Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: the Challenges Facing Cities and Regions
Authors: Ed Ferrari and Stephen Parkes
Over the last decade there has been substantial progress towards the development of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs). As the technology that provides CAVs with the ability to undertake more advanced driving tasks has reached the real-world testing stage, attention is now turning towards how CAVs should be regulated and what their impacts might be on the environments in which they operate.
Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: the Challenges Facing Cities and Regions makes the case that it is now time to expand the dialogue to include consideration for towns and cities beyond early adopters to understand how CAVs will fare, and how they might interact with other important policy agendas facing them.
This Policy Impact Book by Stephen Parkes and Ed Ferrari and funded by the Regional Studies Association (RSA) addresses the following questions:
- How will the urban and built environment practically accommodate CAVs?
- What problems might arise, and will there be “winners and losers”—if so, who and in what ways?
- How will different policy agendas—across geographical scales or policy domains—align or conflict as the urban environment begins to accommodate CAVs?
- Will policies promoting or accommodating CAVs help or hinder other urbanagendas including, but not limited to, active travel, zero carbon, health and well-being, social and economic inclusion, and liveability?
- What do best-practice policy solutions look like, and how can local and regional policymakers plan proactively?
- What will national policymakers and infrastructure providers need to do? And what must be resolved locally?
The past decade has seen substantial progress towards the development of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs). Accompanying the technological developments, there has been much dialogue around the potential for CAVs to help solve a range of economic, social, and environmental issues. Some of CAVs purported benefi ts include, for example, greater effi ciency in the use of existing transport infrastructure, improved safety through removing human error, and widening access to automobility. However, there are also many potential downsides, and whether and how CAVs will deliver on their promise remains shrouded in much uncertainty and not a small degree of scepticism.
This book views developments around CAVs through the lens of local policymakers and the towns and cities they represent. We argue it is now time to expand the dialogue to include consideration for towns and cities beyond those early adopters to understand how they will fare, and how CAVs might interact with other important policy agendas facing them.
We discuss the different challenges that CAVs will pose for the urban built environment and the required forms of preparedness for these. We also explore how CAVs will interact with other uses and users of cities, including potentially competing eff orts to enhance urban wellbeing and liveability. Finally, we consider how responses to CAVs are being developed and what the implications of these are.
This book will appeal to policymakers, practitioners, and academics interested in the potential impacts of CAVs and in understanding more about how they will shape and interact with cities and regions in the near future.
“This book is valuable and timely given a growing requirement to better inform policy and place-based thinking for autonomous vehicles. With governments and industry alike rapidly advancing automated vehicle technologies the time is right to consider aligned policy to ensure that autonomous technologies remain positive alongside other place-based and transport evolutions. The authors provide not only key recommendations for autonomous vehicles but insight from key stakeholders and wider analysis on where key areas of policy and place based concerns can be impacted by autonomous vehicle deployments. This book provides a rounded view of policy considerations providing a useful tool to make places better for future technologies.” – Sam Chapman, Co-Founder, The Floow – global vehicle mobility risk experts
“On our journey to develop better vehicles, we sometimes overlook the true signifi cant opportunity, that of creating a better transport network. This book focuses on the challenging questions of how this disruptive technology can be integrated to produce a societal benefi t, locally and nationally. Highly recommended for everyone interested in the implications of CAVs may have on cities and regions, and what should stakeholders do about it.” – George Economides FCIHT (Head of AI and Autonomy, Department for Transport and Innovation Fellow, Oxfordshire County Council)
RSA members will receive their free copy of this Policy Expo book in the post and can read online here: https://rsa.tandfonline.com/toc/rpim20/4/1.
For more information on the RSA Policy Expo grant please click here.
For more information on the project please visit the project website – www.policyexpo.net .
Watch the recording of the #RinR21 session SS24. Accommodating Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: Understanding the Challenges for Cities – Chair: Stephen Parkes, University of Sheffield, UK; Speakers: Iain Docherty, University of Stirling, UK; Kelsey Oldbury, Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, Sweden; Edward Ferrari, Sheffield Hallam University, UK.
Watch the recording of the Regions Cities Industry webinar: Policy Expo Connected and Autonomous Vehicles – The Challenges Facing Cities and Regions