TRANSIT LEAP SIDEBAR 2: CONGESTION HYPE


There are always several inputs to traffic congestion. Its nuance fills textbooks. Several expected attributes of Level 5 vehicles are touted to reduce


congestion. They will travel in tighter formation and in narrower lanes. Moving at uniform speeds, traffic waves would no longer slow highways packed with commuters. Far fewer crashes will mean avoidance of many other jams. Optimal navigation systems take over connected control to balance loads removing any residual congestion. Before these vehicles can occupy narrower lanes, move with shorter


headways and end traffic waves, there needs to be minimum portion of the fleet converted to Level 5 vehicles. These effects are mostly unmodeled and the minimum conversion required is unclear. The cost and timing of reconfiguring lanes is unknown. Adjusting some lanes would shift problems somewhere else in the system. In the interim, vehicle use will continue to grow. In Level 3 or 4 vehicles,


near-flawless robotics would relieve drivers’ attention while on highways reducing the perceived pain of congestion and offering productivity gains during a trip. This is expected to create more sprawl and add VKT to our highways. This would demand more capacity at choke points such as entrance and exit ramps to cities and more parking in our cities as car travel becomes yet more convenient compared to transit. Being able to work, nap or conduct business while traveling solo in a car would tend to lower occupancy and counter the effects of ridesharing efforts. More critically, worldwide demand for motorized PKT doubles every 20


years. Whether reflected in vehicle ownership or trip count, PKT translates to VKT unless vehicle occupancy can increase at a matching rate. While vehicle occupancy may improve will it be enough to offset the increase in PKT demand? Growth in demand is not uniform. Some jurisdictions, especially in


wealthier countries, are seeing a slow down in demand growth. Depending on demographics and policy, some populations will be more willing to ride-share than others. Not every jurisdiction will see the same congestion effects. But to assume that congestion will naturally reverse or evaporate due to the deployment of vehicle robotics is naïve, at best.


SIDEBAR 3: SOLUTION HYPE


Because automotive robotics hold so much promise, it is easy to compile a lengthy list of benefits: greater safety, less congestion, more access, more productivity, more sharing, and many more. In contrast to such a list are counterbalancing advantages: more access means more congestion; more productivity means greater sprawl; greater sprawl affects land prices, more sharing affects transit ridership, less parking means less municipal revenue and jobs, redeveloping parking spaces as residential condos changes the tax base, and so on. System interactions are always more numerous and harder to divine that simple effects. It is always the interactions – the second and higher-order effects – that trip us up. The more interactions, the harder is it to model. The


harder to model, the more confusing it is to regulate. Clearly vehicle robotics imply both a virtuous cycle and a vicious cycle. Some manufacturers and consultants espouse the virtuous. Other consultants and pundits magnify the vicious. Because of the number of variables and interactions, confident projections are impossible. This is why we say that the decades in front of us comprise the most difficult transportation-planning horizon ever faced by urban planners.


SIDEBAR 4: (R)EVOLUTION HYPE


Will the arrival of the autonomous vehicle be revolutionary or evolu- tionary? Will we jump suddenly to robotaxis as Google is proposing? Will we evolve our way to Level 5 autonomy as many manufacturers appear to be hoping? Or will Apple announce something one year later that changes everything, anyway? In March 2015, in its newsletter, Clearthought, Clearwater Interna-


tional, a corporate finance house with an automotive practice, wrote: “…a consensus is emerging that the journey to autonomy will be a progressive one in which small steps are made along the way and new features are added to vehicles every six to nine months or so.” That same month, executive Astro Teller of Alphabet’s business divi-


sion overseeing the Google automated vehicle, said at the South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas: “We came quickly to the conclu- sion that … the human was not a reliable backup – the car had to always be able to handle the situation. And the best way … was to design a car with no steering wheel – a car that could drive itself all of the time.” Seeming contradictions, both the Google and Clearwater views


carry credibility – and both will happen. There are two ways to rea- son through this. The first is that highly automated vehicles typified by the early Level 3 releases such as Tesla’s Autopilot and Volvo’s Intel- liSafe Auto Pilot going into 200+ vehicles in Sweden and China from


www.thinkinghighways.com 23


2017, comprise many hundreds of hardware and software elements each of which has an innovation trajectory and are implicated in enor- mous numbers of system interactions. These Advanced Driver Assist- ance Systems (ADAS) are technological evolution, pure and simple. In fact, whether one or more of the several companies engaged in this innovation develops better technology than the others is part of that evolutionary process. To the extent that Clearwater’s progressive, feature-creep vision operates, this form of technology trajectory is incremental. Things gradually improve, the driver stays in the vehicle, parking demand grows gradually, sprawl increases a bit more. Big Auto consolidates and gets bigger. The second way to think about this is that if at some point the driver is


to leave the driver’s seat something more fundamental has to have taken place – enough incremental changes, enough social readiness, enough infrastructure preparation – so that a whole new species of motor travel becomes available. The car itself will be unsurprising, as David Cummins predicted (see Preface). Levels 2 through 4 are evolutionary. Level 5 is revolutionary. Connected, robotic, driverless, revolutionary Level 5 vehi- cles follow from the evolutionary development of earlier levels. But there is a break between Level 5 and the earlier levels, and Transit Leap is the missing link.


CONNECTED CANADA SUPPLEMENT


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