What’s New in Planning for Autonomous Vehicles

Recently, Clarion Director Don Elliott, FAICP, led a panel discussion at the APA National Conference in New Orleans titled “Autonomous Vehicles Are Coming.” Don’s co-panelists included Associate Professor (and co-founder of the Center for Sustainable Cities) at the University of Oregon and Kelley Coyner, an adjunct faculty member at George Mason University and founder of the Mobility e3 consultancy. Although all predictions of the future involve some guesswork, key points to emerge from the APA panel included the following:

• Despite the many advantages of AV vehicles and systems, it will take a long time (perhaps 20-40) years for today’s U.S. fleet of 263 million vehicles to be replaced (or retrofitted) with the types of AV technology that will change driver and passenger behavior. This is good news for planners, because many changes to accommodate and encourage AVs will occur over a 20 year (or more) planning horizon.
• Although autonomous vehicle (AV) technology continues to evolve much more quickly than most planners expected, “Level 5” vehicles – i.e. those that can do the driving for their passengers without assistance and in all weather conditions – have not yet arrived. Some types of bad weather and poor road conditions still pose significant challenges.
• When they do arrive, Level 5 vehicles are predicted to cost over $100,000 – although that cost will no doubt fall steadily as research and development costs are recouped and the market expands. While the market for individually-owned cars in that price range to be used for routine driving is small, the market among shared vehicle services (i.e. Uber- and Lyft-type services that can keep the vehicles operating much more of the time) is significantly larger. As a result, most early use of Level 5 vehicles will be in shared vehicle services.
• AVs used by shared vehicle services are likely to behave much like the Uber- and Lyft-type services with which we are becoming familiar. Although the AVs won’t have drivers, they will operate using the same types of (increasingly sophisticated) vehicle use optimization algorithms used today. To see the short-term impacts AVs will have on your community, look at the impact that Uber- and Lyft are having. For most communities, that includes increased pick-up and drop-off activity at the front doors of major workplaces, commercial shopping areas, and residential buildings.
• Use of shared-vehicle services tends to be a largely urban phenomenon (in less populated areas the efficiencies to both systems operators and drivers go down significantly because demand is more spread out). Use of shared-vehicles for commuting remains low.  So communities with low population density or located far from urban densities are likely to experience AV-related changes slowly.
• In urban areas, short-term impacts will include pressure to repurpose on-street parking spaces for pick-up/drop-off areas; desire by both local governments and developers to incorporate pick-up/drop-off areas in site plans for private development; pressure to reduce minimum parking ratios; pressure to allow reuse/redevelopment of parking garages areas for other uses; and increasing use of existing parking lots and garages as “staging areas” for AVs during periods of low demand.
• Local government responses to these changes need to be made in light of the fact that for the next 20-40 years the U.S. fleet will be a mix of AV and non-AV vehicles. That means that most development and infrastructure standards will need to evolve gradually to match the changing mix of uses. For the foreseeable future, changes to policies and regulatory affecting parts plans, garages, streets, and street edges will probably need to be incremental rather than wholesale.
• Once privately owned Level 5 AVs begin to penetrate the market, time losses in commuting will fall, some commuters will decide to live further from work, and there will probably be significantly increased pressure for low-density residential development on the edges of metropolitan areas. While this is not a short-term concern, the easiest time to put in place policies and regulations to limit future low-density sprawl may be before stronger pressure for that inefficient land use becomes stronger.

Photo Credit: Dllu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, from Wikimedia Commons