This document summarizes a presentation on autonomous vehicles given to the Southern New England APA Conference on October 17, 2013. It discusses several key points: 1) Major automakers like Google, Nissan, Ford, and BMW are developing autonomous vehicle technology, with some vehicles able to perform functions like adaptive cruise control, parallel parking, and emergency braking without human input. 2) Testing by Google has shown its self-driving cars can travel over 300,000 miles without an accident compared to the average human driver error rate. However, fully autonomous vehicles without human oversight present complex control and legal issues. 3) Autonomous vehicles could significantly impact transportation, land use, and urban design by reducing the need

1. Gino Carlucci AICP, Sherborn Town Planner and Planning Consultant
Eric Halvorsen AICP, Transportation Planner, Metropolitan Area Planning Council
Tom Houston AICP, P.E., President, PSC
Southern New England APA Conference 10/17/2013

3. Who’s Working on Autonomous
Vehicles?
 Google
 Nissan
 Ford
 BMW
 Toyota
 Audi
 Mercedes-Benz

4. Current Technology
 Adaptive Cruise Control
 Vehicles change speeds automatically using sensors
 Parallel Parking
 Just sit behind the wheel and let the car position itself
 Lane Detection
 Cars that can sense drifting on the road and correct for it
 Early Braking Systems
 Vehicles sense obstacles to the front and rear and “step on”
the brakes faster than a human can respond

5. Testing So Far
 Google self-driving cars have completed more than
300,000 miles of testing without a single accident under
computer control
 This is almost twice as good as the average driver
according to Federal Highway Administration statistics

6. Projections
“You can count on one hand the number of years it will take
before ordinary people can experience this”
- Google co-founder Sergey Brin

7. Projections
“I could sleep in my driverless car, or have an exercise bike in
the back of the car to work out on the way to work”
- Bryant Walker Smith
Center for Automotive Research at Stanford

8. Projections
Autonomous vehicles “will account for up to 75 percent of
cars on the road by the year 2040”
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

9. Projections
“What automation is going to allow is repurposing, both of
spaces in cities, and of the car itself.”
- Ryan Calo, University of Washington School of Law

10. Legal Issues
 Sagan reference
 CA, FL NV
 Liability etc.

11. California
 Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill into law that has
California adopting rules and regulations for operating
driverless cars in April 2013.
 The “operator” can now be “the person who causes the
autonomous technology to engage” even if not sitting in
the driver’s seat.

12. Nevada
 Legislature enacted regulations to allow for testing and
operating autonomous vehicles in February 2012.
 Two people must be present: behind the wheel and in the
passenger seat.

13. Current Car Culture
 Consider
 Dodger Stadium
 Fenway Park

16. Travel Trends/Car Usage
Source: Federal Highway Administration, 2011, 2009
National Household Travel Survey

17. Inefficiency of Dominant Auto
Use
 Cars spend up to 90-95% of the time parked
 NHTSA estimates 30% of driving in business districts is
spent looking for a place to park
 Victor Gruen estimates that each car needs 3 or 4 parking
spaces elsewhere in addition to one at home (Donald
Schoup, 2005 The High Cost of Free Parking)

18. Land Use Impacts
 Accurate measures of urban land devoted to cars is
difficult to obtain, but estimates have ranged from 30% to
50% in most cities and up to two-thirds in some
(Schoup, 2005)
 Harvard researchers estimate that up to a third of land in
some cities is for parking alone.

19. A typical parking requirement for office space of 4 per 1000 square
feet means that a three story office building with a footprint of
1000 square feet needs more than three times its footprint for
parking (12 x 300 ft2 = 3600 ft2).

20. Changes with Autonomous
Vehicles
 Car ownership is no longer necessary as car sharing
becomes the dominant mode
 The need for parking and storing cars is reduced
dramatically
 Space formerly used for parking gets repurposed

21. Car Sharing
 Removing need for driver also removes need to keep cars
parked 90% of the time.
 Zipcar, Flightcar, Uber, Hubway, etc. represent symbiotic
trends that meld perfectly with autonomous vehicles
 One model is cell phone use – one could subscribe for
unlimited use, fixed amount of time, or pay per ride.

22. Zipcar
 As of July 2013, the company had more than than 810,000
members and offers nearly 10,000 vehicles throughout the
United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain and
Austria, making Zipcar the world's leading car sharing
network.
 Hertz on Demand, Enterprise's WeCar, UHaul's Uhaul Car
Share, and Daimler's Car2Go are copycat services.

23. Uber – Flightcar-Kidcar
 Uber: “By seamlessly connecting riders to drivers through our
apps, we make cities more accessible, opening up more
possibilities for riders and more business for drivers.”
 Flightcar: “FlightCar lets people parking at the airport rent their
vehicles out to other travelers. Every rental is insured up to $1
million, and every renter is pre-screened. Depending on the
type and model year of the vehicle, you can also make up to
$20/day in cash! “
 Kidcar: “Kid Car NY is the ONLY car service in New York that
provides safe transport for children by providing specially
trained drivers in kid-friendly, luxury minivans with properlyinstalled car seats appropriate for the child's age and weight.”

24. Reduced Parking

25. Elimination of Car Storage

26. Lessons For Planners
 Be aware of trend
 Design sites with future potential in mind (building
location and parking lot design)
 Identify redevelopment opportunities in master planning
 Address potential repurposing of sites and garage space

27. Stairway to Heaven
Yes, there are two paths you can go
by, but in the long run there's still time
to change the road you're on.

28. Gino Carlucci AICP, Sherborn Town Planner and Planning Consultant
Eric Halvorsen AICP, Transportation Planner, Metropolitan Area Planning Council
Tom Houston AICP, P.E., President, PSC
Southern New England APA Conference 10/17/2013

29. Changing Demographics
Millennials are driving
changes in auto
ownership, licensing, and
vehicle miles traveled.
 People aged 16 – 34 drove 23% fewer miles in 2009 than in
20011
 In 2011, 86 percent of driving-age Americans held driver’s
licenses, the lowest percentage in 30 years1
1 US PIRG, A New Direction, Spring 2013

30. Changing Demographics
Chart Source – The Atlantic, Jordan Weissman, July 2012.

31. Changing Demographics
Boston-area cities, large and small, are seeing
increases in populations 55 and over
Quincy, MA
Melrose, MA

32. Changing Demographics
Technology is assisting with shrinking automobile
ownership

33. Changing Demographics
While trends do show a movement back
to urban areas, there are still large
numbers of residents living in suburban
and rural areas.
The percentage of Americans living in suburbs
increased from 23 percent in 1950 to 50 percent in
20002
2 US PIRG, A New Direction, Spring 2013

34. Driverless Car Technology
13-Town Transportation Coordination Project

35. Driverless Car Technology
• Challenges with coordination of services
• AV dispatch technology could schedule sets of shared rides
within designated “pick-up zones”
• Challenges with consistent driver training
• No longer a need for drivers
• Limitations of who can use existing suburban services
• AV fleets could be designed and designated for specific uses
or sets of populations
Residents can age in place as suburbs build out

36. Driverless Car Technology
Urban Area Impact
What about the

37. Driverless Car Technology
Urban Area Impact
• Won’t MBTA core ridership decrease?
• Not likely, still cheaper and can transport more people
• AV technology can be used to connect areas that don’t
have as frequent service
• Potential feeder service to major MBTA lines
• Reduce congestion in the core
• AV fleets could be used as first/last mile
connections, increasing attractiveness of Commuter Rail

38. Driverless Car Technology
• Huge potential upside for suburban and rural travel
options
• Could serve as the first/last mile connection in all
locations
• Increase efficiency of existing suburban transit models
• Increase transit use and car sharing, thereby reducing
overall congestion

39. Gino Carlucci AICP, Sherborn Town Planner and Planning Consultant
Eric Halvorsen AICP, Transportation Planner, Metropolitan Area Planning Council
Tom Houston AICP, P.E., President, PSC
Southern New England APA Conference 10/17/2013

40. Control System
 COMPLEXITY OF INPUT AND RESPONSE
 Software – Computers – Sensors – Controls
 Vehicle Operating Characteristics
 Mechanical Responses And Failures
 Road Conditions & Weather
 Intrusions – Pedestrians, Children, Animals
 Road Hazards
 Traffic Officer Preemption

41. Control System
 Phase 1 – Autonomous Control with Driver Riding
Shotgun
 Phase 2 – Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles
 Truly Driverless Vehicles – Increased Benefits –
Increased Complexity




Are Truly Driverless Cars Attainable.
Elevators Used to Have Operators
Computer & Software Crashes – Control Failures
Criminal Activity – Hackers – Terrorism

42. Control System
 Mercedes-Benz's autonomous research vehicle WSJ
 At the frontier of making cars drive themselves… is the
writing of pattern-matching algorithms so the machine
brain understands what the machine vision sees. As the
speed of traffic increases, these algorithms must
become increasingly predictive, anticipating, as
humans do, the probable intention of drivers in other
vehicles.
 To evolve, this research needs the car to experience
randomness so that it will react appropriately in even
the unlikeliest situations. "We have a washing-machine
test…[where]…Something suddenly falls off a truck
ahead of the car. Can the system react faster and better
than a human?

43. Control System
 Platform – Individual Systems OR Centralized
Control
 Urban Arterials/Highways and Interstate
Highways Restricted to Truly Driverless Vehicles
and/or Operate under Centralized Control






Increased Speed – Increased Capacity
Public Policy – Establish Design Criteria
Manually Controlled Vehicles Prohibited
Drivers Could Not Preempt Autonomous Control
Uniform Vehicle Operating Characteristics
The Clunker – The Truck – Special Vehicles

44. Vehicle Design
 Uniform Operating Characteristics
 Platform – Passenger and Seating Configurations
 Personalized Public Transportation Vehicles
 Extreme high early maintenance schedule

45. Roadway & Highway Design
 New Classifications and Design Requirements For
Highways And Roadways
 Ultra Limited Access Highways And Roadways
 Replace Conventional Traffic Controls
 Headway – LOS – Capacity

46. Roadway & Highway Design
 Totally New Types of Transportation Facilities
 Ultra High Speed Vehicle Tubes
 Ultra Low Speed Integrated Pedestrian & Vehicular
Facilities for Local Urban Access
 Subdivision Streets with 12 Foot Wide Traveled Ways

47. Urban Design
 Urban Areas Have Been Shaped by Innovations in
Transportation Technology
 Eighteenth Century Walking Scale Cities
 Streetcar Suburbs
 Post WW II Urban Freeways
 Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles will Reshape the
Urban Areas of the 21st Century

48. URBAN DESIGN
 Vehicular Facilities Are The Antithesis Of Vibrant
Urban Areas.
 Capacity Increase for Highways and Streets
 Limited Need For Downtown Parking
 Greater Urban Density.
 Urban Centers Ringed with Remote Parking
Facilities

49. ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
 Increased VMT
 Increased Speed
 Increased Energy Use
 Exurban Sprawl
 Emissions (Increase in VMT vs. Decrease in Congestion)

50. Stakeholders
 Groups with Restricted Mobility
 Physical Restrictions on Driving – Elderly – Children
 Everybody
 Decreased Travel Time
 Use travel time for business
or personal activities
 At your next dinner party,
ask for a show of hands of
the people who'd want that
[Autonomous vehicle] WSJ