Journal of Planning Education and Research 1–15 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0739456X15613591 jpe.sagepub.com Research-Based Article Introduction Self-driving cars are no longer science fiction. In 2005, five research teams’ self-driving vehicles completed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA’s) 150-mile obstacle course designed to challenge autonomous vehicles and spur new technological innovations. A year earlier, no team had completed even a tenth of the course. Google, which sub- sequently hired engineers from several of the winning teams, has developed semi-autonomous vehicles that have driven more than a million miles on city streets and highways. The company recently unveiled a fully autonomous prototype car with no brake pedal, accelerator, or steering wheel and plans to test the cars on its campus (Markoff 2014). Most major car manufacturers already market and sell high-end vehicles with features like automated braking, self-parking, lane-departure warning, and variable-speed cruise control. Most are also rac- ing to develop fully autonomous vehicles. Nissan announced that it plans to mass-market cars with automated steering, brak- ing, and acceleration by 2020 (Nissan 2014). The freight and transit industries will be likely early adopters of driverless technologies since the higher vehicle costs will be offset by lower labor costs. Daimler recently began testing an autonomous 18-wheeler prototype on public roads in Nevada (Davies 2015). Many transit agencies and airports already have decades of experience operating driver- less trains on fixed guideways (Furman et al. 2014), and the European Union–funded CityMobil2 has already begun test- ing driverless transit on public streets (CityMobil2 2015). Within the next twenty years, fully autonomous vehicles will likely be commercially available and driving themselves on city streets and highways. By removing humans and human error from the driving task, autonomous vehicles have the potential to reduce congestion and traffic collisions dramatically (Shladover 2000; Thrun 2010; Fagnant and Kockelman 2014; Anderson et al. 2014; Winston and Mannering 2014). Self-driving freight, transit, and personal vehicles may also alter how people and goods move and where households and firms choose to locate. The policies, regulations, plans, and technologies adopted for autonomous vehicles will influence the scale and perhaps even the direc- tion of these impacts. Despite a history of and purported focus on projecting and planning for the future (Isserman 1985; Myers and Kitsuse 2000; Cole 2001; Couclelis 2005), the planning profession has a somewhat poor track record of preparing for new transporta- tion technologies. Brown, Morris, and Taylor (2009) argue that planners’ inability to foresee the impacts of private cars at 613591JPE XX X 10.1177/0739456X15613591Journal of Planning Education and ResearchGuerra research-article 2015 Initial submission, November 2014; revised submission, July 2015; final acceptance, August 2015 1 University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA Corresponding Author: Erick Guerra, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania, 127 Meyerson Hall, 210 S. 34th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. Email: erickg@design.upenn.edu Planning for Cars That Drive Themselves: Metropolitan Planning Organizations, Regional Transportation Plans, and Autonomous Vehicles Erick Guerra 1 Abstract Through a review of long-range transportation plans and interviews with planners, this article examines how large metropolitan planning organizations are preparing for autonomous vehicles. In just a few years, the prospect of commercially available self- driving cars and trucks has gone from a futurist fantasy to a likely near-term reality. However, uncertainties about the new technology and its relationship to daily investment decisions have kept mention of self-driving cars out of nearly all long-range transportation plans. Nevertheless, interviewees are keeping a close watch on the new technology and actively looking to understand and plan for future impacts. Keywords autonomous vehicles, long-range planning, self-driving cars, regional transportation planning, metropolitan planning at Korea Research Inst. of Human Settlement on December 9, 2015 jpe.sagepub.com Downloaded from