The impacts may be en route, but cities should plan for AVs

Self-driving cars could make any number of impacts on cities in areas including traffic congestion, parking or even suburban sprawl, prompting officials to begin thinking about how to plan for these changes.

But despite the attention given to robotaxis, sidewalk delivery robots and other related next-gen automated devices, autonomous vehicles (AVs) are not a big piece of the transportation ecosystem, and it could be some time before cities and regions will experience sizable impacts, researchers said.

“Yes, we need to be looking at it. Yes we need to figure out the readiness. But also, our hair’s not on fire,” is the way Nico Larco, director of the Urbanism Next Center at the University of Oregon, described the current AV climate.

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