We are all selfish bastards when it comes to sharing road space and public space.
When we drive, we complain about pedestrians jumping out in front of us, crazy cyclists who get in our way, and under-utilized bike lanes that are taking away valuable driving space and creating traffic jams.
When we take surface transit (such as buses and streetcars), we want all the cars out of the way so that we can move more efficiently. And we complain about drivers who don’t stop to let us off and on when the streetcar doors open. (Toronto specific reference.)
When we cycle, we complain about cars parked in the bike lanes, people who don’t look before changing lanes or opening their car doors, and drivers who honk at you because they just want you off the road and onto the sidewalk.
And when we walk, we complain about cyclists who ride on the sidewalk (they should be on the road!), cars that don’t stop to let us go, and slow walking groups who linearly block the entire sidewalk so you can’t pass.
We are never happy. And we automatically assume that we could do it better. (I know I’m guilty of this.)
But here are a few things to consider the next time you’re flipping the bird to someone on the streets. Here are a few things that we do know about urban mobility.
We are all selfish bastards when it comes to sharing road space and public space.
When we drive, we complain about pedestrians jumping out in front of us, crazy cyclists who get in our way, and under-utilized bike lanes that are taking away valuable driving space and creating traffic jams.
When we take surface transit (such as buses and streetcars), we want all the cars out of the way so that we can move more efficiently. And we complain about drivers who don’t stop to let us off and on when the streetcar doors open. (Toronto specific reference.)
When we cycle, we complain about cars parked in the bike lanes, people who don’t look before changing lanes or opening their car doors, and drivers who honk at you because they just want you off the road and onto the sidewalk.
And when we walk, we complain about cyclists who ride on the sidewalk (they should be on the road!), cars that don’t stop to let us go, and slow walking groups who linearly block the entire sidewalk so you can’t pass.
We are never happy. And we automatically assume that we could do it better. (I know I’m guilty of this.)
But here are a few things to consider the next time you’re flipping the bird to someone on the streets. Here are a few things that we do know about urban mobility.
There is an unprecedented number of condominiums in the development pipeline right now in Toronto. For argument’s sake, let’s assume 75,000 condominium suites – many of which will be built in central areas of the city.
At a parking ratio of 0.6 stalls per unit, which isn’t an unreasonable assumption today, that’s 45,000 new parking spots and potentially 45,000 new cars in the city.
If you think that 45,000 new cars will be able to get fully absorbed into the core and somehow move around in an unfettered way, then I believe you are mistaken.
If you think that there’s something that can be done to magically expand road capacity to handle all of these additional cars in the city, then I believe you are mistaken.
And if you think that adding a bike lane is the only reason you are currently stuck in traffic, then I believe you are missing the bigger picture.
Over a decade ago, we made a decision in this region to encourage building up, instead of building out. And along with that decision came a necessary rethink of how we get around. That transition is what we are living through right now.
The other thing we know is that the 4 modes of mobility that I started this post with are ordered from least sustainable to most sustainable.
Electric self-driving vehicles will reduce the impacts of driving, but it will also transform it into something that feels more like transit and less like the driving we know today. That will be a very good thing.
But I’m not yet convinced that it will solve all of our problems. To do that I think we will need to adopt a much more balanced and unselfish view of what it takes to move around a city. That, of course, isn’t always easy.
I spent this morning reading a long – but incredibly worthwhile – article by Tim Urban on Wait But Why called, How Tesla Will Change The World. (Are they all this long? It was my first time reading WBW.)
The article, of course, talks a lot about Tesla, but it’s so much more than that. It talks about (1) the history of energy, (2) the history of cars, and then about (3) Elon Musk and Tesla. If you have the time, I highly recommend you give it a read.
But since it is long and many of you probably won’t do that, here’s an extract from the third section on Tesla (EV = electric vehicle/car):
EVs aren’t there yet. Right now, there are legit cons. But as the next few years pass, EVs will get cheaper, battery ranges will get longer and longer, Superchargers will pop up more and more until they’re everywhere, and charging times will just decrease as technology advances. Maybe I’m missing something, and I’m sure a bunch of seething commenters will try to make that very clear to me, but it seems like a given to me: the gas era is over and EVs are the obvious, obvious future.
The car companies, as I mentioned, aren’t happy about all of this—they’re acting like a kid with a cupcake whose parents are forcing them to eat their vegetables.
But how about the oil industry?
Unlike car companies, the oil industry can’t suck it up, get on the EV train, and after an unpleasant hump, continue to thrive. If EVs catch on in a serious way and end up being the ubiquitous type of car, oil companies are ruined. 45% of all the world’s extracted oil is used for transportation, but in the developed world, it’s much higher—in the US, 71% of extracted oil is used for transportation, and most of that is for cars.
As Tim states at the end of his article, this piece is all really about change and progress. Progress is not inevitable. It doesn’t just happen as time marches on. It happens because of strong willed people who believe in something that many others probably don’t.
Because with many changes – regardless of how critical or beneficial they may be to society as a whole – there will almost always be entrenched interests that would rather see things stay exactly the same. But in my view, that shouldn’t get in the way of doing the right thing.
There is an unprecedented number of condominiums in the development pipeline right now in Toronto. For argument’s sake, let’s assume 75,000 condominium suites – many of which will be built in central areas of the city.
At a parking ratio of 0.6 stalls per unit, which isn’t an unreasonable assumption today, that’s 45,000 new parking spots and potentially 45,000 new cars in the city.
If you think that 45,000 new cars will be able to get fully absorbed into the core and somehow move around in an unfettered way, then I believe you are mistaken.
If you think that there’s something that can be done to magically expand road capacity to handle all of these additional cars in the city, then I believe you are mistaken.
And if you think that adding a bike lane is the only reason you are currently stuck in traffic, then I believe you are missing the bigger picture.
Over a decade ago, we made a decision in this region to encourage building up, instead of building out. And along with that decision came a necessary rethink of how we get around. That transition is what we are living through right now.
The other thing we know is that the 4 modes of mobility that I started this post with are ordered from least sustainable to most sustainable.
Electric self-driving vehicles will reduce the impacts of driving, but it will also transform it into something that feels more like transit and less like the driving we know today. That will be a very good thing.
But I’m not yet convinced that it will solve all of our problems. To do that I think we will need to adopt a much more balanced and unselfish view of what it takes to move around a city. That, of course, isn’t always easy.
I spent this morning reading a long – but incredibly worthwhile – article by Tim Urban on Wait But Why called, How Tesla Will Change The World. (Are they all this long? It was my first time reading WBW.)
The article, of course, talks a lot about Tesla, but it’s so much more than that. It talks about (1) the history of energy, (2) the history of cars, and then about (3) Elon Musk and Tesla. If you have the time, I highly recommend you give it a read.
But since it is long and many of you probably won’t do that, here’s an extract from the third section on Tesla (EV = electric vehicle/car):
EVs aren’t there yet. Right now, there are legit cons. But as the next few years pass, EVs will get cheaper, battery ranges will get longer and longer, Superchargers will pop up more and more until they’re everywhere, and charging times will just decrease as technology advances. Maybe I’m missing something, and I’m sure a bunch of seething commenters will try to make that very clear to me, but it seems like a given to me: the gas era is over and EVs are the obvious, obvious future.
The car companies, as I mentioned, aren’t happy about all of this—they’re acting like a kid with a cupcake whose parents are forcing them to eat their vegetables.
But how about the oil industry?
Unlike car companies, the oil industry can’t suck it up, get on the EV train, and after an unpleasant hump, continue to thrive. If EVs catch on in a serious way and end up being the ubiquitous type of car, oil companies are ruined. 45% of all the world’s extracted oil is used for transportation, but in the developed world, it’s much higher—in the US, 71% of extracted oil is used for transportation, and most of that is for cars.
As Tim states at the end of his article, this piece is all really about change and progress. Progress is not inevitable. It doesn’t just happen as time marches on. It happens because of strong willed people who believe in something that many others probably don’t.
Because with many changes – regardless of how critical or beneficial they may be to society as a whole – there will almost always be entrenched interests that would rather see things stay exactly the same. But in my view, that shouldn’t get in the way of doing the right thing.
What I meant by that was simply that conventional notions around private car use are going to change. And ultimately that is going to mean that we need to rethink public transport and how that fits into a broader urban mobility framework.
The study looked of what might happen when all cars become self-driving in a mid-sized European city (specifically Lisbon, Portugal). They leveraged existing transportation data from the city, but replaced 100% of the human powered cars with two types of self-driving cars: TaxiBots and AutoVots.
TaxiBots were driverless cars that would be shared with multiple people at the same time. In other words, they were a kind of pseudo-public transit. And AutoVots we’re your more conventional private taxi. They picked up one person at a time.
In the first scenario, they combined their TaxiBots and AutoVots with public transit (light rail) and discovered that the same number of people could be moved around with only 10% of the cars currently on the road. That’s a 90% reduction!
They also found that the city needed 20% less on-street parking and 80% less off-street parking since driverless cars don’t need to sit idle waiting for a driver.
In the second scenario, they removed mass transit from the equation. And in this instance they found that the city was still able to get around, but with an 80% reduction in the number of cars on the road. Remarkably, it also led to a 10% reduction in rush hour commute times.
These are pretty profound changes. Reducing the number of cars on the road by 80-90% is a significant change.
But it’s also why I’ve been thinking about the tension between private and public transport. As we get better at optimizing “cars” (their definition will change), what becomes the role of true public transit?
Ultimately, I think what will happen is a blurring of the two. In the example above, the TaxiBots served basically as small scale public transit. But that does not necessarily mean that true mass transit will become irrelevant. We’re just going to need to rethink how the entire mobility network fits together.
I’d now like to bring this discussion back to Toronto for a minute.
As many of you probably know from this blog, Toronto is on the cusp of deciding what to do with the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway (an elevated highway that runs across the downtown waterfront). It will go to City Council next month.
By today’s standards, I believe this concern represents an outdated way of thinking about cities and urban mobility. Adding more lanes is like loosening your belt to deal with obesity. However, it gets even worse when you think about urban mobility in the context of this post.
Given the profound transportation changes that are currently underway, I think there’s a strong likelihood that the Gardiner projections we have today will be completely wrong by 2031. I don’t know know for sure, but I’m guessing the models don’t account for the efficiencies being created by driverless cars and peer-to-peer networks.
In other words, I am suggesting that those 3 to 5 minutes could prove to be a red herring. The relevant question should be: Which decision will allow Toronto to build the absolute best waterfront in the world? And in my opinion that leads to removing the Gardiner East.
What I meant by that was simply that conventional notions around private car use are going to change. And ultimately that is going to mean that we need to rethink public transport and how that fits into a broader urban mobility framework.
The study looked of what might happen when all cars become self-driving in a mid-sized European city (specifically Lisbon, Portugal). They leveraged existing transportation data from the city, but replaced 100% of the human powered cars with two types of self-driving cars: TaxiBots and AutoVots.
TaxiBots were driverless cars that would be shared with multiple people at the same time. In other words, they were a kind of pseudo-public transit. And AutoVots we’re your more conventional private taxi. They picked up one person at a time.
In the first scenario, they combined their TaxiBots and AutoVots with public transit (light rail) and discovered that the same number of people could be moved around with only 10% of the cars currently on the road. That’s a 90% reduction!
They also found that the city needed 20% less on-street parking and 80% less off-street parking since driverless cars don’t need to sit idle waiting for a driver.
In the second scenario, they removed mass transit from the equation. And in this instance they found that the city was still able to get around, but with an 80% reduction in the number of cars on the road. Remarkably, it also led to a 10% reduction in rush hour commute times.
These are pretty profound changes. Reducing the number of cars on the road by 80-90% is a significant change.
But it’s also why I’ve been thinking about the tension between private and public transport. As we get better at optimizing “cars” (their definition will change), what becomes the role of true public transit?
Ultimately, I think what will happen is a blurring of the two. In the example above, the TaxiBots served basically as small scale public transit. But that does not necessarily mean that true mass transit will become irrelevant. We’re just going to need to rethink how the entire mobility network fits together.
I’d now like to bring this discussion back to Toronto for a minute.
As many of you probably know from this blog, Toronto is on the cusp of deciding what to do with the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway (an elevated highway that runs across the downtown waterfront). It will go to City Council next month.
By today’s standards, I believe this concern represents an outdated way of thinking about cities and urban mobility. Adding more lanes is like loosening your belt to deal with obesity. However, it gets even worse when you think about urban mobility in the context of this post.
Given the profound transportation changes that are currently underway, I think there’s a strong likelihood that the Gardiner projections we have today will be completely wrong by 2031. I don’t know know for sure, but I’m guessing the models don’t account for the efficiencies being created by driverless cars and peer-to-peer networks.
In other words, I am suggesting that those 3 to 5 minutes could prove to be a red herring. The relevant question should be: Which decision will allow Toronto to build the absolute best waterfront in the world? And in my opinion that leads to removing the Gardiner East.
