Let yourself be driven in city center

Lisbon is in fashion and welcomes more tourists every day. This wave has transformed the city: there are more and more houses for temporary rent, the house prices has rose exponentially leaving only an older population to live in the city centre. But Lisbon is a mobility challenge for the locals with some locomotion difficulty; city with 7 hills, with steep and narrow streets, a very special stone on most sidewalks or no sidewalks at all or even full of incorrectly parked cars.

Imagine transporting an elderly person to the city centre. The driver will stop close to the destination, leave the vehicle and help the person getting into the house. Let’s imagine the same scenario with a AV. Here, we can have some issues:

(1) Who’s going to help the person with disability leaving the autonomous taxi? Could we have a ride-sharing dedicated service, where the taxi driver leaves his/her function of driving and becomes a host?

(2) No driver has problems overtaking a vehicle that is stopped on the road, ever if it’s breaking some rules, but will the AV capable of doing that?

(3) Stop in the middle of the road, causing congestion, can be accepted in critical situations like the one described, that leads to some social compensation. But this is common practice and sometimes with meaningless justifications like waiting for someone or “being right back” when there is a parking spot in 10 m. Will the AV capable of differentiate the level of necessity and acceptance of certain situations?

The future of the central areas, currently with higher parking pressure, can go through not having any areas dedicated to parking on the surface. These lanes could be reserved to drop off passengers or cargo vehicles (avoiding jeopardizing the surrounding traffic, stopping with the four indicators in the middle of the road). Perhaps you can even think of a coexistence area with pedestrians in which you can maximize the use of soil.

Framing AV in EU policies

Autonomous vehicles (AV) are included in a vast group known in the European Union (EU) as Connectivity and Automation in Transport (CAT). These transports are studied by the Innovation and Development department because they answer to three fundamental EU objectives as: (1) contribute to decarbonisation, (2) better efficiency, and (3) competitiveness49.

Europe battles for an economy environmental friendly and less dependent of energy consumption, and points out as 2050 objectives:

– reduction of 80% in greenhouse effect,
– and cut of 60 % of emissions;

Compared to 1990 values in different sectors as industry, agriculture, etc.50

Among these is also the mobility sector, one of the major responsible by emissions. It is expected that the timed intervention with the fleet replacement by electrical and hybrid vehicles, might help achieve the 60% reduction50.

But profound alterations may bring an unwanted disturb. Transports have an enormous impact in society nowadays. On an economic level it employs 12 million on the automotive industry, plus 5 million on a direct level; and it the sector that is most invest in innovation and development49.

With the development of new technologies, new solutions arise regarding passenger and cargo transportation. The door is open to create new international markets and, as a consequence, create value to Europe.

However, as the technology evolves the bigger the amount of tests required. Systems are implemented and tested at a greater scale. The implementation time frame is thought to be long and the mobility policies should predict the negative results that with come from this innovation.