how about this instead of raising the fares all the time?
New York’s subway, on the other hand, hasn’t even advanced to the 20th century in terms of labor-saving efficiencies, never mind the 21st. Almost all of the subway’s trains have 2 paid employees on board at all times, long after other rapid transit systems around the country folded driving and door operation into one job. The city has slowly been winning concessions from its drivers’ union toward so-called “1-person train operation” and other efficiency measures, but it’s starting from a low base.
The benefits of driverless cars are potentially significant. The typical American spends an average of 100 hours a year in traffic; imagine using that time in better ways — by working or just having fun. The irksome burden of commuting might be lessened considerably. Furthermore, computer-driven cars could allow for tighter packing of vehicles on the road, which would speed traffic times and allow a given road or city to handle more cars. Trips to transport goods might dispense with drivers altogether, and rental cars could routinely pick up customers… The point is not that such cars could be on the road in large numbers tomorrow, but that we ought to give the cars — and other potential innovations — a fair shot so that a prototype can become a commercial product someday. Michael Mandel, an economist with the Progressive Policy Institute, compares government regulation of innovation to the accumulation of pebbles in a stream. At some point too many pebbles block off the water flow, yet no single pebble is to blame for the slowdown. Right now the pebbles are limiting investment in future innovation.
cities could double with robotic cars, all else being equal.
Because of the steadily decreasing price/performance ratios of our tunneling technologies, the increasing intelligence and cleanliness of our automobiles, and the ever increasing social value of our spare time, some overcrowded city (LA? NY?) will eventually decide to put a nice, long AHS express tube underground, creating a fast connection between 2 important and yet informationally different urban cores, at the same time bypassing the most gridlocked sections of the city. Only certified, AHS-equipped, electric vehicles will be allowed into these underground connector tubes. Want Speed? Get Intelligent and Go Green.
if you really need suburbia, at least but all roads into tunnels. should be cost-effective soon.
Route optimization software can save substantial fuel for trucks and airplanes.
Many look to alternative fuels and hybrid-electric vehicles. But information technology has an important role to play in making existing vehicles more efficient, particularly when it comes to aggregating small gains across large fleets. Take something as simple as reducing left-hand turns. For US drivers, this means less time idling in the middle of the road waiting for oncoming traffic to pass. Collectively, Roadnet clients save an estimated 205m liters of fuel a year and can cut 85k trucks and cars out of their logistics systems.
2013-07-26: What Was a Truck Driver? The US commercial truck fleet has 253m trucks, and employs 5.7m truck drivers. Within 20 years, that should go down to 0 drivers. 2014-05-30: Software truck convoys. This kind of mundane driverless car will be on the road very soon, already saves 10% fuel and can save up to 20% if the distance is further reduced.
Across China, 7.2m trucks and 16m drivers are responsible for intercity transportation of goods. This industry is worth $300b, and drivers account for 40% of the costs. Some long-distance trips across China require 3 drivers to complete. The truck freight industry in the US is even bigger, valued at $700b.
Amazon is building an app that matches truck drivers with shippers, a new service that would deepen its presence in the $800B trucking industry. The app is designed to make it easier for truck drivers to find shippers that need goods moved. It would also eliminate the need for a third-party broker, which typically charges a commission of ~15% for doing the middleman work.
In 2022, that figure is 3m truck tractors on the road. From there, we can estimate the average yearly net transactions per truck at $340k per year. Multiply the 2 numbers together, and we get $1.04t!
Trucking is a potpourri of different services and needs. There’s drayage: the process of moving containers from docks to warehouses. There’s reefer (refrigerated truck): the truck trailer is temperature controlled. There’s hazmat: transport of hazardous materials. Flatbed, dry van, tankers, partials, hotshots, box trucks, and more.
The prospect of dying for want of a kidney has concentrated Sally Satel’s mind wonderfully on how to make sure that more kidneys become available. She comes down in favor of incentive payments to donors, and suggests 4 basic models:
A forward market for cadaver organs (I like this one) in which you sign up to have your organs harvested at death, and receive a small payment on signing or a large one to your estate when you die
A centralized single compensator. Medicare or whoever pays a bounty for the kidney; and pays $15-20k a year for the immunosuppressant drugs which the recipient will need; but saves $66k per patient per year on dialysis.
Multiple compensators. As above, but private insurers and charitable foundations chip into the compensation fund.
Private contracts. The sort of market we have now, between individuals, only regulated and legal. One nice nuance, suggested by Ms Postrel’s husband, is that donors/vendors should get a year’s tax holiday, evening out the incentive between rich and poor.
2007-03-14: iran, of all places, might be the first place with an organ market. 2011-05-31:
Scott Carney’s The Red Market is a book-length investigative journalism piece on the complicated and sometimes stomach-churning underground economy in human flesh, ranging from practice of kidnapping children to sell to orphanages who get healthy kids to pass off to wealthy foreigners to the bizarre criminal rings who imprison kidnapped indigents in “blood farms” or lure impoverished women into selling their kidneys.
the trade in human flesh is brisk. 2016-12-30: Car crash victims are a major source of organ donations. What will replace them? Better stock up on those artificial organs.
background: the army wants autonomous delivery trucks. congress mandates that 33% of all vehicles are autonomous by 2015. they used an over clocked 1.1 GHz TI DSP (fastest DSP on the planet) to build a 3D terrain map 60 times a second. Based on that information, they compute 100 possibilities and pick the most promising one. this computation uses 36B pixel operations per second. they hacked into the steering electronics of a standard toyota truck throttle to feed in their vehicle control. these guys used DSPs to avoid stuffing their trunks with computers like the competition did. insurance issues prevented the team from sitting in the truck to debug it: the government disallowed them to sit in the autonomous vehicle during debugging. don’t you love insurance policies 🙂 their GPS worked to within 15 cm precision. DARPA was concerned with universities not moving autonomous vehicles forward fast enough. “no one of us ever expected to see our vehicles again once they crossed the start line.” they were thinking, as it drove away, “what should we put on the insurance claim form?” for next year, they will abandon the CCD sensors and use an array of 100 lasers that will scan the surroundings 360 degrees and build a terrain map. this will get around the accuracy problems. next time, vehicles that avoid obstacle detection (as everyone did in 2004) will be destroyed by tank blockers, DARPA promised. the truck used in the challenge sites in the parking lot, bruce drove it out here 🙂
Gregor J. Rothfuss 