I always imagined that thinkers in the Smart Growth camp would be unnerved by the prospect of roads filled with self-driving cars (SDCs). If commuters could punch a destination into their mapping app, lean back, read email, surf the web or even doze off during the drive to work, SDCs could revive the long-distance commute and the perpetuation of scattered, low-density settlement patterns anathema to Smart Growthers. (See “A Roadmap for the Future of Self Driving Cars.“)
But it turns out that some Smart Growthers and even transit advocates are looking at the emerging technology differently than I expected. In a Friday post to the Atlantic Cities blog, staff writer Emily Badger asks, “If autonomous cars can one day better perform the functions of transit, shouldn’t we let them?”
Badger’s hope is that SDCs will reduce the number of vehicles clogging the road and hogging parking spaces:
When cars can drive themselves, they can drive off when we’re done with them. They can pick up other people instead of sitting parked outside. We’ll request them on-demand. They’ll pull up out front, take us right where we want to go, then do the same thing for a hundred other passengers, a hundred times over. They’ll behave, in other words, like sophisticated ride-share services – or like personalized mass transit.
SDCs won’t substitute for mass transit, she believes, but will complement it. The post is worth a read.
— JAB
