I am skeptical of claims that autonomous vehicles would decrease congestion even without taking into account this paradox (i.e., even if the density of cars on the road remained the same). All the claims seem to reference the same study [1], but per the abstract they are just simulating one circular lane of traffic. No "lane changes, bottlenecks, merges, or changes in grade". Intuitively, it seems like once you add all these other factors in, autonomous vehicles won't help much unless deployed on a wide scale; for example, it doesn't seem like one driver can do much to speed up the merging of cars ahead of it.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.01693

The original post even mentions that it’s if deployed on a wide enough scale. The point is that f it is, it will end traffic. I haven’t seen any arguments that address what they’re talking about it here in this thread so far.

>The point is that f it is, it will end traffic.

Will it though? Lyft claims that self driving cars are smoother and more consistent. They claim this will end traffic. Smoother, consistent driving doesn’t take into account traffic lights, stop signs, merging, lane changing and turning, all of which require you to slow down, even for a bit, and all of which are sources of traffic congestion. And of course bottlenecks as you move from a highway to city streets, and the slowing down as you reach your final destination. Intuitively, you would need a vast, high capacity tunnel network that would allow you to avoid all those things to “end” traffic (maybe). That’s more than self driving cars alone.

The original Lyft post references a news article that references the article that I linked to. This is under the "The end of traffic" headline.

Yes, increasing availability of cars through self-driving will result in more trips, probably from underage or elderly people. But add in a service like Lyft, and the facts change. Taxi services reduce the total amount of miles driven.

When I first heard that it sounded crazy, but think of this scenario: you live near your friends, but go to work at different places. You all agree to meet up for a beer after work. If everyone takes the same taxi home from the pub, you've saved two car trips.

I'm not sure you grasp just how fundamental a change in our lifestyles a switch to driverless cars could be, especially ones sold on a subscription basis with unlimited usage. It's the difference between first world countries with socialized medicine and those without.

Before, driving was a job that everyone had and took up valuable cycles away from living your life. You had to consider each trip, e.g., "How much gas do I have? What's the traffic like? My car isn't working, I have to skip going out tonight."

After, no matter what you want to do, you just call a car and get in. You don't even have to think about it. It's going to liberate so many people that undoubtedly frivolous trips are going to stack, similar to how people in countries with socialized medicine tend to visit the emergency room for less and less serious medical problems.

Since Uber has come to town I catch myself calling it for things I could have easily skipped or taken the bus to or suffered on my motorcycle for (rain, etc.). I might haven taken, on average, less than one taxi per year but now take at least 15 Uber trips during that same time period. I think this sort of liberating convenience will only increase once driverless cars become popular.