Agenda - Planning Commission - 01/04/2018

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Getting Ready for Driverless Cars By Donald L. Elliott, FAICP News about driverless cars is everywhere. It seems that everybody wants in on this "next best thing." Apple is playing. So is Google. So is Testa. Even the U.S. military (though you won't be inside one of those unless you enlist). Of course, not everyone is happy about this prospect. Some are fearful that the brains behind the vehicles might not be as smart as we hope; others swear they love driving too much to stop. But others yearn for the day they can drink coffee and read a novel while the car takes them where they want to go. Unfortunately, much of the media cover- age seems to focus on impressing us with this emerging technology, but provides little information about how the technology is likely to arrive and what changes we will see first. More specifically, the media blitz has. left many planners wondering just what they should be doing to prepare for this brave new world. To help answer that question, let's focus on some basic facts about driver- less cars, likely scenarios for their arrival, and what Impacts planners are likely to see sooner rather than later. One caveat at the start. This article assumes that driverless cars are coming whether we like them or not. While cities and counties will probably retain many powers to regulate their use —and will use those powers as their elected officials see fit —I assume that neither federal nor state nor local governments will significantly restrict their introduction into our vehicle fleet. This article is not about whether we should have driverless cars, but how to prepare for their arrival (To dig deeper, visit APA's resource for planners. Autonomous Vehicles: Planning for Impacts on Cities and Regions is at planning. org/research/ay.) THE BASICS To begin with,'we'Il call them "autonomous vehicles," or "AVs," which seems to be the emerging preferred term. Three key facts about AVs need to be kept in mind as we think about how to plan for them. An Ober self -driving car on a test drive in downtown San Francisco. First, AVs Are Not One `Thing' The Society of Automotive Engineers lists the following five categories of AVs (sae.org/ autodrive): 1. Driver Assistance (like cruise control) 2. Partial Automation (like adaptive cruise control that brakes on its own) 3. Conditional Automation (system monitors the area and drives but may need help on demand) 4. High Automation (system monitors the area and drives in some conditions) 5. Full Automation (system can drive in all conditions without help) At levels one and two, the driver is responsible for monitoring everything going on around the car (other cars, pedestrians, road conditions, weather) —so no reading a novel. At levels three and four, the car is monitoring what is going on nearby, and can drive part of the time, but may need help or need to have the human take over in some situations (like bad weather). So probably no reading a novel, because you don't know when the AV will ask for you to respond to a situation. We really haven't seen level five AVs yet (for example, many still have trouble in severe weather conditions). That means The Jetsons vision of a car that takes you where you want to go without any effort on your part is still a way off in the future. Most news coverage that "X will introduce a driver- less car by 2020" doesn't clarify what level of AV will be introduced. Any changes in com- muting patterns or choices of where to live will depend heavily on how much work the human still has to do (or be prepared to do). Second, AVs Are Not Coming All at Once Yes, AV technology has improved fast, and some automakers now say they will begin to introduce AVs by sometime between 2018 and 2021. By some estimates, AVs may cap- ture 15 percent of the market by 2030, and maybe 5o percent of the market by 2040. That's pretty fast. White the projections do not say so, we'll assume that they are all level -five AVs—they can drive for you all the ZONINGPRACTICE 12.17 AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION Ipage 2