Abstract
Automated vehicles in Latin American cities? feasibility of adoption, impacts on urban structure and public policies At present, automated vehicles are being tested in cities of the developed world. Even though, automated driving technology is considered to be still in its infancy, cities are looking into ways to adapt for its adoption and possible impacts. At the same time, cities from developing countries, face big challenges ahead, related to how this new technology is likely to influence passenger and freight transport. The deployment of automated transport creates favorable conditions for shared mobility systems, but also can increase individual vehicles use and transforms land use in urban, suburban, and rural areas while also having fiscal impacts. Considering the need to identify and evaluate the spatial impacts of automated transport systems, including their social, economic, and environment implications at metropolitan level for Latin American cities, this paper assess the impact of autonomous vehicles on urban mobility and urban structure. It describes the planning challenges ahead, develops estimates of the distributional consequences of AV technology and outlines some policy guidelines considering the particular characteristics of the region. One of the most relevant features of these cities and metropolitan areas are their very denser urban structure, lacking an appropriate governance structure, high inequality levels, massive private vehicle consumption growth in the last decade, and a path to informal urban extension without the appropriate infrastructure that continues guiding urban development and extension in many cities. The paper includes a detailed spatial analysis of 30 metropolitan areas in the region, based on an innovative database on urban structure and population density at very disaggregated scales. The study is complemented by a three-round Delphi survey to transportation and urban planning experts from public, and private sector (academia, multilateral organizations, planners and public authorities, but also from industry and technology). This section of the analysis is intended to achieve the construction of consensus or a reduction in the range of variation of the formulated forecasts of AVs impacts and policy requirements, based on an interactive process of exchange among the experts. The main overall objective of this study is to highlight -and understand- how AVs could affect the broader transportation network and cities structure and contribute to preparing cities to be better equipped -and with the institutions and regulatory powers- needed for the deployment of this new technology. Policy recommendations looking at land use, transportation and governance, regulations and fiscal impacts, among others, related to short, medium and long term effects are needed for capitalizing on self-driven vehicles. The whole research project is part of a study commissioned by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) on AVs in Latin America.
