Calgary plans for fully autonomous cars on its streets by 2021, if not sooner

Fully self-drivingcars will likely be on Calgary streets within five years, according tothe city's transportation boss, whois already working on plans to ensure they can be integrated smoothly into existing traffic patterns.

"We're not quite there, yet but we're getting ready," said Mac Logan, the city's general manager of transportation.

"The world's changing in a big hurry."

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Logan said autonomous vehicles will factor heavily in to the next major update to the city's transportation plan, duein 2019.

But a pair of city councillors want an update even sooner, calling on city staff to prepare a detailed report with "recommendations, potential pilot opportunities and next steps" by March 2017.

"We need to be conscious of our investment because we're planning for capital spending fiveyears down the road, 10 years down the road," said Coun. Evan Woolley.

He andCoun. Peter Demongintroduceda motion which passedat Monday's council meeting calling for the report on new transportation technologies.

Infrastructure planning

That includes self-driving cars,in particular,but also other things that are increasingly expected to change the way we move goods and people, such as delivery drones and electric cars that require readily accessible charging stations.

"We have billions of dollars in things planned," Woolley said. "We need to be very very smart about if we're going to be building obsolete infrastructure."

For example, Woolley saidspending millions on park-and-ride lots for future LRT lines may not be as necessary in the future as it is today,if certain technologies take hold.

Logan said it isstill to be determined how those technologies will impact transportation in Calgary but it's only a question of when not if they arrive.

"Those cars are coming so we have to figure out how the roads are going to respond," he said.

With files from The Calgary Eyeopener