Including, surprisingly, my state of Pennsylvania, which is rarely at the forefront of anything new. I am cautiously optimistic about this. It sounds like some pedestrian and bicycle advocates (I include myself in these groups) are against this. But I think slow-moving, light, predictable vehicles should not be a big problem. Fast, unpredictable vehicles driven by humans on infrastructure that does not consider the existence of pedestrians and bicyclists are what usually kills people. Also, every package on a slow, light, predictable robot is one that is not on a truck, and that should reduce the number of trucks over time. Trucks disproportionately kill people – pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists alike. I realize that trucks also create some jobs, and job losses need to be dealt with through unemployment, education and training.

I see some problems looming, and these are infrastructure problems that need to be solved. Here in Philadelphia, sidewalks are often blocked by construction and parking because the law is either too lax or not enforced. Bike lanes often do not exist, and when they do they are often poorly designed, unprotected and unmaintained. Ramps for disabled people (which also help the rest of us, especially parents pushing strollers) often do not exist, are in a state of poor repair, collect water every time it rains, or are simply blocked by, again, construction or illegal parking. These are design and operational problems that have solutions, and the relevant public agencies (more than one, but one in particular) are either ignorant or incompetent or both. We need to fix the public agencies before we can design streets, bike lanes and sidewalks that are really going to work.

There’s another issue here. I don’t have the time, money, or expertise to sue individual contractors, landowners, or public agencies because they are blocking my walking path or bicycling lane. An Amazon or a UPS or a Google or an Uber will have these resources. This might be okay if it forces some change on big entities with deep pockets. This could be a problem for the individual homeowner or small business owner though. In my city, technically the sidewalk in front of my house is private property but public right-of-way. That means I can’t stop people from walking past, I can’t modify it significantly, but I can be sued or forced to repair it if it is not up to code. This might make sense on paper, but in practice cities are very lenient enforcing this on the small-time homeowner unless there is a serious incident. Sticking every homeowner in a city with a $10,000 repair bill (you might as well replace water and sewer lines while you are at it, which many people also don’t realize they own and are responsible for) would be a big burden on the middle class on down. Sidewalks are obviously public infrastructure and really part of the street, but this is one way cities push responsibilities and costs to the citizenry and try to keep taxes down a little bit. Taking over the sidewalks and raising enough tax revenue to keep them in a state of good repair would probably be the best answer from a technical and economic standpoint, but this would be a big legal and financial change for city government.

My utopian vision is for walking, bicycling, and slow, predictable, light, soft rounded vehicles to gradually displace most of the trucks, taxis and private cars that are out there. There would be less traffic at this point, almost no need for parking because the vehicles can just stack themselves somewhere out of the way when they are not in use. Maybe you only need one travel lane for big vehicles at this point (we’ll still want ambulances and fire trucks, although really I think these can be a bit smaller and quieter and still do the job), and robots, bicycles, and pedestrians can all have their own dedicated spaces and signals. You would have lots of room opened up for green infrastructure, sidewalk cafes, park benches, fountains, or whatever else you want to do. There is no technical or economic reason it couldn’t be done, and it would be cool. Cynicism, ignorance, and poor leadership are the reasons it won’t be done, at least not in most U.S. cities anytime soon.