Driverless Cars- Just five years ago, the concept of autonomous driving was the stuff of science fiction. The idea that a car could travel 60 mph (100 kph) without a human controlling the wheel was inconceivable.
Today, autonomous vehicles are already on our streets.
What was simply a concept five years ago has become a reality. Cities around the world are already hosting self-driving pilot programs. The concentration of pilot activity is being observed in cities like Los Angeles, Paris, and Tokyo.
In Dubai, future tech like autonomous vehicle technology is transforming the city into a laboratory for technology, smart transportation, and research and development. In fact, Dubai is set to host the Dubai World Challenge for Self-Driving Transport, a global competition to tackle the “transport challenges faced by global cities.”
This challenge aims to understand how driverless vehicles will transform cities and intra-city travel. But autonomous vehicle technologies won’t just affect how people travel. Below, we look at three sectors that are poised to transform urban living.
1. Parking
Traditionally, parking facilities were configured to allow drivers to pull in and out of a spot with considerable ease. What’s more, these facilities were located adjacent to residential and commercial properties to improve ease of movement.
This configuration required acres of space to be built to address consumer parking demands.
Driverless cars, however, do not require the same amount of space as current vehicle models do.
Driverless vehicles can simply drop passengers off before parking into a space. With no requirement to open doors after the vehicle has been parked, parking lots can have larger grids of tightly crammed vehicles.
In a similar framework, driverless vehicles can drop off and pick up their passengers at their destination or point of origin. Because parking lots are no longer required to be situated next to commercial and residential properties, they can be relocated to less valuable spaces, like the edges of a city.
After dropping off a passenger, driverless vehicles can navigate to these parking lots and return when a passenger requires its services. This increased utilization will reduce the requirements for on-street parking, allowing cities to reclaim existing parking facilities for other urban uses such as urban parks or new property developments.
2. Real Estate
Urban development has always been determined by available modes of transport. Property and transport have always been inexplicably linked. Transportation technology has long defined the dimensions of a city.
The more efficient modes of transport became, the greater the distance people could travel. Urban sprawl development grew from advances in motorized transportation. The more auto-centric our lifestyle became, the more towns and cities expanded.
Real estate has relied on transportation technology to determine land values.Location, location, location has long been the mantra of the real estate industry. The more transport links (highways, mass transit, etc.) a property has, the higher its land value will be.
The dawn of driverless cars is set to disrupt this status quo. A well-mapped city will result in reduced congestion, improving travel time. This will change how people view long commutes. Being able to focus on things other than driving will maximize productivity and reduce perceived travel time.
This will also likely encourage more people to travel longer distances, allowing them to purchase larger and cheaper property outside the city. This change in commuting behavior will impact real estate costs between urban and rural areas.
3. Mobility
Personal mobility has always been a concern for the urban working class. Being able to access reliable transportation maximizes job opportunities and contributes to greater worker productivity.
The rise of rideshare programs like Uber and Lyft has helped cities unlock more of their productive potential. It has also enhanced the social connections of urban demographics with limited mobility such as the elderly, the disabled, and the disadvantaged.
The emergence of driverless cars will enable rapid scaling of autonomous personal mobility. Concepts of autonomous modes of transportation like inter-modality urban mobility solutions, integrated door-to-door transport solutions, and on-demand, pay-as-you-go usage models will allow individuals to generate greater social value to their communities and streamline productivity.
Cities with gridlock and long commute times will find that driverless cars will result in improved workplace productivity. During travel times, workers can relinquish driving to autonomous vehicle technologies, freeing up their time to get a head start on work.
In a city like Dubai, initiatives like the “Dubai Autonomous Transportation Strategy” will transform inter-city transportation into autonomous mode. This mobility strategy will mean that 5 million daily trips will be completed autonomously by 2030. What’s more, this will result in a 13% increase in individual productivity hours.
Navigating the future
Autonomous driving technologies represent significant redevelopment opportunities for global cities. The existing built environment cannot keep up with current demands. Many cities face land use issues such as housing shortages and soaring rents.
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A new network of autonomous vehicles will shrink the transportation’s demand on the built environment. Spaces will be more efficiently designed, maximizing urban land usage.
This shift will encourage public streets to become more efficient, revolutionizing cities. While it’s uncertain how much impact driverless cars will have on the urban landscape, what is certain is that travel and land use development patterns will need to be overhauled to accommodate a more autonomous future.
