The End of Driving

While many transportation and city planners, researchers, students, practitioners, and political leaders are familiar with the technical nature and promise of vehicle automation, consensus is not yet often seen on the impact that will result, or the policies and actions that those responsible for transportation systems should take.

The End of Driving: Transportation Systems and Public Policy Planning for Autonomous Vehicles explores both the potential of vehicle automation technology and the barriers it faces when considering coherent urban deployment. The book evaluates the case for deliberate development of automated public transportation and mobility-as-a-service as paths towards sustainable mobility, describing critical approaches to the planning and management of vehicle automation technology. It serves as a reference for understanding the full life cycle of the multi-year transportation systems planning processes, including novel regulation, planning, and acquisition tools for regional transportation. Application-oriented, research-based, and solution-oriented rather than predict-and-warn, The End of Driving concludes with a detailed discussion of the systems design needed for accomplishing this shift. From the Foreword by Susan Shaheen: The authors … extend potential solutions through a set of open-ended exercises after each chapter. Their approach is both strategic and deliberate. They lead the reader from definitions and context setting to the transition toward automation, employing a range of creative strategies and policies. While our quest to understand how to deploy automated vehicles is just beginning, this book provides a thoughtful introduction to inform this evolution.

Author Biography

Bern Grush is Executive Director of the Urban Robotics Foundation and project lead for ISO 4448, a technical standard for public-area mobile robots. With over four decades of experience in transportation innovation, he has founded several technology companies including Skymeter Corporation for road pricing systems and PCI Geomatics for satellite imaging analysis. His current work focuses on deployment standards and regulations for mobile robots in public spaces. He holds degrees in Human Factors Psychology from the University of Toronto and Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

John S. Niles is Founder and President of Global Telematics, a Seattle-based research consultancy focused on improving transportation efficiency and effectiveness. As a Research Associate at San Jose State University’s Mineta Transportation Institute, he has published studies on transit development, ride sharing, and vehicle automation. He advocates for sustainable personal mobility through non-profit organizations including the Ridesharing Institute and Puget Sound Smarter Transit. Life-long learning beyond his studies at MIT (S.B.) and Carnegie Mellon University (M.S.) have recently focused him on defining the strategic choices available for public transport agencies to expand personal mobility options for all citizens.