Thank you, Madam Chair and members of your committee.
My name is Gary Andrishak. I am a director of IBI Group, a global firm providing consultation in fields of intelligence, buildings, and infrastructure. I was asked today to comment on the future significance of autonomous vehicles within our urban environment, so this is my presentation.
Every day we are inundated with news articles about a driverless future. By now, we know autonomous vehicles, or AVs, are coming—the question is not if, but when—yet most articles focus on two basic topics. One is the technology: who is building driverless cars, and how they will work? The other is safety concerns: will your driverless car be willing to kill you to save the lives of others?
These opinions tend to fall into two camps: either driverless cars will exacerbate the ills brought on by the private automobile, a suburban dystopia, or they will become a way to fix them, an urban utopia. Both positions recognize the disruptive potential of this new technology. It is undisputed that driverless vehicles will change people's behaviour and how cities move, function, and feel. Not since the last reset, the advent of the automobile in the early 20th century, have we had the opportunity to reshape the places in which we live.
Which one is more likely to happen, utopia or dystopia? The answer lies not in the driverless car phenomenon itself but in how it will link to the wider dynamics of the mobility ecosystem. If you consider driverless cars only on their own, chances are they will indeed produce a bleak future urban scenario. People will be able to live farther out, making the effects of sprawl even more acute. Traffic will get worse, not only because of longer commutes but also because owners can choose to have their cars circle around empty instead of paying for parking or driving back home unoccupied. Traffic congestion will increase but will somehow not really seem to matter, as we'll be otherwise occupied within our vehicles, reading, sleeping, or playing computer games. Pollution will likely increase unless they are powered by alternative energy sources.
However, it doesn't have to be this way. Driverless cars aren't happening in a vacuum. Three important urban mobility components are occurring in parallel: a transit renaissance, the rise of shared mobility, and the emergence of on-demand technology.
In isolation, these three components do not have the power to reset our complete mobility model. True, the transit renaissance in new light rail lines can move the needle toward compact, mixed-use development, but they are costly, take years to build, and impact metropolitan areas only in patches. True, shared mobility in the form of ride-sharing services such as Lyft are space-efficient, but they need coordination, require sufficient passenger demand, and are less convenient than the private automobile. True, on-demand technology such as Uber and similar services have revolutionized the taxi industry, but they cannot move as many people as efficiently and cost-effectively as rapid transit.
That said, combining the disruptive potential of driverless cars with these three components can have a positive, long-lasting, synergistic effect if they work in concert with each other. How might this integrated approach look? In its simplest form, imagine driverless cars that do not need to be owned by each household but can be used by many, which is shared mobility. Instead of investing in a car, you only pay a fraction of the cost, and you don't have to drive.
Imagine these cars bringing people to rapid transit stations and then picking other people up for the ride home. Instead of needing parking at each station of your destination, the vehicle makes another trip within the community without congesting highways.
Imagine an app that allows for real-time pick-up anywhere, with pricing integrated into your transit ticket, which is on-demand technology. Instead of figuring out how bad traffic will be and how much your travel fare is going to cost, you'll have the answers at your fingertips.
The result will be a system that is safer, cleaner, faster, cheaper, and more convenient, one that requires less land for highways and parking. Space can be repurposed for other uses, such as urban agriculture, affordable housing, and community spaces—in other words, the idea of urban living that most people would agree with.
This positive scenario for a driverless future will only happen if correct policies, initiatives, and incentives are put in place by the public sector. These measures include revamping parking regulations to adapt to the new driverless reality, developing incentives for redevelopment of parking structures and service parking lots to highest and best use for community-supportive services, pursuing strategies for the reuse of street parking and excess road space, implementing congestion pricing on major highways and shopping and employment areas, applying progressive taxation by commute distance for single-occupancy and single-ownership vehicles; and combining fare integration for private sector on-demand services with public transit.
In conclusion, a century ago we let the disruptive technology of the private automobile set the pace of development without giving serious consideration to the unintended consequences of commuter gridlock and suburban sprawl. This time around, we can and must do better.
Thank you.