Joel Kotkin's NewGeography.com did it again. Yesterday, Jeff Khau published "Will Driverless Cars Help us Drive Less?" to give urban planners nightmares.
NewGeography.com bloggers have done this before. They are looking ahead at how technology could thwart some anti-suburban policy efforts.
The latest is a look at how the driverless car technology is going to make mass transit less necessary and make the individual car a permanent fixture.
I can't say I don't revel in the consternation they are causing the Smart Growthers. Plus, it's pretty exciting stuff.
The driverless car is not far off. I'm growing more and more convinced.
I didn't know that legislative changes in California mean that "at any given moment, a dozen driverless cars are operating somewhere in California." That's right now.
This paragraph was my favorite:
"Google, along with GM, Ford, and Daimler are now designing cars that drive themselves, making private vehicles more efficient, flexible, and thereby more irreplaceable. The US is not alone. Manufacturers in Japan and Germany are coordinating with their national governments to launch their autonomous cars within the next decade. IEEE, a group of technology professionals, says that self-driving vehicles would comprise 75 percent of the global traffic stream by 2040."
That's before I turn 75. That's in my statistically-predictable lifetime.
Cool.
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