eclipsenow
Scripture is God's word, Science is God's works
- Dec 17, 2010
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Instead of paving paradise and putting up a parking lot, we could be tearing down the parking lots, and putting up a paradise.
Singapore is so dense they're going to have a layer of subway trains, then a layer of robot-taxi's (that no body but the company owns), then a layer of parks on top of that!

And traffic would be much more efficient. Central computers could group the cars in slugs that all go through the light at the same time. One could even imagine a scenario that if forty cars are going north on the main road and I was going east, my car would time itself for a gap. Everybody goes through the intersection without stopping, but the slug of 40 cars breaks in the middle as it approaches the intersection so my car can fly right though.
There is a potential for that, but it would freak the passengers out so might not be that popular. But car platooning (getting centimetres from each other and acting as one) could see highways used more efficiently.
There's a real danger that robot cars could make traffic far worse if:-
1. Everyone owns their own
2. Everyone see their own robot car as a PA (Personal Assistant) and send them on trips while they're at work. EG: Collect the dry cleaning, get the groceries rather than having the truck deliver it, etc.
This TED talk estimates traffic could be 5 times worse if we don't adopt car-sharing. Watch this TED talk! We're going to have to have those 40 people in 10 to 15 cars, and getting a discount for car-sharing, or even in just a handful of 'algorithm mini-buses' and getting a super-discount! (An algorithm bus determines its 'route' according to the closest collection of bookings that day).
TED Talk
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