1. TRAVEL AND LAND USE IMPACTS OF TRANSFORMATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES
NCHRP
TRAVEL AND LAND USE IMPACTS OF TRANSFORMATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES
ITE Western District Annual Meeting
Session 3C: Smart Mobility
Tim Erney, AICP/PTP/CTP
Senior Principal, Kittelson & Associates, Inc.

2. NCHRP 08-117: Impact of Transformational Technologies
Why: Rapidly evolving technologies in a number of fields have the potential to significantly transform how people and institutions use land and transportation systems to support economic and social activity.
Goal: Provide help to local, state and federal transportation decision-makers to assess the likely impact of transformational technologies on future activity centers, land uses and travel demand

3. Overall Study Approach
Major steps:
1) Define transformational technologies
2) Establish technical foundation and inventory of existing conditions
3) Identify short/long-term issues, metrics, and partnerships/information needed
4) Develop recommendations and best practices
5) Document in a guidebook (currently in publication process)

4. What are Transformational Technologies?
Evolving new applications of science, engineering and societal organization
Transform how people and institutions use land and transportation systems
Collectively influence how people use public right-of-way, curb space and transportation facilities

5. What are Transformational Technologies?
(1) Innovative methods of moving people and freight in vehicles
Alternative power sources
Vehicle communications, self-drive technologies
(2) Innovative infrastructure (both public right-of-way and supporting land uses) that the vehicles utilize
“Smart” infrastructure
Active management
(3) Innovative sharing of information (IoT) to account for the travelers, shippers and public agencies involved in people and freight movement
Applications that replace the need to travel
Applications that better utilize resources or manage systems
Examples: CVs, AVs, electric vehicles, hybrids
Examples: adaptive traffic signals, managed lanes, variable message signs
Examples: 3D printing, drones, bikeshare, SMART cities, micro-transit, Lyft

6. The World of Transportation
We initially considered the whole world of transportation from highways, roads, and streets, to rail, air, and water, but rapidly concluded we could not cover all of the bases. The world is too big.

7. Our Focus
We chose to focus on highway, road, and street; vehicle and infrastructure technologies, and added in unmanned aerial freight delivery vehicles (UAVs) because of their potential impacts on truck deliveries.

8. Focus Technologies
We identified 4 major categories of technologies for evaluation: (1) information technologies utilizing personal communication devices, (2) active transportation technologies (Bike, scooter), plus auto, bus and rail transit, trucks, (3) unmanned aerial delivery vehicles, and (4) highway/parking infrastructure.
We felt that people carrying UAVs were too far off and left them off our list. Same for the hyper-loop, maglev, high speed rail and other long distance high speed technologies. Too expensive, long ways off.

9. New Technologies, New Applications
First, we documented the status, strengths, and weaknesses of each of the technologies. Then, we focused on how they were applied for FOUR things: improve personal mobility, increase the efficiency of land uses, promote the delivery of government services, and improve logistics.

10. (1) Personal Mobility Apps
e-Commerce, 3-D Printing, Internet of Things (IoT)
Personal mobility applications of new technologies have the potential to replace the need to travel, and to facilitate travel by decreasing travel costs or by increasing awareness of available travel options. E-commerce, 3-D printing and the Internet of Things (devices with direct connections to the internet) are major personal mobility applications affecting travel. The policy challenge is that for rural areas, high-speed internet service is an essential pre-requisite for e-commerce. Lack of high-speed internet may adversely affect the sustainability of rural areas. Similar issue for EJ groups, such as those that cannot afford the systems or those that cannot use the systems.

11. (1 cont.) Personal Mobility Apps
Mobility as a Service (MaaS)
Ride-hailing
Vehicle sharing
Vehicle rentals (daily or by the trip)
Next bus
Route Guidance Apps
These applications make traveling easier, thereby, facilitating increased travel. The policy challenge is regulating the applications to ensure that the agency’s public welfare, equity and environmental goals are met. Storage of shared vehicles in the public right of way, mixing light vehicles (bicycles, scooters) with heavy vehicles and pedestrians, and navigational apps that send traffic through residential areas are significant concerns.

12. (2) Land Use Applications
Apps that help residents and landlords fill up underutilized space (bedroom, parking spot, apartment, house, etc.)
Restaurant at night, shared-workspace by day.
Everybody is aware of AirBnB. It is just one of many apps out there for connecting possessors of underutilized space with those needing space. There is even an app in select cities (e.g., San Francisco) to place a desk and chair in public curbside parking spaces and rent it out by the hour.
One of the policy challenges of these are estimating the traffic impacts of hyper-utilized buildings, environmental clearance of these “non-traditional” spaces.

13. (3) Government Services Apps
Smart City applications improving the delivery of general government services
Applications improving the delivery of transportation services
Applications improving the delivery of parking services
Smart city and smart community initiatives improve the delivery of general government services. They develop and integrate data repository and communications applications for better monitoring real-time needs and managing delivery of government services. Smart city/community applications are often built on a central integrated data exchange (IDE), to which all agency divisions contribute data and from which they draw information. The public can also contribute to the IDE through requests for services and notification of events and draw from it to improve their utilization of government services.
Other applications, like connected vehicles, adaptive signal control, and parking information services help agencies price and optimize the operation of their road facilities and their parking facilities.

14. (4) Logistics Applications
Applications Improving Line Haul
Truck Platooning
Self-Driving Trucks
Applications Improving Last Mile Delivery
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)
Truck platooning has the potential to save about 5% to 10% on fuel costs. Self-driving trucks have the potential to cut shipping costs 40%. Unmanned aerial vehicles could reduce the need for local truck deliveries and loading zones for delivery of small, light weight goods.
Policy Challenges:
Truck platoons mean large surges of arriving and departing goods. Providing sufficient space with direct freeway access for enlarged warehousing and distribution centers will be a challenge in urban areas.
Higher truck volumes with closer following distances may warrant consideration of dedicated truck-only lanes or freight highways.
The consequent shift from rail traffic to truck traffic may work contrary to the agency’s environmental sustainability goals.
Highway patrols and emergency responders will need to develop protocols and procedures for interacting with (pulling over) fully autonomous trucks.
State car-following regulations may need to be revised to allow truck platooning on rural and urban freeways.

15. Inter-Regional Land Use Impacts
So, how does this all tie together? What we have found is that Metro areas with high technology, “smart cities”, have the potential to reduce within-region travel costs, increasing land values on the fringe, and increasing the overall attractiveness of the region. As such, jobs may migrate from higher travel cost rural areas to the lower travel cost urban areas. However, as inter-regional travel costs decrease, the competitiveness of lower labor cost areas increases, which will draw industries from higher labor cost metro areas. Similarly, there may be increased housing pressures in exurban areas, given the cost (e.g., travel time) will be reduced.

16. Key Findings
Things that improve mobility are generally considered to be a positive, but may have a negative effect on the transportation network and surrounding land uses
Strong relationship between demand, cost and travel times
Three primary categories of Transformational Technologies that directly affect our industry: vehicle, intelligent infrastructure, information sharing
Need for agencies to (a) stay flexible, (b) keep informed, and (c) be nimble
Potential impacts to codes/ordinances, CIPs, short- and long-range land use and transportation planning, design, evaluations >> Must take new technologies into account

17. How Do We Plan for These Unknowns?
With technologies evolving so rapidly, how does one plan for what could look like chaos? The report recommends:
Conduct a self-assessment of your agency’s readiness for the new technologies
Develop a technology transition plan for your agency.
Get Data: Regularly (daily) collect and monitor land use and travel data (licenses, permits, counts, speeds, O/D, etc.)
Get Smart: Acquire the needed expertise, train your staff, involve the technology sector in your planning processes.
Be Nimble: Create performance based plans, rather than facility based plans.
Specify what is needed in the corridor (the capacity to reliably move 100,000 people a day at high speeds),
Not the solution (e.g. a freeway)
Update your plans frequently. (Keep your 20 year plans but focus on the first 2-year increment. Update annually)

18. For more information: Tim Erney, AICP/PTP/CTP, terney@kittelson
For more information: Tim Erney, AICP/PTP/CTP, //