This is the future of cities. Doing this would open the door for massive efficiency gains. Within these controlled "back-alleys," you could lay down metallic guides for the cars to glide down (dramatically reduced rolling friction losses), and couple vehicles moving in the same direction (dramatically reduced aerodynamic losses). Eventually you could electrify the whole thing so that cars wouldn't have to carry fuel while in the back-alley network

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It needs a catchy name though. Back-alley is too harsh. Something that represents our aspirations for the cities of the future. I'm thinking "Metro."

I like that nobody caught on. But yes, that's basically a Metro system. The difference is that a Metro system doesn't allow divergence without transfer and it's a "mass transit" system. Autonomous vehicles provide an opportunity to blend controlled and uncontrolled transit paths, privacy, and the ability to diverge without transfer while increasing traffic efficiency, reducing the dangers of driving, and freeing up commuter time for other activities, just like mass transit.

Hah, yes, I agree!

But with a difference of point to point rather than line-based. Autonomous technology will probably mean a kind of union between private and public transport, and between road and metro rail.

> vehicles could move around almost in tunnel-like back-alleys, with periodic embarkation points into pedestrianized open plazas and boulevards.

Sounds an awful lot like a subway or lite rail system to me. I've never understood the fascination with self-driving cars and what they imply for PT--how is such a system superior to a well designed and maintained train system?

I just find it amusing because autonomous vehicles don't really solve any traffic problems. You still have too many cars on the highway at rush hour. Even if they move better, they won't move as well as a train system would for the same number of people in much less space.

And they would be very limited in their destinations.

Cars can go anywhere.

Where do I find a subway that gives me a private cabin where I can leave my things, and still find them there on the trip back?

Would a private locker at a station, do?

Not really, because then you either have to transfer your belongings from station to station or you have to return to the station with your locker.

I don't really see the difference. You have to return to where your car is parked, too. And you have to transfer your belongings from your car to e.g. your house and so on.

Yeah. Something like that would solve so many problems.

We could really hide the rails underground and at last free the roads again for people to use, like the article says it was in the 1920's. We could reduce automotive accidents to a bare minimum, which btw is the main selling point of self-driving cars, far as I can tell. We could reduce pollution by a factor of 10, probably, which is the much bigger problem that the industry isn't try to sell a solution for - because more cars are not exactly what you'd call a solution to it. We could make our cities places for humans, rather than noisy, dirty, polluting, often deadly machines. But, no. We gotta have more cars. Because you can't stop the march of progress.

It's hard enough to get bike lines built, let alone a separate road system.

> We could end up with roads dedicated to cars being separated

We tried that, it's called the Interstate Highway System, and it was a half-trillion-dollar disaster.

How so?