Autonomous vehicles offer a pathway to radically different travel patterns, impacts and opportunities for development. Despite a recent legislative new dawn, they still only represent a plausible disruptor rather than a credible certainty for planning decision-making. Nonetheless, the extent of changes to development strategies and infrastructure requirements, means that strategies for sustainable places will need to embrace the challenges of factoring them in.
Regulatory Gap Closing
The Automated Vehicles Act 2024 (the AVA) sets out a comprehensive legal framework for the testing, trial and deployment of automated vehicles (AVs) in the UK. The act creates a new regulatory scheme for AVs and addresses various related issues such as the liability of users, licensing of operators and marketing restrictions on the use of certain terms relating to AVs.
The Department for Transport has forecasted that by 2035, 40% of new cars in the UK could have self-driving capabilities and has dubbed AVs as the future of road travel. In response, the UK government has brought forward pilots of taxi and bus-like AVs to spring 2026, meaning that AVs could potentially be commercially rolled out in 2027.
Therefore, there will be a gap between most local planning policies and the transportation habits of UK residents unless Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) are proactive in addressing AVs in their planning policies.
Development Implications
Future developments will need to consider the impact that AVs will have on transportation patterns in their planning. Such impacts include:
- Parking and Town Centres: AVs are expected to reduce the need for dedicated parking facilities as the growth of AV transportation options become a more viable alternative to car ownership. This could free up land in urban areas for other uses as there will be less need for parking facilities in major urban centres. Densifying town centre uses, strengthening ease of access from a wider catchment, reclaiming streets as places for green infrastructure, interaction, play and spectacle are masterplanning ambitions. Strategies will need to cope with the downside risks, though; that ‘centres’ lose their meaning as more locations are deemed ‘sustainable’ due to ease of access on uncongested roads and do not require their own centre in turn. Re-thinking sustainability in line with healthy living objectives that support the NHS will require an even stronger focus on walkable towns.
- Governance: The more reliance that is placed on access to AV fleets, the greater the onus on promoters, planners and operators to demonstrate that access is inclusive or sustainable. ‘Platformisation’ of mobility has challenged the ability of cities to offer universal services – cuts to public transport continue and ridership remains a challenge without investment (see Lockhart, Hodson and McMeekin (January 2022)). If AV roll out adds to congestion and undermines inclusive mobility, transportation assessments used in promoting development are going to become difficult to produce.
- Road Design, Masterplanning and Hierarchies
- Roads will need to cope with different modes of transport: promoting AV adoption will require highways standards and design coding principles to prioritise legible, low-speed, well-maintained streets with clear pedestrian priority, safe crossings, uncluttered kerbs and robust arrangements for vulnerable users. These are the things that already drive quality of place and more appealing walking and wheeling. There should therefore be real overlap between commercial requirements for safe AV operation and walkability. Encoding that is something that the planning policy system can do today, using a vision-based approach that avoids overdesigning roads and reimagines street hierarchies in a consistent way.
- Kerb Control: contested and digitalised – AV is likely to require far fewer parking spaces but far more designated drop-off zones, digital loading bays, dynamic waiting restrictions, delivery consolidation and servicing strategies. This involves:
- Coding in consistent standards to new masterplans to ensure sensor-readable environments.
- Upgrading the existing road network to accommodate AVs alongside both non-automated vehicles and alternative modes (walking, cycling).
- Digitalisation of highways controls is required – see the DfT’s facilitation of Digital Traffic Regulation Orders. The AVA now enables regulations to be made requiring traffic authorities to publish TRO data in standardised digital form, supporting connected and automated vehicles.
- Enforcement of more kerb management controls.
- Who bears the costs of all these investments will require thought to avoid unrealistic burdens on either public bodies or developers. So too will highway standards need to ensure that this allows less, not more, land to be dedicated to vehicular road space.
- Local planning and Spatial Development Strategies: the adoption of AVs and a reduction in car ownership present an opportunity for LPAs to redesign their streets to focus on genuinely sustainable modes: as above, rethinking sustainability around health outcomes may mean strengthening provision for cycling and walking while acknowledging the role for AVs in improving access to services.
- There is also an opportunity for LPAs to designate dedicated areas for AVs which may have a positive impact on traffic flow and decrease congestion. Serious thought will be needed about the footprint, location and utilities connections needed for that.
- Planning obligations: it is tempting to think that new schemes at real scale could be required to provide space for AV systems, but care is needed not to require developers to give away land for things that private fleet operators will need to pay for. It may also turn out that AV uptake drives greater need for, and subsidy of, both walkability and genuinely public and affordable mobility services.
Infrastructure
AV deployment at fleet scale will require infrastructure investments:
- Dedicated communication infrastructure (such as communication beacons and fibre optic networks) – vital to ensure that AVs have the requisite connectivity to support their systems and function safely.
- Fuelling/charging and maintenance stations to be developed to support their usage. These could be within parking facilities (especially if all AVs become electric vehicles) or be purpose-built facilities that are separate from residential or commercial developments. LPAs will need to consider whether their existing infrastructure is sufficient to support Avs.
Lead or Follow?
Initial AV deployment will rely very little on planning decisions – the steps to create a legal framework for safe adoption and workable digital environment are already underway.
The extent of uptake and its impact on inclusive mobility and other outcomes remains speculative, though. Away from the private fleets and mobility platforms, time and investment is still needed for the various DfT-sponsored public transport trials to translate into services that are funded.
To stand the best chance of success, planning for developments at scale will need to both look differently at measures of sustainability and allow speculative flexibility to be built into masterplans, where parking can be superseded and spaces repurposed.
With thanks to Ejiro Agbaire for preparing this blog.
