Will the Transportation Revolutions Improve Our Lives — or Make Them Worse?

Daniel Sperling, Susan Pike, and Robin Chase

We must steer oncoming innovations toward the public interest — toward shared, electric, automated vehicles. If we don't, we risk creating a nightmare.

We love our cars. Or at least we love the freedom, flexibility, convenience, and comfort they offer. That love affair has been clear and unchallenged since the advent of the Model T a century ago. No longer. Now the privately owned, human-driven, gasoline-powered automobile is being attacked from many directions, with change threatening to upend travel and transportation as we know it. The businesses of car making and transit supply — never mind taxis, road building, and highway funding — are about to be disrupted. And with this disruption will come a transformation of our lifestyles. The signs are all around us.

Maybe you use Zipcar, Lyft, or Uber or know someone who does. You've probably seen a few electric vehicles (EVs) on the streets, mostly Nissan Leafs, Chevy Volts and Bolts, Teslas, and occasionally others. And you've undoubtedly heard and read stories about self-driving cars coming soon and changing everything. But how fast are the three revolutions in electric, shared, and automated vehicles happening, and will they converge? Will EVs become more affordable and serve the needs of most drivers? Will many of us really be willing to discard our cars and share rides and vehicles with others? Will we trust robots to drive our cars?

We're at a fork in the road.

Over the past half century, transportation has barely changed. Yes, cars are safer and more reliable and more comfortable, but they still travel at the same speed, still have the same carrying capacity, and still guzzle gasoline with an internal combustion engine. Public transit hasn't changed much either, though modern urban rail services have appeared in some cities since the 1970s. Likewise, roads are essentially unchanged, still made with asphalt and concrete and still funded mostly by gasoline and diesel taxes. We have a system in which our personal vehicles serve all purposes, and all roads serve all vehicles (except bicycles). It is incredibly expensive, inefficient, and resource intensive.

But it's even worse than that. Most cars usually carry only one person and, most wasteful of all, sit unused about 95 percent of the time. As wasteful and inefficient as they are, cars have largely vanquished public transit in most places. Buses and rail transit now account for only 1 percent of passenger miles in the United States. Those who can't drive because they're too young, too poor, or too physically diminished are dependent on others for access to basic goods and services in all but a few dense cities.

Starting in Los Angeles, the United States built this incredibly expensive car monoculture, and it is being imitated around the world. Cars provide unequaled freedom and flexibility for many but at a very high cost. Owners of new cars in the United States spend on average about $8,500 per vehicle per year, accounting for 17 percent of their household budgets. On top of that is the cost to society of overbuilt roads, deaths and injuries, air pollution, carbon emissions, oil wars, and unhealthy lifestyles. The statistics are mind-numbing. For the United States alone, consider that nearly 40,000 people were killed and 4.6 million seriously injured in 2016 in car, motorcycle, and truck accidents. Nearly ten million barrels of oil are burned every day in the United States by our vehicles. Transportation accounts for a greater proportion of greenhouse gases than any other sector. Farther afield, in Singapore, 12 percent of the island nation's scarce land is devoted to car infrastructure. In Delhi, 4.4 million children have irreversible lung damage because of poor air quality, mostly due to motor vehicles. We have created an unsustainable and highly inequitable transportation system.

But change is afoot, finally. For the first time since the advent of the Model T one hundred years ago, we have new options. The information technology revolution, which transformed how we communicate, do research, buy books, listen to music, and find a date, has finally come to transportation. We now have the potential to transform how we get around — to create a dream transportation system of shared, electric, automated vehicles that provides access for everyone and eliminates traffic congestion at far less cost than our current system. Or not. It could go awry. It could turn out to be a nightmare.

Let's take a minute to imagine two different scenarios set in the year 2040.

Transportation 2040: The Dream

In one vision of the future, the government has managed to steer the three revolutions toward the common good with forward-thinking strategies and policies. Citizens have the freedom to choose from many clean transportation options. They can spend their time with family and friends rather than in traffic thanks to pooled automated cars. They breathe cleaner air, worry less about greenhouse gas emissions, and trust that transportation is safer, more efficient, and more accessible than ever before. The search for parking is an inconvenience of the past. Worries about Grandma being homebound have evaporated. No longer must parents devote hours to ferrying their kids everywhere. Transportation innovations have made it easy for people to meet all their transportation needs conveniently and at a reasonable cost.

On a typical day in this optimistic scenario, Patricia Mathews and Roberto Ruiz eat breakfast at home with their two children before Pat is picked up by an electric automated vehicle (AV) owned by a mobility company. The AV is dispatched from a mobility hub, where trains come and go, bikes are available, and AVs pick up and drop off passengers.

Like most homes in the neighborhood, the Mathews-Ruiz home has a small pickup area and vegetable garden in front, replacing what had been a large driveway. The garage has been converted to a guest room. Parks and public gardens are connected in a greenbelt that runs behind the homes. Children scamper around without parents worrying about traffic.

As Pat approaches the dispatched AV, it recognizes her and opens a door. Her unique scan authorizes a secure payment mediated through blockchain from...