Without the guidance of experts, integrating AV solutions can be a new and complicated process that can become cumbersome, time-consuming, and expensive for city teams to develop. Successfully planning and deploying AVs is a heavy systems engineering process that requires specific processes, tools, and frameworks – as well as proven expertise.

While a city’s visioning team for improving transportation systems will likely include experts in ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems), such as smart traffic lights, cameras, roadside networks, and traffic management systems, it is essential that urban planning teams also include autonomous vehicle subject matter experts to advise on how to deploy AV technologies safely. The reality is that autonomous vehicles, which are constantly in motion, are a different area of expertise than the hardware, systems, and technology of ITS.

Elevating AV safety standards is essential for people as well as vehicles and infrastructure. For example, today, due to inevitable traffic accidents, city managers need to maintain a significant number of additional vehicles, such as buses, in their fleet to ensure that transportation operations can continue running in the event of vehicles being out of commission.

Through our experience and expertise, the Stantec GenerationAV consulting team can help transportation directors and city planners look to AV solutions and state-of-the-art technologies to help with efficient throughput of traffic as well as safety – and ultimately, help to further reduce traffic accidents and traffic fatalities.

The scope of AV solutions for your city can range from moving people with shuttles as well as providing on-demand transportation to enhancing the delivery of goods. AVs can also help deliver solutions to address the challenges many cities are facing today, including limited resources and labor shortages of bus drivers, truck drivers, and maintenance vehicle operators. For example, autonomous or robotic vehicles can be deployed to help complete essential groundskeeping and city maintenance service tasks such as street sweeping, bike lane sweeping, mobile EV charging, security patrol, roadside brush clearing, and lawn mowing of civic spaces.