par for the course in discussions of this topic–on the radio, TV, or on the Internet.
In a blatant attempt to newsjack and catch the wave of interest in cars that drive themselves, I have a short cartoon-illustrated book (12 pages, 1700 words) called My Car Never Listens To Me (see attached), free at Smashwords.com.
In the story, a self-driving car makes trouble for its human passenger.
Is the world ready for a driverless smart car? No.
Must we be imprisoned by our technological creations? Probably.
The humor of exaggeration can provide an antidote to fears about the future.
If nothing else, check out the silly cover–possibly the first car with true arms and legs.