Mobility on Demand in the United States

The growth of shared mobility services and enabling technologies, such as smartphone apps, is contributing to the commodification and aggregation of transportation services. This chapter reviews terms and definitions related to Mobility on Demand (MOD) and Mobility as a Service (MaaS), the mobility marketplace, stakeholders, and enablers. This chapter also reviews the U.S. Department of Transportation’s MOD Sandbox Program, including common opportunities and challenges, partnerships, and case studies for employing on-demand mobility pilots and programs. The chapter concludes with a discussion of vehicle automation and on-demand mobility including pilot projects and the potential transformative impacts of shared automated vehicles on parking, land use, and the built environment

Advisory Nonpreemption

We are living in an era of dramatic and unpredictable technological and business innovation. Federal agencies have been at the forefront of updating substantive legal rules to meet new challenges not originally contemplated by Congress. Yet some innovations—for example, autonomous vehicles—also upset longstanding allocations of authority between the federal and state governments. Significant uncertainty about whether local or national concerns will predominate as innovations develop requires temporary flexibility in allocations of regulatory authority. This Article identifies a new method that federal agencies can use to promote such flexibility before the initiation of a rulemaking or before Congress acts to address such disruptions—advisory nonpreemption. Ordinary preemption shifts the balance of power from the states to the federal government. Advisory nonpreemption has the opposite effect. Advisory nonpreemption can open a dialogue among the federal government, the states, interest groups, and industry not only about the best substantive rules to address innovation, but who ought to govern and enforce those rules. Most importantly, advisory nonpreemption is a method of inserting de facto dynamic jurisdiction temporarily into an existing dual federalism scheme. This Article both describes advisory nonpreemption and defends its use as a normative matter using autonomous vehicle safety regulation as a case study. The approach’s costs in temporary regulatory uncertainty are outweighed by its benefits in promoting innovation, transparency, and the public interest

Logistiikan megatrendit ja niiden mahdolliset vaikutukset logistiikkatilakysyntään Suomessa

In recent years, the increasing popularity of logistics assets as investment type has been evident both in Finnish and European property markets, meanwhile the logistics sector and the occupiers of logistics properties have been challenged by constant changes in their operational environments. Megatrends represent unavoidable forces of change affecting companies as well as the complete economic and social system, and the purpose of the thesis is to recognise and increase knowledge of the megatrends shaping the logistics industry and to study their potential effects on the future logistics space occupier preferences and logistics space demand in the Finnish market. The research method of the thesis is environmental scanning, a method of futures studies. The environmental scanning process completed in the thesis consists of two parts: literature scanning and expert panel. The aim of the literature scanning is to recognise the logistics megatrends by reviewing existing literature and publications focusing on the subject. The expert panel verifies the results of literature scanning and finds out potential effects of the logistics megatrends on logistics space demand and occupier preferences in the Finnish environment. The expert panel consists of eleven experts, representing the players in the logistics property market, both logistics space occupiers and real estate investors. As a result of the completed environmental scanning process, five logistics megatrends, eight megatrend subcategories and numerous of potential effects of the megatrends on the logistics space demand have been identified and analysed. The logistics megatrends covered in the thesis are (1) demographic changes, urbanisation and changing demand, (2) technological development, (3) collaboration and integration, (4) globalisation, re-shoring and changing global competition and (5) ecological drivers and sustainability. Also the probability and importance of each megatrends have been estimated, and in total seven potential futures themes created to represent the combined effects of the megatrends and the potential future developments of logistics occupier demand.Logistiikkakiinteistöjen suosio sijoituskohteina on viime vuosina kasvanut sekä Suomessa että muualla Euroopassa. Samanaikaisesti toimintaympäristön jatkuvat muutokset ovat haastaneet logistiikka-alan ja sen toimijat, logistiikkatoimitilojen käyttäjät. Megatrendit edustavat yrityksiin ja niiden toimintaympäristöön vaikuttavia väistämättömiä muutosvoimia, ja tämän diplomityön tarkoituksena onkin tunnistaa ja lisätä tietämystä logistiikka-alaa muovaavista megatrendeistä sekä tutkia logistiikkatilojen käyttäjien tulevia preferenssejä ja tulevaisuuden tilakysyntää Suomessa. Diplomityön tutkimusmenetelmänä on tulevaisuudentutkimuksen menetelmiä edustava toimintaympäristön muutosten tarkastelu. Toimintaympäristön muutosten tarkastelu toteutetaan tässä diplomityössä kaksivaiheisesti: kirjallisuustarkastelun ja asiantuntijapaneelin avulla. Kirjallisuuslähteiden tarkastelun tarkoituksena on tunnistaa logistiikan megatrendit tutkimalla aiheeseen keskittyviä kirjallisuuslähteitä ja julkaisuja. Asiantuntijapaneelin tarkoituksena on varmentaa kirjallisuustarkastelun tulokset ja tunnistaa megatrendien mahdollisia vaikutuksia logistiikkatilakysyntään ja käyttäjien preferensseihin Suomessa. Asiantuntijapaneelin 11 jäsentä edustavat logistiikkakiinteistömarkkinoiden osapuolia, sekä tilankäyttäjiä että kiinteistönomistajia. Toimintaympäristön muutosten tarkastelun lopputuloksena tunnistettiin ja tarkasteltiin yhteensä viittä logistiikan megatrendiä, kahdeksaa megatrendien alakategoriaa sekä megatrendien lukuisia mahdollisia vaikutuksia logistiikkatilakysyntään. Diplomityössä tarkasteltavat logistiikan megatrendit ovat (1) demografiset muutokset, kaupungistuminen ja kuluttajakysynnän muutokset, (2) tekninen kehitys, (3) yhteistyö ja integraatio toimitusketjuissa, (4) globalisaatio, ”re shoring” ja muuttuva kansainvälinen kilpailu ja (5) ekologiset ajurit, kestävä kehitys ja vastuullisuus. Lisäksi kunkin megatrendin todennäköisyyttä ja merkitystä arvioitiin ja kaikkiaan seitsemän mahdollista tulevaisuuden teemaa luotiin havainnollistamaan megatrendien osin yhteneviä vaikutuksia ja tulevaisuuden logistiikkatilakysynnän mahdollisia kehityskulkuja

Robotics and the Lessons of Cyberlaw

Two decades of analysis have produced a rich set of insights as to how the law should apply to the Internet’s peculiar characteristics. But, in the meantime, technology has not stood still. The same public and private institutions that developed the Internet, from the armed forces to search engines, have initiated a significant shift toward developing robotics and artificial intelligence. This Article is the first to examine what the introduction of a new, equally transformative technology means for cyberlaw and policy. Robotics has a different set of essential qualities than the Internet and accordingly will raise distinct legal issues. Robotics combines, for the first time, the promiscuity of data with the capacity to do physical harm; robotic systems accomplish tasks in ways that cannot be anticipated in advance; and robots increasingly blur the line between person and instrument. Robotics will prove “exceptional” in the sense of occasioning systematic changes to law, institutions, and the legal academy. But we will not be writing on a clean slate: many of the core insights and methods of cyberlaw will prove crucial in integrating robotics and perhaps whatever technology follows

Scope of Using Autonomous Trucks and Lorries for Parcel Deliveries in Urban Settings

Courier, express, and parcel (CEP) services represent one of the most challenging and dynamic sectors of the logistics industry. Companies of this sector must solve several challenges to keep up with the rapid changes in the market. In this context, the introduction of autonomous delivery using self-driving trucks might be an appropriate solution to overcome the problems that the industry is facing today. This paper investigates if the introduction of autonomous trucks would be feasible for deliveries in urban areas from the experts’ point of view. Furthermore, the potential advantages of such autonomous vehicles were highlighted and compared to traditional delivery methods. At the same time, barriers that could slow down or hinder such an implementation were also discovered by conducting semi-structured interviews with experts from the field. The results show that CEP companies are interested in innovative logistics solutions such as autonomous vans, especially when it comes to business-to-consumer (B2C) activities. Most of the experts acknowledge the benefits that self-driving vans could bring once on the market. Despite that, there are still some difficulties that need to be solved before actual implementation. If this type of vehicle will become the sector’s disruptor is yet to be seen

Potential Effects of Autonomous Vehicles on the Insurance Industry

The implementation of autonomous vehicles, or self-driving cars, promises to radically change much of the normal way of life. While it may seem inconsequential to start small with a vehicle of relatively low level of automation, there are many factors to consider. Some of these factors include security, moral dilemmas, and even the insurance field. One can look back at previous implementations of new technology, such as air bags, and see that it can be difficult to predict consequences and adapt. However, actuaries have been suggesting solutions to make autonomous vehicles a safe reality. While the solutions may vary, one thing is clear: communication between the vehicle and the insurance field is imperative