Driverless Cabs Coming to New York

At the moment, commuters in New York City spend, on average, 60 hours stuck in traffic each year. Those wasted hours cost each person over $1,000 annually.

The Earth Institute at Columbia University recently released a study which may alleviate the congestion by exchanging the city’s 13,000 yellow taxis with 9,000 self-driving cars.

According to The New York Times, customers will be able to hail driverless taxes through phone apps which communicate through a centralized system. The data-optimized system is believed to decrease wait times and boost utilization of cars. The result will be lower costs and better efficiency.

At Present, Manhattan’s 1.5 million residents travel over 400,000 trips each day by cab. In peak hours, more than 300 taxi trips are begun each minute and travel an average of two miles.

As yellow cabs aren’t ‘pre-booked’ and must be hailed on the street, most taxis remain unoccupied — even during peak traffic periods. Inefficiency drives the current costs to more than $4 per mile. The plan proposed by Columbia believes the driverless fleet will cost just fifty-cents per mile.

Besides the cost savings, the study says self-driving taxis can cut the wait times for customers from five minutes to 35 seconds. The shorter time is the result of efficiently concentrating the taxi fleet in areas of especially high usage.

Not Untested

The Columbia scheme is not untested. Google’s self-driving car and the ULTra Personal Electric Transportation Pods now in use at London’s Heathrow Airport show the idea can work.

Not Examined

What is not understood is the socioeconomic impact of the plan. Over 50,000 persons are employed by New York City as cab drivers, mechanics and other support staff. Costly infrastructure costs to implement a driverless fleet could eat up a large part of any cost savings projected.

It Works For The English

Milton Keynes is a small English city with a quarter-million residents. The city council recently announced their intent to adopt ULTra transportation pods. The system will include 100 pods and is expected to cost just over $100 million to implement. A similar system in The Big Apple will cost exponentially more.

A driverless fleet of cabs won’t be see on New York’s streets soon, but the study and progressive technology does make one stop and think.