A child beginning school today will graduate around the time futurist Ray Kurzwell had until recently projected as the year we would reach Technological Singularity, a point at which AI (artificial intelligence, aka “the machines”) gains the ability to improve and replicate (they even have a song), eerily reminiscent of dystopian plot lines of sci-fi classics like The Terminator and The Matrix. Whether this will happen so soon, if at all, is a matter of debate. What is not up for debate, however, is that technology is marching along, rapidly changing the structure of society as we know it. Witness the demise of cable television, travel agents, cameras (at least as separate devices), etc.
Above: Google demonstrates the self-driving car
One technological advance on the not so distant horizon is the self-driving car. The website Driverless-Future.com maintains a list of car manufacturers and their projected dates for having self-driving cars. These dates somewhat converge around 2020. Yes, they are referring to that 2020, the one 5 years from now. That kid entering school mentioned at the beginning of this article? He or she may never drive an automobile. Imagine.
So what affect would this have on parking garages?
If you have an office in the country, say a roadside office for a construction business, parking is just outside your door. As you move to more dense urban areas, this parking becomes more centralized for design efficiency, requiring drivers to walk a bit from their parking spot to their office. If your car drives itself, it can park itself, and it does not need to be near. If it needs to park – if as in time car ownership itself may become a thing of the past as self-driving Uber-esque services may move people from place to place – it can go to an even more centralized, cheaper, farther away location. Thus, in a world of self-driving cars, parking garages, at least those in proximity as we’ve become accustomed, should become a thing of the past.
Services like Uber, Lyft, and Car2Go represent early versions of this societal structure change. Although usage numbers remain low, these companies are leading the trend away from personally owned and generally idle transportation assets (yeah, aka cars) to shared, generally utilized ones. Uber itself, for one, seems to be gunning for a self-driving future as it engages in efforts to develop self-driving car technology.
How it will all end up is anyone’s guess. The players may be completely different, as may be the technology. I’m, for one, still waiting on the flying car (they promised). In any case, it is bound to be highly dissimilar versus today, with parking garages seemingly playing a diminished role in any scenario.