I'm sorry but the assumption that robotaxis will make parking spots obsolete in 5 years is the sort of thinking that probably keeps Elon Musk a rich little boy. About 10 years ago we had conversations about autonomous driving coming by 2020 and how it would likely make auto insurance irrelevant. That hasn't materialized yet, and granted we are much further along now, but it seems like we're still a long way away from it being the norm to the point where it disrupts city building codes.
Why Can't Walnut Creek Build 3 Bedroom Apartments with a Playground?
51–60 of 93 posts
Re: Why Can't Walnut Creek Build 3 Bedroom Apartments with a Playground?
#52> The global leader in self driving cars has a headquarters thirty miles from here - the city could invite someone from Waymo to give a talk on the future of onsite parking and how our codes should adapt.
I agree with pretty much everything in your article, Kevin. But I wonder whether Waymo actually has a holistic vision for how families would use their service? Do they expect people with small children to haul around a carseat or booster seat (possibly multiple) for these trips until all their kids are old enough? And spend the extra couple of minutes double parked while they install/remove it?
Re: Why Can't Walnut Creek Build 3 Bedroom Apartments with a Playground?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is the city's parking code assumes that every car has a human driver that needs to park and then exit the car. This informs the choices about how wide the spaces and how wide the aisles are. Even if only some of the cars had the ability to park themselves - onsite or offsite - you could drastically reduce the floor space required for parking. Reducing the floor space reduces the building height, the constru…
25 years from now, if half the cars are then capable of autonomous nav-and-park, we could convert some of the excess parking lots to buildings. (Any lot large enough to have “aisles” will also be large enough to build on.)
It's extraordinarily difficult, and expensive, to convert parking garage space to housing - the heights are different, it's not designed with the same egresses, the floor material is concrete.
It also affects what the ground floor of buildings looks like - you can't have ten ground floor pedestrian exits or bike parking in the courtyard if the courtyard is on the third floor.
Re: Why Can't Walnut Creek Build 3 Bedroom Apartments with a Playground?
#54> The global leader in self driving cars has a headquarters thirty miles from here - the city could invite someone from Waymo to give a talk on the future of onsite parking and how our codes should adapt. I agree with pretty much everything in your article, Kevin. But I wonder whether Waymo actually has a holistic vision for how families would use their service? Do they expect people with small children to haul aroun…
My sense is that parents are pretty tired of driving their kids to and from things and if it was possible for your kids to take a self driving car to school or to activities or to camp that would be a pretty attractive proposition.
The schools or daycares or camps could help figure out unloading on the other end.
Re: Why Can't Walnut Creek Build 3 Bedroom Apartments with a Playground?
#55“Human driven cars are going to be around for about 5 years” is one of the most out of touch quotes I’ve seen this month. Also, all of this is about NIMBYism, which is about house prices being inflated to make up most of households’ wealth, which is not fixable without triggering a massive wealth redistribution. Most western societies are stuck in a very non-ideal Nash equilibrium and it is not going to be solved any…
It is ridiculous to be building infrastructure with a seventy five year lifespan under an assumption that may never come in its entire life.
When was the last time you looked at a chart of Waymo passenger miles driven?
Re: Why Can't Walnut Creek Build 3 Bedroom Apartments with a Playground?
#56“Human driven cars are going to be around for about 5 years” is one of the most out of touch quotes I’ve seen this month. Also, all of this is about NIMBYism, which is about house prices being inflated to make up most of households’ wealth, which is not fixable without triggering a massive wealth redistribution. Most western societies are stuck in a very non-ideal Nash equilibrium and it is not going to be solved any…
> “Human driven cars are going to be around for about 5 years” is one of the most out of touch quotes I’ve seen this month. Where did you see that sentiment expressed? I couldn't find anything along those lines in the article. The closes was about parking, which I think is very different.
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Re: Why Can't Walnut Creek Build 3 Bedroom Apartments with a Playground?
#57You should be looking places other than California before asking this question. In my suburb of Iowa we have apartments that are very similar to this one as far as sizes but the rent is much cheaper. There are also a number of three bedroom apartments in those new buildings, for much more reasonable rent. These apartments have the large parking lots required in the U.S. They have the large elevators required in the U…
I moved to California from Nebraska, so I'm well familiar with what you're talking about. And while that's true, it overlooks a few things:
* My salary:housing ratio is better in California than in Nebraska. I have to work fewer hours each month to pay for my home here than I use to, for roughly similar niceness.
* What is spendy is services, like paying someone to do work on the house. Those workers make more here, too.
* On a side note, anything you buy from a national retailer costs the same in both places. An iPhone or a minivan both cost $X whether you live in CA or IA, so I only have to work about 1/4th the amount of time to buy a new phone here as I use to.
Yes, the cost of living is a lot higher here. Especially for those in tech, in my experience the pay difference far outweighs the cost difference, even including housing.
Re: Why Can't Walnut Creek Build 3 Bedroom Apartments with a Playground?
#58“Human driven cars are going to be around for about 5 years” is one of the most out of touch quotes I’ve seen this month. Also, all of this is about NIMBYism, which is about house prices being inflated to make up most of households’ wealth, which is not fixable without triggering a massive wealth redistribution. Most western societies are stuck in a very non-ideal Nash equilibrium and it is not going to be solved any…
pretty sure I saw this quote from Elon in like 2015.
Right, the difference is you can see from charts of miles driven by Waymo etc. that the technology is clearly ready. If it was not ready they would not have been able to raise money at a $126 billion valuation.
Re: Why Can't Walnut Creek Build 3 Bedroom Apartments with a Playground?
#59“Human driven cars are going to be around for about 5 years” is one of the most out of touch quotes I’ve seen this month. Also, all of this is about NIMBYism, which is about house prices being inflated to make up most of households’ wealth, which is not fixable without triggering a massive wealth redistribution. Most western societies are stuck in a very non-ideal Nash equilibrium and it is not going to be solved any…
The point is the city's parking code assumes that every car has a human driver that needs to park and then exit the car. This informs the choices about how wide the spaces and how wide the aisles are. Even if only some of the cars had the ability to park themselves - onsite or offsite - you could drastically reduce the floor space required for parking. Reducing the floor space reduces the building height, the constru…
People have been saying that self-driving cars are so imminent that we don't need to bother making any improvements to public transit for... at least 10 years, probably closer to 15 years at this point. It's still too premature to shape your entire land use planning around still largely theoretical predictions of how the technology could evolve.
Re: Why Can't Walnut Creek Build 3 Bedroom Apartments with a Playground?
#60> The global leader in self driving cars has a headquarters thirty miles from here - the city could invite someone from Waymo to give a talk on the future of onsite parking and how our codes should adapt. I agree with pretty much everything in your article, Kevin. But I wonder whether Waymo actually has a holistic vision for how families would use their service? Do they expect people with small children to haul aroun…
My sense is that parents are pretty tired of driving their kids to and from things and if it was possible for your kids to take a self driving car to school or to activities or to camp that would be a pretty attractive proposition. The schools or daycares or camps could help figure out unloading on the other end.
the only thing I can imagine in the near-term are a subset of vehicles in the fleet which have carseats for infants and todlers which stay installed in the vehicle. We also already see vehicles from Volvo which have integrated/convertable booster seats for children 4+ and maybe the entire fleet could have these.