The Parking Maths Developers Need to Know in Era of Robotaxis

Cars that drive themselves, shared e-bikes spreading across cities and flying taxis at the Brisbane Olympics . Australian private vehicle and mobility behaviour is changing faster than lawmakers can keep up with. For developers and planners, that means designing roads, buildings and parking spaces for uses and technologies yet to reveal themselves. Under Federal legislation currently being drafted, autonomous vehicles are to begin operations on Australian roads next year. Many Australian cars are already enabled for Level 2 assisted driving and will be ready to upgrade instantly with nothing more than a software update to unlock dormant self-driving tech. RACV head of public policy James Williams told The Urban Developer that “the technology is finally emerging”. “We’re now at the point where the policy prescriptions are likely to be clearer than the commercial applications, despite the fact that the technology’s leapt forward,” Williams says. Williams says the complex interaction between Federal oversight of vehicles and state-based oversight of drivers will need to be clarified. “We know they’ve been successfully deployed elsewhere and we expect to see them in Australia from next year.” Roads for robots Williams says it’s too early to understand how road or network design will respond as uptake grows. Early concepts of a single lane from Melbourne to Brisbane dedicated to autonomous vehicles have already become outdated, for example. ▲ Tesla vehicles sold in Australia already have limited assisted driving capabilities, and can be upgraded overnight. “We’re not seeing any city shaping changes yet,” Williams says. “We know that human error is a very significant problem … 94 per cent of crashes [globally] have some human error contributing to them. “We’ve built a road environment that is trying to be forgiving, in the sense that we have crash barriers and dual lanes so we can overtake safely. We spend a lot of time and money and consideration of how to make our roads safer, and that all potentially changes with automated vehicles.” E-bikes reshaping parking and pavements Meanwhile, e-bike adoption is on a stratospheric curve, as illustrated by Lime bike usage doubling every year . Legislators and regulators are struggling to keep up with the popularity of the mobility devices and the community pushback against anti-social users. In August, NSW began phasing in laws giving councils the power to dictate shared e-bike parking zones, and fine operators for their users’ non-compliance. ▲ Share bikes ridden and parked inappropriately have quickly become a challenge for councils. At the time, transport minister John Graham said that share bikes were “a fast-changing space, and we don’t want to miss out on the great transport benefits these bikes provide, but we have to strike the balance on their impact on the rest of the community and these laws do that in a comprehensive way”. "If you’re sick of e-bikes cluttering up your streets, these are the laws you’ve been waiting for,” Graham said. STEP Advisory founder Graham McCabe was involved in developing the City of Sydney’s initial pedestrian and bicycling strategy in 2007, which has since evolved into hundreds of kilometres of cycleways. “E-bikes are great as freedom devices for teenagers,” McCabe says. “That’s why there’s so much fear, uncertainty and doubt being propagated around them being a menace to society. When I was a kid, we had the same thing with skateboards. “The issues with bike parking come down to who’s prioritised in the space between buildings. You take out one car parking space and you’ve got parking for five bicycles. ▲ Autonomous vehicles have evolved beyond low speeds and controlled environments. “That’s five times the storage, but it’s more like 10 or 15 times the usage, because most car parking spaces are not turned over very frequently.” While robotaxis could theoretically reduce the number of cars driving or parked on roads, McCabe says they have the potential to contribute to congestion. “If we don’t have a pricing signal … they can just be driven round for cents on the kilometre, until somebody decides to hire them. “The operators will optimise the number of vehicles for their maximum profitability, but if they can get away with not having to pay for the societal impact, then I’m sure they’re going to try and do that.” An uncertain future for car parks Analysts report that car ownership is not declining in Australia, despite changes in transport behaviour, and that cultural factors mean a drastic reduction in the vehicle fleet is unlikely. Ollo chief executive Luke Rust says that property is a platform for shared vehicles as amenity, but that “the key is to move the conversation away from simply allocating a bay to a shared car”. ▲ Designing roads or buildings for adaptability from the outset is cheaper. “Ideally, we are involved during the planning or early schematic design stage, before the development application and basement layout are fixed. “We can retrofit a service into an existing building, and we do that regularly. But if the objective is to materially change the basement rather than simply add an amenity to it, the conversation needs to happen before the basement has been designed.” Understanding the costs and returns on car parks, particularly expensive basement parking, is already a complex proposition, even before new technology and behaviours are introduced. “Developers still have to respond to buyer expectations, lender requirements, valuation assumptions and planning frameworks that can be more conservative than the way residents actually live,” Rust says. Urban design decisions based on mobility technology can leave long-lasting vestigial impacts on roads and buildings. Many inner-Sydney streets are still coupled with nightsoil lanes for waste collection, for example. ▲ Design decisions based on contemporary technology will affect outcomes for decades or centuries. At the other end of the scale, newer apartment developments may have truck turntables for garbage trucks, or car stackers, maximising the efficiency of basement floor area. The precise rate of change is less important than “recognising that buildings being designed today should still be operating in 50 or 100 years”, Rust says. “Developers should therefore design for optionality. The biggest mistake would be to design a basement around the assumption that every household will always store two or more privately owned vehicles underground for the next century. “The opportunity for developers is to avoid creating highly specialised dead space. Where possible, basements should have flexible layouts, appropriate ceiling heights, accessible circulation and infrastructure that can adapt as demand for private parking changes.” ▲ Demand for private cars, and their interactions with property and built environment, are rapidly evolving. Rust says that the most exciting conversations are occurring at a precinct level, and McCabe agrees that some strategic planners are unbundling parking from residential development altogether, preferring a centralised approach. However, McCabe says that “you never really know, with this type of technology, where it’s going to end up”. “There are lots of predictions, and the only prediction I’ll say is that we’re all wrong,” McCabe says.

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Patrick Lau
Tue 15 Sep 26

The Parking Maths Developers Need to Know in Era of Robotaxis