It's not efficient. It is convenient. The most efficient system is always going to be a train or bus full of people. But that often isn't as convenient as your own car.
How many times do you ever see a taxi full of people? And a shared one makes for longer waiting and journey times.
How do you know they are unused you see them for a few seconds as you drive past, quite possible they will be used or have recently been used and parked up , not everyone travels in the same 2 second timeframe
So your proposing that these driverless taxis pick up several people on route, isn't that a bus
Great if someone else is paying and the cabs are local , not so good if your traveling 100 mile a day
Depends how you view efficiency, is it efficient that i have to wait for a cab say 20 minutes for a thirty minute journey is it environmentally beneficial
The general answer is no because my time is precious so it means less output. from an evidential position the cab has to travel to my location first so again its not efficient
The real win would be to integrate the (driverless) taxi and the train/bus bookings. The ultimate goal would be to offer guaranteed connections and reserved seating throughout.
In my recent experience, quite often, because if one went round the office on a Friday morning and said "anyone heading to the airport at 3 o'clock?" you very quickly found you had a couple of car's worth and people booked accordingly. Similar experience for taxis to/from hotels. With conventional taxis there is no incentive to optimise usage of the vehicles via journey sharing because it would result in less income for the drivers who, ultimately, own the business. Take away the drivers, add some technology to match up journeys and vehicles, and the rules change.
However, when I have used taxis recently I have had a smartphone application that gives me up to date information on the state of my booking - where the car is and an ETA. If the car is delayed I just find something else to do with the extra time - e.g another cup of coffee for breakfast or write another email. If the application also offered me a discount in return for accepting a delayed (or even earlier) start and a journey share I could modify my routine and pay less for the journey if that was my choice. There is a balance to be had between convenience and price and I reckon the technology could be getting close to creating a situation where private car ownership and usage in urban areas won't be worth the bother of finding (and/or paying for) somewhere to park and/or charge a privately owned car. There are other benefits: e.g. you could probably eliminate a lot of on-street parking which would free up additional capacity for the service.
Ah. So not only filling the towns with driverless cars running around empty, but increasing the size of trains so everyone gets a seat?
Have you ever lived in a big town and travelled at rush hour? ;-)
No. Where did I even suggest that? Which part of the word "offer" did you fail to understand?
Yes, I have lived in a large town (now a city) for nearly 30 years, and for around 20 of those years my day job was based in central London.
impossible to integrate non structured and structured timetables
I recently traveled from Birmingham to canley, Coventry 3,30 in the afternoon , standing room only , larger trains , pointless stations to small,
Not to mention that cars carry at lot more than just passengers. Some people need to lug quite a bit of stuff to and from work. Some may want to carry things to drop off somewhere on the way home - what are you supposed to do with them during the day when your car is no longer there to store them in 'til home time? Are you going to have to lug around a coat, umbrella, bags for shopping, phone charger, laptop, etc. all day just in case you need them?
You also need to be able to go into somewhere, not knowing whether you'll be a couple of minutes or half an hour and not have to call up transport and wait for it to arrive when you want to leave.
What happens when you want to transport dirty, messy items? Need to use a roof-rack? Trailer? Even a take-away curry - the car still stinks of it when you get in the next morning, which the next occupant may not appreciate! What if you have a dog and the next person is allergic?
Ooh, and I forgot to mention that I have also lived and worked elsewhere in the UK, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the USA. Maybe this has given me a somewhat broader perspective on urban transportation systems than some of the people who respond to my posts?
Plus humping the offspring's junk around to the various activies .
You have a good point though, the taxi's and Private hire have enough problems with drunken puking passengers on a Friday or Saturday night.
Not really. The idea of communal individual 'units' to transport individuals from door to door is hardly new. But if you think of why most own a private car and the use it gets put to, the flaws of such a scheme become apparent.
There are already schemes around with self drive hire cars where you pick it up from a (hopefully) convenient location and drop it off at one (hopefully) convenient to your destination. Thus saving the cost of a driver. And of course the costs of owning your own car. Now computer controlled driverless cars sound like they'd get round the door to door problem of those. But such things *always* end up being very much more expensive than the predictions. To the point where it will be much cheaper to own your own modest car. Which is also likely to be far more versatile than the 'units' proposed.
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