To realize this future, Singapore is making farsighted investments in research and infrastructure and rewriting its transportation policies and regulations. It built a sprawling test track, complete with fake buildings, steep hills and a rain machine. It is working with 10 different companies on plans to roll out fleets of driverless cars.
The municipal agency that keeps a tight regulatory grip on cars and roads in Singapore—it currently charges commuters nearly $15,000 a year for the privilege of owning a car and using the roads during rush hour—recently removed the requirement that cars have human drivers. All new residential developments must now abide by rules that both accommodate self-driving vehicles and discourage car ownership: narrow roads, special road markings, gentler curves, specific curb heights and fewer parking spaces.
The first driverless buses and shuttles hit the city’s streets in November. If all goes well, a large fleet will soon be cruising the roads, calculating their routes on the fly based on where they need to pick up passengers and drop them off. Then a fleet of AVs will be deployed to work nights, sweeping the streets and delivering packages. “The goal here,” says Niels de Boer, who heads autonomous vehicle research for the Energy Research Institute at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, “is to make having your own car completely unnecessary by 2030.”
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