Governments need to ensure that long-term investments aren’t undercut by emerging technologies
Will driverless technology be able to coexist with current methods of transportation? Or will it cannibalize the other ways people travel in their communities? It seems unlikely in the long run that public transportation in particular will survive this shift as autonomous vehicles surpass these networks in terms of costs, speed, and efficiency over time.
Autonomous Vehicles Are a Better Financial Investment
Public transportation networks, particularly rail, put a big financial strain on local governments. The Washington Metro Area Transit Authority (WMATA), for example, has invested billions of dollars into the Washington metro system over the past 50 years — including $5.8 billion to complete the new Silver Line. For that, D.C. residents have received a rail network that is often unreliable and is only getting more expensive in terms of maintenance costs. WMATA estimates that it will require $2.5 billion per year to keep the system up to spec, according to its 10-Year Capital Needs Report. It’s a system that generates headlines like “The Good News: Metro Isn’t on Fire as Much. The Bad: Stuff Is Still ‘Arcing.’”
Even “well-managed” subway networks such as New York’s face massive, and rising, infrastructure and maintenance costs in the coming years — exemplified by its sparkling new Second Avenue extension project:
On January 1, the Second Avenue subway extension [opened] about 100 years after it was first proposed — or at least, a little bit of it will, running from 63rd Street to 96th Street. It’s pretty and shiny, and it’s also the world’s most expensive subway ever built on a per-mile basis: $4.45 billion for two miles.
Subway systems are hardly the only example — light rail can also be an expensive proposition. Charlotte’s Lynx system cost $462 million for the original network, an extension already underway is estimated to cost $1.1 billion, and yet another new line for the network could also cost more than $1 billion. All of this to serve approximately 16,000 rider trips per day in a city of more than 800,000 people.
Read more in my series, Your Autonomous Future, commissioned by Medium.