New York Times: "Disruptions: How Driverless Cars Could Reshape Cities"

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"While driverless cars might still seem like science fiction outside Silicon Valley, the people working and thinking about these technologies are starting to ask what these autos could mean for the city of the future. The short answer is 'a lot'.

"Imagine a city where you don’t drive in loops looking for a parking spot because your car drops you off and scoots off to some location to wait, sort of like taxi holding pens at airports. Or maybe it is picked up by a robotic minder and carted off with other vehicles, like a row of shopping carts.

"But to some, this promise — or overpromise as the case may be — sounds familiar.

Bryant Walker Smith, a fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School and a member of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford, said:

"The future city is not going to be a congestion-free environment. That same prediction was made that cars would free cities from the congestion of horses on the street.

You have to build the sewer system to accommodate the breaks during the Super Bowl; it won’t be as pretty as we’re envisioning."