Dedicated charging area for Uber and Lyft in Mountain View, CA

Brad Templeton

Dealing with the “curb” has become a major challenge for both self-driving vehicles and human-operated taxis and delivery vehicles. Driving on the road has its challenges, but every trip also requires picking up and dropping off goods or passengers, which can be a completely different problem in the city. It’s one thing the robot taxi company Cruise has not yet resolved, which recently resulted in the San Francisco MTA it operates in denying its application for a permit to provide robot taxi services.

When I recently reported on Cruise’s first Robotaxi ride, I pointed out that it was strange that the vehicle never stopped for pick-up and drop-off, even when the driver was waiting in front of a temple that had a large and empty loading area. Instead, it blocked the lane and the driver got on and off. I suggested that this is simply because Cruise is doing things “one thing at a time” and resolving all of “Picov Andropov’s” (the famous Russian chauffeur from NPR’s “Car Talk”) on the first day. While it’s illegal, it’s very common for human taxi drivers to do the same too, especially when the streets aren’t crowded just because it’s easier.

The SF Muni does not seem willing to have it worked out later. That’s not unreasonable, but they should also be balanced out – if Cruise isn’t supposed to do PuDo (pickup / drop-off) on the street, then crackdown on Uber, Lyft and taxis should also be tough. We want all providers, including Cruise, to be safe, but we don’t want to slow down the autonomous developers any more than others.

In some places the curb is often empty and this is an easy problem to solve. If there is a light loading zone or a wide piece of curb, it isn’t too difficult for a generalized algorithm to identify and use. To do it really well, you’ll likely want to map every PuDo spot in the city, including official loading zones, parking lots, and other approved zones. Likewise, you want to identify no-parking / no-standing zones, bus stops and other places where it is not allowed and their opening times. You’ll also want to know more about official PuDo zones (which some cities have) and even special alleys that are often found in hotels and office towers. These zones can have additional rules for their use.

If you have such a map and you arrive at a location, it is not difficult to see which of the mapped PuDo zones near the destination can be used for free. Parking spaces can even be parallel parking. Robots will get very good at this, although there is an argument that it is often faster and less disruptive to traffic to stop in the lane and release a passenger than to park and drive in parallel.

For pick-up, a waiting passenger could be shown the map with the spots in his vicinity and he can click on a free one. If there is only one, they could even “claim” the space by partially standing in it and waving away cars trying to park there – but they shouldn’t wave away other cars trying to do a quick PuDo. Otherwise, they should update the app when they are given away. You should also consider walking until you find a space.

Some of the best stops are just outside residential driveways. This is a little annoying for the homeowner when it becomes a regular event – more on this below. Another interesting and common opening is in front of fire hydrants. It is legal to stand by a fire hydrant place in some cities, but the law requires a driver to stay in the car while standing in the fire trail. This law may need to be changed to cover robot drivers who would, of course, start driving immediately if they spot a fire engine, just as humans have to.

Pick-up of food

It looks different with delivery drivers. You usually have to walk to a restaurant or go to the door of a house to transport the food. This makes them less likely to block the lane. For delivery, most robot delivery services now signal the customer on the phone that the delivery is about to arrive and the customer has to go to the curb. In this case, a quick turnaround can make sense if it would also make sense for the passengers.

A managed curb

In this scene from a video, the Cruise car stopped in the middle of the lane to drop the company off … [+] Founder Kyle Vogt, despite two open curbs that he could use. This angered the SF MTA.

cruise

The future holds the potential for something bigger, namely a fully city-managed curb, including parking lots and PuDo spaces. Many, including respected parking expert Donald Shoup, argue that the idea of ​​free parking was a huge mistake, and that thought could even be extended to include short-term curb use. Today all commercial users of curbs are computerized – with an app or soon because they are robots. It is not impossible to have a system where the use of the curb can be managed, calculated and reserved, if only for 30 seconds.

This could also be done without better parking management, although it would certainly be very helpful if it were done as well. Perhaps one day all parking options will be handled by just one app that will select, reserve, manage and pay for parking spaces (street and private parking spaces) in your city. In this case, vehicles that need to do PuDo in busy areas could reserve a single minute in parking lots as well as PuDo spots to facilitate arrival. But they could still do that for the no parking spaces that allow PuDo. In particular, the rooms that some cities have assigned as “TNC only”.

A vehicle that is on its way to a PuDo (and that includes a human-controlled TNC with an app) has an estimate of its time of arrival that improves over time. His headquarters could ask the city to reserve a place through a time slot. This would prevent any other such vehicle from using that space at the reserved time. If it’s just a TNC spot, private drivers are not allowed to use it, although they might be found surprisingly in other areas there, so this needs to be handled – including passenger handling. As the vehicle got closer, the timing of the reservation was refined until it was completely precise and of course adjusted so that it didn’t overlap with others who were also so close to arrival.

Reservations would even apply to the gaps in front of residential driveways if they are large enough. I noted above that the constant use of these houses would annoy the residents of these houses, so the reservation system could limit the number of PuDos in such places. In addition, if the residents of these houses happened to be on the move with a smart app or a car, they could block reservations for free prior to their entry if they could block the resident. While residents don’t own the curb in front of their driveway, we don’t want to upset them too much. Using these spaces means a lot more PuDo capacity and less traffic jams on your street, so it’s a win-win situation. (A single driveway is often not wide enough for PuDo, but many driveways are paired or combined with an unusable curb.)

Clogged bulk pickup

Special efforts will be required to handle locations with extreme pick-ups such as airports, office buildings at closing time, and the largest stadiums of them all. While it would be nice to develop a distributed system to have this done, these places will only have a limited amount of PuDo space and it won’t be practical for all the cars to show up at the same time. There is a possibility that such establishments could contract to have someone run a system to manage their PuDo room. Robocar companies would talk to the server managing a building to handle congested times and let vehicles know when to get a reservation to approach the building and drive to their seat – probably only if their passenger is is immediately ready to board.

This is already partially the case with TNCs at some airports, but each of them has its own area and some of them manage it themselves. Taxi PuDo areas like Singapore Airport, where taxis park perpendicular to the street, are probably the best design compared to the often slow-moving taxi lines found in some locations. The busiest places (especially the stadiums and convention centers) can do well to put passengers on buses that go to the satellite PuDo places in the direction each passenger wants to go. In some cases, these vehicles (be it cars, vans, shuttles, or buses) can even travel a long distance as no one will avoid them.

These systems are likely to be related or identical to the systems used to handle larger and heavily trafficked parking lots. If vehicles do not approach parking lots or loading areas until they are ready for a quick transfer, there should be no congestion in those areas. Old parking lots that were no longer needed in the Robotaxi era are excellent candidates for staging areas. At an airport, one can imagine taking the old short-term car park and assigning most of the spaces to the PuDo, which can handle all but the busiest times. Of course, if they are building a Robocar airport, this could also happen on the unused parts of the airport perimeter, where airside vehicles take people without checked baggage directly from their aircraft to a gate in the fence and the PuDo area for ground transportation transfers.

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After considering whether to support or oppose two controversial housing laws, the South San Francisco City Council decided to speak out against Senate Law 9 unless it was amended and no vote was taken on Senate Law 10.

Senate Laws 9 and 10 would allow homeowners to convert single-family homes into maisonettes, with the potential to split a lot in two, dividing each lot for up to 10 units.

“SB 9 and SB 10 will not solve the housing problem,” said council member Buenaflor Nicolas at the council meeting on July 27th. “The housing problem that we have right now has been a problem for many decades, and this is mainly due to several factors, lack of construction for rapid employment growth, high land, labor and material costs, long and costly inspection and adequate financial resources approve. And there is definitely no silver bullet to solve these problems, what we need is a comprehensive approach. “

Senate Act 9 is called the California Housing Opportunity and More Efficiency Act. The bill increases legal density for all single-family zoning counties across the state and was written by Senate President Toni Atkins, D-San Diego. It gives homeowners options by streamlining the process to create a duplex or subdivide an existing lot.

“Building on the successes of the ADU Act, SB 9 strikes the right balance between respecting local control and creating an environment and opportunity for neighborhood housing that will benefit the wider community,” said Niccolo De Luca, Townsend Public Affairs, of the advocated the legislation.

It requires cities to ministerially approve two units or subdivisions of two units on any property that is zoned for single family homes within an urbanized area and not in a fire, earthquake or flood hazard zone and not in a historic neighborhood. Senate Bill 9 does not require the units built to have affordable deeds.

Senate Bill 10, drafted by Senator Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, approves an ordinance not subject to the California Environmental Quality Act to expand land for up to 10 residential units in a busy area within half a mile of transit or one urban infill site. Cities are free to do so or not.

Many citizens said that these bills could not solve the problem of housing affordability.

“I own a house in Avalon Park. I worked my backside seven days a week, 12 hours a day in an oil refinery to get this home. And I believe this bill is a sell-off to families who own and run these homes, ”said Mike Sutter, a 40-year resident of South San Francisco. “This is clearly just a corporate interest bill that ultimately doesn’t benefit any family. As I said, we are not in the middle of a real estate crisis. This is an affordability crisis. “

The average home price for a single family home is $ 1.3 million and for semi-detached houses is $ 1.1 million in South San Francisco. And to afford the average home price, the household income would have to be around $ 260,000, said Nell Selander, assistant director of the city’s economic and community development department.

“I don’t think SB 9’s mere existence would be the answer to the housing crisis,” said Councilor James Coleman. “It’s an affordability crisis that so many of us mentioned today. I think it’s a problem that requires multiple approaches. You could look at the vacancies in our city, especially in some of the larger developments. “

After making some changes to the League of California Cities, South City added the changes to have an affordability requirement, allow cities to determine a range of lot sizes suitable for Senate Law 9 projects, and allow local governments to do so To take into account local conditions such as hills, land dimensions, natural hazards, available infrastructure when approving or rejecting housing project applications and ensuring that major investors and builders do not take advantage of the provisions of the bill, and especially in this last part.

“These types of amendments allow the city to continue to have some control over development,” said Mayor Mark Addiego. “I have big, big concerns about Senate Law 9 and unable to control it, especially in the old town where some of the rents tend to be a little less harsh.”

The city council is sending a letter to the state legislature with these changes and will reject Senate Draft 9 if it is not changed. Councilor Nicolas moved against Senate Bill 10 and the vote died after unsupporting it.

Senate Law 9 is currently on the Assembly’s Budget Committee, and there is no date for a hearing yet. After the approval committee of the assembly, the draft law is presented to the entire assembly. The state legislature is on hiatus and will return on August 16. The remainder of this year’s session will take place from August 16 to September 10.

Senate Bill 10 is currently in assembly for the final vote. Then it goes to the Senate for approval.

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Two California-based trucking associations continue to oppose plans to build a major league ballpark for the Oakland Athletics in the Port of Oakland at the Howard Terminal.

Major League Baseball recently turned up the heat and authorized the team to begin talks with other cities about a possible move once the lease for the current stadium, the RingCentral Coliseum, expires in 2024.

The truck associations said they had no objection to the American League Club building a new park – the Coliseum is the MLB’s fifth oldest stadium – but opposed it on the port area.

Yadon

“When you talk about being in the heart of an active port, there are productivity, efficiency and safety concerns,” Shawn Yadon, president of the California Trucking Association, told TT. “I think people who depend on the port for their business have concerns.”

The Port of Oakland is the eighth largest cargo port in the country. In April, 217,993 20-foot equivalent containers were processed there, an increase of 34.3% compared to the same month last year. And it’s an important part of the west coast supply chain. For agriculture, it is especially important for farmers in California and the Midwest who ship millions of pounds of raw materials and frozen meat to Asian countries.

The Howard Terminal has not been used for cargo operations in nearly a decade because it is considered too small for large container ships. However, it is used for mooring ships, parking trucks and containers, as well as operating depots, training longshore workers, and other logistics services.

The privately funded stadium is only part of the Howard Terminal plan known as the Oakland Waterfront Ballpark District Project. The $ 12 billion redevelopment includes not only the ballpark, but also office, retail, hotel space, quality and affordable apartments, and an indoor events venue. A gondola takes baseball fans to a rapid transit station in the Bay Area in the city’s waterfront entertainment district.

The A are reportedly meeting with officials from other cities about relocation. Among them are Portland, Ore. And Las Vegas, where the NFL Raiders moved from Oakland last year.

However, Oakland City Council has written to MLB executives, advising that plans for a stadium at the Howard Terminal are moving forward.

Several city council members, including the vice mayor and president, said the city was determined to negotiate in good faith for a strong future for the A in Oakland and would take up claims that the city was unwilling to have a new stadium on Howard Terminal to negotiate. The city council also said it would consider a non-binding agreement with the team to move the stadium issue forward at its July 20 meeting.

Sheep

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, backing the Howard Terminal’s plan, said in a statement the day MLB authorized the team to begin moving discussions, “The only viable way to get the A’s roots in Oakland is a baseball stadium on the water, ”she said.

Port officials insist they did not take a position on the stadium issue because there is nothing to discuss until the council makes a decision.

“There is no action before the Port Authority Board so there is nothing to be said,” said Marilyn Sandifur, Port of Oakland spokeswoman. “Now the city has closed the comment period for the public and they are reviewing the comments on the environmental review process.”

Leading truckers said the better alternative would be to build a new ballpark near the RingCentral Coliseum on the site of the now-disused Oracle Arena, the former home of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, who moved late in the 2019-20 season new Chase Center in downtown San Francisco.

“If you look at a major seaport or industrial site as soon as it creates tourist or residential attraction in those areas, that will be the beginning of the end of those industrial sites,” Weston LaBar, president of the Harbor Trucking Association, told TT. “The Port of Oakland is too important to sacrifice for a ballpark when they have a perfectly developed location to be in. The Port of Oakland is the lifeblood of California’s agricultural export industry. “

Sports stadiums advisor Marc Ganis has worked on two dozen stadium plans and said that time is running out for Oakland to build a new stadium somewhere as the 56-year-old RingCentral Coliseum is out of date and the possibility of moving is now real .

“Oakland should be promoted because they’ve already lost two teams, the Raiders and Warriors,” said Ganis. “The A’s will be reluctant to pack their bags if they can’t make an agreement on the port location.”

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