Last night I had a dream that I was driving around in a snowstorm and, for whatever reason, my tires had almost no tread on them. So I was all over the road. Strange. I have no idea what this means, if anything at all.
But it did remind me that I can absolutely imagine a time when the thought of driving your own car (outside of it being maybe a hobby) will seem positively archaic. I mean, think about how messy our current system is. Roads are a chaotic and oftentimes dangerous place.
The more interesting question for me though is: how will self-driving vehicles change our cities, our habits, and so on? In Elon Musk’s recently published Master Plan (Part Deux) he outlines 4 main goals for Tesla:
Create stunning solar roofs with seamlessly integrated battery storage
Expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major segments
Develop a self-driving capability that is 10X safer than manual via massive fleet learning
Last night I had a dream that I was driving around in a snowstorm and, for whatever reason, my tires had almost no tread on them. So I was all over the road. Strange. I have no idea what this means, if anything at all.
But it did remind me that I can absolutely imagine a time when the thought of driving your own car (outside of it being maybe a hobby) will seem positively archaic. I mean, think about how messy our current system is. Roads are a chaotic and oftentimes dangerous place.
The more interesting question for me though is: how will self-driving vehicles change our cities, our habits, and so on? In Elon Musk’s recently published Master Plan (Part Deux) he outlines 4 main goals for Tesla:
Create stunning solar roofs with seamlessly integrated battery storage
Expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major segments
Develop a self-driving capability that is 10X safer than manual via massive fleet learning
Enable your car to make money for you when you aren’t using it
Let’s think about what these could mean.
One translates into decentralized energy generation and storage. Now all of a sudden the cars on our roads will be roaming around our cities collecting and storing energy, eventually returning home at the end of the day to power our homes. I can already imagine fleets of sun worshipping cars chasing the light as it moves across our cities.
Two is recognition that self-driving vehicles are going to have a meaningful impact on traditional public transit. (Elon reveals that Tesla is working on high passenger-density urban transport.)
Three addresses the chaotic current state and the massive potential of networked cars.
Four is particularly interesting to me. I wonder to what extent this income will simply subsidize car ownership or if it could actually transform cars into an investment (rather than purely an expense). Will people end up buying self-driving vehicles in the same way that people buy real estate for yield?
Furthermore, how does this notion of a shared vehicle pool now completely change the way we think about parking requirements. For instance, today we think about parking in terms of individual usage. This tenant requires/wants X amount of parking. All 2-bedroom apartments require Y amount of parking.
But if we’re now all sharing our vehicles, parking requirements would then be based on some broader and collective demand curve. Parking would become less individualistic and instead become more of a yard where self-driving vehicles come to store themselves when not in use.
Once again, we reach a point where utilization rates go up for each vehicle and overall parking demand goes down. Good thing we’re getting rid of parking minimums.
“Minimum parking requirements create especially severe problems. In The High Cost of Free Parking, I argued that parking requirements subsidize cars, increase traffic congestion and carbon emissions, pollute the air and water, encourage sprawl, raise housing costs, degrade urban design, reduce walkability, damage the economy, and exclude poor people. To my knowledge, no city planner has argued that parking requirements do not have these harmful effects. Instead, a flood of recent research has shown they do have these effects. We are poisoning our cities with too much parking.”
And here’s his summary of what it costs to build a parking stall in various US cities (both underground and aboveground):
One of the things that’s becoming a lot more common in Toronto is parking stackers. For small infill sites there’s simply no other way to fit in the parking. You can’t lay out a traditional parking garage.
But while it’s still relatively new for Toronto, I think many of you would be surprised by how many projects there are in the pipeline right now that plan to use parking stackers. In the next 5 to 10 years, they are going to be quite common.
Some of you might be wondering how they work. There are a bunch of different solutions, from stackers to elevators and palettes, but here’s an example of a triple car stacker:
In this case, there’s a below grade pit and an open space that goes up into the second floor. This way each car remains accessible without having to move any of the others. If you want the car on the top shelf, just lower the other 2 into the pit. If you want want the car on the bottom shelf, just raise the other 2 into the second floor space (which is what’s shown above).
But here’s what I’m really curious about: How do you feel about parking stackers? Would you live an apartment or condo where that was how you had to park your car? Or would it be a deal breaker? Please let us know in the comment section below.
Enable your car to make money for you when you aren’t using it
Let’s think about what these could mean.
One translates into decentralized energy generation and storage. Now all of a sudden the cars on our roads will be roaming around our cities collecting and storing energy, eventually returning home at the end of the day to power our homes. I can already imagine fleets of sun worshipping cars chasing the light as it moves across our cities.
Two is recognition that self-driving vehicles are going to have a meaningful impact on traditional public transit. (Elon reveals that Tesla is working on high passenger-density urban transport.)
Three addresses the chaotic current state and the massive potential of networked cars.
Four is particularly interesting to me. I wonder to what extent this income will simply subsidize car ownership or if it could actually transform cars into an investment (rather than purely an expense). Will people end up buying self-driving vehicles in the same way that people buy real estate for yield?
Furthermore, how does this notion of a shared vehicle pool now completely change the way we think about parking requirements. For instance, today we think about parking in terms of individual usage. This tenant requires/wants X amount of parking. All 2-bedroom apartments require Y amount of parking.
But if we’re now all sharing our vehicles, parking requirements would then be based on some broader and collective demand curve. Parking would become less individualistic and instead become more of a yard where self-driving vehicles come to store themselves when not in use.
Once again, we reach a point where utilization rates go up for each vehicle and overall parking demand goes down. Good thing we’re getting rid of parking minimums.
“Minimum parking requirements create especially severe problems. In The High Cost of Free Parking, I argued that parking requirements subsidize cars, increase traffic congestion and carbon emissions, pollute the air and water, encourage sprawl, raise housing costs, degrade urban design, reduce walkability, damage the economy, and exclude poor people. To my knowledge, no city planner has argued that parking requirements do not have these harmful effects. Instead, a flood of recent research has shown they do have these effects. We are poisoning our cities with too much parking.”
And here’s his summary of what it costs to build a parking stall in various US cities (both underground and aboveground):
One of the things that’s becoming a lot more common in Toronto is parking stackers. For small infill sites there’s simply no other way to fit in the parking. You can’t lay out a traditional parking garage.
But while it’s still relatively new for Toronto, I think many of you would be surprised by how many projects there are in the pipeline right now that plan to use parking stackers. In the next 5 to 10 years, they are going to be quite common.
Some of you might be wondering how they work. There are a bunch of different solutions, from stackers to elevators and palettes, but here’s an example of a triple car stacker:
In this case, there’s a below grade pit and an open space that goes up into the second floor. This way each car remains accessible without having to move any of the others. If you want the car on the top shelf, just lower the other 2 into the pit. If you want want the car on the bottom shelf, just raise the other 2 into the second floor space (which is what’s shown above).
But here’s what I’m really curious about: How do you feel about parking stackers? Would you live an apartment or condo where that was how you had to park your car? Or would it be a deal breaker? Please let us know in the comment section below.
To put these numbers into perspective, he also looks at the median net worth of US households (2011) to show just how expensive this parking is for some groups.
Because remember, these parking costs get embedded into the cost of housing, retail stores, and so on.
To put these numbers into perspective, he also looks at the median net worth of US households (2011) to show just how expensive this parking is for some groups.
Because remember, these parking costs get embedded into the cost of housing, retail stores, and so on.
