Policies

Driverless vehicles will likely have a huge impact on our future; however, it is the government’s actions (now and in the future) that will determine how they are integrated into society and if the impacts are largely positive or negative. The intent of this guide is to outline the role of government in the integration of driverless vehicles in society and present the information that local and regional governments need to inform planning and decision-making – now and in the future.

This policy brief defines APBP's position on autonomous vehicles and sets forth policy recommendations to prepare for a future with AVs.

For 50 years, American geography and land use has been centered on the personal car. The three revolutions in vehicle sharing, automation and electrification present new challenges and also great opportunities for land use and transportation planners. Absent policy reform, the three revolutions may contribute to more sprawl, but a sustainable planning approach that supports both higher-density development and lower single-occupant (or zero-occupant) driving can once again put people first rather than their cars.

Using data from the 2010 to 2014 merged American Community Survey released by the U.S. Census Bureau, this paper estimates the labor market impact of jobs likely to be lost with a rapid transition to autonomous vehicles. The report finds that certain population groups and areas of the country would be disproportionately affected. Finally, we call for policymakers to take immediate steps to offset the potential for harmful labor disruptions.

This White Paper offers a prototype framework for integrated shared, electric and automated mobility (SEAM) governance. The SEAM Governance Framework Prototype has four phases: (i) governance work principles outlining essential approaches to be considered by developers of SEAM governance; (ii) governance visions, including objectives that the authors believe should be embedded in SEAM governance development goals; (iii) governance instrumentation stock, where creative and exhaustive tools for public- and private-sector actors are presented by type and priority (“SEAM rank”); and (iv) policy evaluation tips and tools, which highlight issues that typically impede the evaluation of governance instruments and present evaluation models.

Website provides information for the testing of AVs with a driver, including: adopted regulations, information for manufacturers, testing permit holders, AV collision reports, AV disengagement reports, previous hearings and workshops, and background on AVs in California.

Over the past few years, many studies have provided detailed descriptions of the potential benefits associated with the introduction of autonomous vehicles, such as improvements in traffic flows, local and global emissions, traffic safety, cost efficiency of public and private transport operations, etc. Additionally, the mobilization of mobility-impaired people and the independent car use of travelers without a driver’s license have been identified as potential benefits for users. However, merely estimating the benefits of these direct (or first-order) effects is unlikely to show the full picture of the consequences that will emerge once autonomous vehicles enter the roads. In this paper, we therefore put emphasis on discussing systemic (or second-order) effects. The paper presents a conceptual exploration of these effects based on literature and research findings to date. We show that these systemic effects have the potential – especially in urban areas and without adequate policy intervention – to eliminate at least some of the benefits initially associated with autonomous vehicles. Following this systemic view on autonomous vehicles, we discuss policy aspects for responsible authorities and planners on how to prepare transportation systems for the challenges related to the introduction of autonomous vehicles, and conclude with areas of research that seem highly important in terms of further investigation in this context.

"As a guide for planners and policymakers, the objective of this thesis is to develop a strong foundation for anticipating the potential impacts resulting from advancements in vehicle automation. To establish the foundation, this thesis uses a robust qualitative methodology, coupling a review of literature on the potential advantages and disadvantages of vehicle automation and lessons from past innovations in transportation, with recent trends of the Millennial Generation, carsharing services, and a series of interviews with thought-leaders in automation, planning, policymaking, transportation, and aviation. From the perspective of understanding the bigger picture, this thesis developed a proposed future scenario of vehicle automation in the next five to ten years that is used to suggest guiding principles for policymakers, and key recommendations for planners, engineers, and researchers."

This paper provides examples of how cities have successfully changed curb use to support transit. It is focused on the types of busy, store-lined streets where high-ridership transit lines often struggle with reliability. These key curbside management strategies support reliable transit and safer streets in one of two ways: either by directly making room for transit, or supporting transit projects by better managing the many demands on the urban curb.

"To better understand the emerging area of low-speed automated shuttles, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office (ITS JPO) partnered with the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (Volpe) to review the current state of the practice of low-speed automated shuttles. These vehicles share many characteristics with other forms of automated vehicles but include unique considerations in terms of design, operations, and service type, including: fully automated driving (intended for use without a driver); operational design domain (ODD) (restricted to protected and less-complicated environments); low speeds (cruising speeds around 10-15 mph); shared service (typically designed to carry multiple passengers, including unrestrained passengers and standees); and shared right-of-way with other road users, either at designated crossing locations or along the right-of-way itself. This report defines design and service characteristics; discusses the deployers, their motivations, and their partners; and provides information on demonstrations and deployments, both international and domestic. The document also provides context on common challenges and suggested mitigations. Building on all of this information, the document identifies several research questions on topics ranging from safety and accessibility to user acceptance and societal impacts."

This report talks about the development AV technology and its implication for low and legislative activity. It also focuses on the standards and regulations for AV technology, liability issues and provide guidance for policymakers.

E‐commerce has become an integral part of Americans’ lives and while it offers many benefits, it also represents forgone sales tax revenue for governments. Using a difference‐in‐differences model, this analysis examines how the Amazon tax affected local sales tax collections in North Carolina and whether that impact has been greater for urban, rural, or tourism‐rich counties. The results suggest that the Amazon tax increased revenues and urban jurisdictions benefit most. This finding is important for practitioners and policymakers as they consider the impact of policy changes, such as the South Dakota v. Wayfair ruling, on revenue capacity and financial management.

In many countries the revenue from gasoline taxes is used to fund highways and other transportation infrastructure. As the number of electric vehicles on the road increases, this raises questions about the effectiveness and equity of this financing mechanism. In this paper, we ask whether electric vehicle drivers should pay a mileage tax.

The Mayor’s Proposed Fiscal Year (FY) 2018-19 and 2019-20 Budget for the City and County of San Francisco (the City) contains citywide budgetary and fiscal policy information as well as detailed departmental budgets for General Fund and Enterprise Departments.

We are on the cusp of one of the fastest, deepest, most consequential disruptions of transportation in history. By 2030, within 10 years of regulatory approval of autonomous vehicles (AVs), 95% of U.S. passenger miles traveled will be served by on-demand autonomous electric vehicles owned by fleets, not individuals, in a new business model we call “transportas-a-service” (TaaS). The TaaS disruption will have enormous implications across the transportation and oil industries, decimating entire portions of their value chains, causing oil demand and prices to plummet, and destroying trillions of dollars in investor value — but also creating trillions of dollars in new business opportunities, consumer surplus and GDP growth.

This paper presents ten key challenge areas that need to be at the center of automated vehicle discussions across all sectors and stakeholders, along with a glossary of key terms. It is intended to serve as a discussion guide and orientation piece for people entering the conversation from a wide variety of perspectives, including advocacy, public policy, research, injury prevention, and technology developers.

As more states and cities consider taxes on TNC services, policymakers should be cautious and thoughtful about how their decisions affect transportation behavior. As services like TNCs proliferate around the globe, it is important to understand what these fees are, what purpose they intend to serve, and how they fit into broader metropolitan transportation policies.

Autonomous vehicles use sensing and communication technologies to navigate safely and efficiently with little or no input from the driver. These driverless technologies will create an unprecedented revolution in how people move, and policymakers will need appropriate tools to plan for and analyze the large impacts of novel navigation systems. In this paper we derive semi-parametric estimates of the willingness to pay for automation. We use data from a nationwide online panel of 1,260 individuals who answered a vehicle-purchase discrete choice experiment focused on energy efficiency and autonomous features. Several models were estimated with the choice micro-data, including a conditional logit with deterministic consumer heterogeneity, a parametric random parameter logit, and a semi-parametric random parameter logit.

In this report, we present a set of four alternative scenarios set in major American metropolitan areas in the year 2030. We intend that these scenarios can be used to spur and inform discussions about the key issues that the nation’s transportation planners and policymakers need to anticipate in the coming decade. And we craft the alternative futures by using the approach of four archetypes: growth, collapse, constraint and transformation.

In the last ten years transit use in Southern California has fallen significantly. This report investigates that falling transit use. We define Southern California as the six counties that participate in the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) – Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura and Imperial. We examine patterns of transit service and patronage over time and across the region, and consider an array of explanations for falling transit use: declining transit service levels, eroding transit service quality, rising fares, falling fuel prices, the growth of Lyft and Uber, the migration of frequent transit users to outlying neighborhoods with less transit service, and rising vehicle ownership. While all of these factors probably play some role, we conclude that the most significant factor is increased motor vehicle access, particularly among low-income households that have traditionally supplied the region with its most frequent and reliable transit users.

This briefing document concisely conveys the key findings of NCHRP Research Report 845: Advancing Automated and Connected Vehicles: Policy and Planning Strategies for State and Local Transportation Agencies. NCHRP Research Report 845 assesses policy and planning strategies at the state, regional, and local levels that could influence private-sector automated vehicle (AV) and connected vehicle (CV) choices to positively affect societal goals. The researchers identified and described mismatches between potential societal impacts and factors that influence private-sector decisions on CV and AV technologies. Policy and planning actions that might better align these interests were then identified. Researchers and the project oversight panel identified the promising actions and then conducted in-depth evaluations of the feasibility, applicability, and impacts of 18 strategies.

This report looks to the past to anticipate an uncertain future. It adopts the view of neither the techno-optimist nor the techno-pessimist about the scope and pace of change, instead taking a middle-of-the-road approach to evaluate the impacts of automation on the future of work in Oregon. Regardless of the scenario, Oregon policymakers — and their federal partners — should be preparing an expansive, flexible and focused policy response that can keep pace with rapidly changing conditions.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) brought together hundreds of transportation stakeholders for its Public Listening Summit on Automated Vehicle Policy on March 1, 2018, in Washington, D.C. Experts in industry, government, labor, and advocacy, as well as members of the general public, provided valuable insights on how DOT can help safely integrate automated vehicles (AVs) into the Nation’s transportation system. This report summarizes the roundtable discussions and the views that panelists provided during the public session.

The next big political fight over data privacy may center on an unlikely piece of technology: The scooters currently flying around streets and scattered on sidewalks in cities across the country.

The article outlines the scope of the emerging transportation technologies and how far they can go. It doesn't have to be just about the autonomous cars and how they interact and react with our communities, but how we can work on preparing the rest of the environment to also interact with them.

This study looks at the potential for a shift away from curb use focused on street parking to more flexible allocation that includes pick-up and drop-off zones for passengers and freight. It presents the results of quantitative modelling of alternative curb-use scenarios and discusses their relative efficiency, contribution to wider policy objectives and implications on city revenues. The work builds on a workshop held in September 2017, and outreach to numerous experts. It also provides insights from a modeling exercise to quantify the impact of re-allocating curb space from parking to pick up and drop off zones.

How safe should highly automated vehicles (HAVs) be before they are allowed on the roads for consumer use? This question underpins much of the debate around how and when to introduce and use the technology so that the potential risks from HAVs are minimized and the benefits maximized. In this report, we use the RAND Model of Automated Vehicle Safety to compare road fatalities over time under (1) a policy that allows HAVs to be deployed for consumer use when their safety performance is just 10 percent better than that of the average human driver and (2) a policy that waits to deploy HAVs only once their safety performance is 75 or 90 percent better than that of average human drivers — what some might consider nearly perfect. We find that, in the long term, under none of the conditions we explored does waiting for significant safety gains result in fewer fatalities. At best, fatalities are comparable, but, at worst, waiting has high human costs — in some cases, more than half a million lives. Moreover, the conditions that might lead to comparable fatalities — rapid improvement in HAV safety performance that can occur without widespread deployment — seem implausible. This suggests that the opportunity cost, in terms of lives saved, for waiting for better HAV performance may indeed be large. This evidence can help decisionmakers better understand the human cost of different policy choices governing HAV safety and set policies that save more lives.

This blog post summarizes a larger article written by University of Michigan faculty member Saif Benjaafar's research on smart technology. It specifically focuses on his analysis of ride-sharing companies.

Smart Mobility 2030 ITS strategic Plan for Singapore

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) represent a potentially disruptive yet beneficial change to our transportation system. This new technology has the potential to impact vehicle safety, congestion, and travel behavior. All told, major social AV impacts in the form of crash savings, travel time reduction, fuel efficiency and parking benefits are estimated to approach $2000 to per year per AV, and may eventually approach nearly $4000 when comprehensive crash costs are accounted for. Yet barriers to implementation and mass-market penetration remain. Initial costs will likely be unaffordable. Licensing and testing standards in the U.S. are being developed at the state level, rather than nationally, which may lead to inconsistencies across states. Liability details remain undefined, security concerns linger, and without new privacy standards, a default lack of privacy for personal travel may become the norm. The impacts and interactions with other components of the transportation system, as well as implementation details, remain uncertain. To address these concerns, the federal government should expand research in these areas and create a nationally recognized licensing framework for AVs, determining appropriate standards for liability, security, and data privacy.

In recent years, economic, environmental, and social forces have quickly given rise to the “sharing economy,” a collective of entrepreneurs and consumers leveraging technology to share resources, save money, and generate capital. Homesharing services, such as Airbnb, and peer-to-peer carsharing services, such as Getaround, have become part of a sociodemographic trend that has pushed the sharing economy from the fringe and more to the mainstream. The role of shared mobility in the broader landscape of urban mobility has become a frequent topic of discussion. Major shared transportation modes—such as bikesharing, carsharing, ridesourcing, and alternative transit services—are changing how people travel and are having a transformative effect on mobility and local planning.

With AVs on the brink of roll-out, what is next? How do our streets evolve and where does our capital begin to go? This article discusses some possibilities on the ways we may be able to better our streets without widening the roads to fit more cars.