City urged to be ready for ‘tech-driven disruption’
Transportation entrepreneur Robin Chase says cities and regions such as Metro Vancouver have a choice between creating “heaven” or “hell” when dealing with disruptive transportation technologies, such as self-driving vehicles.
“Everything we hate about our transportation problems today — air pollution, congestion, curb access, not enough money being spent on infrastructure — it’s about to get 10 times worse if you add autonomous cars,” said Chase, who co-founded and is the former CEO of Zipcar. “We have to specifically and proactively rework our physical, and social, and economic, and data infrastructure. If we don’t, we’re going to go down this path of horror. We really need to go forward.”
And quickly, Chase said during a talk at the New Westminster Innovation Week transportation forum on Thursday, because disruptive transportation technology is already here in the form of ride-hailing companies, and there is more to come.
Fully automated self-driving cars are expected to be available for sale from companies such as BMW and Ford by 2021. Chase said how the future unfolds is a matter of how we prepare and what kind of cities we want to inhabit.
“We have this incredible opportunity,” she said. “Our mission is to channel the tech-driven disruption in the mobility sector to rebuild cities that are sustainable, livable and just. This touches on every single area, these self-driving cars.”
Governments will be forced to rethink areas such as their tax structures around cars, how they design walkable and livable communities, labour, land use, energy and charging infrastructure.
Chase shared a number of mobility principles for livable cities, which were developed by a working group of international nongovernment organizations.
She said they are applicable to any municipality or region.
One principle she emphasized is prioritizing people over cars. “We really need to get a handle on moving people, not vehicles, and making efficient use of our space,” she said.
Chase talked about seeking fair user fees so people can factor in the actual cost of moving around a city or region, similar to the work that is being done by the Mobility Pricing Independent Commission in Metro Vancouver, and to encourage different forms of transportation.
Specific to autonomous vehicles, Chase said they should be shared and electric, which will take cars off the road, reduce emissions and give us the chance to redesign our cities.
“We have to get this transition right,” she said. “This moment in the transportation world, the tectonic plates are all in motion. Everything is in flux and it is going to solidify in the next 10 years, and I know profoundly it has to solidify in direction of shared, electric, livable cities. We have to be courageous and we have to do hard things.”
TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond agrees. “Disruption is coming, and we’ve got to have a broad publicand private-sector conversation about how that disruption lands in our region, and lands in a way that improves mobility and improves community,” he said.
Some of those changes are on the horizon — ride hailing and autonomous vehicles — and others can’t be predicted. Desmond said TransLink wants to be part of the planning process and figure out how these changes can be used to the region’s advantage and in conjunction with public transit, one reason why it has established a mobility group within the transit authority.