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Post by High Priestess on Jan 5, 2017 15:06:27 GMT
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Post by helgaparis on Jan 8, 2017 20:07:22 GMT
He is not the mayor of Paris, only of one arrondissement.
I have seen a detailed graphic in a newspaper a few days ago: all the inner arrondissements ( 1 - 10) lost population, between 0,2 and 1 %, which seems a lot. The others mostly gained habitants. Mine (14) about 1%, if I remember correctly. It's a large arrondissement and they are building hand over fist. There was a long disaffected tramway line, which the city and the railway company quarreled over for decades: to build or to keep or to teuse for a line.
Now, they build over it like crazy, so that's a lot of land for a first time building boom. Condidering that, an 1 % increase means we are also loosing inhabitants.
(I say "build over the old line" as they do exactly that. It's very deep, like it was running in canyons. Where you can see what they do, they put a heavy concrete platform on top of the chasm and build residences on top. The canyon with the old rails stays underneath. I guess the new inhabitants may not even be aware that they are living over a void. If ever they want a circular metro line just inside the boundaries of Paris, no need tfor digging. Anyway, the new mayor, Mme Hidalgo, will ban cars as fast as she can. No moreneed to have a garage under the buildings.)
For politicians, especially in less populated areas, loosing living room means losing voters too.
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Post by keith on Jan 11, 2017 16:32:56 GMT
Anyway, the new mayor, Mme Hidalgo, will ban cars as fast as she can. No moreneed to have a garage under the buildings.) For politicians, especially in less populated areas, loosing living room means losing voters too. For losing voters, this isn't bad.. a Politician has a better chance of maintaining control with a small population whose whims are more easily managed/predicted. As for cars.. I'm of the mind that all major cities should move as swiftly as possible to exclusively autonomous vehicles. All will be faster, safer and more efficient if you take all humans out from behind the steering wheel... the real problem is when you have both person and computer controlled vehicles. All that parking can add lots of housing for both residents and tourists... or, put in solar or lovely gardens. |
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Post by helgaparis on Jan 11, 2017 19:32:27 GMT
Paris has a pollution problem and the idea is to shift from cars to public transport, which works very well, if there is no strike. Or else electric cars and bikes. (Residents get a contribution for buying electric bikes).
The Uber trial with driverless cars did not work well in San Francisco, as the cars ignored red lights, basically a thing that a computer should be able to recognize. How an AI would cope with the Paris situation, where residents ignore red lights and happily walk into heavy traffic, even in front of police cars, is another question. That's probably impossible to program into a machine.
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Post by keith on Jan 11, 2017 22:17:55 GMT
The Uber trial with driverless cars did not work well in San Francisco, as the cars ignored red lights, basically a thing that a computer should be able to recognize. How an AI would cope with the Paris situation, where residents ignore red lights and happily walk into heavy traffic, even in front of police cars, is another question. That's probably impossible to program into a machine. This is the whole reason we need to switch from driver to non-driver cars all at the same time. The intelligence required to program a computer controlled car to follow the rules we set forth for people driving cars is inefficient. If ALL the cars on the road are computer controlled, you can have a central intelligence and no need for traffic lights. the cars will all know where they're all going and can make sure they don't crash into eachother. traffic lights are a convention required to help humans not smash into eachother (and moreso to know who to blame if someone does). This all is unnecessary with autonomous vehicles. They do need to watch for motion in case a child or pet runs into the road...this is easy. And since they'll know what other cars are near them, they can eliminate motion of other vehicles. It would be a much safer and more efficient system. They can then all be electro powered and will just return to a charging station when they need to and take themselves out of service temporarily. We can then provide a variety of sized vehicles for individuals to large groups all being super efficient. |
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Post by helgaparis on Jan 12, 2017 11:16:46 GMT
That's a nice utopia, Keith, but I don't believe it will work in densily populated areas in European cities. The mentality is different, people do not see it as a good thing to hand over control. You drive an individual car for the pleasure of driving. Watch European car publicities (I don't know your local ones): they sell the pleasure, the adventure, the experience, you become an adventurer driving. It's not even half naked beauties on the hood any more, the status symbol; but the action is the main argument. How would you sell a boring ai driven car?
Otherwise it's a nonsense to have individual cars at all, when a bus can transport 40 or 60 at once and a train hundreds. You have to power these cars somehow, either by fuel or by electricity and we have a long way to go to produce this electricity by solar-, wind- or wave power. Besides, the batteries and panels need elements in scarce supply, especially if Trump starts a trade war with China.
Personally, I thought I'd prefer an AI driven car to a typically horrible Parisian taxi, till I read the results of the first trials, tried to get my iphone to understand my accents in at least one language or to adapt hi-tech to the needs of sick/old/handicapped clients.
That gives me a vision of driverless taxis silently driving by, with helpless old peple trapped inside banging on the windows as the ai can't understand their slurred speach. ;-)
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Post by High Priestess on Jan 12, 2017 13:16:15 GMT
I echo what Helga says about the pleasure of driving. I'd definitely oppose mandatory driverless cars. I don't want anyone else -- government or tech companies -- controlling my car. It's annoying enough as it is with my cellphone increasingly under control of tech companies -- software updates that add "features" that are bothersome or require extra steps now to get something done. I drive a 24 year old vehicle and prefer old to new as far as cars go. If I got a new car, I'd remove the airbags and have a mechanic convert the car to using standard old style keys, not the wireless locks.
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Post by helgaparis on Jan 21, 2017 0:54:37 GMT
I'd keep the airbags, but I'd very much prefer keys.
I thought about this threat crossing the street today, at the red light of course. Like most st of the crowd. And winding through standing traffic between cars and busses, watching out for bikes and bicycles as they can thread themselves through standing cars too. The bikers watch out, but the bicycle riders ignore everything. Automatic cars in the lot would be really scary.
The tech press expects them to arrive in numbers in 2020 and be common in 2025. I'm curious, which vision is closer to reality.
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