Tag: driving

• One hour drive

  I’m taking next week off so that I can respond to emails from various places in Ontario and Quebec instead of from my desk. The out of office messages really fly at this time of year, so it’s usually a pretty good time to try for a recharge.

  Because of that, this post feels appropriate. 

  Sahil Chinoy of the Washington Post recently looked at anonymous cell phone and vehicle data (from Here Technologies) to see how far you could drive in one hour if you were trying to escape the downtown of various U.S. cities on a Friday afternoon in the summer.

  This exercise was done for 3 departure times on July 28, 2017: 4pm, 7pm and 10pm. The mappings all leverage 3 years of historical speed data.

  Here is a first set of maps showing a few cities in the northeast and in the mid-atlantic. Every city is shown at the same scale so that they can be easily compared.

  

  And here is a second set of maps showing a few, more car-oriented, cities.

  

  Not surprisingly, older transit-oriented cities like New York don’t do well in this contest. No matter what time you leave, it’s hard to make it past 30 miles. Whereas in the case of Vegas, it doesn’t really matter what time you leave. You should be able to clear 50 miles.

  That’s the other interesting thing to note about these maps – the spread between distances at the various times.

  I’m sharing these because I’m a sucker for diagrams, but I don’t think they tell the whole story. The modal splits and the population and employment densities are all very different across these cities. New York’s core competency is in moving lots of people in trains, not in cars.

  Although, perhaps the ironic thing about these diagrams is that a tighter drive radius might actually say something about how efficiently land is being used.

  2017.08.19

• Why dynamic road pricing is inevitable

  

  The Economist recently published an article called: How and why road-pricing will happen. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that there’s been lots of talk and support

  over the years

  on this blog for dynamic road pricing.

  It’s politically unpopular, but it’s an incredibly rationale way to deal with traffic congestion. 

  In Singapore – home of the world’s first congestion charge zone (1975) – they constantly monitor traffic congestion. As soon as average speeds drop over a three-month period, they simply raise the charge. Congestion gone.

  We know this works, but for many reasons road pricing is highly divisive. According to The Economist, there are a few reasons why this is going to become a bit more politically palatable.

  For one, the take from gas taxes and vehicle duties has been declining in Britain over the past couple of years. Electric vehicles will only exacerbate this trend. So governments are going to be forced to look elsewhere for money.

  Secondly, traditional tolls and congestion charges are becoming increasingly ineffective. Today in central London, private-hire vehicles are said to make up about 38% of all car traffic – almost double the share of traditional black taxis. 

  These are cars circling around the city, picking up passengers. Blunt charges based on suburbanites entering the city in the morning and leaving in the afternoon is simply not capturing the way that many of us move around our cities today.

  In other words, urban mobility is undergoing dramatic changes and the revenue and congestion management tools are going to need to adapt. If you’re interested in this topic, check out the full article here.

  Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

  2017.08.16

• Autonomous vehicles will strengthen the case for road pricing

  

  Joe Cortright of City Observatory recently published a post about the types of policies that cities should be looking to adopt in response to autonomous vehicles. It’s called: Pricing roads for autonomous vehicles.

  Many have argued, including urban economist Edward Glaeser, that autonomous vehicles are going to be positively disastrous for cities. Once you remove the labor costs associated with the driver and the overall price per kilometer plummets because of pooling/technological advances, we are going to see an huge surge in demand – well beyond the capacities of our roads.

  Of course, there are solutions. We can accurately price the roads, which is something that more cities should be doing today even before autonomous vehicles arrive. Here is an excerpt from Cortright’s article:

  “With modern electronics, and especially with autonomous vehicles, position and speed is monitored with great precision. There is no reason why they [drivers] should not pay for exactly the amount of roadway that they use. And we know that the cost of the city’s roadway varies substantially across space and over time. Use of road capacity in less dense neighborhoods at off-peak hours imposes nominal costs on the city’s road budget. In contrast, peak hour use of city streets and arterials, particularly in and near the city center, imposes huge costs on the city and its residents. Those who use the system at peak hours in congested locations should pay the costs associated with creating, maintaining, and where necessary expanding that infrastructure.”

  This isn’t a novel concept, which is why when Toronto was looking at a flat road toll I argued here on the blog that it was a step in the right direction but that it was too blunt a tool. 

  It’s a moot point now because sadly the province ended up pandering and rejecting the plan, but we should have been considering something that could achieve the above objectives. It needed more finesse.

  But in all likelihood our cities will have to face that reality sooner rather than later.

  2017.06.18

• The death of Big Oil

  Designing a building for 5+ years into the future can be tricky. The pace of change in the world today is astounding.

  Last month Seth Miller published a Medium article called: This is how Big Oil will die. His argument is that the cost of running an electric self-driving vehicle will be so low – simpler technology and no labor cost – that the personal vehicle as we know it will come to an end. People are inevitably going to give up their cars, which will result in a peaking of oil consumption.

  We’ve talked about this future many times before on the blog. But Miller’s argument ties it back to oil and also comes with a set of predictions taken from a report prepared by the consulting company RethinkX:

  – Self-driving cars will launch around 2021.
  – A private ride will be priced at 16¢ per mile, falling to 10¢ over time.
  – A shared ride will be priced at 5¢ per mile, falling to 3¢ over time.
  – By 2022, oil use will have peaked.
  – By 2023, used car prices will crash as people give up their vehicles. New car sales for individuals will drop to nearly zero.
  – By 2030, gasoline use for cars will have dropped to near zero, and total crude oil use will have dropped by 30% compared to today.

  If all of these predictions prove to be true, then what should we be doing today to prepare our cities for this future?

  2017.06.14

• Downstream effects of electric and autonomous vehicles

  

  I speculate a lot on this blog about what electric and autonomous vehicles will mean for the future of our cities. The reason it’s speculation is because it’s phenomenally difficult to know with any sort of certainty what the downstream effects of these technologies will be.

  I’ve seen some people claim that a car is still a car. That is, all of the same rules will apply even if they’re powered completely by renewals and we manage to make drivers obsolete (5-10 years?). But I fundamentally disagree with this line of thinking. There will be both positive and negative consequences. They are just yet to be seen.

  Benedict Evans recently wrote a post where he started to think about where some of these changes might happen. And so I thought it might be valuable to throw a few of these into the discussion mix. Here are some of his ideas:

  • About half of car maintenance spending in the US goes to things directly related to the internal combustion engine. Electric takes that away.

  • There are about 150,000 gas stations in the US. They go, along with their associated convenience stores, which is where the margins are made. Interestingly enough, more than half of all US tobacco sales happen at gas stations. Where does that go?

  • It is estimated that electric vehicles will increase overall electricity demand by 10-20%. But this could disappear with the battery storage and off-peak power.

  • Globally, about 1 million people die every year from car accidents. In the US, something like 90% of all accidents are thought to be caused by human error and about 1/3 of fatal accidents involve alcohol. Autonomy has the potential to take most of this away. Personally, I think we’ll look back and think about how dangerous driving used to be and wonder how/why we all did it.

  • A complete rethink of parking. This obviously gets talked about a lot. ~14% of LA’s land is thought to be used for parking. My guess is that parking ratios/requirements go way down (we’re already in the 0 to 0.3 per residential unit territory here in Toronto) and parking garages transform into yards for AVs.

  • Autonomous vehicles once again rewrite the retail real estate landscape. Benedict believes they will create more billionaires in real estate and retail than in tech or manufacturing. I like how he describes big box retailing as an arbitrage of land costs, transportation costs, and people’s willingness to drive and park. This point is likely about AVs + e-commerce. See yesterday’s post about Amazon.

  • Finally, his last point is that autonomous vehicles could become a kind of mobile Panopticon. The Panopticon was an institutional building typology conceived of by Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. It was based on the idea that inmates could all be monitored by a single watchman, without any of the inmates knowing if they were, in fact, being watched. It was a way of trying to impose strict obedience in prisons, and so on. Since virtually all autonomous vehicles require some sort of computer vision, Benedict argues that they could become the 21st century watchmen. Move over CCTV.

  The other big question is about decentralization. New transportation technologies have consistently promoted greater suburbanization – think streetcar suburbs to car suburbs. The fact that you’ll be able to use your time more productively in an autonomous vehicle is continually floated as an argument for this trend to continue. But I haven’t made up my mind about this one.

  Do you have any other thoughts on the downstream effects of electric and autonomous vehicles?

  2017.04.02

• We’re still on road pricing

  

  The New York Times recently argued that self-driving cars can’t cure traffic, but that economics can. Here is the key soundbite:

  “Maybe autonomous cars will be different from other capacity expansions,” Mr. Turner said. “But of the things we have observed so far, the only thing that really drives down travel times is pricing.”

  The argument here is that capacity expansions – such as additional lanes – never solve the problem of gridlock. Yes lane widening projects increase capacity, but the latent demand is so strong that the problem never gets solved. Even in places like Houston.

  We talked a lot about this phenomenon on the blog a few years ago when Toronto was embroiled in debate over the Gardiner Expressway East. But it’s interesting to think about self-driving cars as simply another incremental capacity expansion.

  I have no doubt that this technology will make more efficient use of our roads. Carpooling will be a lot easier – as is already the case. Cars will be able to drive closer together. We’ll be able to stop abrupt breaking and swift land changes, which actually create systemic traffic problems for everybody else.  And the list goes on.

  But there will still be limits to how many people can be efficiently moved on a particular strip of road. Exactly how there are limits to how many people can be efficiently moved via a particular subway tunnel, streetcar line, and so on.

  So if latent demand continues to outstrip available capacity, which has historically been the case, then we are once again back to the politically unpopular idea of pricing away congestion. As much as people criticize it as regressive, I believe that’s where we’re headed.

  2017.03.11

• Form follows parking

  

  “Form follows function” is a famous axiom of 20th century Modern architecture. It is based on the rational notion that architecture and its associated shapes, geometries, and spaces should be a direct result of their function. 

  It was a way of trying to eliminate the arbitrary ornament that had adorned previous architectural movements. In this case, if it had no function, then it should be stripped away.

  There have been many bastardizations of this pithy statement over time, but one of my favorites is: “form follows parking.” Obviously derogatory, it is this idea that much of the built environment is a result of parking requirements, rather than of more human factors.

  We see this in suburban building typologies (large surface parking lots), but also in urban infill projects where the below grade parking begins to dictate the structural grid and layout of the upper floors. It is, of course, necessary in many cases, but there’s also something subversive about parking having such a lasting impact on the spaces we occupy.

  That said, we know where the trend line is headed when it comes to parking. Streetblogs recently posted an article about the scarcity of parking in Manhattan and cited number of interesting stats.

  Because of the city’s bike-share program (introduced in 2013) and because of all of the bike lanes that have been added in recent years, the city has (rightly) removed approximately 2,330 on-street parking spaces in Manhattan south of 125th Street.

  Here’s another set of stats: 

  In 1998, New York City had about 810 parking lots and garages south of 60th street. Together, they accounted for approximately 112,826 parking spaces. As of last year (2016), the number of lots and garages had dropped to about 643 and the number of parking spaces to approximately 95,000. That’s a decline of about 16%, during a period of when the population of Manhattan grew by more than 100,000 people.

  I would also imagine that these pressures are increasing. So it is quite possible that “form follows parking” could be on its way toward obsolescence. I certainly feel it waning.

  2017.02.03

• Driving in the HOT lane

  

  Joe Cortright of City Observatory recently published an interesting post on HOT lanes (high-occupancy toll lanes) and cited a research paper by Austin Gross (University of Washington) and Daniel Brent (Louisiana State University). The paper looked at the behavioral response of drivers to dynamic HOT lane pricing. 

  They way HOT lanes work is simple: when traffic is light, the price dynamically decreases; when traffic is heavy, the price dynamically increases to ensure a minimum level of service. That is, the price increases until enough cars leave the lane and driving speeds increase to some minimum threshold. In this case, it’s 45 mph.

  The key takeaway from the report is that “value of reliability” appears significantly more important to drivers than “value of time”. Put differently: it’s less about the time I’m wasting in traffic and more about the uncertainty of not knowing when I’m going to arrive at my destination.

  It’s for this reason that HOT lanes are used more frequently in the morning (when you’re running late for that meeting) than in evening (when you’re just on your way home from work). 

  Gross and Brent estimate that the spread is about 7.5x. The typical driver values saving time at about $3 per hour and reliability improvements at about $23 per hour! This is fascinating because we tend to focus a lot on time. But arguably what people really want to buy is greater certainty.

  I can tell you that it’s definitely one of the things that I love about walking to work, or for that matter cycling somewhere. I always know how long it’s going to take.

  2017.01.31

• Province rejects Toronto’s proposed road toll plan

  

  Earlier this week I was in an Uber heading up to Charles Street and the driver made a comment to me. He said that since he moved to Toronto in the 90′s, traffic has gotten progressively worse every single year. He continued on to say: and yet we continue to build, build, build.

  My response won’t surprise anyone who reads this blog. I said that Toronto has become a far more exciting city since the 90′s because of intensification (though 1992 and 1993 were pretty awesome) and that the problem is our mental model. We haven’t moved beyond the car as the perceived solution to urban mobility.

  A perfect example of this is what just happened with the province vetoing Toronto’s proposed road toll plan. 

  Firstly, I fully agree with Marcus Gee of the Globe and Mail that this is both an act of cowardice (the province gave every indication that they initially supported the plan) and an act of arrogance (we are talking about roads owned by the city, not the province).

  I also find it incredibly frustrating that Toronto cannot control its own destiny. This is a mistake and it needs to change if we – and the rest of the cities in this great country – are to continue competing at a high level in this urban century.

  But to my initial point, the problem with this move is that it signals a status quo mental model. It is a clear reluctance to make any sort of bold moves to move Toronto in a new direction. I guess we are happy with the current trend line. More traffic.

  We shouldn’t be.

  2017.01.28

• BOOK by Cadillac

  Cadillac is just about to launch a new subscription-based car service in New York City. It’s called “BOOK by Cadillac” and the inspiration for the idea is as follows (taken from this Cool Hunting interview):

  “We believe there is an as-yet untapped space between traditional ownership (leasing, financing, buying) and the rental, ride or car sharing options available today (Car2Go, rental, Zipcar, Uber) — a space where experience is more important than ownership, but a luxury experience is paramount.”

  The way it works is that you pay a flat fee of $1,500 per month, which includes repairs & maintenance, insurance, taxes, unlimited mileage, and the ability to swap out your Cadillac vehicle 18 times per year. The idea here is that you can have one car in the city, one car when you drive to the mountains, and one car when you land in LA and are just feeling something a little different. It’s also commitment-free. Cancel any time.

  It’s all done through their app and there’s a concierge to take care of every little detail, including moving your stuff (sunglasses, phone charger, and so on) to whatever new car you’re swapping to. My understanding is that you can also make the swapping as carefree as you’d like. Meaning: “Oh look, there’s a new Escalade in my parking spot.”

  Here’s their marketing video (click here if you can’t see it below):

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-2c6BsqRYU?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

  Now, $1,500 is not cheap. But the value prop here is effortless luxury. I think it’s interesting to see car companies experimenting with new and different business models. 

  My view has always been that the most cost effective way to have a car is to buy a 2-year old model, pay it off, and then drive it for as long as it remains respectable. I am currently in that camp. But even that approach is starting to feel antiquated to me. 

  So much is changing in this space. Pretty soon, I don’t believe we’ll be thinking about car ownership in the same way.

  2017.01.06