Foreseeing the Impact of Transformational Technologies on Land Use and Transportation

Examples of transformational technologies—many are discussed in technical and popular media—include wireless telecommunications, shared vehicles, connected vehicles, fully autonomous vehicles, alternative-fuel vehicles, smart cities and communities, big data analytics, internet-of-things, as well as UAVs or drones, 3-D printing, and more.

Public agencies face significant challenges continuing to perform their governmental functions in the face of the private sector’s prodigious output of these new technologies. Agencies need to rethink how they develop their policies and plans—and they need to obtain new expertise.

The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Research Report 924: Foreseeing the Impact of Transformational Technologies on Land Use and Transportation reviews the characteristics of new transportation-related technologies and their applications in the transportation sector and explores a wide variety of potential impacts on areas such as travel and land use and planning projects.