# How Will Self-Driving Cars Will Transform Your City?



## Maven (Feb 9, 2017)

Many urban planners in several cities are already considering the many infrastructure changes that will be required to support SDCs and how to pay for them, including San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Pittsburgh and Los Angles. They are working with corporate leaders in SDC technology.
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SWA/KINDER BAUMGARDNER
ELON MUSK SAYS every new Tesla comes with all of the hardware needed for fully autonomous driving. He is hardly alone in trying to spare humans the tedium of car operation. Audi, GM, Google, and Uber are among the many companies working toward the day when autos do everything and you're just along for the ride.

Musk, ever the showman, plans to see one of his cars drive across the country next year without a human doing anything more than enjoying the scenery. Others lay out more conservative timelines for rolling out their technology, but make no mistake-robocars are coming, and sooner than you think.

This technology promises to radically remake the very form and fabric of our cities, even if it remains to be seen just what those changes will look like. We asked eight urban planners and futurists to share their visions of a driverless future.

*Carlo Ratti, Director, MIT Senseable City Lab*
Ratti, whose lab anticipates how technology will transform the built environment, predicts that vehicle automation will require 80 percent fewer cars on any given highway. "In general, fewer cars could mean shorter travel times, less congestion, and a smaller environmental impact," Ratti says. "Vast areas of urban land currently occupied by parking lots and roads could be reinvented for a whole new spectrum of social functions" like parks, public spaces, and maker spaces. Cars, he adds, could also become extensions of our homes. But Ratti warns: "We can also have nightmarish scenarios. For instance, if self-driving were to become so cheap that people would prefer jumping into a car than, say, taking the subway. In that case our cities could easily become gridlocked."

*Erick Guerra, assistant professor of city and regional planning, University of Pennsylvania*
"I think in urban environments it will lead to less driving and urban space will be used in a more positive way," Guerra says. At the same time, he's skeptical of the utopian claims that we'll all be inherently better off. "If you're living in a low density suburban community, they're finding it will increase travel when you use existing travel models." In other words: There are still a lot of unknowns. "It's a really hard thing to quantitatively predict," he says. "There's a good deal of uncertainty in terms of how it influences urban form."

*Anthony Townsend, author of Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia*
Townsend, who thinks a lot about how technology will impact cities and the people who inhabit them, argues that those studying the impacts of autonomous vehicles are focusing too much on passenger cars, and not enough on all the other self-driving vehicles that will soon pop up."It's actually trash trucks, trailers, delivery vans, taxis and other vehicles that take up much of the space in cities. They will be completely transformed by automated technologies," he says. This change, along with automated mass transit, will make dense cities much more efficient and livable. But the technology, he adds, will also exacerbate sprawl unless legislators take action. "When you make an economic input cheaper, the net effect isn't to use less. It's to use a lot more of it. So without restrictions or disincentives, we'll have more cars." The good news: An automated vehicle whose software can be updated at any time can adapt dramatically over time. "There's a lot more chances to get it right, because we can change it as we go along," Townsend says.









SWA/KINDER BAUMGARDNER
*Kinder Baumgardner, managing principal, SWA*
Baumgardner, who leads landscape and urban design firm SWA's Houston studio, recently published a paper entitled "Beyond Google's Cute Car." He predicts that a reduction in cars will transform urban cores, with entrepreneurs reimagining parking lots, parking spaces, and garages by converting them into housing, retail outlets, and public spaces. Already, he notes, garage operators are beginning to strategize how they can reuse or sell their properties.

"Who knows, garages could become the cool place to live? You suddenly have an opportunity for space where it didn't exist."

Suburbs, meanwhile, could become less isolated, as garages, driveways and cul-de-sacs become common spaces and walking replaces driving in town centers. "You'll get to know your neighbors better," says Baumgardner. "You'll see changes pop up in an ad-hoc way." Suburbs, he adds, will also become more desirable. "The one inconvenience, driving, goes away. There's going to be more demand to live in those places."

*David Ory, planning principal, San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Commission*
Ory believes planners need to think broadly about how technology will change the urban environment, given how unpredictable it can be. "Instead of thinking about one future," he asks, "do we think about dramatically different futures?" We won't, he says, just have driverless cars, but automated, seamless systems for buses, subways, bicycles, and much more. The ideal scenario? A major reduction in land devoted to cars of all types-but that could vary widely based on an area's resources. He also warns that we can get ahead of ourselves in planning for driverless cities. "There are a lot of revolutions that don't come about. Driverless is the most promising, but it's still somewhat speculative."

*Jarrett Walker, president, Jarrett Walker + Associates*
Walker, a planning and transit consultant who has advised cities around the world, is also wary of utopian visions of the self-driving landscape. "A lot more money wants self-driving cars to be wonderful than wants us to remain skeptical," he says. He warns of induced demand: "If you make something easier, more people do it, so you have to think of the consequences of what it means for more people to do it." That means there's going to have to be a lot of regulation and intervention to manage this process to limit the otherwise devastating effects of induced demand. The real fight, in other words, will be policy-related. "The battle is to create a space in which the question is not how we get ready for self-driving vehicles but rather what kind of city we want."









AUDI
*Lisa Futing, Project Manager, Audi Urban Futures Initiative*
"The biggest change to the urban fabric will be to parking infrastructure," says Futing, whose initiative sponsors research collaborations with academic and cultural institutions dedicated to urban mobility. "Parking will be moved indoors and outside of city centers, freeing up outdoor lots and spaces for development and public space. Lots them will be able to accommodate 60 percent more cars thanks to smaller driving lanes, greater maneuverability, and a lack of need for stairs and elevators."

*Brooks Rainwater, Senior Executive Director, Center For City Solutions, National League of Cities*
Rainwater warns that few cities are thinking about the problem of self-driving cars. His group has found that only 6 percent of the country's major cities' long-range transportation master plans consider them. His most novel prediction is that the traditional boundaries of the urban form-such as those between roads, sidewalks, and street walls- will begin to break down. "Through technology you can get to a point where you no longer need traffic lights or clear distinctions between roads and sidewalks. Our cities will be more data intense and human-centered. You can really see the urban form shifting in ways that are hard to imagine. Particularly in our densest cities."


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## Maven (Feb 9, 2017)

*Why Cities Aren't Ready for the Driverless Car*
*Urban planners have a lot of infrastructure work to do to make cities safe and practical for autonomous vehicles*








ILLUSTRATION: HARRY CAMPBELL FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By Henry Petroski Updated April 22, 2016

When it comes to adopting self-driving cars and trucks, the easiest part may well be building them. The far more difficult task will be maintaining our urban transportation infrastructures for autonomous vehicles to be functional, safe and practical.

Consider that last year, a modified Audi completed a 3,400-mile cross-country trip, driving itself 99% of the time. The 1% of roadway the car couldn't navigate on its own: construction zones and other complicated traffic situations-hallmarks of urban traffic.

What will cities have to do to get ready for the transition to the autonomous car? For starters, they will have to maintain everything from complex intersections to lane markings to the specifications expected by vehicle software designers. Without a city's commitment to certain standards, self-driving autos might freeze in place on streets lacking clear lane markings. Similarly, unmanned vehicles might proceed at speed through an intersection where a stop sign has been removed by college students or knocked down the night before by an impaired human.

*Local practices*
Traffic rules may be writ in stone, but the autonomous car or truck should also understand local practice. If in a particular city it is customary for trucks to double-park while making deliveries, will the driverless vehicle coming up behind a stopped truck think (in software terms) that it is at a stop light and wait there for the unseen light to change? And in cities where it is customary for human drivers to anticipate the red light turning to green by inching into the intersection prematurely, will the driverless automobile allow for the custom?

Driverless cars can be programmed to be aggressive or patient. But who gets to choose? The software developer? The owner? Or perhaps the local police department?

The duration of a yellow light will be programmed, as it is now, down to a fraction of a second. But upon sensing the yellow when almost into the intersection, will the driverless car stop suddenly or will it speed up? Will the car be programmed to respond differently when it is carrying passengers, comparing in milliseconds the risk of both actions and choosing the one less likely to cause injury?

*New responsibilities*
Many potential problems can already be handled by vehicles equipped with sensors, controls and warning devices to assist in changing lanes, slowing down or stopping, if vehicles get too close to one another. Cities also can make their traffic signals communicate wirelessly with vehicles.










But naturally that involves spending money that may have to be diverted from fixing potholes and other infrastructural necessities. It also means that increasing and maintaining the wireless-bandwidth capacity used by cars in traffic to communicate will become a responsibility as important as smooth roads and clear signage. The wireless network will have to be pervasive and fast enough to allow for adequate response times to, say, jaywalking pedestrians or erratic cyclists.

These are issues that must be resolved before autonomous vehicles are turned loose on the asphalt. But the ultimate testing will necessarily take place in real cities under real traffic conditions that test tracks can hardly be expected to replicate fully.

Proponents of driverless vehicles focus-sometimes too much-on the benefits the vehicles offer to both individuals and the communities in which those individuals live.

Autonomous cars can drop off people at their workplaces in the heart of a city, then drive to a remote area to park. Later they can drive themselves to pickup points, perhaps designated via a smartphone app, and choose the best route to take into account current traffic. All of these things, in theory, could reduce traffic. But it's also possible that traffic congestion and the need for parking will increase as a result.

*Segway to nowhere*
Whether cities will even allow self-driving vehicles will depend mainly on public policy. Despite its popularity as a touring aid in some cities, the Segway-a self-balancing electric scooter-has failed to find acceptance in the broad transportation market in part because there is little uniformity among communities regarding rules governing its use.

Policy debates about autonomous cars are likely to be just as important, starting with such fundamental questions as whether a vehicle should be required to have a driver. A century ago, as motorized vehicles began to share the roads with horse-drawn conveyances, it was understood that a human would be in control of any vehicle on the road.

In the postdigital age, drafters of municipal legislation may be looking at an extended legal battle to redefine what a driver is, and what that driver's responsibilities and liabilities are.


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