My partner Kieran sent me this chart this morning:

It is a summary of the average weekday miles traveled by adults in private vehicles, including taxis and ride-hailing vehicles, for the 50 largest metro areas in the US (data is from the fall of 2023). At the top of the list with the most miles traveled is Raleigh, and at the bottom of the list with the fewest miles traveled is, not surprisingly, New York.

The other cities on the bottom of this list probably won't surprise you either. But it's a good reminder of how built form determines our mobility choices. If you look up which US cities have the highest population densities and the most compact built forms, I think you'll generally find that it mirrors what you're seeing here.

Over the winter I visited BMW World, and its neighboring museum, in Munich, Germany. I loved seeing how the company got its start and how far it has come since it helped to invent the automobile at the beginning of the 20th century. I think their first product was actually an airplane engine. But you and I both know that the paradigm is changing. The internal combustion engine (ICE) is going away and pretty soon we won't be driving, so much as being driven around by our cars. Bloomberg recently published an interesting article about this shift and about BMW. Here is an excerpt:

The fact that both combustion engines and electric motors find themselves inside the same 18,000-person complex in Dingolfing, BMW’s largest in Europe, makes it a microcosm of a shift overtaking automakers the world over. A visitor can see that 625-horsepower engine—more than twice as powerful as the original from 1985, a luxury product relentlessly branded as “the ultimate driving machine”—then walk around the corner and see its puny electric replacement. You start thinking the better slogan might be “the ultimate combustion engine.” As in: last of its kind.

Electric motors are a hell of a lot simpler to manufacture (and service) than gasoline engines. BMW estimates that they take about 30% less time to make. So the impacts of this transformation span everything from supply chain to human capital. Today, about 10% of the work that goes on in Dingolfing is related to electric vehicles.

I was on two panel discussions over the last week and, as is the case with all real estate panels, the topic of parking invariably came up, as did the impact of autonomous vehicles.

There seems to be a general consensus that the advent of driverless cars will result in less demand for parking. Every developer I know is trying to build as little parking as possible and is thinking about how – when the time comes – they might convert their parking into something more productive. I have yet to speak to anyone who is building excess parking in order to prepare for autonomy.

Where there’s a split, however, is whether autonomous vehicles will represent a decentralizing or a centralizing force for our cities. Historically, new technologies have lowered transportation costs and encouraged decentralization. Before the advent of rail, the US population hugged the coasts, because it was cheaper to navigate across the Atlantic than it was to move inland.

A similar phenomenon also played out with our streetcar suburbs and with our car-oriented suburbs. These new technologies made it possible for people to travel further distances in order to get to work and other places. So it is not at all surprising that many people today are inferring that autonomous vehicles will produce this same outcome.

But there is a counterargument. 

We know that the demand for transportation services is highly elastic. Uber and other ride sharing apps have demonstrated this to us. Lower fares translate into dramatic increases in demand. So the opposing argument is that as the cost per kilometer drops – autonomous electric vehicles are going to be much more cost effective to operate – we’re going to see boatloads of induced demand.

This induced demand will then force us to look toward road pricing and other demand management tools in order to cope, which then begs the question: How much cheaper and more convenient will autonomous vehicles really be? 

At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that autonomous vehicles should correct many of the inefficiencies currently caused by humans acting like humans. There is also the opportunity to operate these autonomous vehicles more like public transit than as personal vehicles. And that will have a profound impact on urban mobility.

Still, it is not yet clear, at least for me, that autonomous vehicles will be the decentralizing force that many assume they will be.