Planning the driverless city

ABSTRACT

AV technologies have the potential to transform urban landscapes and existing transport systems and networks. Yet, the utopian imaginary of reduced automobile ownership and a new shared economic future sits in tension with suggestions that car dependency, urban sprawl and transport inaccessibility will be exacerbated. The issues are situated in a complex governance landscape involving an influential private sector who are increasingly setting the agenda. The public sector may be forced into reacting to the new innovations by information technology and automobile companies as they are introduced into existing built environments. Drawing on an extensive literature base and interviews with public sector planners, this paper reveals the conceptual gaps in the framing of AV technology – the prospects and limits – and how these are conceived. The paper raises questions about the role urban planning can play in the rollout of AVs in order to anticipate and mediate unwanted built environment and socio-spatial impacts, as well as reconciling the ambition of transport innovation with the public purpose of planning.     

Using risk analysis to determine the potential range of lifecycle costs for urban transit systems

Intense competition for limited public funding for urban transport projects can often result in proponents of individual schemes presenting minimized costs and maximized benefits to funding bodies to try to ensure that their scheme is chosen above others for funding. This presents public bodies with a problem, especially in an era when they are keen to attract private contributions for transit schemes. Risk modelling techniques can be of great assistance in ascertaining ranges of costs and benefits for individual submissions and deciding upon which projects should receive priority-not only those with greatest cost-benefit indices, but also those whose indices have low levels of associated risk to allay the fears of the traditionally risk averse private sector.     

The 2008 New Zealand public transport management act: Rationale, key provisions, and parallels with the United Kingdom

In January 2009, following a lengthy industry review and consultation process, the New Zealand Public Transport Management Act (PTMA) came into force. The Act allows Regional Transport Authorities, as the primary procurers of public transport services, to place either a control or a contracting requirement upon services that are registered as commercial requiring no subsidy. The imposition of either the control or the contracting requirement is designed to facilitate greater system integration, improve service continuity and enhance services to the customer, andallow the Authority to invest in key strategic projects, such as integrated fares and ticketing, so as to grow patronage.The PTMA’s other objective is to ensure improved value for public subsidies. Recent years have seen significant subsidy inflation for seemingly little commensurate benefits. The Act will allow the Regional Transport Authority to achieve greater value for money through improved farebox, a shift to longer, larger contracts to increase competition in the market, a more appropriate allocation of risk, and the removal of the ability of operators to ‘game’ the current system by using strategically placed commercial services as barriers to competition.Similar concerns have also stimulated new legislation in the UK and this paper illustrates the parallels in the environment and proposed response.     

Symbolic transport choice across national cultures: theoretical considerations for research design

A recently empirically isolated latent variable in transport choice is symbolism, which examines what people believe their transport choices say to others about them and how they are judged in a social context. Whilst it is well established that symbolism differs vertically across different socio-economic groups within a country, very little work has been done on how symbolism in transport may differ between similar individuals across nations as a function of national cultural values, and how this may manifest itself in transport choices. If significant differences were to be found then this could have impacts for transport policy formulation and transfer. This paper explores and discusses these issues and concludes that the initial goal of any research into symbolic transport choices across cultures is theoretical fertility, and this is best achieved by adopting Lakatosian research programmes, using theory-driven thematic analysis to develop theoretical models for testing.