this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
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Ive been thinking for years that if we could put the (absolutely enormous) privacy concerns aside think of the environmental benefit of every major city in the world having an "AI" controlling the traffic lights and variable speed limits. Using numberplate recognition cameras and gps on every vehicle to optimise flow, reduce bottlenecks and minimise time spent in traffic.
That won't work because you're approaching the problem from the wrong angle; you're trying to "fix" traffic by encouraging more traffic. If you want to improve car traffic the only possible solution is to make other forms of transport more appealing. It doesn't really matter which form of transport you focus on, it could be trains, busses, bikes, walkability, etc; just as long as you ensure it's as or more efficient than a car for the majority of journeys.
The only way to fix traffic is for there to be less traffic.
Well you arent wrong but its not like its a "pick one" situation. With the unbiased data from the AI you could optimise all forms of transport. If you can see that theres clearly a lot of people driving from point A to point B you can examine the why and implement better solutions.
Society wastes a great deal of time looking for the perfect solution while some good ones sit right under our nose. If the AI solution has a city of 1 million drivers saving 5 minutes each way on an average commute of an hour. Thats the equivalent of 166k cars not driving that day and everyone saves 10 minutes.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make and the metrics you're using don't really make sense. If one million people are driving with an average commute of 1 hour (personally I find it insane that that's considered "normal" in some places, it should be an upper bound) and switch to a train which saves only 5 minutes each way they'd still save that same 10 minutes. Depending on what you mean by your "cars not driving" metric, that's anywhere between 1 million cars (no more cars driving) and 255k cars (carbon emissions of 1m electric car commuters vs 1m national rail commuters, using this data).
That's not even accounting for the induced demand previously mentioned, making driving more appealing only creates more drivers which makes driving worse.
And all of that is still only considering the traffic itself and not the effect of the infrastructure. Take a satellite shot of any random North American city and chances are a significant portion of it is just places to park a car. It's a bit less common to see a city center dedicate half of its land to bike, bus, or train parking; that land is better used for people or business instead.
The specific numbers dont matter.
If you take 1 million cars with an average useage time of 1 hour a day and reduce that by 10 minutes thats roughly the same as taking 1 in 6 cars off the road from an emisions standpoint.
Make it 500,000 cars and reduce it by only 5 minutes its roughly the same as 41,000 cars worth of emissions that werent pumped out of exhaust pipes.
No it doesnt solve everything. Yes a well designed public transport system would be a much bigger environmental benefit. But its something that could be done with current tech and without massive infrastructure overhauls with a real tangible benefit for the environment and society.
The numbers do matter because the numbers are literally your entire argument. You're arguing building for cars is more effective, you cannot make arguments about effectiveness without numbers. Alternative transport methods can be done with current tech since alternative transport methods literally existed before cars. There are plenty of examples of places that aren't car-centric, and most major car-centric cities weren't originally built around cars. I honestly have no idea how you could have thought that's a remotely reasonable argument? It's utter nonsense.
Even if your massive infrastructure overhaul argument was valid^1^, we're literally talking about a hypothetical scenario where you can pump absurd amounts of money into a project.
^1.^ ^It's^ ^not,^ ^just^ ^build^ ^other^ ^infrastructure^ ^instead^ ^of^ ^more^ ^roads.^ ^From^ ^a^ ^strictly^ ^capitalist^ ^perspective^ ^it^ ^pays^ ^for^ ^itself^ ^when^ ^more^ ^space^ ^can^ ^be^ ^used^ ^for^ ^taxable^ ^business^ ^instead^ ^of^ ^the^ ^dead^ ^weight^ ^of^ ^parking,^ ^and^ ^those^ ^businesses^ ^are^ ^more^ ^accessible^ ^to^ ^foot^ ^traffic^ ^making^ ^them^ ^more^ ^profitable^ ^and^ ^therefore^ ^generating^ ^more^ ^taxes.^ ^Not^ ^to^ ^mention^ ^the^ ^maintenance^ ^costs.^