From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.physics,sci.energy
Subject: Re: Is car pooling for real? (was Re: Are bikes really less polluting?)
Date: 21 Jul 92 13:35:21 GMT
Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group

In article <1992Jul20.163426.25940@kth.se> tpalm@nada.kth.se (Thomas Palm) writes:
>The first one is better electronic communications. With video telephones
>electronic mail etc. in many cases people won't have to move as much as
>today. One may e.g. work at home or in a small, local office. 

Good solution for office workers. A better solution is to eliminate 
much of the useless paper shuffling, most of it government inspired. 
Then there are automatically fewer commuting office workers. Then the 
workers who produce real wealth by manufacturing real products can keep 
using their cars to get back and forth to work. The unemployable office 
workers can be shipped off to a rural commune to plant rice. 
(Worked for Pol Pot.) 1/2 :-)

>In densely populated areas there is also the concept of light-rail,
>automatic "taxis". The difference from todays mass transit is that you 
>may order a private vehicle to go just where you want to go. Using 
>larger, mass-transit vehicles would probably be cheaper, although slower,
>though. Computers would allow you to mix them easily.

Robocabs.

>The advantages over automatic cars are several:
>
>* Vehicles travel on their own, preferably elevated, track. This makes it
>  much easier to control the movement. No kids on the street etc.

This is actually the same *dis* advantage shared with mass transit. The
relatively few fixed routes limit flexibility.

>* Driven by electricity from the rail. Less energy consumption and less
>  environmental inpact. 

Advantage. 

>* The average car is used only a couple of hours a day. The rest of the
>  time it just wastes space. These vehicles would be working day round
>  (neglecting variations in traffic). Thus less capital cost, and parking
>  space.

Advantage. Also available to street operated robocabs.

>* Compared to todays cars, would allow much higher vehicle densities and
>  speeds in cities. It would also allow the passenger to do something
>  other than drive. 

Advantage. Also available to street operated robocabs.

>Disadvantages:
>
>* Requires a new infrastrucure. Advocates of the systems have on the other 
>  hand calculated that just the saved land area could pay for the investment.

But the land area for traditional roads is already in use. You can't
economically convert it to other uses because of it's unfortunate 
configuration. So you don't save any land area until you tear down all
the buildings, redraw all property boundaries, and redevelop all the land.
Major bummer.

>* It would be impractical to have tracks to every home, which would 
>  necessitate a short walk to the closest stop. 

Define short. In America it's not unusual for the next *house* to be
two miles away. The majority of the population lives *outside* city
boundaries. Increasingly, the *jobs* are also outside city boundaries.
That's the same dilemma facing mass transit. The density of living areas
is too low while the work destinations are in multiple high density
clusters scattered over the countryside. The traditional downtown is
a thing of the past in most urban areas. That's why fixed rail transit
has been an economic failure in most areas. 

Robocabs that can use the existing streets more effectively would be helpful.
However, the commute pattern still exists with very high peak flows followed
by lower flows. This means that effectively there needs to be a robocab
for each commuter since they all need to travel at roughly the same time,
though not necessarily to the same destinations. That negates most of the 
advantages of the public conveyance. Privately owned robocars distribute 
the costs better in this case while keeping the advantages of higher density 
and higher speed highway usage.

>* Even if you may travel alone it is not personal property, which may
>  annoy some. Some work left for the social engineers?

Pride of ownership is a factor, but if the transport is quick, efficient,
takes the most direct route to the destination, allows carriage of 
miscellaneous sundries portal to portal, and offers competitive cost, 
then many Americans could be convinced to use it.

One thing many posters have overlooked in touting mass transit schemes
is the value of time. Most people on the net would value their time in
excess of $20 an hour. Adding an hour to the daily commute puts the
relative cost of individual transport versus mass transit in a different
light. For paper shufflers, some of the time lost in using mass transit
can be recouped by doing work on the train, though few employers are willing
to count the worker as being on the clock while in transit. But for productive 
workers, that option is difficult because most trains don't have a lathe, or
other tooling, available for use.

Gary