Are urban planners ready for driverless cars? No.

Federal law requires metropolitan planning organizations to develop regional plans that look 20 years out. Given the advances in driveless mobility, you’d think those plans (which must be produced every 4 years) would start preparing for this next evolution in transportation. You’d be wrong. A University of Pennsylvania researcher perused the plans of the 25 largest metro planning organizations and found that 24 don’t even mention self-driving cars in their future. 

Excerpt:

“The biggest factor, then, is not uncertainty about whether or not self-driving cars will change urban transportation. Rather, it’s uncertainty over just what those changes will look like, and how these shifts will impact major planning investments already underway. One planner put it bluntly: “We don’t know what the hell to do about it. It’s like pondering the imponderable.””

Read the rest here.

And here’s a little about Google’s new self-driving car.