Colleagues and I are about to begin a project investigating the role of town planners and local authorities in establishing the introduction of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs).
What views do you have on the needs of users of CAVs, particularly members of the disabled community; the usefulness of planners creating infrastructure to accommodate CAVs and join these with existing conventional forms of travel; and how these can combine to establish a 'whole of journey' approach to future transport systems?
Well, certainly no easy task, but a really inspiring project! First question that comes into my mind is, what kind of CAV are you expecting or preparing for? In the moment I see two possible developments:
- privat AV: The private cars get more and more sophisticated. Then my guess is, that we don't have to anticipate big changes in terms of infrastructure
- AV fleets: Be it the driverless Uber (or similar brands) or a robo-taxi-service integrated into a broader public-transport-environment. Then you can acomodate the travel needs with much fewer vehicles needing much fewer long-time (meaning several hours during the day) parking facilities. But the curb-space will become the real challenge. Because of these services, there will be constantly people getting on and off of those robo-taxis thus conflicting with other uses of the curb-space like walking, cycling, patios, loading-zones, vegetation etc.
The UrbanismNext Center at the University of Oregon (https://www.urbanismnext.org/) has a lot of work related to that field.
Dear Martin Schmidt Many thanks for the answer and the link to the material from the US. I think you are exactly right about the second develop (which is our main focus). We have seen a move to pedestrianisation of city centres and thus the issues between these users and CAV introduction (as a form of mobility) are very interesting and pertinent. We'll update this page as we move forwards and welcome any further insights you have.
Many thanks and all my very best wishes, James.
Hello James Marson I came across some resources that might be helpful for your work: https://dredf.org/public-policy/transportation/autonomous-vehicles-avs-also-known-as-self-driving-cars/
Best regards, Martin
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Bioecology
- Systems Ecology
- Landscape Ecology
- Connectivity