ABSTRACT
The trend toward driverless mobility services replacing privately owned vehicles is likely to lead to droves of driverless, fleet-owned cars. We seek to examine the net effect of these trends on demand for daytime parking downtown, and to determine two questions: how sustainable is downtown parking, and what land use changes would be required to support intra-day parking demand in (currently) non-prime locations? In other words, where would the driverless car fleets stage during the day?
Applying the forecasts developed earlier in Chapter 9, we project that the net demand for parking in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, our test market, could drop by 17% to 52% by 2040. This would allow for substantial densification and redevelopment of land currently devoted to downtown parking. The need for the expected “robotaxi” fleets, expected to be substantially less numerous than private cars, could be readily accommodated by existing overflow parking by the lakefront airport or football sports stadium, which could be retrofitted with electrical charging and vehicle service capability.
