Cars would be equipped with self-driving technology, including onboard sensors (both vision cameras and LIDAR). Vehicles would also be able to communicate with each other, as well as with a central control node.

Automated system would take over during periods of heavy traffic congestion, so that vehicles would be able to coordinate with each other in maintaining a high rate of throughput and good travel time, instead of traffic gridlock.

System would first be deployed on downtown taxis, in the denser urban environment where traffic congestion is highest. All taxis would be required to have this hardware installed in order to operate in the downtown area. In return, these taxi fleets would receive a subsidy to allow them to lower fare costs and thus increase their usage.

Pretty soon, usage of personally-owned vehicles in said urban environment would become rare, and subsidized taxi rides would be the norm. This would be a next step in urban transit, beyond Metro subways.
-- sanman, Apr 25 2019

// LIDAR //

Do you write RADAR, SONAR/SODAR, and LASER too? Also note that the first time the term was ever used in print, it was capitalized "lidar".
-- notexactly, Apr 25 2019


I was thinking about this and wondered if an information technology like this, with human driver, could be an add on. If this was the case there would be a few cars initially in the flow acting as control nodes over the blind cars. At some point, if the tech caught hold, the flow would have enough connected cars for the speed to be safely increased.

But all the better with a 100% of autonomous vehicles.
-- wjt, Apr 27 2019



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