The Achilles Heel of the AV future?

From May’s monthly McKinsey note on Mobility “A new look at autonomous-vehicle infrastructure” (which you should read for its review-list of “[s]tructures and accommodations that may be needed to support shared autonomous mobility”), I draw your attention to a key passage regarding the infrastructure issue:

"Funding autonomous-vehicle-infrastructure upgrades: possible approaches

"Federal, state, and local governments are already struggling with budget deficits, and transportation is underresourced. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the United States has a $836 billion backlog of highway- and bridge-capital needs. Adding to the problem, the growth of AVs and EVs could exacerbate the current funding gap by 22 percent—about $80 billion—by 2040. (Given that most AVs will be electric, fuel-tax revenues may fall by more than half). And without the need to license and register drivers or personal cars, various fees could also fall substantially. These shifts will likely present a daunting financial challenge for the public sector.

"Public officials could mitigate the funding gap by finding new revenue streams. When considering their options, it would be helpful if they investigate whether new revenue streams would incentivize or discourage more cost-efficient SAM. In many cases, these streams may come from public–private partnerships (PPPs), which are becoming more common with large transportation projects."

There are two reasons I think that this is the (an?) Achilles Heel of autonomous mobility (shared or not):

First, as is evident in the passage, already we cannot (or no longer wish to) afford what transportation infrastructure America has.

Second, McKinsey’s revenue-focused accounting assumes the new decrement in affordability will predominantly be due to revenue losses. I am certain this is an enormous underestimate. McKinsey's authors lean too much into the market-hype that autonomous vehicles will operate fluidly and effortlessly on our existing infrastructure (assuming it is in reasonable repair, and with fresh striping). That may be mostly true relative to big-and-fast, limited access highways and bridges, etc., but I cannot see this in our cities with complex interactions among automated and non-automated vehicles, passenger drop-offs, pedestrians, parking, transit vehicles, growing goods deliveries, drones (delivery, enforcement, aging-assistants), construction, parking lot/garage repurposing, rapid changes in vehicle capabilities, and much more.

When looking at ideas (say the NACTO Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism, itself just surface-scratching) to prepare for a significantly automated 2040 or 2045, we will need funding to reformat and prepare city streets and those tallies will reduce planners to tears. I am not an infrastructure cost estimator, but I am suggesting that McKinsey is shy of a realistic number by factor two or three.

The inability to fund the needed preparations will dramatically impede the diffusion of fully automated vehicles, as they must start as closely managed and geofenced shuttles and taxis. Without addressing this, the promises being made for a better transportation future in 2030 and 2040 — as envisioned in this McKinsey article — will not be met.

The smartest players in the entire field, in my opinion, are the TNCs who lobby for road-pricing.* Of course, one may see that as self-serving but that does not make them wrong.

* and I add curb-pricing to that…