Bring on the bots

After a few small FedEx robots reared their cute little heads on the streets the other day, Mayor de Blasio breathed fire: “never get a robot to do a New Yorker’s job,” he tweeted, registering reflexive hostility to any such technology. The mayor is being dumb, just as he was when, as a presidential candidate, he proposed a robot tax.

It’s true, as de Blasio also pointed out, that the SameBot and any autonomous vehicle should have to get official permission before rolling either on sidewalks or in lanes now designated for cars, trucks and bicycles. But no city leader should summarily shut down the conversation about bringing drones to the cityscape. Especially not one who purports to care about traffic congestion and bike-lane clogging and air quality.

Our new delivery-centric economy brings 1.5 million packages a day to New York streets, the vast majority of which are on big trucks that double-park, often in lanes intended for bicycles or buses. While emerging technology isn’t ready yet, there are bound to be many better ways to get stuff from point A to point Z.

Airborne drone delivery by a Google sister company has begun on a pilot basis in Virginia. San Francisco is testing sidewalk delivery robots. Both would now be illegal here.

As for the jobs complaint: Should we bring back elevator operators?

What our congested metropolis needs is an intelligent roadmap to experiment with new delivery methods so they can easily proliferate if they’re good for New York. A “hell no” from the mayor is a bad start.