Very exciting news, as more people use autonomous vehicles, the less parking needs there will be and hopefully more parking lots can be reclaimed with plant life, that benefits the whole earth with better air and calming energy.
It doesn’t seem likely that parking is even half of street surface let alone street plus sidewalk.
That would require more parking width than travel lane width on any given segment with parking (to account for areas where parking is not permitted plus intersections). Few streets have less travel width than parking. Many have a multiple.
>That would require more parking width than travel lane width on any given segment with parking
Not sure about Houston, but that is the case in many dense US city-suburbs. They'll have two-way roads with parking on both sides, and the roads will be about three cars wide. The result is cars parked on both sides, with drivers sharing the middle lane for both directions of travel.
When you see someone driving towards you, it's a game of chicken to see who will temporarily pull off into a vacant parking spot. It seems to happen because the lots aren't big enough for 2-4 car garages and driveways.
And for our friends across the ponds, yes: US households really do demand space for at least 2-4 cars per family.
I believe you'll find that the difference between a machine and a human driving the same car can be dramatic. A lot of humans just drive like complete dicks. Switching the throttle map on my car to "eco" and driving in a sensible way gets me +50% MPG compared to setting the throttle map to "sport" and driving like a teenager.
Why do you believe that? These taxis will increase the number of vehicles on the road, because
> more people use autonomous vehicles
Those "more people" will be bus riders and the housebound, and extra trips by people who already use cars in one form or another. The latter's own cars will be parked somewhere. Everyone commutes at the same time of day, no-one wants to share with randos.
Or more housing. Or virtually anything else would be a better use of land than parking lots.
The amount of valuable land that widespread deployment of autonomous vehicles could unlock is just staggering. Not to mention the avoided costs of building undercover garages.
