I've never forgotten a Hacker News comment about the same idea - might have predated Uber even. If parking costs increase, and self-driving cars can recharge cheaply, then we'll see them slowly navigating streets en masse while waiting for their next gigs. Like a molasses taxi rank oozing around with no urgency.
As someone who mostly cycles to get around the city, I would love this situation. I could get around everywhere so quickly between all the car-tar without the fear of being killed by a careless human driver. But if this thought experiment teaches anything, it's that we should give public pathways over to non-car users way before we ever get to this stage. We've already gone way too far out of our way for cars. Make most roads bike/train/tram only and save one or two lanes max for delivery trucks and maybe buses.
I already had this experience where i had to wait 30 minutes for someone to come pickup a car. Driving it around was cheaper than parking it for 30 minutes
haha, I experienced this myself. My friend fell on some hard times, and it was actually a net financial gain for me to have him sleep on my couch and pay for his food, since he'd drive me to/pick me up from work in downtown Seattle and save me $30/day on parking (or 60+ minutes a day in crappy bus commuting)
