Self-driving cars are on a collision course with our crappy cities

The self-driving cars are coming, and US cities are totally unprepared for the radical changes that will accompany them. Their roads are crumbling, their public transportation services are out-of-date and over-capacity, and their car traffic is among the worst in the world. Autonomous vehicles are supposed to be a panacea for mobility, but if they arrive to the status quo in our major metropolises, their promised benefits may never be realized.

A new crop of research released this week underscores some salient facts about our increasingly automated future: self-driving cars will reshape the way our cities look and feel; the services through which most of us will experience this technology, ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft, are...

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