Niche management of Autonomous Vehicles for positive environmental outcomes in Copenhagen

Sammanfattning: Cities around the world are leading the race toward an environmentally sustainable future, but one of their major obstacles have been the personal automobile. The movement of people using public transportation often has a far lower impact than the personal automobile, but these systems are often rigid and expensive to build and operator. Now, with the emergence of intelligent transport systems – and soon self-driving (or autonomous) vehicles – cities will become increasingly capable of offering affordable, convenient, and potentially sustainable transport. Whether autonomous vehicles (AVs) will contribute to sustainable mobility is, however, far from guaranteed. With competing motivations behind the technology’s development, it will be up to city authorities to steer the integration of this technology down an environmentally sustainable path. This entails finding purposive measures to prevent congestion, lower vehicle kilometres travelled, and limit the cannibalisation of their public transport systems. Copenhagen is one city that has recently taken the first step in adopting autonomous vehicles, initiating a preliminary test-phase in a confined area of the city. Though the technology is primed to offer a host of opportunities in Copenhagen, the city will eventually need to consider concrete measures that ensure AV contribute to positive environmental outcomes. The cutting-edge of literature and experts in the field reveals a number of potential measures, from which four scenarios could be described. However, based on an evaluation by Copenhagen’s technical and environmental administration, i.e. the city’s strategic unit, responsible for the integration of AVs in the city, it was impossible to determine which scenario the city is likely to undergo. Lack of knowledge, and the technology’s uncertain interaction with the city’s existing agendas were the main obstacles for the lack of clarity.