The Bright Shining Future of Parking Spaces
Wut.
Parking spaces. And parking garages for that matter. They’re everywhere. Above ground, below ground, there’s even a requirement here in Washington, DC that each house/apartment/condo has X number of parking spaces in correlation to the number of people living in the building.
If you think about it, it’s already sort of mindless, with all the transportation options in the city that don’t require car ownership, but soon it’s going to be just plain stupid.
Let me get back to parking spaces in a second so I can talk about self-driving cars.
Yeah yeah, Google Cars are the future…what I find interesting isn’t the technology but what’s going to happen because of the technology. How will our cities respond to cars that drive themselves, like a symbiotic relationship, what’s the benefit and what’s the tradeoff?
I answered a question on Quora about how self-driving cars can change our world. I’ve articulate a few of the thoughts from that post -
Car sharing will be common, significantly less cars on the road You can see where this is going if you’re reading into this at all. If cars spend 95% of their lives idle, what happens when you now have a technology that allows then to spend that time moving? You have less idle cars but also less of a need for cars as there would now be a bajillion on the road. So get rid of car ownership.
Huge cost savings – no need to buy gas, pay for upkeep, car insurance etc. in a car sharing economy If this system uses the subscription model like we use now for Uber and Car2Go, we pay for what we use in the end.
More urban real estate, less parking lots and spaces. Think Wal-Mart lots and giant parking garages - gone Annnnnnd here we are. If you have a car that’s constantly moving, what do you do with all those parking spaces? You get rid of them. But where will my self-driving car go once it drops me off at Wal-Mart? It will take someone else someplace else and come back and get you. Or some other car will get you.
Less environmental degradation, in terms of pollution and resources used in production/manufacturing In the near-term they’ll probably be hybrid cars, eventually switching to electric. I also imagine less run-off from parking lots as there will be less cars.
Cheaper transportation, people will be enticed to take self driving vehicles longer distances in a redesigned human-centered car cabin You could even imagine how there might not be a need for public transportation, or at least not to the degree cities have it now. Airlines, trains and bus services would take a dent.
Cars become less of a status symbol, more of a utility I think this is something that’s been happening for the last decade in urban areas anyway. Maybe less so in rural areas but the car as status symbol or an extension of identity is going out the window.
Networked transit routes will require less human resources, potentially cutting costs for municipalities When you don’t need people to steer, read signs, navigate, etc, then what do you need all the resources for?
Parking spaces. And parking garages for that matter.
I imagine a few will exist here and there and those self-driving cars will need to live somewhere when they’re in for upkeep…but imagine, less parking spaces, less parking garages, less cars on the road. That’s a lot of space we’ll need to figure out how to use.
I’m hoping for more parks and sidewalks.