Along for the Ride #247
Zoox's SF operations, reducing traffic collisions, and one very scary election
Heya friends, happy Friday!
This week’s newsletter is helping me to not … completely spiral over the US election. So thank you for giving me an outlet to manage that stress bomb. Without further ado.. le news:
Bloomberg’s citylab deep dives into Denver’s ebike rebate program which has distributed 15,000 ebike discounts to residents (approx. one for every 40 adults in the city). The upshot: more people are choosing to bike over using their cars, however Denver’s cycle network has major gaps which is limiting the potential for mode shift in the region.
How various states are preparing for autonomous vehicles
This article details about how half of the States in the US have statutes in place for when AVs are introduced to their public roads. It focuses heavily on freight, which might not be the jazziest subsection of AV policy, but is an interesting read nonetheless.
Canada is going all on in improved train connections between Toronto and Quebec City
Pretty good, heh, bud? The Trudeau government will announce plans for a high-speed train linking Quebec City and Toronto in the coming weeks. According to ~sources~, the train will travel 300 kilometres per hour (double the speed of Via Rail's current trains!).
How wider streets are more dangerous for pedestrian crossings
We love it when AFTR friends are in the news! My friend Marcel’s most recent research on street crossings is the core of this article. Way to go mon ami. Here’s a link to the research article.
Marcel’s research found that crosswalks that span a larger distance from one side of the street to the other increase the likelihood of a pedestrian being struck by a vehicle. The study looked at 49,000 street crossings in Paris, San Francisco and Irvine, California, and overlayed recent pedestrian–vehicle collisions on these data sets. The research raises the salience of traffic-calming interventions.
It’s important to me that we discuss these interventions in the framework of AVs. Do we need AVs if we can right-size our city streets to be safer for all road users? There is an abundance of interventions that we already know make our cities safer, more sustainable, and more joyful… but what we lack is the political will power to enact them.
Zoox provides more details about upcoming SF operations
Key details: it’s gonna be in the lil toaster pictured above, will only be available to Zoox employees to start (which I actually like, be your own guinea pigs!), and operate in the SoMA neighbourhood as well as offer rides to Zoox’s HQ in Foster City. I’ll be curious to see how this pans out, as Zoox is one of the first to have a non-traditional car model operate in SF. I’m used to seeing the Jaguars and Chevy Bolts roaming around.
Zoox also fired shots at Tesla, stating their AV technology “does not work” lol (TechCrunch).
Tesla in Full Self-Driving mode hit and kills a deer
I’m about to sound like PETA, but wtf! I would expect lower levels of autonomy to … recognize and avoid a large obstacle in the roadway (??), but Tesla’s always been one for broken promises (!!). A video shared on Twitter (watch at your own peril) shows dashcam footage of a “Tesla Model 3 moments before absolutely obliterating a deer at full speed that wandered into traffic, with the vehicle making no attempt to slow down.” According to the Tesla owner, the driving assistance software didn't even stop after the collision, and instead just kept rolling right along as if nothing happened.
Waymo raises an addition $5.6b to expand operations and plans to use Google’s Gemini AI to train vehicles
How many (protected!!) bike lanes to do we think this would build?
According to the tagline of the second article, “the company used Gemini to build its own ‘End-to-End Multimodal Model for Autonomous Driving.” Do we think they know what multimodal means in the transportation context lol (the article makes note that is is different technical modules… but one would hope their comms team would maybe catch the confusing double entendre?).
How street design changed in North America during the pandemic
“This paper examines street design as an emergency response for physical distancing in public space during the coronavirus pandemic. We assess how design ideas for streets were discussed and promoted through news media from February through October of 2020. This marks a temporary, though potentially paradigmatic, shift in how streets function. To what extent the pandemic will enable longer-term street interventions is unknown. However, the initial impacts of the pandemic on streets are noteworthy. From our nine-month 2020 media analysis, we highlight a typology of emerging coronavirus-driven street interventions and assess how urban design ideas were discussed as a pandemic response.”
What makes a street good for car-free day celebrations?
Filed under: very niche lol.
“Cities with a growing population and complexity face urban crises related to road safety and mobility. Governments and collaborative stakeholders are introducing car-free day programs to address these challenges. In this study, a scientific criterion to identify suitable streets for such programs was established through a three-round Delphi study. The study involved twenty panelists from academia, city governments, international and local organizations, and freelance consultants. The panelists identified forty-six criteria clustered into six categories through open-ended and close-ended rounds, desk research, and insights from a car-free day workshop.”
Tesla’s robotaxis are going to make your commute worse
“Robotaxi companies would argue that centralized vehicle routing algorithms can reduce [deadheading] impact, but deadheading is inevitable in any taxi system. It is more pronounced during rush hour, when traffic is at its worst, as commuter demand tends to be very directional, necessitating longer trips between a drop-off and the next pickup. We simply cannot replace personal vehicles with taxis (human-driven or autonomous) without a substantial increase in congestion.”
To my fellow Americans: we gotta vote!! there is an orange fascist on the ballot and to put it simply: not the vibe.
If you’re voting in SF, we also have a million propositions and mayoral candidates. My two cents: Yes on K (we love turning useless roads into oceanfront parks and supporting (the very cute) natural residents aka plover birds!). The mayoral race is 😵💫, and as my friend Jay put it, hold your nose and vote for anybody other than Mark Farrell lol.
I spent a good portion of this past weekend helping friends paint their flat in advance of a new lil baby entering the proverbial villa. We sang, we danced, we painted and got painted on. I forced everybody to watch Paddington 2 at the end (in anticipation for Paddington 3 being released in the UK next week!).
I myself am painting my flat this weekend (!!), and am excited to share pictures of it coming together (design is my passion memes, etc etc).
That’s all from me. Have a beautiful weekend friends.
Sarah
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