Autonomous Vehicles
The Road to Economic Growth?
CLIFFORD WINSTON
QUENTIN KARPILOW
Brookings Institution Press
Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2020
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020936118
ISBN 9780815738572 (pbk : alk. paper)
ISBN 9780815738589 (ebook)
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Typeset in Maiola
Composition by Elliott Beard
Contents
2 Autonomous-Vehicle Operations and the Process of Adoption
Potential Effects of Autonomous Vehicles
3 The Potential Effects of Autonomous Vehicles on Economic Sectors
4 Estimating the Effects of Congestion on Economic-Performance Measures
5 Estimation Results Obtained from the Congestion Model
6 Simulation of the Effects of Autonomous Vehicles on Congestion
7 Other Important Effects of Autonomous Vehicles
Constraints on the Success of Autonomous Vehicles
Appendix Measuring Freight Flows across Urban Areas
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Edward Glaeser and José A. Gómez-Ibáñez for initial collaboration on a submission to the Wolfson Economics Prize, which included some of the material in this book. We also received useful comments and suggestions from Stephanie Aaronson, Martin Adler, Alan Blinder, Marlon Boarnet, Robert Crandall, Matthew Kahn, Ashley Langer, Paul Lewis, Shanjun Li, Robin Lindsey, Vikram Maheshri, Fred Mannering, Ashley Nunes, James Sallee, Marc Scribner, Chad Shirley, Kenneth Small, Mike Smart, and Jia Yan.
Katherine Kimball carefully edited the manuscript, Cecilia González managed the editorial production process, and Enid Zafran created the index.
Part 1
Introduction and Background
1
Introduction
Transportation innovations and investments have contributed significantly to U.S. economic growth. They have enabled households to optimize their residential and workplace locations and their choice of employers; encouraged firms to increase the size and scope of their markets, reduce their inventories, and expand their choice of workers; and allowed consumers to benefit from greater competition among domestic and international firms and from more product variety. The motor vehicle, which has contributed greatly to those socially desirable activities, has been listed among the greatest human inventions of all time (Bowler 2017; Winston 2010).
The increasing dominance of cars and trucks for transporting passengers and freight has evolved with the development of the U.S. public road system, which represents the nation’s largest civilian public investment and has become the arterial network of the U.S. economy. Today, some 90 percent of commuters use cars to get to work, 70 percent of travelers use cars for intercity trips, and 30 percent of shippers of intercity freight (measured in ton-miles) and nearly all of their urban freight is shipped by truck—all of those movements rely on a federal-highway capital stock that is valued at roughly $3 trillion (Winston 2013).1
Given the importance for the U.S. economy of motor-vehicle transportation and the infrastructure that it uses, significant changes in the performance of either could have a large effect on economic growth. To date, however, the road network has been characterized by growing traffic congestion,
