Self-driving cars to end parking woes in Dubai, and save billions: Experts
dubai — Imagine in the future you don’t have to go to the parking lot. When you go to a mall, simply get out at the entrance, near your desired location, and your selfdriving car will head off to the parking lot.
This will not only be very convenient for you but this will also mean that less space is required for parking which will translate to enormous savings.
In the case of Dubai, this can mean over $1 billion savings, according to a transportation expert who spoke at the Cityscape Global Conference held in Dubai on Monday.
Autonomous vehicles (AV) should happen soon because over the next five years, around 100,000 new parking spaces are required for existing and new malls in Dubai, according to Andy Stevenson, future mobility director at Mott MacDonald.
To lessen the impact required for more parking spaces in the malls, Stevenson said that there should be a balance of parking space and time to get out for the visitors and for the car to park.
In particular, this should mean that 40 per cent of the new parking spaces could be shaved of by introducing more drop-offs. “With this change in behaviour, we will no longer need 40,000 car park spaces due to AVs and this will translate into savings of around $1 billion (Dh3.65b). And the space saved can be used for additional gross floor area (GFA) of the or electric vehicle charging,” Stevenson explained.
According to a recent research conducted by the University of Toronto, “since passengers and drivers can get out of the car beforehand, you don’t need to open the door once parked and you can cram more cars in a given space.”
“In a parking lot full of AVs, you don’t need to open the doors, and cars can park with very little space in between (as compared to conventional cars),” Prof. Matthew Roorda, author of the research, said in a report. “If AVs work together, even more space can be saved. You can cram the cars like sardines, which self-parking cars allow you to do,” Roorda added.
Stevenson said developers should now prepare for the mobility innovation.
He explained that parking needs to be flexible and futureproofed to ensure it can adapt to new technologies or can be used for other purposes. Malls and other establishments and institutions like airports, hospitals, schools and stadiums should also be ready to accommodate additional drop-off requirements to ensure that assets are best placed for the future.
Parking woes
Dubai’s vehicle density is one of the highest in the world, exceeding some of the biggest mega-cities. The average car ownership in Dubai is one for every two residents or 540 vehicles per 1,000 people while New York, London, Singapore and Hong Kong respectively has 305, 213, 101 and 63 vehicles per 1,000 residents.
In 2006, the number of vehicles in Dubai was only around 740,000, but this doubled to 1.4 million at the end of 2014. The RTA said that at an average annual increase of 8.2 per cent, the number of cars in Dubai could reach more than two million by 2020.
Compounding the vehicle density in Dubai, the RTA noted that around 450,000 vehicles enter the city daily from other emirates. Despite the high volume of vehicles, the RTA previously told Khaleej
that there are only 166,000 public parking spaces across the city.
We will no longer need 40,000 car park spaces due to AVs and this will translate into savings of around $1 billion (Dh3.65b) savings.” Andy Stevenson, future mobility director, Mott MacDonald