One of the defining features of DG Cities is our multidisciplinary approach to tackling the changes and challenges faced by urban areas. Our team is made up of experts with backgrounds cutting across sectors, ranging from architects and engineers to technologists and transport planners. These unique and wide-ranging perspectives allow for a whole-city approach to urban innovation - something that is well exemplified by our work on Project Endeavour. This is a mobility project designed to accelerate and scale the adoption of autonomous vehicle services across the UK, and involves multi-location road pilots, simulation development and extensive engagement with the public. Today we hear from three members of the DG Cities team who are contributing to the project: Head of Smart Mobility, Kim Smith, former Head of Integrated Planning and Built Environment, Lola Fernandez-Redondo and Head of Research and Service Design, Ed Houghton. They each zero in on the kerbside element of the project, offering different angles and considerations and ultimately highlighting how we at DG Cities operate: approaching urban challenges from multiple perspectives to arrive at whole-city solutions.
The Built Environment Perspective
As connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) services develop and are expected to increase in the coming years, it is paramount that pick-up and drop-off areas are designed, planned and implemented so that passengers are allowed on and off CAVs safely, without disrupting other road and kerbside users and functions.
Part of DG Cities’ work on Project Endeavour is looking specifically at how to design and manage the kerbside space to improve users’ experiences and optimise resources, for example, road infrastructure and space. For the design of the CAV stop, we are taking into account three factors: (i) the surrounding environment, (ii) human behaviours and (iii) existing and emerging legislation on CAV parking spaces. The surrounding environment must be key to the design of the CAV stop – from the type of the street and its density of vehicle and pedestrian traffic, through to the street and pavement widths, connectivity with footways as well as the surrounding infrastructure. Equally important are human behaviour patterns as people are the end users of the kerbside space, either as pedestrians or as passengers of AV services.
To gather these insights on how future pick-up and drop-off areas need to be designed, we are working with the London Smart Mobility Living Lab (SMLL). SMLL is using the infrastructure of its testbed to monitor existing pick-up and drop-off locations – e.g. taxi ranks and bus stops – to provide us with data and insights on the following: the number of people clustering, the time needed to pick people up and drop them off, and how people behave / occupy / use the infrastructure of the space surrounding them while they are waiting to be picked up, while the vehicle approaches, and while they are getting on and off the vehicle. The research is also looking at how this data changes depending on the type of users – for instance, solo commuters, adults with a pushchair or people with mobility impediments. The quantitative and qualitative insights gathered through video clips recorded from the SMLL testbed will be analysed with sophisticated software and used alongside outputs from surveys designed to understand the public’s perceptions and attitudes to CAVs and their usage.
The Mobility Perspective
Our personal view of the kerbside’s role will flex depending on whether we are walking, cycling, waiting for a bus, trying to park or simply driving through a busy streetscape. In our urban environment, where space is scarce, we accept the swathes of land dedicated to the car pretty unthinkingly, it’s something we’ve just grown up with. However, it’s widely accepted that most of our private vehicles are parked for more than 90% of their time. In London this equates to an area the size of about ‘2 Dartmoors’.
Connected, and in time automated, vehicles potentially give us the opportunity to rethink this space. As we follow the trend from ownership to usership, and become ever more aware of the sustainability costs of private vehicles, the move to CAV gives us the chance to reclaim and repurpose our urban kerbspace.
Lola’s right in saying that there are locations where we need to provide a ‘stop’ for CAVs – interchanges, high streets and health facilities are all examples where numerous vehicles and their passengers will congregate – and we need to think carefully about how this can be designed to best work for both the CAV rider and the rest of the area’s users. But from the mobility perspective, there is a bigger picture to consider. For me, the step change is the digitisation of this urban kerbside space and the traffic orders and mapping which underpins its use.
A CAV wont double park or nip into a delivery bay to drop you off, it will need to locate a position where it can park – even for a short period – legally. We’re already seeing some highways authorities starting to adopt the digitisation of traffic orders, but it’s when this becomes dynamic that it becomes exciting in optimising the space. The same area of highway could be ‘booked’ at different times for a delivery drop off, a CAV drop, or even identified as a pedestrianised event space. And what’s more your connected vehicle will know and behave accordingly.
The Wider Public Perspective
A critical component of our work on Project Endeavour has been to foster meaningful engagement with members of the public. It’s crucial that we take the time to understand the human side of our data, and we at DG Cities do this by speaking directly to citizens. When designing kerbside interventions in particular, we can’t make assumptions about people’s behaviour.
Data from cameras, such as Lola mentions above, is a great starting point; it helps us to identify what people do. But that only tells us half the story, because we also then need to understand why. Only then can we gain a deep and accurate insight into their preferences, habits and motivations behind their behaviour. That said, user experience will vary widely; pedestrians, cyclists, people using public transport, freight and other vehicles will all interact with the kerbside and will also all have different requirements and needs. With the development of autonomous vehicles there is a real need to look at the user experience in greater detail in order to understand how citizens will experience this new technology.
One potential future use of CAVs is as a shared service that is requested and used on demand. Designated stops on the kerbside are likely to be needed in busy urban centres and to help their effective use, it's possible to imagine that these stops could share information about service quality, schedules, vehicle locations and vehicle capacity to users. For users with accessibility needs, these stops will need to provide information and guidance to ensure services can be used safely. There are many questions about how the kerbside can be made safe and usable by CAV services for all citizens, which is why we're conducting kerbside research with the community to explore how users will interact with the CAV services of tomorrow.
While Lola, Kim and Ed offer three very different takes on the kerbside work for Project Endeavour, together as a team they collaborate to integrate these perspectives and insights, making for a cohesive and multi-pronged approach that will help autonomous vehicle services become a reality across the UK.
If you’d like to have your say on the future of mobility, you can get involved by filling in our Project Endeavour survey. You can also read more about the project here.