Category: Personal Mobility

Finding parking when and where you need it can be both time-consuming and stress-inducing. In pre-pandemic days at least, there never seemed to be enough parking.

However, have you ever considered the true cost of parking, and what uses could we make of that space if we could solve the personal mobility challenge with only a fraction of current parking demand? Fewer parking lots, and the elimination of street parking and driveways would certainly make our communities more attractive and people-friendly.

A new research report, released in October 2021 estimates that the annual cost to the average Canadian for personal vehicle parking is a whopping $1452 per year. For the average household of 2.6 persons, that amounts to $3775/year and for all Canada, we are looking at an annual bill of over $52B/ year, equivalent to about 3% of Canada’s gross domestic product.

Most of the parking costs are embedded in what Canadians pay for their residences, and what they pay for goods and services from commercial and institutional sectors that provide ‘free’ parking. Taking these costs into account positions parking at about 25% of the cost of personal vehicle ownership (Figure 1), equivalent to what the average Canadian pays for fuel plus vehicle maintenance in a year. Compared to other components of cost, the annualized cost of parking is second only to the cost of vehicle purchase or lease (Figure 1).

All values are from Statistics Canada (Table: 11-10-0222-01) except the cost of parking which is estimated in the Transition Accelerator study by calculating the embedded costs of parking associated with residential, commercial, and institutional facilities.

The study was carried out by the Canadian Energy Systems Analysis Research (CESAR) initiative at the University of Calgary with support from the Alberta Real Estate Foundation and the Transition Accelerator.

The report entitled “Autonomous vehicles, parking and the real estate sector in Alberta and Canada” explores the potential implications of a shift to Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand (AMoD), where fleets of autonomous, connected and driverless vehicles will pick up and drop off passengers, effectively replacing the need for personal vehicle ownership, and the parking spaces they currently use.

On the Cusp of Transformative Change?

While fully autonomous vehicles are not commercially available today, limited self-driving features are increasingly common in new vehicles, and companies around the world are investing billions to be among the first to develop and prove fully autonomous capability. Their target is the multi-trillion-dollar global personal mobility market which is ripe for disruptive change. AMoD vehicles promise to provide a more convenient, safer, and lower-cost service.

For example, in Canada today, vehicles cost many 10’s of thousands of dollars but are typically used for only 1 to 1.5 hours/day, so 95% of the time, they are parked on some of the most expensive land in Canada. Providing a lower cost, private and convenient mobility service would not only reduce the cost of getting from ‘A’ to ‘B’ but could have significant knock-on benefits in lower costs for housing, as well as goods and services if personal vehicle parking no longer needs to be provided.

How does Alberta Compare to Canada?
On a per capita basis, Alberta has more light duty vehicles (LDV) than the Canadian average (0.73 vs. 0.62 LDV/person, respectively), and more parking spaces per vehicle (4.3 to 5.8 for Alberta vs. 3.2 to 4.4 for Canada). Consequently, the annualized cost of providing this parking in Alberta is estimated to be about 30% higher than the Canadian average.

The Scale of Parking Infrastructure
The report estimated that Canada has 71 to 97 million parking spaces for the 23 million light duty vehicles in the nation, or 3.2 to 4.4 parking spaces for every vehicle in Canada. About 40% of these spaces are associated with the residential sector, 26% with commercial and institutional sectors, and the balance are ‘on-road’ spaces.

AMoD and Vehicle Electrification
Research has shown that just one AMoD vehicle has the potential to provide the service that is currently met with about 8 personally owned vehicles. Therefore, in a city like Calgary with about 1 million cars on the road, 150,000 AMoD vehicles should be able to provide equivalent or better service. Of course, each AMoD vehicle will need to drive at least 8 times more than a typical personally owned vehicle (AMoD vehicles will need to move empty between customers), but that level of use is expected to strongly favour electric vehicles over internal combustion engine vehicles since the former have lower maintenance and lower fuel costs.

Hence, the movement to AMoD vehicles could become a major force in the transition to zero emission vehicles in Canada’s personal mobility sector. AMoD vehicles could also become a significant driver in the transition to a hydrogen economy. Compared to battery electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles can refuel faster, and drive further; features that could deliver a competitive advantage in an AMoD future.

How soon will this happen?
While advances in sensor and artificial intelligence technologies have been rapid, it will be many years before we see fully autonomous vehicles on the road, despite what some company executives have claimed. The early market entrants are likely to be heavy trucks running on major highways, but many years will past before we see AMoD vehicles replacing personally-owned cars on our city streets. While it is very difficult/impossible to accurately predict the future, there certainly is a movement towards vehicle autonomy and the AMoD business model. This is a trend worth watching and, if necessary, ‘nudging’ to ensure it is deployed in a way that improves our cities and enhances the quality of life for Canadians.

Implications for the Real Estate Sector
The transition of the business model for personal mobility from personal vehicle ownership to AMoD, could reduce household expenses, and increase disposable income. Implications of AMoD for the real estate sector include:

• The transition to fully autonomous vehicles is likely to begin with luxury, personally owned vehicles that will be able to drop off their owners and drive themselves to lower cost parking lots. Strategically located, higher cost parking lots will lose customers and value.
• Urban public transit is likely to be an early adopter of AMoD vehicles, especially in providing first mile/last mile services to connect to commuter trains and express buses. This could reduce demand for second vehicles in households, as well as parking at transit stations.
• Widespread deployment of AMoD has the potential to dramatically reduce the use of, and demand for personally owned vehicles. In the residential sector, this may result in:

• • Removal of driveways, and conversion of garages to secondary suites, laneway housing, etc.
  • A movement against personal vehicle parking on streets, in favour of pick up and drop off (PUDO) locations, bicycle lanes and wider sidewalks,
  • Unused parking lots/ parkades associated with condominiums and apartments,
  • Elimination of minimum parking requirements for new residential construction, but new demands for safe and convenient PUDO locations.

 

• In the commercial and Institutional sectors, AMoD deployment may result in:

• • Demolition or refurbishment of above ground parking facilities so they can be repurposed,
  • Surface parking converted to other uses, including increases in densification or greenspace,
  • More attention being paid to PUDO locations and designs.
  • Underground parking facilities will either be taken over by companies providing AMoD fleets or be allocated to other uses.
  • Reducing or eliminating street parking to allow more ‘people-friendly’ places.
  • Phasing out of car dealerships, fueling stations, vehicle service facilities etc.
  • A need to rethink how strip malls, box stores, shopping malls and specialty shops will need to adapt to a new business model for personal mobility.

 

While much uncertainty exists regarding the timing of the transition to AMoD, there is widespread understanding that this is the direction society is headed, driven by economics and convenience. The real estate sector can benefit from understanding, advancing and adapting to the transition.

Autonomous vehicles have come to play a major role in many visions of the transportation future, with car companies, tech companies, and policymakers all proposing their own versions of a self-driving future. According to the most enthusiastic boosters, removing responsibility for driving from humans will not only make people’s lives easier and more convenient; but also make travel safer, more efficient, and less congested.

Even more potentially exciting, some predictions suggest that autonomous vehicles could radically reduce carbon emissions from the transportation sector. This prediction appears for several different levels of advancement for autonomous driving technology. Limited automation could increase the fuel efficiency of driving, while fully autonomous cars could be used to create a system of shared autonomous mobility on demand that could make car ownership itself obsolete, replacing it with a sustainable system of electric robo-taxis.

If these predictions come true, they would effectively be sustainable transportation policy on autopilot. Rather than grappling with the hard political, economic, and social dilemmas of low-carbon transportation, we could simply let a handful of clever engineers and entrepreneurs build a high-tech alternative that will gently supplant our existing system simply by being more convenient. Unfortunately, this tantalizing vision faces serious technical, economic, and political obstacles. In fact, there is also a very real risk that autonomous vehicles could increase carbon emissions from transportation. Both of these scenarios are addressed in a new report released by The Transition Accelerator.

Many of the potential efficiency gains from low levels of automation depend on how people will use autonomous vehicles in practice, rather than on the technology itself. “Eco-driving”, for example, could take advantage of precise digital control to make driving patterns more efficient—particularly if a majority of cars on the road are autonomous and if these cars are networked with each other. Car owners, however, might prefer to not use such a feature due to concerns about privacy and personal autonomy that are well-established in the research on this subject. This literature also reveals a devoted group of “hard-core” motorists, for whom the physical act of driving is extremely important.

The potential benefits of automation get larger at higher levels of automation, but so do both the challenges and the risks. If autonomous vehicles can drive themselves entirely independent of human intervention, then drivers could redesign them from the ground-up, for example by emphasizing efficiency over performance and by taking advantage of safer driving to remove bulky safety features. At the same time, however, it could lead to a huge increase in the total distance travelled by car. A two or three-hour commute might look less unappealing if people can work, watch TV, or even sleep en route. People might take advantage of the ability to multitask while driving to travel much longer distances, which would mean more cars on the road, more congestion, and more emissions. They might also start preferring larger and less efficient vehicles where they can stretch out and fully take advantage of their new free time while underway.

The most radical scenario for autonomous mobility is one in which fully autonomous vehicles mean that car ownership is replaced by shared autonomous taxis. Companies such as Waze and Uber are already banking on this possibility. There is, however, considerable evidence from surveys that most people would not be willing to give up their cars in favour of such a system, and would prefer to use privately-owned autonomous vehicles.

This could be partly because a car is not just a means of travel. It can also be a mobile living room and storage locker, and a way for its owner to display their class status. Self-driving taxis might therefore mainly compete with public transit and active travel rather than private cars, thereby resulting in higher carbon emissions

A major hazard associated with fully autonomous vehicles is the potential for empty vehicle-kilometers. People could send their car home rather than parking it downtown, or even dispatching it to run errands independently. This would result in a colossal increase in the total vehicle-kilometers travelled by car, which would in turn increase carbon emissions.

Many of the scenarios sketched out here are pessimistic ones, but they are plausible enough to be cause for concern. Even if the negative impacts of these scenarios are offset by other innovations, such as electric vehicles, they will still make the challenge of responding to climate change harder rather than easier.

None of this means that we should reject autonomous vehicles out of hand. It is still possible that autonomous mobility could play a major role in a future low-carbon mobility system, for example as a last-mile solution for public transit, or in the form of small, slow, shared micro-shuttles like those being piloted in Europe under the City2Mobil program. This, however, will require hard work. To make a real contribution to mitigating climate change, it is not enough just for autonomous vehicles to disrupt the mobility system; they must disrupt it in a way that acts as a force-multiplier for other forms of sustainable mobility, such as electric vehicles and public transit.

This means that autonomous vehicles will not create a low-carbon mobility system for us on autopilot. It may be an ironic conclusion, but to have the greatest benefits for the climate, autonomous vehicles will have to be manually steered.