London may not need traffic lights if automated vehicles replace human-driven ones, Parliament has been told.
Lord Moylan, deputy chairman of Transport for London when Boris Johnson was the city’s mayor, also told the Upper Chamber that automated vehicles should be seen as addressing the “last mile problem” rather than longer distance travel issue.
Speaking during a debate on automated vehicles, he stressed: “Transport for London is planning to spend a very large amount upgrading its extremely comprehensive traffic light system that it has rolled out over the years, which still depends on the SCOOT software technology that has been in use for at least 20 years and possibly longer.
“But why will anyone ever need traffic lights? Automated vehicles do not need them.
“They are there for people such as me to look at something terrestrial in front of them, and see that it is green, red, orange or whatever.
“If their motion is dependent on their sensing where other vehicles are, together with communication with a satellite at the same time, they will not need traffic lights. What will happen to traffic lights?”
The peer said traffic lights had “some uses” such as helping people cross roads at junctions.
But he added: “What are the consequences for the money that we are still spending, even today, on upgrading our traffic light system if we are moving over to an automated vehicle system?”
He believes automated vehicles, as computer-driven Tube trains, will be safer.
But he also raised concerns that they could cause congestion in the capital and undermine public transport, highlighting how they could be privately-owned or communally/corporatedly owned with fleets of pods.
“You summon them like an Uber and they arrive, take you somewhere and then park, vanish or find another passenger somewhere,” he explained.
“Let us imagine 80 of those lined up nose to tail, very safely moving along Piccadilly from Hyde Park Corner up to Piccadilly Circus, each containing an individual passenger—and bang close to each other because it will be very safe. It will be 80 passengers moving up Piccadilly.”
But he stressed that this role was currently done by buses, carrying around that many passengers.
“I know noble Lords will say, “Ah, but these pods, when they get to Piccadilly Circus, they can split off and all go in different directions. They can take you to your office, the hairdresser or wherever you want to go in that vicinity,” he added.
“That illustrates what automated vehicles are really addressing, which is the last-mile problem rather than the main trunk problem of transport. It is to get that last mile from the hub that you want a vehicle to be available to take you, but not necessarily all the way along the journey.”
Transport minister Lord Davies presented the Automated Vehicles Bill which seeks to address some of the challenges from the new technology including by providing for corporate entities to assume responsibility for how self-driving vehicles behave, underpinned by a robust framework of safety standards, monitoring and enforcement.
He stressed: “Self-driving vehicles offer an unprecedented opportunity to improve the safety and connectivity of our road network. Unencumbered by fatigue, distraction, frustration or intoxication, and built from the ground up to obey the rules of the road, self-driving vehicles could one day far exceed the standards of even the safest human drivers.”
