Yeah poor guy. Survived cancer in his late 20s too.
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Canadian PoliGAF - 42nd Parliament: Sunny Ways in Trudeaupia
- Thread starter matthewwhatever
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Yeah poor guy. Survived cancer in his late 20s too.
Change could come in ways I don't expect, but I feel like even in the most extreme change scenarios I can think of, such as 100% of people only use public self driving car system, with 0% car ownership, you still run into fundamental issues of automobile oriented urban design, such as rush hour traffic. This is what I mean when I say that self driving cars will dramatically change things, but could at the end of the day, not really improve much.
Well what if people share cars? Well then we're just talking about public transit, which is what I'd point to as something policy makers should be more interested in.
If services like Car2Go are an early model of future car share programs they're going to be oriented toward cities and use terrible city cars. If you want to go off roading or go on a road trip to another town you'll likely need your own car for a long while into the future. On the other hand, possibly people will just rent cars for those special needs if good services pop up to fill that need.
Otherwise known as the 'Paul Martin'.
When you consider that one of the strongest disincentives to car ownership and driving is the lack of or high price of parking, the concept that self driving cars could allow an individual to have all the benefits of driving and car ownership, but without the expense of parking is troubling in that it is likely to dramatically increase car use.
Additionally with self driving cars theres no licensing barriers, so more people than ever will be able to drive cars. Children will be driving cars around. This has real benefits, but it certainly has the potential to significantly expand the amount of cars on the road.
Its likely that self driving cars will spike the amount of car use in general. Im not sure thats a good thing.
Additionally with self driving cars theres no licensing barriers, so more people than ever will be able to drive cars. Children will be driving cars around. This has real benefits, but it certainly has the potential to significantly expand the amount of cars on the road.
Its likely that self driving cars will spike the amount of car use in general. Im not sure thats a good thing.
That's a fair point but there are only so many roads out there and, while self driving cars would be more efficient, road capacity/congestion will remain significant factors in how fast road travel can be. I'm sure you'll see self driving buses on dedicated busways and the like come into play to try and cut travel time down.
I feel like you saying this means you're not actually reading my posts, considering I addressed exactly this. Once you give up owning your car, the opportunity costs of using public transit when it will literally get you where you're going faster (as is the case in almost all urban centers where at least some of that transit has dedicated ROW) also go away.
Again, lack of car ownership *under any circumstances* increases the incentive to use public transit. When the cost of delivering public transit also goes down because you are no longer paying drivers this only compounds.
People I know drive to downtown Edmonton, even when the train will get them there twice as fast, simply because otherwise they're basically wasting the value their car gives them and reducing their freedom at their destination. The combination of not owning a car and *near immediate on-demand* availability of point to point transit (which is what a self-driving Uber or Uber-like is, not even remotely resembling what we call taxis right now btw) at their destination will easily combine to drastically reduce the number of cars on the road and the amount of space dedicated to them in urban centres (which is currently ridiculous).
Furthermore, looking farther down the road, much of the space occupied by roads is actually for human driver benefit and if we were to ever get to 100% self-driving you could fit a lot more vehicles in a much smaller space.
Can you rephrase this? I don't understand what you're trying to say here.
Maybe it would be helpful if we talked in more concrete terms instead of using generalities like "public transit" and "self driving cars." I'll start with some narrower definitions.
Self driving bus - essentially exactly like buses now, with fixed routes and high capacity, but without a driver. These are going to be great, as they're going to be cheaper and safer than what we have now. Cities should be excited by these.
Self driving carpool - some sort of minivan (6-8 people?) that will take you directly to your location but could pick up people along the way. Lyft is already experimenting with something like this and I think you get a few bucks off your fare if you allow your Lyft driver to pull over and pick up more people along the way. Hilariously they're also experimenting with set pick up points, kind of like... Bus stops? This sort of technology could be very cool but it may only be marginally efficient than being shuttled somewhere individually. I don't have enough data to say how good or bad this would be, but given that Lyft is trending to a bus system, maybe cities should just focus on buses.
Self driving taxi car - essentially this is an uber, but with no driver. You don't own one, you just call one with your phone. These will be great in that they will be safer than regular cars, and provide transportation flexibility to people who can't drive. I think cities should be neutral if not negative on these, and essentially ignore their future existence with regard to how cities plan. Even if they're small smart four two sized cars, they're still inefficiently large compared with other transportation modes. A city with streets dominated by self driving taxis is not a good outcome for pedestrians and cyclists, and I have trouble seeing how in the worst case the existence of these self driving taxis make our roads any different than what they look like today.
Self driving owned car - this is a car that you can drive, but which also drives itself. It is owned and exclusively used by an individual. I assume these will still exist in the realm of luxury cars. Ferraris for example. These are obviously no better than regular cars we have now, except they're potentially safer.
Yeah I just straight up don't see how this will be true and you need to put a lot more work into showing why you're right instead of asserting that it will inevitably and undoubtably turn out this way.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/23/opinion/us-should-follow-canadas-lead-on-heroin-treatment.html
Note that this "demonstrable success" that the op-ed published by the New York Times is calling on US states to emulate is something that Harper's Health Canada spent considerable resources fighting (to no avail)
Note that this "demonstrable success" that the op-ed published by the New York Times is calling on US states to emulate is something that Harper's Health Canada spent considerable resources fighting (to no avail)
This and the NAOMI Project (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2587648/) had an incredible effect on opiate users in Vancouver.
PS. Don't search Project NAOMI or NAOMI Project without Vancouver in the search, lol
Is this only in Vancouver? This is something that Winnipeg desperately needs. In fact, every community in the country should have one. There doesn't appear to be any downside.
Winnipeg does not have a local Insite location, although it does take part in the Street Connections program, which is a mobile van that can be contacted for needle exchanges, as well as providing various health issue supplies of various types, counselling information, and the like... all at no charge. Back in 2010 apparently they were giving out about 30,000 needles per month!
Silver Arrows
Banned
IIRC they are looking to put one in Toronto, but yeah, it is desperately needed.
Ether_Snake
å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®
100% wrong. Cars are rarely used, they just sit idle most of the time. Self driving cars reduces the needs for ownership, instead cars will be utilized nearly 24/7, or at least close to optimal levels VS demand, something that will be defined in realtime as all cars transfer their data to the network, and each car becomes the equivalent of a surveillance drone, gathering and transmitting all sorts of data reused by various parties, be it emergency services ot others. They will know where to go to meet current and expected demand, and a mere option would allow you to chose carpooling or not and predict the estimated travel time, etc.
It's full of other aspects that would significantly reduce the number of cars produced, significantly reduce the number of cars parked in the streets, etc.
I haven't even started explaining where this can really go. A self driving car passes by an accident site and emergency services have video they can review before anyone even gets there.
Not to get too into the car convo but cars will not be used 24/7 as most people have no need for cars at certain hours, and cars need to refuel/recharge/get flat tires fixed. Will a self driving car drive on a flat tire? Of course not.
Also, self driving cars will require a normal drivers license. No self driving car will ever be in the vain of googles wheel less vehicle, or at least not in the next 20 years. For the times when there is an emergency or the gps doesn't work or for whatever reason, there will always be a manual driving mode and thus the need for licensing
Also, self driving cars will require a normal drivers license. No self driving car will ever be in the vain of googles wheel less vehicle, or at least not in the next 20 years. For the times when there is an emergency or the gps doesn't work or for whatever reason, there will always be a manual driving mode and thus the need for licensing
You went from "ever" to "20 years" awfully fast here.
The reality is that when cars get to a certain point it will actually be *imperative* to not have a potential human takeover on that car, because it will drastically reduce safety. If a computer can't deal with an emergency problem, there's no way a human who's not even paying attention because they've adjusted to the car doing most of the work will be able to.
Some minor driving in a parking lot or something like that to get you the last 100m maybe, but once cars do most of the work people will become very very bad drivers.
People need to look at this from a road utilization and physical space point of view.
Say I have a typical section of road in a major city with 2 lanes each way and some parking/loading zones. At odd hours of the day it's only 20-40% utilized, but for a few hours in the day around rush hour you reach 80-90% utilization, and you get congestion at the level where traffic speed goes ~10km/h under the speed limit. Occasionally there is construction or car crashes that closes a lane and makes things even slower.
Please explain how the addition of self driving cars in the future will change this road.
Say I have a typical section of road in a major city with 2 lanes each way and some parking/loading zones. At odd hours of the day it's only 20-40% utilized, but for a few hours in the day around rush hour you reach 80-90% utilization, and you get congestion at the level where traffic speed goes ~10km/h under the speed limit. Occasionally there is construction or car crashes that closes a lane and makes things even slower.
Please explain how the addition of self driving cars in the future will change this road.
Ether_Snake
å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®
There's a bunch of ways it can. It's pretty obvious many of those folks would be car pooling since it would be an option far more accessible. Second, traffic jams can occur as a result of accidents (which you even mention as a cause in your example) which there would be fewer of, and security measures such as speed limits. When self driving cars become ubiquitous, the infrastructure itself might be designed for them, which means the cars could go much faster to begin with (see Minority Report).
Another cause of traffic jams is lack of coordination among drivers and stubborness. A GPS might tell someone they could take another route to save time, but they might not take it because they're being lazy, among other reasons, such as not even having a GPS. Plus like I said self-driving cars become information gathering and broadcasting drones, so we simply get more information for the cars to make decisions on.
In your example, imagine a side route becomes available; the drivers won't coordinate to avoid jamming that one too, maybe everyone tries to take it, maybe many aren't even aware it's available or where it can get them and in how much time. The self-driving cars will know all that and coordinate to make the optimal decisions.
PumpkinSpice
Banned
They should. There is value in having an operator to a bus other than just driving.
Personally, I don't think self driving cars are going to change much, if they even get them to work reliably outside of sunny California.
What we need is a driving ban (outside of delivery trucks, transit, etc) for downtown areas, force people to take public transit as much as possible for commuting. Then we can stop overbuilding roads for the 2 hours a day where they're busy. Next we need serious parking restrictions elsewhere to get people to consider other options wherever possible.
Fundamentally, people without cars are more likely to use shared vehicles (fixed route buses, trains, carpooling services, etc) when they're available. That is the entire basis of my argument and I've stated it several times but you have yet to acknowledge it. I am well aware of what congestion means and how it works, thanks.
SheepyGuy said:
If wishes were horses... Talk about not being pragmatic.
Enticing people to abandon car ownership by making the alternatives better is possible with changes we *know* are coming. Forcing them to abandon car ownership by edict won't happen unless something drastic changes that we have no sign of happening.
I'm not ignoring your argument but it's hard to follow it when you seamlessly intermingle self-driving car and transit even though the implementation details of these ideas have dramatically different implications. The result is that I think we're just talking past one another here. This is why I made an effort post to actually try to clarify the language being used.
You're not going to hear any resistance from me that self driving public transit (as in buses, and trains) is a public good that we should build and encourage people to use. Self driving car pools seem like they could be good too (certainly better than a single individual in a car), but that's a bit more future tech so it's hard to say how effective it will be.
I don't know if it necessarily follows that the existence of a high quality autonomous uber-like system that would allow one to comfortably abandon a personally owned vehicle would additionally result in an uptick in public transit usage. In the worst case the person is using a car individually in the exact same fashion as before. It would be interesting to know what percentage of New Yorkers travel almost exclusively by taxi cab, as that would be one of the few areas of the world that has a significant enough taxis that one could not own a car, but easily travel by car everywhere nonetheless.
My assertion is that if you're a policy maker trying to figure out how to move increasing amounts of people from point A to B, due to the scaling problems associated with car oriented infrastructure, I don't think automobiles, whether part of an autonomous taxi service or not, can really be a major part of the solution. Effective self-driving carpools could be good, as so many cars on the road just have one or two people in them, but I suspect it would be a marginal improvement when compared to traditional transit. I'd encourage city planners to continue on the path that they're already on (or moving towards), which is to decrease the amount of space used exclusively for cars and encourage people to walk, bike and use buses and trains.
Automobiles are always going to have a role in our transportation system, but we rely on them too much. According to the 2011 census around 65% of Torontonians commuted to work by driving a car. Unless we want to be building twenty three lane highways in the future like they currently have in Houston, we probably have to bring that number way down below 50%.
This is an interesting point, but you quite simply can't have one without the other. Whether anyone likes it or not, autonomous driving will revolutionize both transit and car ownership. This is a false dilemma you're proposing. Cities should absolutely build for transit and build for density in so far as that is within their control. I don't drive, so you're gonna have me cheering for that no matter what. I love buses and trains and any day will gladly be in one of those over a car whenever it's feasible. On this front, I live the world I want to live in, and I do it in a city where that's pretty difficult.
But a self-driving Uber is also coming and will end up being an integral part of how people get around when density just isn't sufficient for even transit that's been made cheaper by removing the human element to its driving. Cities like Toronto may eventually strive to be as low in car ownership as Manhattan without one, but for cities like Edmonton that's a much more distant dream even if our City Council did everything in their power to make it happen.
There's a whole world out there of cities that are less than 2 million people. They also need improvements to how people get around. And you will never get those improvements so long as car ownership sits up in the 80-100% range. Car ownership has to come down *first* before people will find value in transit.
matthewwhatever
Member
Bruce Anderson of Abacus Data has been tweeting the results of some party-focused polling they did.
First, for the Conservatives:
So Jason Kenney, who has spent years allegedly building up a campaign infrastructure, only cracks 10% if you look at one very specific subset of voters, while Kevin O'Leary -- who has done zero legwork and is an idiot -- is running a pretty strong second place. I'm also curious to see what kind of ceiling Peter Mackay has. Even if he's pretty conservative, I have a hard time seeing Westerners taking to him, but at the same time.
Meanwhile, on the NDP side, if Mulcair survives his leadership review, it may be by incredibly slim margins:
They also did a poll of who NDP members would prefer as leader, and it was basically a 50-50 split between Megan Leslie and Nathan Cullen. They don't say what the question was, though -- I'd be surprised if those were the only two names that came up in a potential leadership poll, since I'd expect Niki Ashton or Alexandre Boulerice to have at least a few supporters.
First, for the Conservatives:
So Jason Kenney, who has spent years allegedly building up a campaign infrastructure, only cracks 10% if you look at one very specific subset of voters, while Kevin O'Leary -- who has done zero legwork and is an idiot -- is running a pretty strong second place. I'm also curious to see what kind of ceiling Peter Mackay has. Even if he's pretty conservative, I have a hard time seeing Westerners taking to him, but at the same time.
Meanwhile, on the NDP side, if Mulcair survives his leadership review, it may be by incredibly slim margins:
They also did a poll of who NDP members would prefer as leader, and it was basically a 50-50 split between Megan Leslie and Nathan Cullen. They don't say what the question was, though -- I'd be surprised if those were the only two names that came up in a potential leadership poll, since I'd expect Niki Ashton or Alexandre Boulerice to have at least a few supporters.
gutter_trash
Banned
R.I.P. Jean Lapierre, former MP and famed political commentator
I used to listen to his segment on FM 98.5, it's sad that he lost his life in a plane crash at les Iles de la Madelaine
http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/condolences-pour-in-for-jean-lapierre-1.2837725
I used to listen to his segment on FM 98.5, it's sad that he lost his life in a plane crash at les Iles de la Madelaine
http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/condolences-pour-in-for-jean-lapierre-1.2837725
Early polling like this is heavily testing name recognition more than anything.
Kenney's apparatus would be a major asset in an actual campaign, though I'm not really convinced he's got the PR skill to really persuade the masses. If we were talking a more old-style delegated convention I would think Kenney was in a much stronger position.
Kenney's apparatus would be a major asset in an actual campaign, though I'm not really convinced he's got the PR skill to really persuade the masses. If we were talking a more old-style delegated convention I would think Kenney was in a much stronger position.
I would be surprised if that apparatus is still in existence after that disastrous election. The party pretty much threw away the multicultural vote that Kenney had been building for nearly a decade.
Yeah. Muslims for one aren't voting for Conservatives for at least one more election cycle.
And the Liberal resurrection of family unification immigration will build a hell of a lot of goodwill.
Eh, the Tories' core vote held, and the apparatus is really relationships with key party operatives, not the actual swing voters. The people who will organize the nationwide voter-mobilization campaign you would need to win the leadership.
https://twitter.com/joe_warmington/status/715207224323276800
First time ever a grown man has used the word "Haters" unironically during a funeral?
#sunmedia
First time ever a grown man has used the word "Haters" unironically during a funeral?
#sunmedia
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
lol wot.... what an asshole
CNN did an article on Justin Trudeau haha.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/30/americas/canada-trudeau-yoga/index.html
Guy is very popular on twitter apparently !
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/30/americas/canada-trudeau-yoga/index.html
Guy is very popular on twitter apparently !
Simon Belmont
Banned
That must just be eating conservatives from the inside out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtHqtRnr_l4
Disclaimer: Rebel video but it's amusing to see an adult getting so salty over something so insignifiant.
They had a point with the Harper derangement syndrome, but the Trudeau derangement syndrome is on a whole other level. It might make the DSM-5.
Why was Paul Ryan on that list at around number 9 or so? Either way, that guy sounds like a douche, looks like a douche and is a douche. I'm an expert in determining who are douches.
matthewwhatever
Member
I pretty much agree with everything you wrote. I think Kenney probably has the apparatus and organizers in place -- even among the ethnic/minority groups that the Tories were trying to demonize, considering how little the overall CPC vote totals actually went down -- and he has the money (if maybe not as substantial a lead over Raitt/Bernier as he'd probably like), but he doesn't seem like the kind of person who can win over voters who aren't already in his corner. He's pretty obnoxiously abrasive, which isn't the kind of personality that attracts the inevitable anti-frontrunner campaign that's going to develop.
I think Andrew Coyne summed him up best when Mackay "retired" a year ago:
He's basically a generic Conservative politician. Not an original thought in his head. Kind of dull but vaguely charismatic to some people (I once knew a girl from the Maritimes who thought he was amazingly sexy, and I guess he is if you like bland and nondescript). I remember hearing that he was pretty homophobic back when he ran for the PC leadership, but he seems to have kept that pretty under wraps. Kind of misogynistic. I can't see him being the one to lead the CPC back to power, but then again, 15 years ago I never would've predicted that Harper was going to be the one to do it for them.
matthewwhatever
Member
This is why I'm skeptical he has a real shot at winning. There's a chunk of Canadians (like me) who'll never forgive Mackay for killing the federal Progressive Conservative Party. I don't know how large that group is, but there's no way I'm not the only one. On top of that, there are former Reformers who think he's not one of them because of his background. I can't imagine that they're suddenly going to drop all their objections to him now, when that's apparently been the knock against him for nearly fifteen years. He may actually have the lowest ceiling out of any of the potential CPC candidates.
No compromise.
The gentleman with him looks really uncomfortable.
It reminds me of when I was a kid at Disneyland and a Mickey mascot yanked me into some other family's picture.
Somewhere there's a family who looks at their photos from that trip and goes "who the hell is that confused kid Mickey has his arm around?"
On that score, a decade as a solid team player in government for Harper will probably go at least some of the way.
I met MacKay briefly back in, oh, 2005, when I was attending the MPs' dinner for students at the Forum for Young Canadians. Seemed pleasant enough, but he's definitely kind of generic as a politician. Now, maybe generically friendly is what the doctor ordered for the CPC -- it's probably a step up from Harper's cold fish demeanor, at least.
I'm not sure if the CPC getting slaughtered in Atlantic Canada last election helps or hurts MacKay's case. He could argue he would help them do better in the region, but others might be more inclined to make that a low priority, since strictly in numerical terms it's not all that many seats, and a lot of the traditional Reformers don't think much of the region anyway.
gutter_trash
Banned
Conservatives veering more socially conservative is what is keeping people like Charest away from ever coming back Federally
Charest holds progressive views on social issues
Charest holds progressive views on social issues
Charest's economic record as Premier of Quebec is anathema to what a lot of Tory base voters want the party to stand for (even if it didn't necessarily do so when Harper was in power).
And that's why they'll never have a real presence outside the Prairies, not that they ever had a true national strategy to begin with anyway
PEI Premier Wade MacLauchlan: abortions for some, miniature Prince Edward Island flags for others.
matthewwhatever
Member
Good on PEI. I couldn't believe that that they were paying Islanders to go to Nova Scotia to get abortions.
Abacus released their CPC leadership polling, and wow at those Kevin O'Leary numbers:
(Though, to be fair, O'Leary actually does surprisingly well amongst self-identified CPC supporters.)
Meanwhile, over on the NDP side, there's this:
An April Fool's joke from Poll Watch Canada, but the actual numbers are pretty bleak for them, according to Ekos. A distant 4th place in BC, barely above 10% in Ontario, fighting for 3rd place with the CPC in Quebec...even looking at demographic groups, they're dead amongst the university-educated and the 18-34 age group. There's a long time until the next election, obviously, but they have quite a bit of work to do.
Abacus released their CPC leadership polling, and wow at those Kevin O'Leary numbers:
(Though, to be fair, O'Leary actually does surprisingly well amongst self-identified CPC supporters.)
Meanwhile, over on the NDP side, there's this:
An April Fool's joke from Poll Watch Canada, but the actual numbers are pretty bleak for them, according to Ekos. A distant 4th place in BC, barely above 10% in Ontario, fighting for 3rd place with the CPC in Quebec...even looking at demographic groups, they're dead amongst the university-educated and the 18-34 age group. There's a long time until the next election, obviously, but they have quite a bit of work to do.
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