While the reality of autonomous vehicles in New York City remains several years away, this timeline grants us the opportunity to set up a policy model for equitable, safe and accessible mobility.
Although AVs are regulated for safety and efficacy within the transportation realm, they are rarely evaluated from a policy perspective. Autonomy’s impacts will be far-reaching, prompting significant social concerns like potential job displacement, equitable neighborhood access, and data privacy.
To establish a framework for considering these wraparound AV impacts in New York City, the NYU Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management led a multi-stakeholder initiative in conjunction with NYU’s C2SMART, USDOT University Transportation Center. The team hosted three workshops in December 2021 addressing issues and opportunities in seven topic areas: Local Governance, Community Outreach, Integration with Public Transit, Equity, Accessibility, Safety and Data Privacy. Participants represented the public and private sectors, advocacy and civic organizations, and academia.
In addition, the research team conducted a quantitative study of equitable deployment of new mobility in New York City. The study finds that the ideal data aggregation level depends on the reliability of the public data collected for that community, and recommends a new tool to help design the appropriate data structure for data sharing.
