Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are coming soon to a roadway near you. Is your community ready for them?

AVs are poised to disrupt the built environment and planning practices just as the automobile did more than a century ago. Planning for Autonomous Mobility is a call to action for planners to develop policy solutions and infrastructure investments that ensure an attractive, people-friendly, equitable, and safe AV future.

The authors offer planners a primer on AV technology and explore its many opportunities and challenges. AVs may improve traffic safety, travel efficiency, transportation access, and air quality — but they could also reinforce auto-oriented sprawl, increase vehicle miles traveled and emissions, and undermine active transportation modes. Which way the scales will tip depends on the policy and planning decisions planners and local governments make, starting now.

A world with AVs will require retrofitting, reimagining, and repurposing transportation infrastructure and the built environment. This PAS report previews these coming changes, and advises planners on how to prepare for and manage these transitions to ensure their communities reap the benefits — and avoid the pitfalls — of AV technology.