Driverless Cars Are Coming, But Will Cities Be Ready?

Probably not.

According to a study by the National League of Cities, only 6 percent of future city plans consider the potential impact autonomous vehicles will have in the next few years, including driverless car lanes and scaling back parking as ride-share services become more popular.

The study collected transportation plans of the 50 biggest U.S. cities, as well as the most-populous cities in every state. In all, 69 city plans were amassed and studied for future traffic and road plans.

Despite automakers rushing to put autonomous cars on the road by 2020, the study suggests that many cities won’t be able to adequately accommodate those cars, nor will they adapt fast enough to changing transportation modes that may challenge conventional public transportation and infrastructure wisdom.

The study also found that 50 percent of city plans call for more roadways and construction, despite fewer Vehicle Miles Traveled and changing work schedules among Millennials, which will become the largest workforce demographic when Baby Boomers retire.

“Many transportation plans which project outcomes decades into the future focus almost exclusively on the problem of automobile congestion and prescribe increased infrastructure in the form of new roads as the primary cure. However, experts and trends point to a future that will be increasingly multi-modal,” the study’s authors wrote.

By 2020, according to the study, local governments will be forced to consider VMT-based fees for tax collection. Already, Oregon is using a pilot program to calculate road use based on VMT, the study points out. Other municipalities and states may follow suit with their own versions to help offset the costs of expensive roadways and fewer drivers using them.

The gas-tax-system-for-road-improvement-dollars death spiral will continue faster as more electric cars hit the road too, according to the study.

Only 10 years later, the study suggests, fully autonomous cars will be commonplace and fewer single-occupant cars will use the roads as public and private mass transit become more popular.

(Rush hour apparently won’t exist in 2030 as millennials now work 20 hours a day to live in many cities including Austin and Denver, I guess.)

In all, the study concludes that the next 15 years of transportation will change quicker than the last 30 years because of rapid advancements in technology and the popularity of denser urban centers, where cars and parking lots just get in the way of single-speed fixies.

The whole report from the NLC can be found here.