Hitting a Moving Target: How Cities Will Adapt to the Coming Mobility Revolution
Within the span of a decade, autonomous vehicles have gone from figments of a distance fantasy to an inevitable, near-term reality. The suddenness of the upcoming transition has caught many of the stakeholders unawares. Autonomous vehicles might be ready to handle our cities, but are our cities ready to handle them?
In any discussion on AVs the key role of regulation and infrastructure design is brought up. However, the challenges for technologists, legislators and citizens is the fact that we are all trying to react to what is itself a moving target. Changes set in motion by autonomous vehicles are moving in parallel with innovations and lifestyle changes. A myopic attempt to design for “driverless cars” in a vacuum could result in plans that could be outdated even before they are implemented.
How will technological advances in other fields, such as the ability to work remotely interact with changes in driving technology? Will cultural shifts such as lesser value of ownership, eco-friendliness or online retail, be relevant for predicting use of autonomous vehicles? We may be looking to a world where ground transportation vehicles themselves could conceivably be made obsolete or relatively less important if other mobility solutions reach maturity, such as personal aerial transportation, drone delivery systems or long-distance options such as Hyperloop.
This leads us to the very important decision of whether we should design for the perceived future of cities, or simply solve for existing problems. Of course, this is not a mutually exclusive set of decisions. In nearly all cases these must be done together. But the real challenge will be in defining what the primary focus and priority should be given our limited constraints.
A related challenge is conceptualizing infrastructural demands of AVs. Cars themselves necessitated the creation of trillions of dollars of infrastructure to serve their exact needs, the most obvious of which were roads. AVs will create a similar demand for smarter complementary infrastructure, such as new sensors and connectivity needs. Making it easier and more predictable for them to navigate is one potential source of investment. This would have many obvious benefits in terms of efficiency and could go some way towards unlocking the full potential of a network of connected autonomous vehicles. Unfortunately, the friendlier our infrastructure becomes for autonomous vehicles, the less friendly it becomes for human drivers. While it would be irresponsible not to adapt to the needs of autonomous vehicles in material ways, a delicate balance of complexity will have to be maintained.
This opens up a related set of issues on standardization and dependence. How reliant can AVs be to a specific set of infrastructure. Similar to today, there will be great disparity in the quality and breadth of infrastructure present in different areas in the world. Will AVs simply have to be optimized for the cities and environments they are going to be used in?
An even bigger problem in the near future is likely to be that of competing autonomous driving standards. Are we likely to see different car manufacturers compete on the quality of their autonomous driving software? Or will there be pressure to regulate and standardize the options that are available. For instance, if one system is proven to be safer than the others, is it conscionable for a government to let a less safe competitor operate when the solution is simply to copy over some software into their vehicles.
The discussion above simply scratches the surface of all the technological, design and ethical questions we as a society will have to grapple with over the coming decade. But what I hope to do is highlight how a clear choice will have to be made not too long from now by policy makers, manufacturers and citizens alike on whether they wish to adopt a reactive, wait-and-see approach, or attempt to mold our urban environment pre-emptively and more aggressively.
