Automated Driving Will Heighten the Urban/Suburban Divide

Notes on my article for Arena, "Taking Our Hands Off the Wheel"

Earlier this year, Arena, a new-ish magazine interested in technology, capitalism, science, and civilization, published my article “Taking Our Hands Off the Wheel”, which was an attempt to imagine ‘what a world of self-driving cars might be like’.

I’m proud of that piece, and I encourage you to read it. But I have to note that in the interests of space, my original draft of the article had to be cut… and I regret that it was some of my more pessimistic observations that ended up being excised.

I regret it because, in recent weeks, I’ve made it clear that I’m skeptical of too-enthusiastic accounts of how automated driving will change our world.

Yes, automated driving will have profound implications.

No, not all of them will be good.

On balance, this is a technology that can change our world for the better, and we should proceed thoughtfully to seize this opportunity.

But we can’t do so unless we know what pitfalls we are trying to avoid. That’s one reason I am severe to people who are too enthusiastic about an AV future.

So today, in lieu of our typical Thursday Off-Ramps feature (which will return next week), I’d like to offer you the opportunity to read the Arena piece…

…but also, I’d like to give you the newsletter equivalent of deleted scenes: some parts of the essay that had to be cut for the theatrical version, but which I think have enough merit to preserve.

In “Taking Our Hands Off the Wheel”, I explore the transformative potential of self-driving cars. I come out strongly in favour of the safety and reliability of automated vehicles (AVs), and their potential health benefits. I explore the ways that this tech would permit us, if we chose, to redesign road infrastructure, reclaim parking space, and build new kinds of vehicles for new kinds of activity.

So far, so good; I think these would all be unambiguously positive changes.

I am less sure, though, that its effect on the urban/suburban divide will be so straightforward.

The last part of the piece considers how the impact of AVs will differ between urban and suburban areas. In cities, where ride-hailing will become cheaper with the elimination of driver wages, some people may no longer need to own cars; this is not quite the triumphalist vision where everyone abandons personal ownership, but I think it likely that dense cities will have the largest concentrations of such people.

Conversely, out in the suburbs, I expect many will continue to rely on personally-owned private vehicles. One of the effective constraints on urban sprawl was Marchetti’s Constant: most people will not tolerate long daily commutes. But driving automation will loosen that constraint, as a longer trip won’t seem so objectionable if one can spend it in a private and comfortable bubble filled with screen time. So suburbs will sprawl yet further.

This split, between car-free robotaxi users in cities and personal-vehicle owners in the sprawling suburbs, will mean that the quality of life in each space will change in ways that are not immediately obvious.

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Courtesy of GPS, self-driving cars will have perfect awareness of the local geography and a cold, logical impetus to find the fastest route. As such, they will trade off paths on crowded arteries for faster routes on less crowded streets. Given time and scale, congestion will become fixed and constant on any street that isn't a cul-de-sac, because cars will find and exploit any underused roadway. Human drivers would not do this; we dislike the cognitive effort of dealing with side streets. AVs will not be so limited. All trips will take longer as a result.

At first, the fortunate few who have access to self-driving vehicles won't notice it, as they will be enjoying their mobile entertainment centres. But everyone else will certainly notice, creating a self-reinforcing cycle: as congestion worsens, the incentive to buy an AV will increase, in order to escape the boredom of ever-longer, ever-more-obnoxious drives. Pity the poorest suburbanites, who won't be able to afford the technology. Universal congestion will bite them the hardest.

Urbanites may now be feeling superior to their suburban counterparts, but they should not be smug. As the cost of hailing a robotaxi plummets, many more trips will be taken. And just as in the suburbs, congestion will increase… at least at first.

We should not assume that city governments will stand by and let this happen. When congestion is the result of thousands of individual actors, it’s hard to respond, but when a handful of robotaxi companies are the cause, they will be a tempting target to regulate. Expect the return of the taxi medallion, updated for a new century, in the form of caps on robotaxi-company fleet sizes.

Cities may go even further and limit all auto traffic in the urban core through congestion charges, as Singapore, London, and Stockholm already do. To the extent that such caps are imposed, supply will decrease and prices will rise, cancelling out some of the benefits of self-driving technology; limiting the number of robotaxi trips people will take; and, of necessity, raising the cost of each trip, making car-free living more of a luxury good. To the extent that such limits are not imposed, more trips will be taken, and all of them will be taken more slowly.

Overall, the urban-suburban divergence is a good thing, one that will allow people to sort themselves by their vision of the good life. With self-driving cars, urbanites will get to enjoy the benefits of hyper-close-knit communities and density, while suburbanites get wider, quieter spaces to cocoon in.

But there will be prices to pay. Poorer suburbanites without AVs will find every trip takes longer. Poorer city-dwellers who can’t take robotaxis everywhere will find their travel and their employment options more constrained, especially as city buses get stuck in robotaxi gridlock. Meanwhile, all suburbanites, farther apart from each other and from any destination, will spend more and more time sitting in their AVs, looking at screens. They will grow heavier and more isolated.

AVs will save lives. This, we should celebrate. If we're willing to take our hands off the wheel, we could build a world where avoidable road incidents cease. Further, car travel will become almost effortless, and cost nothing but time.

That will be time we can spend as we like, so long as we are willing to spend it, for the most part, alone.