Roadways and streets were never designed, laid out or engineered for multiple drop-off zones and loading areas. They have always been designed with flow in mind, with static parking hosted away from traffic.
Self-driving cars, though, means much of this is poised to change. Curbed recently took a look at the topic of self-driving cars and how it will change the way streets, parking lots and other real estate develops in the future. One thing is nearly certain: there are way too many parking lots.
Repurposement of parking lots will likely become key in the future, as personal vehicle ownership declines in the coming decades, replaced by on-demand services, most likely. Streets will be rethought, too, as ride-sharing services become more popular. Imagine 50 Uber or Lyft vehicles trying to drop off riders at the same location. Bottlenecks will ensue.
Redeveloping locations for better flow will be incredibly important.
“This will completely change us as a society,” said Shannon McDonald, an architect, assistant professor at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, and an expert in future mobility planning. “I think it’ll have the same transformational change as the introduction of the automobile.”
As for real estate, it will change the way dwellings are built. Without the potential need for dedicated parking spaces—personal vehicles are only used about five percent of the time—developers can save money and decrease costs in dense urban areas.
“Developers will start using the promise of AV and driverless cars to realize net savings,” said Don Elliott, a zoning consultant and director at Clarion Associates. “It’s not necessarily cheaper, but more space can be used for commercial or residential purposes.”
In all, many analysts don’t see these effects taking place for a couple of decades, but as autonomous technology matures, these questions will need answers.
Comments
The future is now!
If that’s the case why are there more vehicles on the road now than ever before. We are nowhere near ready for this stupid sci-fi fad nonsense in 2017
“We are nowhere near ready for this stupid sci-fi fad nonsense in 2017”
We are, actually. In downtown Vancouver, there’s over 100,000 people who don’t have lawns, basements, or 2-car garages, and have no problem walking or using public transit in one of the most densely populated and safest cities in North America.
Roads won’t be just for cars forever. They once were for people, and eventually will return. Cities were built for human use after all. Cars came afterwards, reduced density, gave us sprawl, girdlock, and poor air quality.
This isn’t fad.
I should like to add that what that kind of a population and consumer shift means for GM (and every other automaker) is that the nature of car ownership is changing. It likely could mean that unless you lived in a remote location that needed transit to another place, your demands for personalized transportation would be limited.
The importance of owning a operating a personal car is becoming less important as it becomes more expensive. If a person lives 90% of their life in a city, and all their needs are met within walking distance, the need for a car diminishes. Cities don’t want to pay to run services outside of their core to reach bedroom communities, as these bedroom communities are often taxed less than their core.
What cities have been doing for the last 20 years is increasing the density in their cores. Why? The more taxpayers you have per square foot, the better served that core is. It wouldn’t cost the city millions to run municipal water services to a suburb who’s tax rate wouldn’t pay for the cost of plumbing. In the core, the streets get plowed first after a blizzard. There’s also less reason to build a multi-million dollar elevated highway, as few people in the core would have any reason to use it.
What this means for GM is that their focus needs to shift too. Personalized transit could eventually become a wealthy luxury….just like it was back in the late 1800’s, back when cities had densely populated cores. If personalized transit is no longer a necessity, then GM would need to change the way it moves people.
GM once had a bus and train division. How nice that would have been for it to evolve and become a train, tram, monorail, whatever transportation manufacturer that serves the cities that city planners are creating. It won’t be overnight, but the personal car ownership model isn’t going to stay around forever. That’s not to say people will never need to be moved about, even in that 10% of the time they need to leave the city core, but for GM’s sake, they’ll need to be there to transport them all the time, even if it isn’t a car as we know them today.
you dont understand, personal car ownership will persist and way outpace autocars. if this above lifestyle was what people truly wanted, or for that matter supper efficient, than the cab driver would have taken over by now in every urban area. that’s all this is, yellow cab everywhere, just no driver so businesses take home a little more cash. seriously, explain how this is any different from uber or any other cab service other than no operator cost (which is only a fraction of the price) the numbers dont add up to that ford futurama dream than has been presented.
Personal car ownership won’t persist if it becomes too expensive. Taxes, insurance, gas, maintenance, parking fees, parking fines. Nobody wants to be suckered into paying out year after year for something that brings no enjoyment. Just look at cable TV. Nobody wants to keep paying every month for something that gives so little.
Lets not forget that bit about density. Why would the city approve a 500 car parking structure downtown when the footprint of that building could be used to build units for people live in and pay tax? Cars don’t pay tax, and they take up too much space for something that they only use transiently.
As for the taxi/uber thing, you need only look at the user base. Those services are being used because the people using them don’t have cars and don’t want to be bothered with the hassle of car ownership. Even Cadillac is doing it (somewhat) with their Book by Cadillac program. Nobody wants any of the above annoyance of car ownership, and when they do need a car to move them somewhere, they want it to be a painless experience without any hassle. That’s why Uber and Lyft have taken off, and why such taxi-like services will only continue to grow in a increasingly dense urban core.
Those annoyances ruin any enjoyment of car ownership in an urban setting. ‘Autocars’, as you put it, will keep automakers in cities for the medium-term, but it won’t keep the ship going. Cars as they are now and getting to become expensive propositions that few people will want to pay for if it doesn’t provide any improvement in their quality of life.
Lastly, if you want any indication that personalized car ownership is a dead end in the long-term, find a gas station downtown Vancouver. All that’s there are brown-field sites because the gas stations couldn’t afford the tax on the land. That’s right, a centralized refueling stations for personalized transport is too expensive to build and maintain in a high density urban core. There isn’t anyone with a car to refuel it there because nobody needs a car there.
Don’t think GM isn’t aware of what’s going on.
I somewhat agree with the post. Look at passenger or private planes auto ride mode is used by many(not sure if its first choice). With maps mode getting more precise it may be the future of driving in certain situations.
Regards,
Sandy
i think some people watch too many of those ted talks and believe them to be the gospel truth.
for all of the hype what do we have?
we have cell phone batteries with a car wrapped around them. we have social media that vacuums up your personal information so they can sell digital ads that are ineffectual at best. and we have big data/artificial intelligence that try to make correlations that are tenuous.
all of this talk about a buck rogers future is getting old.
just saying, I park my car with a tool box, extra jacket, some additional office supplies, some unnamed and unwisely placed valuables that are handy at a moments notice. in all I have about 150lbs of auxillary’s that reside in my car. I want them there and I am not going to rent a self driven car or send mine home for this convenience, nor would I abandon the super SUV for the convenience of picking up any one or any thing on the fly. This micro smart car future isn’t really handy or realistic accept in a new York touring district, and there the competition with busses would be tight.
informative post..!!
i agree. Even top tech companies like Google, Samsung, Apple are testing self driving cars.
Very useful and informative post.
Very interesting blog, Thanks for sharing.
Nice blog, one day I wish I would experience it.