This is the eighth a series of essays by journalist Bradley Perrett on long-term planning ideas to provide for a better future for the people of Greater Newcastle and the Hunter Region.
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Very probably, you didn't catch a bus or train this week.
Quite possibly, you haven't sat on one in years, except maybe for train trips to Sydney.
The state government wants to change that, but, if anything, you will be even more reluctant to use public transport in coming decades, when getting around cheaply in self-driving taxis will make a mockery of standing at bus stops.
Regardless of whether the autonomous-vehicle revolution takes off in this decade, the 2030s or the 2040s, our urban roads are likely to become even more valuable to us than they are now.
Travelling in cars will be more attractive: it will be cheaper and we won't have to concentrate on controlling the vehicles.
To the extent that public transport in Greater Newcastle survives this upheaval, it will increasingly need facilities for people transferring to and from self-driving cars.
We've heard plenty about autonomous vehicles over the past decade, and, despite promises, they haven't turned up yet. Some experts say they're still decades away.
But other experts are working on technology projects, which are heavily funded by investors who obviously don't expect to wait until the 2050s to make profits. Google affiliate Waymo has been running a full robotaxi service, with no supervising drivers, in Phoenix since October 2020 - though we notice that dry, sunny Phoenix offers easy conditions for the cars.
We should assume that self-driving cars are coming.The state government evidently did not think this through when in 2018 it published a transportation plan for Greater Newcastle that sought to push us into greater use of public transport.
One measure that it set out, which will annoy many readers, was deliberately "limiting parking in centres where strong public transport exists".
Planners need to think about locations on train and tram lines for interchanges with self-driving cars.
While trains at least offer speed, our buses and trams are needed only as a social service for people who cannot or do not wish to drive. They're not needed to ease congestion and hardly make any contribution to doing so, since fewer than 4 per cent of trips in Greater Newcastle are on any kind of public transport.
The US electric-car company Tesla has estimated it will run its planned robotaxis at a cost of US18 cents a mile, or about 15 cents a km. If the cars cover half their travelling distance without passengers aboard, the fare only needs to exceed 30 cents a km to yield a profit.
Running the cars will be so cheap because there will be no driver wages and because each vehicle will be used by many people during the day, not just one person or one family.
Even if such figures from Tesla and other organisations turn out to be underestimates, robotaxis will obviously present a huge challenge to public transport.
In NSW, a six-kilometre trip with an Opal card costs $2.65-$4.60. While opinions differ, the Australia & New Zealand Driverless Vehicle Initiative expects the technology of autonomous vehicles and the robotaxi business model to mature this decade.
This will happen mostly in the US, but Australia won't be far behind, says Rita Excell, executive director of the industry group. According to this outlook, autonomous taxi services should begin to flourish in the 2030s, and by 2035 public transport will be under great pressure.
In cities with adequate roads, patronage on public transport will have dwindled so far that many governments will want to withdraw it and instead subsidise robotaxi rides for people who cannot afford them, Excell says.
And use of robotaxis, not personally owned self-driving cars, really is likely to be dominant. If hiring a cab is so cheap and convenient, putting up the money to buy a vehicle will seem unnecessary.
Because mobility by car will become so much more convenient and, for many people, more available, we'll want more of it. This extra travel will be a good thing; it's nothing to groan about.
Imagine, for example, that you'd like to see your cousin in Wangi Wangi today, but feel you've been driving too much lately. So maybe you'll read a book at home instead. If you could take a cheap robotaxi, getting there would be hardly any bother at all, and you could read the book on the way. So you're more likely to go.
Similarly, a 15-year-old might want a lift to see her friend. If mum and dad are busy, the girl doesn't go. But if a taxi ride to the friend's home costs, say, $3, she will go.
The prospective attractiveness of robotaxi travel means the state should be putting more emphasis on preparing for future traffic capacity, rather than, as now, just about ignoring the possibility of additional arterial roads in Greater Newcastle.
One measure to increase road capacity will be replacing parking spaces with traffic lanes, which will be possible because robotaxis, like any taxis, will drive away after passengers get out.
No doubt such road changes will help, but we wouldn't want too many of them.
For example, imagine Cardiff town centre with four busy lanes on narrow Main Road and vehicles running right next to shoppers or cafe patrons on the footpaths. It would be better to widen the footpaths, plant more trees and build a better route somewhere else for the cars.
Because robotaxis will run empty between jobs, they'll generate more traffic. But they and other autonomous vehicles may be able to squeeze into less space by running very close together, maybe even connecting to each other. And trucks, having no drivers, will be economically run at night, getting them off roads in daytime.
Excell says it's possible that, on balance, autonomous vehicles will neither consume extra road capacity nor yield any.
Except that they'll encourage us to travel more. Because a taxi does not need to be parked at the end of a journey, tight supply of parking spaces will cease to deter travelling by car. This is particularly relevant for Newcastle city centre, which has good road connections but limited parking spaces.
At first glance, that seems to mean we'll just need ever more road capacity into the city centre and other major destinations. But there must be a limit to that. We wouldn't want Stewart Avenue converted into a motorway, for example.
This is where public transport again finds a role. Most likely, Excell suggests, some regulatory measure, such as tolls, will be used to discourage the concentration of vehicles on heavily burdened roads approaching major destinations.
This will encourage people to hop out of their self-driving cars and onto public transport for the last leg of the journey. It's just the kiss-and-ride concept (though we probably won't kiss the taxi).
For this purpose, Newcastle's tram line should survive and eventually be extended.
Planners need to think about locations on train and tram lines for interchanges with self-driving cars. They'll have to balance good road access to the interchanges (which will be easier to provide far from the destination) against the desire of travellers to stay in their comfortable cars for as much of the journey as possible.
As the city grows, more roads will become congested and more public transport will again be needed.
One more planning issue is to start making parking floors in buildings convertible to residential, office or retail space, because people won't need anywhere to leave cars that they don't own. It's time to require developers to keep car-parking floors flat and place each of them at least 3.1 metres above the other, so they'll be suitable for later occupancy.
The usual height between floors in car parks is about 2.7 metres. To allow for the increase, a few meters could be added to the allowable building height.