I would put the odds of that being used in cities in the foreseeable future pretty low. Much more likely to get approved for low-density, straight-line highway travel imo, like what the current talks in Nevada are contemplating.
Alternatives also have political problems, but overall I'd probably bet on the miracle of cities actually building decent subway systems, unlikely as it is, before betting on the miracle of cities approving fully automated cars in urban traffic. I think both are basically political problems, as well, contrary to his claim that mass transit is inherently difficult due to the size of investment. It's not super-cheap, but a city in a wealthy Western country can build a subway network without that much trouble, and some American cities have done so much more recently than NYC, but have been stymied mainly by politics. For example, DC's system has been built out pretty well, and Atlanta's started, but expansion was killed in the 80s for political reasons (some of them race-tinged).
I would guess that PRT systems will start to make inroads in favor of new subways or rail. They share a lot of the benefits of autodriving cars, but they're based on far more mature technologies, and the cost of rail and rolling stock is far below older rail systems because the scale is smaller.
But like you say, the issues are mainly political.
The title asserts that density causes jobs, or somehow leads to better jobs, yet the article goes on to say, "One can’t create wealth just by crowding people together."
This article is all over the place, contradicts itself multiple times, and has no conclusion. It constantly appeals to authority by vague references like "... according to two decades’ worth of research from economists." Never mentioning which economists or what research.
Save yourself 10 minutes. This is all the article says: "Cities have more jobs due to many different factors, some of which are exclusive to cities."
I found it neither confusing nor hypocritical. My take-away is that with an educated work-force and working market, a city can improve its productivity by allowing density to increase. Cities that don't do this - typically cities with well-heeled citizens who don't want their backyards ruined - will see their competitive advantages eroded.
If the editors and writers of the New York Times had the faintest clue what they were talking about when it came to the topic of creating jobs, we'd long since have been out of the employment hole, what with the green jobs bonanza that we'd be in the middle of, combined with the wonderful fantastic stimulus which had saved us, and the fantastic crop of jobs that government regulation creates by raising costs of doing business under their bizarre economic system. (Under any sane theory of economics, raising transaction costs drops economic activity.) A brief comparison of how their theories say we ought to be doing compared to where we actually are right now ought to establish their credentials on that issue.
And I get the feeling his 'productivity' is measure in dollars - but wages increase in cities due to competition for workers and other factors that don't involve true output.
There's another solution that's more politically palatable: better transportation. Physical distance is only marginally relevant to the health of a city. Travel time is what actually matters. How do you get 100 million people or more within a 30-minute diameter? Improve transportation.
Human transportation in the United States is a fucking joke. We stalled out in the 1950s and haven't improved. Our trains are expensive and slow, air travel is expensive and inconvenient with terrible service, and automotive travel has the obvious problems of scaling abysmally and belching greenhouse gases. We need fast and affordable trains: 75 mph and $0.10/passenger-mile from suburbs to cities, 300 mph and $0.03/passenger-mile cross-country. Going from New York to Chicago should be a $25 train ride that takes 2 hours. That's what it would be if we were an actual first world country. New York to San Francisco should be doable overnight for under $100 each way.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see the assholes in Greenwich Village who keep their neighborhood sky-high expensive by blocking new development get their shit scrambled by a government that actually had the masculine force to stand up to them. I think the whiny bastards deserve to have their windows painted black every night for what they are doing to this city (making it hard to build, thus expensive, because they're emotional 4-year-olds who can't handle change in their pweshus widdle views). All that said, I think improving transportation is more of a winning battle than busting NIMBY monsters (but we should be doing both).
For the most part I agree. Transportation investment is key and much wiser than trying to deal with NIMBYs.
But: $0.03 per passenger mile?! Even subsidized HSR systems come out closer to $0.40. How are we supposed to come to an order of magnitude improvement?
Here's why $0.03 per passenger mile is not unreasonable. The automobile is one of the most energy-inefficient modes of transportation out there and it costs about $0.40 per mile, per vehicle. That's $0.10 per passenger mile for a family of four. On the most expensive, dangerous, environmentally costly common mode of transportation out there.
There's no good reason why trains should be less efficient than the car. None at all. That gives us a starting point, which should be easy to beat, of $0.10 per passenger per mile for a 75 mph train.
Now, most costs in transportation are labor costs, so it stands to reason (below the sound barrier) that what things "should" cost (excluding fuel) can be measured on a per-hour basis. Travel at 300 mph should be cheaper, for this reason-- perhaps not 4 times cheaper because energy costs increase, but definitely 3.
That's what's counter-intuitive here: slow travel is more expensive, in terms of what it actually costs the provider, than fast travel because it sucks up more employee time.
Realistically, $0.05 per passenger mile would be a substantial accomplishment. I would be happy to see that. The Category 5 embarrassment is that we're not even trying.
