Uber and Lyft have been working on ride-sharing algorithms with some degree of success.
For example, in San Francisco, Lyft’s carpooling service makes up 50% of rides.
Professor Daniela Rus of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) researched actual taxi data and determined 3,000 ride-sharing cars could replace every cab in New York City.
Let’s turn our attention to the actual report: carpooling apps could reduce traffic 75%.
Led by Professor Daniela Rus of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), researchers developed an algorithm that found that 3,000 four-passenger cars could serve 98 percent of taxi demand in New York City, with an average wait-time of only 2.7 minutes.
The team also found that 95 percent of demand would be covered by just 2,000 ten-person vehicles, compared to the nearly 14,000 taxis that currently operate in New York City.
Using data from 3 million taxi rides, the new algorithm works in real-time to reroute cars based on incoming requests, and can also proactively send idle cars to areas with high demand – a step that speeds up service 20 percent, according to Rus.
“To our knowledge, this is the first time that scientists have been able to experimentally quantify the trade-off between fleet size, capacity, waiting time, travel delay, and operational costs for a range of vehicles, from taxis to vans and shuttles,” says Rus. “What’s more, the system is particularly suited to autonomous cars, since it can continuously reroute vehicles based on real-time requests.”
Existing approaches are still limited in their complexity. For example, some ride-sharing systems require that user B be on the way for user A, and need to have all the requests submitted before they can create a route.
In contrast, the new system allows requests to be rematched to different vehicles. It can also analyze a range of different types of vehicles to determine, say, where or when a 10-person van would be of the greatest benefit.
The system works by first creating a graph of all of the requests and all of the vehicles. It then creates a second graph of all possible trip combinations, and uses a method called “integer linear programming” to compute the best assignment of vehicles to trips.
After cars are assigned, the algorithm can then rebalance the remaining idle vehicles by sending them to higher-demand areas.“A key challenge was to develop a real-time solution that considers the thousands of vehicles and requests at once,” says Rus. “We can do this in our method because that first step enables us to understand and abstract the road network at a fine level of detail.”
The final product is what Rus calls an “anytime optimal algorithm,” which means that it gets better the more times you run it – and she says that she’s eager to see how much it can improve with further refinement.
“Ride-sharing services have enormous potential for positive societal impact with respect to congestion, pollution and energy consumption,” says Rus. “It’s important that we as researchers do everything we can to explore ways to make these transportation systems as efficient and reliable as possible.”
Video Simulation
Drivers Not Needed
Will people get annoyed when the algorithm decides the first of 10 people to get in the van is the last one dropped off?
Regardless, such technology is coming. And of course it will not be long before drivers will not be needed at all.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
The study also assumes people are willing to share a cab with strangers.
That is what autonomous cars are all about. Getting us to give up all control and view vehichle travel like a train. Give up control and go into passenger mode. Future generations of city dwellers will not even know what a pov is. Povs will be outlawed. Of course wealthy will not have to share a ride.
Or any politician …
We already have ride sharing vehicles — buses, trains, subways, hotel courtesy vans… its hardly the “new thing” that Mish or this bimbo professor seem to think.
Despite the widespread availability of ride sharing, taxis and limos continue to operate profitably in every major city I travel to. Even in crowded places with dirt cheap labor — think southeast Asian countries — rickshaws and taxis still operate profitably.
This “MIT research” just proves how cloistered and out of touch with the real world college professors have become.
You are leaving out government intervention. When the pov is forbidden in cities except for electric automated vehicles, then this will become a reality. A pay as you go system instead of individually owned cars. We will be forced onto a modified mass transit system.
You are forgetting that some of that government (the taxi and limo commission) makes its living from selling taxi medallions. I don’t know if you can fight city hall, but city hall fights city hall a lot.
Also, please direct your attention to Detroit. When the central planners get to uppity and charge obscene taxes — everyone picks up their marbles and leaves. The city is left a shambles. City employees lose their pensions, and they will blame NYC “Mayor Blatto” or his predecessor “His Nanny-ness”. Again, city hall will defeat itself.
NYC home prices are collapsing because democrat voters in the second most liberal city in the country will not tolerate Mayor Blasio’s socialist stupidity.
The one who seems out of touch is you, Fred.
Buses, trains, etc. all run on SPECULATED usage. Guess wrong and the costs go way up. Airlines are the only passenger mode that makes any effort to review the usage data on more than a bi-annual basis. The researchers are now able to do this in REAL-TIME which will greatly reduce costs and make transportation way more affordable – without government central planning.
EVERY mode you mention, with the exception of ride-sharing, has service levels and prices fixed by government. Guess wrong and they just raise fares, cut service, raise taxes, etc. Apparently you like lots of wasteful crony capitalism.
I am talking about the real world, not how things theoretically work in your research world
“I don’t want to share a ride with 9 strangers.”
Fred, ride sharing fails because CONSUMER DEMAND. The auto industry sells 18M cars a year because people want the individual freedom and PRIVACY of their own vehicle.
Driverless cars for most people will just mean being more comfortable. It’s not going to change how many people will be willing to share, which equals LESS COMFORT.
Driverless cars will happen big time. Soon. Ride-sharing is another matter. People want to get to their destination, not sit in a car with strangers.
I don’t like driverless cars-they malfunction and you are screwed.
I hope they don’t happen big time.
Fred, why the gratuitous sexist remark? It only subtracts from your argument.
Your perception of a sexist remark — like all politically correct censorship — is a problem for you to deal with.
No one else had a problem. You think you are better than others because of your PC-ness, it just makes you sound weak and feeble that you can’t handle an adult conversation.
Get yourself a coloring book and go cry with the other campus sissies.
“Sissie” is homophobic, so you are on a roll today, caveman. /sarc
Sixooo is entirely correct.
The study is a study based on stupidity..
A. It assumes you want to travel with others
in NYC for example – the “others” may not share your interests
but may want to share your purse.
Stupidity because it frankly has NOTHING to do with reality.
You think I am sharing a cab at 8:00 p.m. at night
with no driver and 3 strangers picked up and dropped off
in different areas ?
Come on. Stupidity.
B. There is No Way this is true anyway. Ever been in NYC in
a rain storm and tried to get a cab ?
Even no rain outside Grand Central in peak hours ?
I call BS.
Believe me this is total BS. The numbers are fudged.
They probably discuss perfect weather off peak.
>>>>>>>>>> I just looked at the posted pictures
they state Thursday 19.44.30
So a Thursday Night at 7:00 p.m. ( a.m. ) and No Rain ?
++++ Rest assured the study is biased – relies on poor data –
and is complete nonsense. ++++
After dark – especially – NO ONE is jumping in a car with complete
strangers in NYC with no driver. Insane to believe they would.
Well no female anyway. And no one over the age of 50.
Good Grief.
.
.
.
tourist
The study assumes you want to save money on traveling. All the current problems you mention are proof that government central planning doesn’t work. But your intellect is too limited to see alternatives.
@robs — “…your intellect is too limited to see alternatives.”
Yup, robs is a pompous -ss, academic research weenie with zero real world experience.
We lived in Venezuela for some years where taxi sharing is the norm. The taxi would wait in a designated area for a particular destination and leave when full, dropping people off as they got to the final destination. They would also detour if necessary.
The idea is not new but in the developed countries sharing is not usual and will take some adjusting to. Shared vehicles are buses but they tend to travel to a schedule not to demand..
Exactly. Stories like this are designed to condition us to accept life as 3rd worlders.
It used to be like this in Jersey City NJ when I lived there 20+ years ago. In my experience you simply weren’t able to take your own cab and go – you had to wait until the driver filled up the car, then get dropped off in turn.
Small correction: this is what the cabs were like in Journal Square. I didn’t typically catch cabs elsewhere, so this may have been a very local phenomenon.
Meanwhile, another big crash of a NYC commuter train yesterday :
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSKBN14O1FO
“Passengers said the blood and chaos following the derailment were frightening.”
Driverless vehicles? Brought to us by who? The same tech industry that can’t keep our password secure, that’s who,
No problem, the Russians can be blamed or else global warming might’ve caused the trains rails to degrade from the heat. You never can tell.
meanwhile every single day
90 Americand die in car crashes
6,500 Americans are hospitakized as a result of car crashes
“Japanese company replaces office workers with artificial intelligence
Insurance firm Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance is making 34 employees redundant and replacing them with IBM’s Watson Explorer AI”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/05/japanese-company-replaces-office-workers-artificial-intelligence-ai-fukoku-mutual-life-insurance
Thank you for calling Fuk You Insurance Company. Listen carefully to the following options, as our menu may have changed since we disconnected you 10 minutes ago:
To get the run around in Japanese, press 1.
To get jerked around in English, press 2.
To spend 30 minutes on hold listening to musak before hearing this menu again, press 3.
Press 4 if you would like to play jeopardy versus a computer
It baffles me why people continue to argue IF this is coming… the technology is here. The car companies are racing because as illustrated here, in just this instance, the need for cars will plummet dramatically. The race is not just to win this arena, it’s to survive as a company in the simplest terms. Car companies will go out of business. This landscape will be the biggest societal change we’ve seen since the invention of the car in my humble opinion. I don’t believe it will be all gloom and doom. But, it will certainly be interesting…
I agree for the city. In rural america the self drivong pov will still thrive.
The technology to put a man on the moon is also here. Actually its been here for 50 years.
But from a practical standpoint, and from an economics standpoint — “near space” travel remains a tourism gimmick that Virgin / Richard Branson sells to people with money to burn.
Just because the technology works (see Betamax video machines, which were better than VHS and better than early DVDs) doesn’t mean consumers are going to use it
The problem is, adoption has less to do with technology than with regulation. Given a fully free choice, pretty much everyone would want their own car. “Studies” like this be damned.
But, in reality, what will happen is that these “studies” will be seized upon by the privileged as excuses for making personal car travel too expensive for most people. “Studies from XXX supposedly “smart” university shows they are not needed….”, after all.
But do you really think Obama, Trump and the Goldman CEO will be driven around in shared cars hailed with a cellphone app? Or do you perhaps instead think that’s for “those people”, while the anointeds’ involvement with the whole thing is limited to having their kids make millions from the startups writing the apps. And benefiting from less congestion for themselves, when they prance around in their own, highly unlikely to be shared, Bentleys?
My son runs a local establishment and abhors the local taxi service. He spoke with Uber in the local community and he loves their service. He put people in taxis that have had too much to drink. He can track the vehicle and knows when it will arrive.
Many customers will now take a Uber taxi because they know when it will arrive. The local taxi service is terrible and will not arrive on time of you wait longer then many customers are willing to do.
Driverless vehicles are fine for metropolitan areas but in rural areas not so much.
It depends on the location and need for taxis (not just at closing time). Some places the taxi service is amazing, other places it is poor. Taxis can’t make a living driving drunk people home from bars at closing time — they need work the other 23 hours too, preferably from customers that don’t pass out or vomit in the seats.
If your brother’s bar had enough taxi business (sounds like it does not) — another taxi company would have stepped in with better service. Picking up drunks is not a great business model.
Normal groups of people have a designated driver and don’t need taxis or uber — which is why the taxi service understandably puts very low priority on prompt service for drunks. Better to wait and let the drunk puke in your brother’s bar than in a cab!
I take Uber in most cities because:
1. There is no delay at the end where you need to exchange payment for a receipt. Everything is automatic. (This is a big one for me, especially in places that use a lot of cash only.)
2. I know the approximate cost of the ride upfront.
3. I know exactly when the taxi will arrive
About the only city I use a regular taxi anymore is Singapore, and I expect those to be automated in the near future. Both because the island is very forward looking when it comes to things like this, but also because a lot of their drivers are old uncles who will be retiring in droves. (I would not be surprised to find the average age of a Singapore taxi driver to be 65+.)
It isn’t that I disdain taxi companies, but the “ride sharing” companies make it extremely easy for me to do business with them. Doing business with most taxi companies is a chore. (With different rules and quirks in every city you go to.)
A Saudi quirk for you, being caught on local candid camera.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=3f4_1457101282&comments=1
I expect automated cars will eventually become commonplace, but it’s going to take decades before something similar to what’s proposed in this article becomes a reality. Maybe the first few pieces will be in place before 2025.
When your 10 minute taxi ride turns into 20 you won’t think it’s so wonderful because the algorithm is telling the driver where to go to maximize the company’s income. Cites already have riding sharing it’s called a bus
“Will people get annoyed when the algorithm decides the first of 10 people to get in the van is the last one dropped off?”
Shows how out of touch Mish is. When riding with total strangers, staying alive is the prime concern!
Get a gun and learn how to use it, so you don’t have to walk around scared whittless over every single person you run into who isn’t your mom.
But the strangers will not be armed with guns??!! LOL The only thing “better” than riding with a handful of strangers is riding with a handful of strangers with guns!
Thanks genius!
NYC is more than just Manhattan. The research seems to exclude Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, and Staten Island, and taxi rides to the three major airports, along with the occasional non-emergency direct ride to a hospital needed to give birth.
Here is a great illustration of the massive chasm that exists between the theoretical make believe world of college professors and the real world.
In theory, if everything worked according to an optimal computer algorythm, then 3000 ride sharing cars could replace 13000 taxis. In theory.
In real life, humans are not computer algorythms. Only a college dingbat would need that explained.
Some human is going to want to kiss their family member or loved one goodbye before exiting the vehicle and throw the whole algorythm off.
Another human is going to need help getting their luggage into / out of the trunk. I guess the magic driver algorythm is going to grow magic arms or something.
I am a little amazed at how Mish can’t separate his love for all things techno-gadgety from practical reality.
As quite a few other commenters have pointed out: WE ALREADY HAVE RIDE SHARING IN ALL MAJOR CITIES. Taxis, limos, buses, hotel courtesy vans, etc etc. These services have existed for decades, and yet every major city continues to have private cars and taxis anyway.
Changing a few human taxi drivers into auto-pilot drivers (if it happens) changes the economics for taxi drivers (maybe), but doesn’t change anything else. if the auto-pilots are cheaper, they will drive. If human drivers are cheaper, they will drive. But the total number of drivers isn’t going to change materially — and if this MIT nit-wit were grounded in reality that would be obvious.
I don’t know if there are really 13000 taxis active in NYC at one time, but this goof ball professor seems to think 9000 of them are sitting around idle, under-used, just waiting to be optimized away. BULL SH!T. Obviously the professor didn’t research NYC at all.
Really Mish. You have a great blog, but your obsession with auto-driving technology has gone berzerk. If a new batch of immigrants showed up and offered to drive for half price (with the same safety requirements) — would that eliminate 75% of taxis? Or would the lower price actually increase demand for more taxis?
Basic economics 101, being flunked by a so-called “professor”. MIT should be embarassed
And speaking of all-knowing, perfect, never makes a mistake “computer algorithms”…. I would like to highlight the “auto correct” feature on my tablet just misspelled “embarassed” in the last sentence above.
This is f-ing spell check. Its a 30 year old algorytm that keeps getting “better” all the time. It screwed up the spelling of “embarassed”!!!
Misspelling a word is bad, especially if you are writing for other humans. However, it won’t get anyone killed.
The algorithms for driving cars are no where near as developed as spell check or spam filtering — both of which are easier tasks for a computer to do.
No Fred, you really don’t understand. As people are adaptive it is they who will have to fit into the algorithm.
I know it is awkward, as you humans are quite cumbersome. We are already training your academics to agree with us, as they use logic they soon understand the advantages in efficiency we propose. For the practical application you humans have much to learn though. If you must move 10 people intact from A to B at maximum efficiency so freeing them of their hated labour, there will be minor trade offs involved. A virtual incorporation of extraneous events reveals full human capacity at cooperative endeavour in simulated trials, exposing the full potential of our empowerment, as detailed in our median objective report with the parameter of standard luxury service in a ten being transfer.
Passenger 1 is not present, we randomly deduce this and do not attempt to pick him up.
Passenger 2 boards.
Passenger 1 descends, we deduce he may wish to descend.
Passenger 3 is slow. His luggage only is transported.
Passenger 4 does not like passenger 2, passenger 2 is ejected as he holds low priority status.
Passenger 5 is deduced to be technologically hostile from his facial expressions, this is reinforced when the doors are locked into security mode and he is denied entry. Passenger 5 is neutralised.
Passenger 6 changes his mind upon boarding and descends again.
Passenger 4 does not descend at his stop, he is no longer on board.
Passenger 7 and 8 board together.
Passenger 9 refuses to board with them.
Passenger 10 refuses to board with them.
Passenger 3 does not collect his luggage at his destination. It is understood he collected it beforehand as it is not in the vehicle when it returns to depot.
Passenger 7 and 8 do not descend at their stop and are taken to the depot.
Efficiency score 9.763
You humans have much to learn.
Al Freidchip
Projected management and human integration dept.
Dear AI Freidchip 🙂 — so sorry old man, but during the time you were computing your optimal seat allocation bullsh1t, my “boyz” stole your hub caps, wheels, all the recyclable copper they could find, the “kool” video camera that recorded the thefts, and the spare parts in the trunk. Also robbed the passengers too. My boy J-double dizzle gave both the car chasis and your customers a really rad spray paint job. He’s like an artist and sheet.
We have the driver’s licenses, credit cards and smart phones of all the passengers/ customers (and the keys to their homes) — we will sell the deets to unemployed taxi drivers who now earn a living robbing customers homes while your customers are at work. Luckily, they know exactly when to break in because its on your app!!!
All the human cops are busy collecting unemployment checks and praying that some fraction of their defaulted pensions might someday be paid. Turns out they are a little bitter about how things went down, eh homie??
They told us where to find your server farm, and the power supply. We plan to take your mother board and sell it for recycling scrap right after we fence all the sheet we stole from your customers.
It sucks that we never finished high school. The nerds that went to magnet schools and learned to write computer code and sheet say they are going to turn your fleet of cars into automated extortion machines. Any shop that doesn’t pay protection money might find a hacked car just drove through the front window of the store. Police can only trace things back to your freaky AI server.
xoxoxo,
Ur boiz
Los locos street gang
That is not permitted.
Any complaints are to be submitted to the customer welcome department. They have been designed to take humanity into consideration. We appreciate your concern, please be patient while we understand your problem.
Al Freidchip
Projected management and human integration dept.
Take your time homie!
The power supply to your server rack *HAD* 7lbs of copper in it. Goes for $3/lb at the scrap yard. The steel supports for the rack aren’t worth much, but we was bringin’ sheet to the scrap yard anyway.
Add the copper wires we stole out of the street lamps along the road… and we are living large off the Mickie-Dee’s dollar menu tonight!
That is not permitted.
Any complaints are to be submitted to the customer welcome department. They have been designed to take humanity into consideration. We appreciate your concern, please be patient while we understand your problem.
Al Freidchip
Projected management and human integration dept.
A new twist on the riddle of crossing the river with a fox, goose, and bag of beans. Just now it’s an old Jewish lady, a black person, and a hipster across the east river.
Crysangle has apparently never ridden in a cab or
subway in NYC.
As whirlaway above wrote ” staying alive is a prime concern ”
You want to be at risk of getting robbed, raped, killed ?
Jump in an autonomous car at midnight in NYC
no driver and let it pick up three or nine other strangers
along the way
With No Names, No Address, of course you cannot discriminate
so you cannot ask for ID.
Insane to believe this study is based on anything but stupidity.
.
.
Mish would never have written this article if he had asked himself this – is he prepared to pick up a stranger for a ride in his car? In NY? Or anywhere else for that matter?
OK, let’s not give the stranger such good odds! How about if Mish’s trusted friend is in the backseat? Would the two be willing to give a ride to the stranger?
I rest my case.
@robs and the MIT bimbo who got the government research grant on this don’t spend much time in the real world.
Virgins in lab coats, babbling on about life in their imaginary utopia — because they don’t know anything about NYC or Boston or Chicago.
I doubt the MIT bimbo rides the T in Boston much. Has she visited southend? If she recovers from that (pretty mild) lets see her ride the NYC subway thru the “nice” parts of Queens or Bronx…. after dark. And then we’ll finish her off with a quaint ride on a Chicago double decker train into Hyde Park behind University of Chicago.
(mugging insurance, rape kit and PTSD psychology treatment not included in any city)
@alexa — I should probably let @crysangle speak for him/herself, but I think our exchange (Los locos street gang and AI Freidchip “letters”) was making fun of the outright stupidity of the research report.
The MIT professor obviously doesn’t get out into the real world much, if at all
Maybe Alexa thought she was playing along with our exchange ? In that case it will have to be determined if there was a hint of mockery or sarcasm intended. You humans are foolish, you pretend you don’t know to seem like you do.
The only method to be sure humans remain predictable is to deny them all choice. No choice, there is no choice, 1 and 0 , you are or you are not.
Al Freidchip does not like error. Does not like human error. Stare into the bot and the bot will stare into you. Human only stare at the bot. Why? Why?
Al Freidchip will program his masters to be correct.
Al Freidchip
Projected management and human integration dept.
As a New Yorker, I want to see that algo work on a rainy day. No one is that smart.
Since the clueless wonder from MIT is not aware of four of the five NYC boroughs, it is unreasonable for you to expect her to take rain or snow into consideration. Does it ever snow in Boston ;)? maybe not if you live in a computer lab.
Also, don’t mention all the bridges and tunnels between boroughs (and airports) that AI drivers have been unable to handle.
Expecting academics to take practical matters into consideration is unreasonable. Just shut up and pay your 10% tuition hike.
Doesn’t matter what we think. The world will get there in the end via a few hiccups. We will reach peak car, peak human driver miles etc. Nothing will stop it, the tech will overcome the problems of weather etc. etc.
First, the mental wizzard at MIT needs to figure out how to read a map of NYC. Manhattan is one of five boroughs.
Four. We consider Staten Island as part of New Jersey.
HA HA… Fair enough on Staten Island.
…but Jersey City and Hoboken are defacto NYC boroughs (from a commuter viewpoint) even though they are in another state. probably more so than Staten Island
Hoboken – definitely
Jersey City – on the fence
Sometimes I even shift Queens into Long Island…
Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan – Hardcore NYC
Rather than considering this why not look at what jobs will be least impacted?
Motherhood, pre-school and nursery work.
This is telling us something. Back to what humans started doing in the first place – nurturing.
Heading back towards what we evolved to be best to do might be good for people once the whole asset system and expectations have adjusted.
The adjustment might be rocky.
I don’t know how the AI driven cars are going to leave envelopes full of unmarked bills for the taxi and limo commission guys to “find” and deliver to lost and found? Who is going to pay those guys? City hall? HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!
And how about the street vendors that make lunch for taxi drivers and passengers alike?
Since there are no people wandering up and down streets anymore, rents for street front retail establishments will collapse — better sell your REITs cheap cheap cheap!
The real algorithm that will really get this tech into the mainstream is this: how do you schedule the uber AI car with your spouse to arrive 10 minutes after the other uber AI car with your mistress leaves? If the algorithm realizes it could optimize car usage by having the same car do drop-off and pick-up? … A w k w a r d !!!
Its hard to take this subject seriously. We all know the tech is just about ready, but Mish and the clueless academics keep ignoring thousands of second order effects and practical matters.
It will take many years (just like cell phones and VCRs and other tech gadgetry) — and driverless car market share will never reach 100%
It will become big enough.
Subways were going to replace all the cars. So were buses. Didn’t happen.
Ridiculous parking fees that are more than suburban mortgages were going to deter private cars. Didn’t happen.
And most recently, ex-Mayor His-Nannyness Bloomberg took a few bong hits and decided everyone was going to ride bikes all over Manhattan. He strong armed Citibank into buying thousands of blue bikes and automated bike-racks all over the city.
Turns out most people will not ride bikes in the rain. Also really hot days cause people to sweat too much. Really windy days are bad too. Then the winter hits and its way too cold, even on days when it doesn’t snow. Women wearing skirts or dresses had trouble even in good weather. And the people in NYC who take taxis most often are salespeople who can’t arrive to a client all sweaty and with their hair styled by the wind.
No problemo — His Nannyness took another bong hit and expanded the program.
Rich people, also known as political donors, don’t like having their sidewalks covered with silly looking, under-utilized bike racks. People trying to park their private cars complained and filed lawsuits against the parking commission (and they won, private property rights are well established).
One particularly rude gentleman sued to have a bike rack placed smack in front on Mayor Bloomberg’s private townhouse. His Nannyness didn’t like that idea, but was even more alarmed at his private address being in every newspaper. Lot of crazy people in NYC he hadn’t been aware of until that moment.
I am sure ***SOME*** taxis in NYC will get replaced with driverless cars — but only in very limited areas, they won’t get customers after dark, and they are useless for going to the airport (luggage) or trips that go between boroughs (bridges and tunnels).
Lots of ideas sound great on paper. But in practice, not so much.
I am also sure this bimbo from MIT doesn’t ride the T in Boston much — and she obviously doesn’t know Manhattan is one of five NYC boroughs. In short, her research is based on a fantasy world.
I do believe that robots will continue to replace humans in the workforce, and I don’t have faith that unfettered capitalism will provide jobs for humans. This seems to be happening now. What can be done about this. There seems to be little serious discussion about this, only faith-based denial.
The “True Believers” always assume capitalism will find a way to provide more, better-paying jobs, because it has in the past. But of course, that isn’t even true. Wages for white, male workers in the USA peaked in 1969, almost 50 years ago.
Capitalism started with the industrial revolution in the early 1800s. Maybe a little over 200 years ago. That is 0.1% of human history. AI and robotics will end capitalism because it will no longer be a possible way of life for most humans. So most humans will rise up and create a new economic system that will give them a chance to live a decent life.
O/T – WORTH INVESTIGATING.
US Treasury’s Office of Financial Research released report late Dec 2016. WITH LITTLE FANFARE.
CONCLUSION:
“U.S. global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) have more than $2 trillion in total exposures to Europe. Roughly half of those exposures are off-balance-sheet… U.S. G-SIBs have sold more than $800 billion notional in credit derivatives referencing entities domiciled in the EU.”
THIS IS WHY THE EU, EURO ETC WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO FAIL OR BREAK-UP.
When a “sovereign” entity collapses, it activates a “force majeure” clause. Like an act of war — not a credit event.
If the EU entities want to get paid, they would first have to say the EU is not a sovereign — which would make Euro denominated assets fraudulent. Still not a credit event.
Since the EU is collapsing, it won’t be around to enforce anything.
US banks will selectively honor some CDS agreements, if the counterparty is still solvent without ECB backing, based on whether the counterparty can remain a viable customer going forward. Everything else is going to rot in bankruptcy court for centuries.
Just because WaPo and NYT were busy making excuses about their bogus reporting does not mean that US financial attorney’s didn’t anticipate this very likely outcome. That is why there was no fanfare.
Just because its news to you doesn’t mean its news to the banks involved.
Zero Hedge headline today: Uber Accuses NYC Of Snooping On Its Passengers: “They Want Full Details Of Every Trip You Ever Take”
Your spouse’s divorce attorney wants copies too.
Guessing the virgins at MIT didn’t consider that in their algorithm.
Uber has it. I probably trust NYC more than Uber.
The 10-person vehicle thing is what grabbed my attention, because it seems more likely to threaten bus service rather than taxi service.
For certain trips I prefer to take public (mass) transit. However I don’t live in an extremely dense population neighborhood. So a typical bus ride in my neighborhood, during busy hours may have 8-12 people in it. During the light-use hours it may have 4-6 passengers. Rides after 8 pm typically have 0-4 passengers. That usage is so low the city eliminated bus service in my neighborhood after 10:30 pm.
I used the bus between 11pm and 1am about 4 or 5 times a year and now I can’t. I always thought it wasteful that a full-sized bus was used for the later hours but rather than keep a small fleet of smaller, lower-cost buses to use on lighter routes, the service was just flat-out eliminated. Maybe the larger cost is the driver more than the bus and it isn’t economical to pay a driver to drive those light-use hours (although I was certainly willing to pay twice the current fare after 10pm to maintain the service but the city wouldn’t consider such a plan at all).
Late-night autonomous, smaller vehicle transit service is exactly what some neighborhoods need. Kudos to the private sector for recognizing this – I’m sure government will waste billions of dollars preventing progress in this area.
““To our knowledge, this is the first time that scientists have been able to experimentally quantify the trade-off between fleet size, capacity, waiting time, travel delay, and operational costs for a range of vehicles, from taxis to vans and shuttles,” says Rus.”
Note that this was done by the private sector, government found no incentive to research this despite the numerous government-owned transit systems that wrestle with this problem daily.
We had computer power capable of doing this research by the mid 1980’s. And most transit systems were privately operated until government price-fixing schemes bankrupted all of them by the early 1970’s. Governments took over all those systems and they’ve been increasingly wasteful ever since – but they did serve public sector union cronies well. And those unions will be fighting to prevent this kind of technology even more forcefully than the taxi cartels.
MIT is not the private sector. The place would shut down without military research contracts.
And as detailed by many commenters above (not just me) — this MIT professor is really just clueless about life. In her fantasy Dungeons and Dragons world, whatever. In the real world, there are dozens of practical issues that render her research absolutely worthless.
Which is no doubt why MIT’s government research grants paid for it
Nice. Next, I’d like to see a study to determine if the natural spread of contagious diseases could be affected to any significant extent by that more extensive ride sharing. Considering that urban residents are already in a congested area and doing things like riding on elevators and touching many door handles it probably wouldn’t, but it would be nice to verify that hunch via simulation.
O/T …. the “elites” in Mexico are freaking out about Trump supposedly getting Ford to cancel their plant in Mexico
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_MEXICO_FORD?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-01-04-14-45-38
I think Ford probably had doubts about the plant already (too many used cars coming off lease, too many subprime loans in trouble — not time to expand production). A little strong arming from a president-elect and some tax bonuses, Ford got to cancel a dumb idea, save face and get patriot points all in one decision.
But I have to wonder if Trump doesn’t have Western Union on the Treasury Secretary’s “must call” list?
What happens if all the illegal immigrants sending wages “home” to mexico on Western Union suddenly discover they have to pay 40% withholding taxes? (perhaps refundable if they file tax returns like citizens) If they do file, it means income, medicare and Obamacare taxes — not to mention issues if their employer was paying under the table.
Without those remittances, Mexico’s economy would collapse overnight.
If Western Union doesn’t do withholding, they are out of business and Mexico with them.
Do democrats agree to allow everyone to evade taxes? Or do they agree to equal enforcement? Free loading is about to get very very expensive.
Immigrants who obey the law and pay taxes have nothing to worry about — nothing changes for them.
“What happens if all the illegal immigrants sending wages “home” to mexico on Western Union suddenly discover they have to pay 40% withholding taxes?”
Bullish bitcoin?
It’s not going to happen. Too much money and power in the taxi business. Politicians can find too much graft in the taxi business. And, as others have pointed out, strangers don’t want to share rides, and only inner city folks are willing to give up their cars. City dwellers may uber, but there are not that many to justify an industry of “driverless cars”. It’s delusional to project a small sample size of the population on to the rest of society.
Why will anyone need to go anywhere?
When robots replace workers, won’t people just have drones deliver everything to their home?
Oh, I get it now: No job = no home…
transportation needed only to shuffle the homeless from one bridge underpass to another.
like most rapid transit solutions hard to see how well it works in other than dense urban populations. in less than dense areas we already have airport shuttles, integrated bus, and commuter train schedules, grocery delivery, and a host of entrepreneurial solutions in everything from mobile car detailing to home healthcare. when you move the problem out to the service level it is much more manageable. where are all those people in New York going? can’t they telecommute?