Autonomous vehicles appear to be wonderful in many ways. They will help seniors and young people get places. They’ll reduce traffic accidents and making driving safer. They will eliminate vast swaths of parking.
Then again, they may worsen the most harmful aspects of sprawl. They could create lost tax revenue. They may cripple public transit. And some people will lose jobs.
To balance these effects, planners, policy makers, activists, and others will be charged with designing the most effective policies. It will be fascinating to witness whether cities will be able to muster the political will to make this brave new world happen.
One new report from researchers at the University of Oregon, titled The Impacts of Autonomous Vehicles and E-Commerce on Local Government Budgeting and Finance, takes a look at some possible responses and, perhaps more importantly, allows us to begin asking the right questions.
One likely impact is on current car-ownership trends, which are extremely wasteful, with most cars “used for less than one hour per day, sitting idle for about 95 percent of their life,” and taking 10 percent of the average American’s budget. With AVs, it will no longer be necessary for individuals to own and drive their own vehicle. They’ll likely simply call up a car as needed. Of course, Uber, Lyft, and a few other companies are already moving us in this direction, but the effects will likely be multiplied.
Reduced car ownership and cars patrolling the streets to pick us up means far less need for parking. As the report points out, it is likely “with AVs that we will need up to 90 percent parking spaces.” Despite many benefits, reduced parking needs could have harmful short-term impacts on cities. Depending on the structure of a jurisdiction’s finances, “a local government could be in danger of going into default if parking garages are no longer necessary.” The long-term failure to raise the gas tax and other revenue sources exacerbates this problem.
The switch to AVs has other tax implications. If personal-vehicle use plummets, “sales taxes on automobile purchases would . . . likely see dramatic declines.” This means planning ahead now if jurisdictions are to avert financial woes as AVs come on line. Still, astute local governments have options. As the report points out, “replacement revenue could come from a variety of sources, including per-mile charges, toll roads, additional excise taxes for electricity generation,” to name a few. Jurisdictions need to plan ahead, and prepare to face likely opposition to needed taxes and fees.
While the reduced parking AVs make possible would be reason for many people to cheer, those same people might hate the danger of increased sprawl. The report’s authors note: “AVs also have the potential to allow for commutes that are further from the place of work.” This could counteract recent trends, refueling migration to the outer suburbs and hurting old inner suburbs. Property and other taxes may further shrink for urban areas. The report doesn’t discuss the environmental impacts of increasing sprawl, but they would likely include runoff, habitat fragmentation, and air pollution (depending on how clean the new vehicles are).
AVs would surely increase mobility for seniors and young people. Yet this social benefit is a double-edged sword, as it means more congestion. Although, in theory, AVs are more efficient than cars driven by humans – able to safely pack more moving vehicles into a smaller space – in practice AVs are likely to induce car trips. Therefore, “some speculate they could also lead to more congestion and slower commutes.” (This is a variation of the economic concept of “rebound,” in which cheaper and more efficient electricity, for instance, spurs increased use, undercutting some of the benefits.)
To cope with this, I would suggest we take a harder look at congestion taxes, as New York City is doing. Urbanism Next has even written about the concept of “street as a utility,” in which actions that take up space on a road are subject to a charge.
Without shrewd planning, AVs are likely to undercut public transit that provides affordable (if not always speedy) mobility, particularly for low-income people. As the report puts it, “public transit ridership could plummet with AVs wider adoption. This could make providing equitable public transit more difficult over time.” The report suggests that governments “find ways to subsidize either access to AVs or run their own fleets to provide adequate transportation.”
The new vehicles are also likely to undercut numerous jobs driving trucks, taxis, and buses. This job loss will impact low-skill jobs, potentially devastating a portion of the population that already feels under siege. AVs are thus at the cutting edge of the expected revolution in automation and artificial intelligence now being widely discussed, like in Jerry Kaplan’s recent article in The Atlantic. He predicts “that machines are likely to take over 47 percent of today’s jobs within a few decades.” The widening chasm in income inequality has even led to calls for a universal basic income.
This effect on jobs alone should spur radical new thinking about politics, policy, and economics. Yet we are only at the beginning of conceiving how to deal with the predicted decline in work.
And then we have all these other issues to consider. They provide just the tip of the iceberg for the major topic that is autonomous vehicles.
It will be a wild ride, and it will happen fast.
Photo by mbtrama/Flickr.