Thread | Brutkey

Great letter in Irish Times about billionaire businesspeople calling for Metrolink to be cancelled from @ccferrie@mastodon.ie

Sir, – What is it about Irish billionaires/multi-millionaires and MetroLink, and with our eagerness to listen to their “pearls of wisdom”? First Michael O’Leary’s rant and now Dermot Desmond, with his outlandish claims that self-driving cars will make public transport redundant.

Setting aside the serious safety concerns with autonomous vehicles, especially in urban areas, we would do well to learn from the experience of Uber and other rideshare platforms which made similar claims about congestion reduction.

Study after study has shown that they in fact increased congestion in cities where they operated and had almost no impact on car ownership. Any privately operated AI-driven autonomous vehicle service will have the same commercial pressures to increase car dependency.

I do, however, share Mr Desmond’s optimism about the possibility of significant reductions in car ownership. This will be achieved, not through futuristic technology, but by investing in our public transport and active travel infrastructure which will make cars redundant in our cities. – Yours, etc

Ciarán Ferrie
@ccferrie@mastodon.ie

@d_mathieson@mastodon.ie They edited out the words "ill-informed and self-serving" between "Michael O'Leary's" and "rant". 😆

Dave Mathieson
@d_mathieson@mastodon.ie

@ccferrie@mastodon.ie There was an interesting study in Cork recently about traffic in general but one figure jumped out that showed average occupancy for taxis was 1.7 (ish). But that includes the driver, so in terms of moving passengers, taxis are worse than single occupant private commuter cars. No reason to assume that autonomous taxis will be different.