Few op-eds that we’ve published over the years spurred more reader engagement than the Sam Schwartz-Kelly McGuinness-penned piece earlier this month about autonomous vehicles. Streetsblog NYC had commissioned the piece from the pair of experts after New York Gov. Hochul ended Waymo’s testing of AV taxis in New York City, mainly to ask the simple question, “What now?” Frankly, the piece was fairly anodyne — “What now?
Society should have a serious debate about the role of AVs so we don’t end up with what happened in the 1920s, when we failed to have a serious debate about cars” — but reader interest was exceptionally keen.
Fortunately, Schwartz and McGuinness were also leading a three-panel seminar last week, “The Future of Transportation,” at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College. Because of our readers’ — and society’s — obvious interest in the top, we offer an excerpt from the Schwartz-led panel, “Autonomous Vehicles and the Hard Problems — Safety, Streets, and Tradeoffs.” Panelists were Peter Norton, author of “Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City“; Rachel Weinberger of Regional Plan Association; and journalist David Zipper.
Read the transcript — and more news from today — at the links below.
Centennial events downplay the violent history of one of America’s most “iconic” highways, and obscure how that violence persists to this day.
The U.S. is becoming a dying petrostate, while China leads the world in renewable energy.
“Affordable travel is not a fallback. It is what makes broad mobility possible.”
