Driverless Cars and Livable Cities

Most enthusiasts for driverless cars are not asking the right questions. They assume that our cities will not change and that driverless cars will make it easier for people to get around these cities. They focus on technological change and turn a blind eye to possible social change.

But when we start to ask how driverless cars can change our cities for the better, interesting ideas pop up.

For example, there would be obvious benefits to driverless cars that were programmed to observe the speed limit. There would have to be some sort of GIS telling the car what the speed limit is on each street it drives on.

We could not only reduce the danger of accidents by reducing speeding.  We could also lower speed limits drastically.

For example, we could lower the speed limit to 12 mph on bicycle priority streets, so bicycles can really share the road with cars rather than being forced to keep to the right. Today, most drivers exceed the speed limit. No one would obey a 12 mph limit, and in most states, it is illegal to set the speed limit lower than the actual speed of most drivers

If there were a significant number of driverless cars programmed to obeyed the speed limit, then the cars with drivers would also obey the speed limit - at least on roads with just one traffic lane in each direction, which are the best candidates for bicycle priority streets. The driverless cars would act as traffic calming devices that prevent other cars from going faster than the speed limit.

We could also create shared spaces, used by both pedestrians and cars, with speed limits as low as 5 mph.

Most radically, we could reduce speed limits across an entire city, so people would drive less, as I suggested in my book Unplanning: Livable Cities and Political Choices.

Even without lower speed limits, it is interesting to speculate about how driverless cars could affect busy urban streets, filled with cars and pedestrians. Today, some pedestrians sneak across these streets, walking through the jammed traffic.  Many would probably realize that the driverless cars are programmed to stop when there is a pedestrian in front of them, and some would be willing to cross the street even if it means walking in front of that are moving slowly and forcing them to stop.  It would be frustrating for the people in the cars, but the street would become a better place for pedestrians to be.

The conventional wisdom is that driverless cars would make driving quicker and more efficient.  But if we want to make our cities more livable, we would do well to use driverless cars in ways that make driving slower - and sometimes even less efficient.