And self-driving cars undermine smart cities.
Zipper ’22 [David; February 4; Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Taubman Center for State and Local Government; the Washington Post, “Companies are racing to make self-driving cars. But why?” https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/02/04/self-driving-cars-why/]
That pivot should sound alarms for those concerned about climate change or the future of cities. While self-driving cars have advanced far beyond the playthings that Koopman encountered at Carnegie Mellon 30 years ago, their societal benefits remain speculative at best. Meanwhile their downsides are very, very real — especially if they become widely available to purchase.
To understand why, consider an experiment in Northern California a few years ago, in which 13 people were given a chauffeur to take them anywhere they wanted for a week, effectively replicating the experience of having their own autonomous vehicle. Freed from the hassles of driving, test subjects traveled a whopping 83 percent more miles than when they had to drive themselves.
A concept called the Jevons paradox explains what happened: When a thing becomes cheaper, people discover new ways to use it. Self-driving cars reduce the “cost” of driving — in terms of effort, if not dollars — and as a result, they will induce people to take trips that they would have otherwise foregone. Over time, people with self-driving cars could opt to move farther from the central city, worsening sprawl and leading to still more miles driven.
Even if self-driving cars are electric, those added miles would be disastrous for the environment. Whether powered by batteries or gasoline, all cars produce emissions from brake dust as well as from friction between tires and pavement. And manufacturing EVs and charging batteries both require power and materials, expanding vehicles’ total carbon footprint. If we’re serious about addressing climate change, promoting transit and cycling instead of driving offers greater potential than any kind of automobile technology, autonomous or electric or otherwise.
For cities, the new driving spurred by AVs would be even more ominous. Without some sort of restrictive policy like a vehicle-miles-traveled tax or decongestion pricing, overwhelmed streets could become mired in gridlock, particularly if owners of self-driving cars avoided parking fees by instructing their vehicles to circle nearby streets while they grabbed a sandwich or met with a client.