Our lingering dream of pod cars in cities needs to end

More space-efficient modes of transportation are increasingly important for Atlanta's future.

Relaxing in a private, self-driving pod car appears to be the American Dream; seen here in a 1956 Life Magazine image I added text to.

But realistically, pods take up too much space for urban areas where sprawling footprints need to be reigned in. Metro areas like Atlanta with a growing population need to move towards a more space-efficient urbanism with walkable density, trains, buses, and bike lanes as the focus.

The pod-car dream is persistent though, and it seems to hinder our investment in transit.

For instance…

In 2015, a bill passed allowing Georgia counties to ask voters to approve up to a 1 percent sales tax that could fund transportation projects, including public transit.

Gwinnett was busting at the seams with population growth while lacking MARTA service (it had its own small bus system), but it opted out of putting transit investment to a vote that year. Why?

In an AJC article at the time, Gwinnett County chairperson Charlotte Nash said: “with the advent of self-driving vehicles and services like Uber, the transportation needs of Gwinnett County and the region could quickly change. People may be less interested in rail if they can relax in a private pod.”

[Gwinnett did finally put a transit tax on the ballot in 2020 & 2024, but it failed both times.]

Meanwhile in the City of Atlanta, we’ve had some loud, moneyed people calling for inefficient pods to be put on the Beltline instead of high-capacity rail – despite the fact that we *did* approve a transit tax.

Can we get over this pod dream? Can we recognize that the amount of space a vehicle takes up, per person, matters for our future?

Getting more people out of cars & into alternatives allows for our street-width to be used for things beyond driving and parking. We can plant more trees, widen sidewalks, make room for cafe tables, build protected bike lanes, and more; basically, the stuff cities do best.

Any personal vehicle, regardless of the technology, takes a larger amount of space per-person than buses, trains, bikes, or walking. Am I concerned about the Waymo vehicles that are increasingly visible on my street? Sure. But please understand that my main concern is for how we grow our mobility types at large scales — I'm more afraid of a future where most of our trips are in small vehicles thank I am of a trickle of Waymo cars being piloted.

There’s a benefit to shared vehicles, but it’s not enough. I'll even admit there's a benefit to exploring self-driving technology, though the largest implementation of it should be in the form of trains.

This is not a call to ban cars. It’s a call to focus on what cities do best.