How much will cities adapt to accommodate autonomous vehicles?

Though driverless vehicles sound like a distant, improbable prospect to much of the public, it is likely that they will impact most people’s lives in some form or another, especially within urban contexts. Whether or not a Level 5 autonomous vehicle (AV) will ever be sold en masse as personal cars or delivery trucks remains to be seen, but shared mobility in the form of autonomous shuttles and robotaxis looks set to be on the cards. Now, according to a recent report by European city transport policy research group Polis, global regions are competing to be the first to bring automation onto their roads. Some cities across the world have already rolled out trials—some, such as Rotterdam’s ParkShuttle, have been running for close to a decade.