To: City Manager (aka Mobility Momma)
From: Concerned City Council Member (composite character, not intended to resemble a real live person)
Re: Mini Metropolis – Behind the Eight Ball
I feel like we in Mini Metropolis have either missed the party or we’re headed for a meltdown on driverless cars. No matter who I talk to, whether it’s a new business we’re courting, our financial advisors, the state DOT, concerned cities, or the taxi drivers, it seems like we are way behind!
Waymo says it is going into production next year.
Taxi drivers say they’re concerned we caved on Uber and Lyft.
The director of our bus system says that AVs will syphon off ridership and then, because it will eliminate jobs, lead to bankruptcy.
The developers say that codes and zoning regulations are out of date and that they are being saddled with expensive parking spaces that won’t be needed in an AV world. They also want strong transit and AV, biking, and walking infrastructure to strengthen our bid for Amazon’s second headquarters.
Researchers at the university tell me that all the vehicles will be roaming the streets empty and people will continue living further and further away from work (induced demand, they call it).
And then these advocate groups say we’re going to convert streets into parks, widen the sidewalks, and add protected bike lanes.
Who is right?
We are promoting ourselves as an innovation hub, but how is it innovative if 75 percent of our citizens still say they’re scared to ride in AVs.
I would sure like to know what all the infrastructure is going to cost and how we’ll pay for it. What do I need to be advocating for in the next round of battles with the metropolitan planning organization?
Can you pull together some level-headed experts and figure out what Mini Metropolis should do?
To: Concerned City Council Member
From: City Manager (aka Mobility Momma)
Re: Mini Metropolis – Behind the Eight Ball
Thank you for your concern, Concerned City Council Member. Interestingly, nearly 100 planners from around the country gathered to ponder these very questions at a recent symposium on how to plan for autonomous vehicles.
(It was co-sponsored by Mobility Lab, the National League of Cities, the American Planning Association, the Eno Center for Transportation, Brookings, and George Mason University.)
Drawing on these ideas of the planners at the symposium, the next step is to develop a full playbook for how cities and regions should prepare. To inform this task, participants heard from Nelson Nygaard’s Jeffrey Tumlin, who framed the challenges of access and equity, the threats and promises of an ubiquitous and cleaner means of mobility, and implications for land use. We also heard a keynote discussion between Linda Bailey of the National Association of City Transportation Officials and Brian Hoeft, who has helped Las Vegas prepare for the low-speed AVs already operating in its busy tourist corridor.
Until that playbook is ready, hopefully by the end of 2017, here are my five crucial things cities and regions should be aware of and how they can start to manage the AV revolution.
- First focus on economic development, job loss and creation, and revenue loss
As Paul Lewis of Eno noted, cities and regions are beginning to consider where AVs fit in their planning. For the most part, it is limited to being enamored with the latest ride demos rather than thinking deeply about the economic-development potential – including preparing the workforce for new jobs.
Cities and regions – including their transportation agencies – need to look at the impacts on their revenue. Greater fuel efficiency and shifts to electric vehicles will accelerate the downward spiral of gas tax revenues. Changed ownership models may undercut personal property tax and rental-car tax revenues. Decreased demand for parking will cut into parking revenues and decline in traffic violations will reduce revenue from fines. Secondary impacts include the potential for decreased revenue from transit and toll fares.
City and regional leaders need to follow the lead of ride-hailing services to implement value- and mileage-based user fees (not to mention getting smarter about how they use data) to replace all that lost revenue.
- Understand equity
AVs can provide dramatically improved opportunities for blind, older, and younger riders – if we consider them in the planning and design.
Meanwhile, job and wage losses could hit transit and trucking workers disproportionately, so training programs will need to come into play.
Rural communities will need to focus on their sometimes-limited ability to provide the communications networks needed to support AV vehicles that come in off the interstates.
Cities, regions, and towns need to understand these crosscurrents and make sure shared-mobility options – such as transit – exist and are even enhanced for these populations.
- Favor safety gains and protect against cyber dangers
There are indeed real reasons to be worried about the vulnerability of automated and connected vehicles to cyber attack. The answer is to address that risk, not to let it highjack automated technologies that protect occupants and people in the path of the AVs, such as bicyclists, pedestrians, and people at bus stops.
That said, I am flabbergasted when anyone is dismissive of saving a huge portion of 37,000 lives lost to human-caused crashes each year. We should not be taking an either-or view on that, and AVs present a really compelling solution.
- Figure out what you want your place to be like
First it was big-box stores and then e-commerce that changed how we develop our land and re-shaped our travel patterns. How will AVs change all this yet again? How will they change our parking needs? Our affordable and workforce housing? Is there a new paradigm for transit-rich hubs that also include shared-AV drop-off areas, electric charging stations, and rich networks of bike and walking paths? What benefits might an AV district bring?
The challenge for the public, private, and nonprofit sectors is how to make the transformation positive.
- Define your principles and set measurable objectives to reach them
Beyond those first four paths I think cities should take, there are still many other ways for cities, regions, and states to maximize the safety and environmental benefits while guarding against increased congestion, sprawl, job loss, and the further weakening of public transit.
They should start by understanding the potential winners and losers of an AV community and work through implications to the entire transportation system. Make sure senior policymakers have the tools to manage what will likely be a long transition to a mostly autonomous world.
Our massive AV transition throughout the U.S. needs to start by avoiding red herrings. Insist that the federal government take the lead in setting design and performance standards and that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has the resources it needs. Avoid esoteric debates about obscure hypotheticals. Focus on understanding the implications of an automated mobility.
Then pull out all the stops to channel the technology revolution on the street where you live.
One of the symposium’s panelists on land use, Lisa Nisenson of Alta Planning+Design, has already developed a guide for crafting effective resolutions. And the playbook that those of us who sponsored the symposium will be releasing should give communities the tools to do all of the above.
Photos of Las Vegas’s AV fleet courtesy of the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada.