< Back to Schedule View

152-Land Development as the Missing Link in AV Deployment: The Enabling Role of Real Estate, Zoning, and More 

Date and Time: Monday, July 10, 2023: 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Location: Continental 7-9

Session Moderators and Organizers

MODERATORS
Danielle Chou, Enabling Technologies Program Manager, Federal Highway Administration
James Fishelson, Executive Director, UC Berkeley PATH
Gerry Tierney, Associate Principal, Director Emeritus Mobility Lab, Perkins+Will

ORGANIZERS
James Fishelson
Danielle Chou
Gerry Tierney

with contributions from Renee Ray

TRB Sponsoring Committees and Partners

Session Description and Agenda

DESCRIPTION

From the intercontinental railroad to streetcar suburbs to the interstate highway system, land development and new transportation systems have always been inexorably linked. However, in discussions around AV deployment, private and public actors in both commercial and residential development (e.g. zoning boards, real-estate developers, retirement communities, truck stop operators, etc.) have frequently been sidelined. This session will examine how these actors can shape and encourage the deployment of a variety of different AV use cases: closed campus operations, car-free zones, connections with transit, mobility hubs, etc. Ultimately, we hope to identify how the public sector, private developers, and the AV industry can work together to enable land development that supports AV solutions in ways that are both economically viable and societally beneficial.

AGENDA

!!! THIS WILL BE AN INTERACTIVE WORKSHOP - PLEASE BRING YOUR LAPTOPS !!!!!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This session will include three panels followed by an interactive workshop. Note that we want to encourage the participation of land development actors, who are coming from communities and industries that have not traditionally been represented at AV and transportation conferences.


(40 mins) Panel #1: Which Built Environments Can Enable Easi[er] Wins? (moderator: Danielle Chou)
This panel will examine how different built environments could enable specific use cases. In particular, it will focus on early-stage use cases (i.e. what is feasible in the next decade), and how land use changes can allow them to thrive. Such “easy wins” will mean different things to different stakeholders, which this panel will examine, but some goals include effectively serving travelers, encouraging societal improvements such as reduced emissions and increased equity, and being financially sustainable. It will examine the friction and potential crossed incentives between different stakeholders, such and competing values and the tension of build vs. no build from an environmental perspective. The panel will also explore how these use cases can help encourage densification and multimodality, as opposed to the current norm of private vehicle ownership. Specific areas include large campuses, retirement communities, truck stops, transit-oriented developments, and more.

Speakers: Shelby Winkler (Cavnue), Mark Arizmendi (Northwestern Capital Partners), Lewis Knight (SERA Architects), Corey Teague (City and County of San Francisco)


(40 mins) Panel #2: Real Estate and Zoning (moderator: James Fishelson)
This panel will focus on how land development actors currently perceive automation, and what they are currently doing to account for the potentially massive changes in transportation. The session will include a discussion of how these actors currently engage with the transportation system, such as how proximity to transit hubs affects land values, how they consider multimodality vs. car-dependence, what transportation options they try to provide to their stakeholders (e.g private shuttles), and more. We will also examine what levers both the private and public sector rely on to enable new development and redevelopment, and how these levers could potentially combine land use and transportation concerns. Examples here are the potential to include land use in federally-funded transportation projects, the various challenges in securing financing, and how we as a society could use the desire to create built environments amenable to AVs to allow for zoning changes and public infrastructure investment.

Speakers: Mark Arizmendi (Northwestern Capital Partners), Tim Haile (Contra Costa Transportation Authority), Billy Riggs (University of San Francisco), Alan Dones (Strategic Urban Development Alliance)


(40 mins) Panel #3: AVs in the Suburbs (moderator: Gerry Tierney)
Suburbs, here broadly defined as neighborhoods consisting of single family homes on plots of land between 0.1 and 2 acres, remain the dominant development mode in the US. Examined through the lens of the Treasure Island development near San Francisco, this panel will explore what business models and use cases would stand the greatest chance of success in these environments, as well as how small land use changes (e.g. updated zoning) could make a difference. Topics will include first-mile last-mile shuttles, transit hubs, small-scale rezoning to encourage densification around hubs, and more. How can we make the post-WWII suburbs closer to the original streetcar suburbs? Is this a zero sum game? How is suburbia evolving, including in a post-COVID work? Lastly, this session will examine the tension between L2/3 automation entrenching the current private vehicle norm (e.g. by reducing the cost of travel time and encouraging more sprawling development) and the potential of more revolutionary new business

Speakers: Suany Chough (San Francisco County Transportation Authority), Hilary Norton (Northwestern Capital Partners, California Transportation Commission), Courtney Sung (Via)


(10 mins) Break


(55 mins) Guided Workshop: Building Consensus
* 5 mins - Join pre-identified use case tables
* 2 mins - Pick persona (end customer, AV developer and/or operator, real estate developer or equivalent (e.g., campus, port authority, etc.), capital, local community, state/federal public agencies)
* 5 mins - Articulate and document respective persona objectives
* 3 mins - Vote for others’ objectives that you can get behind
* 30 - For the 3 most popular objectives, how can you build consensus? Negotiate.
-Where do you have flexibility in use case definition?
-How hard will the changes be to implement?
* 5 mins - What are the unresolved non-negotiables?
* 10 mins - Report-out: what changes were made to realize common objectives?

Session Objectives

* Identify collaboration opportunities between development (real-estate and otherwise), AV operators, and other transportation technology vendors.
* Explore the needs and challenges of land development actors with respect to AVs: how does the real estate industry perceive automation, what are the funding challenges for different types of development, how do they currently engage with the transportation system, etc.
* List of AV use cases that are most sensitive to real estate and land use changes: i.e., for which use cases is the built environment a critical enabler.
* Learn how land use policy and regulations can promote or inhibit use of AV and other emerging technology on public roadways, including what mechanisms exist to better integrate land use and AV deployment (e.g., by tying federal funding to specific types of built environment).
* Show how government actors (e.g. zoning boards, planning commissions, etc.) can proactively encourage the types of AV deployment that best meet their public good objective, especially in avoiding more sprawl and VMT.