Future Cars: Electric and Autonomous Vehicles

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FISHMANPET
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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby FISHMANPET » February 21st, 2018, 12:24 am

I will say, as a board member of the MGC:
Would that resolution from 1999 prevent operations of these small buses too? I think that running them would take away the usage from Pedestrians and Bicyclists. Midtown Rail should be a priority once SWLRT is built!
The MGC is not a government entity, we don't set policy. We're basically a neighborhood organization. Hennepin county could tear out the bikeway tomorrow and put in a highway, we can't stop them.

And it's not clear exactly what the county is "testing" here with this pilot. Hopefully we'll know more when we meet with the county guy in the article later this week.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Bakken2016 » February 21st, 2018, 8:34 am

I will say, as a board member of the MGC:
Would that resolution from 1999 prevent operations of these small buses too? I think that running them would take away the usage from Pedestrians and Bicyclists. Midtown Rail should be a priority once SWLRT is built!
The MGC is not a government entity, we don't set policy. We're basically a neighborhood organization. Hennepin county could tear out the bikeway tomorrow and put in a highway, we can't stop them.

And it's not clear exactly what the county is "testing" here with this pilot. Hopefully we'll know more when we meet with the county guy in the article later this week.
Good to know, please keep us updated.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby amiller92 » February 21st, 2018, 9:46 am

The MGC is not a government entity, we don't set policy. We're basically a neighborhood organization. Hennepin county could tear out the bikeway tomorrow and put in a highway, we can't stop them.

And it's not clear exactly what the county is "testing" here with this pilot. Hopefully we'll know more when we meet with the county guy in the article later this week.
Could you ask why this test is being done on our premier bike/ped facility, either closing it at its busiest stretch or taking space and possibly safety away from bikes and peds, when it could be just as easily be done on any number of our very great quantity of streets? Basically, why are they testing a car on a bike/ped path?

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Silophant » February 21st, 2018, 10:02 am

And if they feel they must test it on a bike path, because they can't possibly inconvenience cars (I mean, it's Hennepin County), why not one of the dual-path sections of the Cedar Lake or Kenilworth Trails? Then they could at least just closed one path and have two-way traffic on the other.
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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Multimodal » February 21st, 2018, 10:12 am

I can see that they would want to connect two fairly close business nodes, so people would have a reason to try it (rather than just being out in the middle of nowhere where people would likely drive there to test it out).

In that case, why not use 31st street for the demo, between Hennepin & Lyndale?

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Silophant » February 21st, 2018, 10:16 am

That's true. Man, what if we had some sort of shared space running between those two areas, up at ground level and, like, just a block north of Lake?
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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby MNdible » February 21st, 2018, 11:59 am

You all are seriously overthinking this.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby DanPatchToget » February 21st, 2018, 12:09 pm

I'm sure people were overthinking when there was a proposed freeway through their neighborhood or their streetcar system was potentially going to shutdown.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby tmart » February 21st, 2018, 2:26 pm

Yeah, I don't think it's overblown at all. Perhaps this one individual demonstration is not that big of a deal in a vacuum, but we're collectively in the process of deciding what role AVs will play in our society. There are lots of players who want to use them as a justification for further expanding auto-centric planning, and I really don't like the optics of putting cars on a bike path and future LRT corridor, through a neighborhood that was already brutally divided by interstate planning once.
Last edited by tmart on February 21st, 2018, 2:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby FISHMANPET » February 21st, 2018, 2:28 pm

For maybe the only time in my life, I agree with MNdible. I think you're all reading way too much into this particular thing.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby FISHMANPET » February 23rd, 2018, 10:23 am

So Hennepin County is interested in autonomous vehicles in a general sense, and MNDOT has this vehicle that they're making available to any local governments to try things out. Hennepin county was involved with the Super Bowl demo, but they just want to test it in some slightly more realistic conditions. The specific model is legal to operate in the US, but each "use" of it on roads requires a federal exemption process that takes 9-10 months. So the county has to test it in a place with no vehicles, hence the Greenway.

They're not testing this as a plan to run a autonomous shuttle on the current Greenway path. If they were to use a technology like this for transit in the Greenway, it would be in the dedicated space on the south side of the Greenway which is already reserved for transit, running in it's own guideway (and a much bigger version of this vehicle, which the manufacturer is apparently working on). But ultimately I think Hennepin County's interest in this lies in connecting suburban transit stations to solve the last mile problem, rather than as a fixed guideway transit in the Greenway.

So everyone can stand down, things are fine.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby amiller92 » February 23rd, 2018, 10:45 am

That's all more or less as I assumed. My question is why can't they shut down a street to do this, rather than shut down one of our few bike/ped facilities.

Maybe that's not good enough for the feds? Possible, but I'm skeptical. Until I hear otherwise, I'm going to assume that the county sees closing the greenway as no big deal, but not so closing a street.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby FISHMANPET » February 23rd, 2018, 10:47 am

They're not closing the greenway. It'll run at about 12 miles an hour, or about the average speed of a bike. You're free to follow it or let it follow you or pass it.

I think they want to test with some people around so closing off a street wouldn't do them any good.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby DanPatchToget » February 23rd, 2018, 3:45 pm

Does the trail have split lanes between Hennepin and Lyndale? IIRC, it's a single path, so not easy to get around the AV. They could've done this just a little bit west where the trail has separate lanes.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby EOst » February 23rd, 2018, 5:30 pm

Again, the vehicle is only 2m wide--and the trail is roughly 20', or 6m--so getting around it is not going to be a problem.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Anondson » February 25th, 2018, 7:25 pm

Charging EVs at night will make our electric grid more efficient on the way to helping EVs make personal transportation greener.

http://fortune.com/2018/02/25/why-charg ... the-world/

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Anondson » February 25th, 2018, 7:29 pm

In between pedal assist bikes, and EVs, we have electric motorcycles.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/25/1704 ... cylce-ride

Kind of niche at this point, the reviewer noted their silence felt pretty dangerous when no one hear you coming and could dart out.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby LRV Op Dude » February 26th, 2018, 4:26 am

In between pedal assist bikes, and EVs, we have electric motorcycles.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/25/1704 ... cylce-ride

Kind of niche at this point, the reviewer noted their silence felt pretty dangerous when no one hear you coming and could dart out.
You can always add recording of a loud Harley-Davidson.
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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby karen nelson » March 14th, 2018, 4:27 pm

Could autonomous vehicles deflate real estate values in 15 years? Seems in less dense cities they will free up lots of parking spaces and also make buildings more affordable because no parking garages, parking lots. That could be a lot of supply on market fairly quickly when autonomous vehicles take off.



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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby talindsay » March 14th, 2018, 5:04 pm

I only read half of that article but unless it gets a whole lot smarter in the second half, I'd say it's kind of idiotic. Where exactly do they think all those autonomous cars will go when they're not in use? Or do they expect them to be continually circulating, and see no problem with traffic in that scenario? Also, I'll point out the fallacy in this that implies Americans own private vehicles because they have to - as though somehow, with autonomous cars, nobody will want to own their own private autonomous car. People don't drive because they can't take taxis, buses, or trains; they drive because they don't *have to* take taxis, buses, or trains.

Technologists love to evangelize the autonomous car. They should really talk with some sociologists about how and why our society's notions of independence and personal freedom have been harnessed by an auto industry that realizes they can make more money selling two cars to every household every five years than they could by selling buses and trains. Autonomous cars are a way to avoid changing the paradigm while making personal cars more expensive and possibly safer.

Edit: turns out I was almost done with the article, so I finished it. Nope, it doesn't get any smarter.


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