Welcome to Changing Lanes
A Guide for New Readers
Welcome to Changing Lanes, where we explore how innovation in transport and artificial intelligence—particularly vehicle automation—will reshape our society, and how we can guide that transformation toward better outcomes.
My name is Andrew Miller, and I write about the intersection of technology, policy, and social change. My goal is to help you understand not only what's happening in mobility innovation, but what it means for our cities, our economy, and our daily lives.
This guide will introduce you to the key themes of this newsletter, and direct you to the best, most popular pieces that explore them.
The Future of Automated Driving
Driving automation is one of the most significant technological shifts of our time. Since its advent in 2005, it’s been the subject of endless hype, which has obscured the technical challenges and social implications it offers, as well as the need for sophisticated policy to implement it well.
Zoox robotaxis, Foster City, California (author’s photo)
Essential posts in this theme include:
Tesla Isn't Going to Succeed in Robotaxis—the inaugural post at Changing Lanes, that provides a clear-eyed analysis of the challenges facing Tesla’s ambitions to succeed as a robotaxi company
The Cruise Shutdown Is Bad News for Tesla—What the demise of Cruise, the second-place American robotaxi firm, tell us about what it takes to succeed in this new market
Automated Driving: the Outside View—a framework for understanding where this technology is at, and where it’s going
The Future of Public Transit
Successful cities absolutely depend on transit service, but so much of this service is bad: expensive, unsafe, unreliable, or paltry. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way. Improving it will require careful thought about our goals, tools, and resources, and how it interacts with other urban systems.
The essential pieces in this theme are my four-part series on Progress and Public Transit:
The Endless Emergency: why is transit service so consistently bad, no matter how much funding it gets?
An End to Subsidy: escaping the Endless Emergency through better fare policy
Density by Design: understanding the crucial relationship between transit and urban form
Vehicle Automation: fixing the Endless Emergency through better technology
My take on fare-free transit, considered standard among transit insiders but contrarian among the wider public, Public Transit Should Not Be Free, also sparked significant discussion.
Innovation and Progress
Beyond specific technologies or policies, I explore how innovation shapes society and how we can better guide technological progress.
Start with:
Orwell Was Right About Progress: understanding the relationship between technology and social change
Mustard Gas, Dynamite, Leaded Gasoline, and A.I.: helpful analogies for the risks posed by artificial intelligence
Why We Should Have Known Hyperloop would Fail: an overview of why Hyperloop was doomed from the start, and why people who should have known better supported it anyway
What to Expect
I publish twice weekly:
Tuesdays: In-depth analysis pieces examining key developments in transportation, technology, progress, and policy
Thursdays: “Off-Ramps”, briefer pieces offering a curated selection of interesting things, usually but not always in these fields, written by others
Coming in 2025
My book The End of Driving, second edition, will be published in August 2025. Co-written with my estimable colleagues Bern Grush and John Niles, it examines several scenarios for how vehicle automation will affect society. The book explains why the worst outcome is also the likeliest one, and what policies to implement today to obtain a better future. Subscribers will get early insights drawn from the research and analysis that shaped the book.
A new four-part series on the future of air mobility, including drones, evTOL and air taxis, airships, and supersonic (and just below subsonic) flight. As with other kinds of transport innovation, a new era of air mobility is imminent. We’ll explore what’s coming and how it will change our world.
Getting Started
If you're interested in understanding how transportation innovation will reshape our world, and how we can guide that transformation to advance human progress, I encourage you to:
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Thank you for being here. Together, we're helping to build a better future, one trip at a time.