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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.

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Transform Lisbon city center

Autonomous vehicles promise to reinvigorate city centers. Areas that now live with congestion and noise from the vehicles, could be transform in green areas, large sidewalks and unique spaces to sit and enjoy. But how?

Imagine a visit to Lisbon downtown, get in to the car and drive to the fashion restaurant. On top of having to drive through all the city center confusion, we need to find a place to park, what can be one of the most boring exercises of this trip. An English research says that 30% of the traffic in city centers are due to drivers searching for a parking spot34.

AV’s, due to their capacity to connect to the parking infrastructure (V2I) and to other vehicles (V2V), are capable to access information that allow to choose where to go. The efficiency of this search and routes, avoiding road congestion, allowing to make the trip shorter. This reduction helps energy efficiency and air quality.

But why does the AV needs to be parked in city center? Can the vehicle drop the passengers at their destiny and get away of the center, since it’s autonomous? The pressure to park in the city center is high due to the lack of available spaces, what is reflected on the absurd prices. The AV can park outside the city center taking advantage of the lower prices there, or even at home, where the parking is free.

This way, the space that is now used to park could be converted in places to be enjoyed in the city. We hope that Lisbon, in the future, could be greener, with space to walk, cycle or even play in the street like the old days.