Along for the Ride #190
Congestion pricing in LA, AVs in Greece, and Tesla's very expensive data leak 💸
Heya friends, happy Friday!
Happy Pride month! There are lots of rainbows floating all around San Francisco right now, and I’m here to remind you that the best allies are those who contact their representatives and let them know passing anti-queer legislation is not the vibe.
This month I’ll also share extra thoughts about queer urbanism, prominent planners, and more resources about the intersections of queerness and urban planning… starting off strong with Sex(uality) in the City: Planning for Queerer Urban Space by Kiri Crossland.
”Queer spaces are largely temporal as gentrification and heteronormativity disestablish commercial queer spaces, such as bookshops or nightclubs, both implicitly and explicitly. Some semblance of this queerness can be retained in these spaces, even after queer business has left the area, through recognition of this queer history.”
Happy Birthday to … my mom! She reads this edition every week and it warms my lil’ heart to no end. She is currently celebrating style from Hampstead Heath, so I can only hope to be so cool one day.
Mamma Mia, AVs come to Greece and Bulgaria
Here we go again! The highway between Sofia and Thessaloniki will support access to AVs as early as 2025. By building a cross-border 5G corridor connecting Thessaloniki to Sofia and Belgrade, the region will see it’s first piece of infrastructure that can support AVs.
LA considers congestion pricing
Can I get a woop-woop! Now they just need to consider how to achieve this in an equitable manner given the city has more or less handcuffed cars to their residents. Other items to shortly consider thereafter: mixed-use urban development, mid-rise developments, the removal of parking minimums, deeper investment in transit, bike lanes, and the removal of any highway wider than eight lanes (hey we all have to start somewhere).
Milton Keynes launches a remote-driven taxi service
And you know it’s called Fetch. Milton Keynes, a suburb of London, is against all odds the UK’s mobility hub (mostly for car-oriented innovations). And with this, they maintain their mobility crown. A driver in a remote location will steer the car, and for whatever reason that kind of terrifies me? The system has been tested for a number of months, and got the all-clear, and all cars will include a safety driver for the time being.. but still. It seems like a convoluted approach to AVs, and further makes me think some people do actually think driving is like a video game without real people on the other end of the equation.
Lyon proposes pricing parking by vehicle weight
The intention? To dissuade drivers from using larger, more polluting vehicles. We love. The city is proposing different rates for EVs and small vehicles, average sized vehicles, and heavy vehicles. Lyon plans to implement pricing in 2024, and would be the second city in the world to implement such a charge: the district of Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, in Montréal, Canada, is also bringing in a very similar system in July of this year.
Tesla’s really expensive data leak
To the tune of $3.3 billion. And we know this because of a whistleblower who leaked a massive trove of data to a German newspaper. “The leak included thousands of customer complaints about Tesla, particularly the company’s full self driving (FSD) system, the car’s autopilot.”
Meanwhile, a driver recently reported her car crashed into a tree (!), when in “self-driving mode” (Electrek). Those stationary, static life forms are pretty tricky to maneuver around.
Jeep plans to take AV technology off-roading
Filed under the part of car brain I may never understand. Jeep has developed two prototypes to bring autonomy to off-roading. Jeep states that the prototypes are designed to “enhance the experiences of seasoned off-roaders, and customers who are new to driving off-road”.
AVs lack “social intelligence”
Not gonna lie, this research title made me chuckle a little. “Using publicly uploaded videos of the Waymo and Tesla FSD self-driving cars, this paper documents how self-driving [sic] vehicles still struggle with some basics of road interaction. To drive safely self-driving cars need to interact in traffic with other road users. Yet traffic is a complex, long established social domain. We focus on one core element of road interaction: when road users yield for each other.. Videos of the Waymo and Tesla FSD self-driving cars show how these systems fail to both yield for others, as well as failing to go when yielded to.” Another article about this research here.
What does love high-speed rail have to do with it?
“This study examines the nexus between high-speed rail (HSR) stations and city evolution from an urban science perspective. We analyzed 1,627 HSR stations built from 1976 to 2021 in 533 Chinese and European cities.. We found that activity clusters in Europe tend to be more contiguous and clustered, suggesting a clear downtown. In Chinese cities, these clusters are more scattered, suggesting polycentric urban development.. Generally, it takes roughly two decades for an HSR station to be able to mature in attracting related development, such as residence and businesses, to complete the exploration process of city evolution.”
How AI can advance and harm transportation equity
“Because AI systems learn from data, [Kofi Nyarko] said, biases in AI training data provided to the algorithms being trained could lead to systems perpetuating existing biases and inequity. Therefore, cities must ensure that their datasets are diverse, there is robust community involvement in program design and rollout, and they monitor systems to make improvements long after implementation..”
The death of AVs has been exaggerated
“So far, the strategy of avoiding freeways, downtowns, and airports has made Waymo and Cruise safe but unprofitable. Eventually, I expect their software will improve enough that they can operate in these challenging environments safely and confidently. But there’s no guarantee this will happen within the next year or two. So the leaders of these companies may come under pressure to push into these more challenging environments before they’re ready.”
AVs will make roads safer, but only if humans bow out
“It will be a major challenge to keep drivers paying attention while the technology crosses the godawful gap between manual and fully autonomous operation. And that problem stands to get worse before it gets fixed, because as the cars improve, the drivers’ temptation to let their attention wander will keep growing. At the same time, their driving skills will begin to atrophy since they’re so rarely actually driving.”
I read this article on the politics of architecture this week and really enjoyed it, reminded me of being in grad school and my friend Sylvia quoting Lefebvre.
I am currently watching Platonic on Apple TV and cracking up. It is so cute, and I adore Rose Byrne. If you’re looking for cute, comedic, and uplifting TV I’d highly recommend popping some popcorn and pouring yourself a glass of wine.
That’s all from me. Have a beautiful weekend friends.
Sarah
