The future of infrastructure development won’t be about building more roads, but using existing roads more effectively, said Stephen Ezell, the foundation’s vice president for global innovation policy.
Studies have shown that investing in smart infrastructure has a 60 percent greater impact than investing in roads alone, Ezell said. Automated vehicles can increase the capacity of roads without building new ones because sensors let vehicles travel much closer together than cars driven by humans, said Christopher Leinberger, the chairman of the Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis at George Washington University.