RethinkX, a San Francisco think tank, released a report in May that should cause transportation officials all over the country, including Boulder and Boulder County, to re-examine assumptions and biases that could lead them to make major investments in transport modes and ideas that are about to become obsolete.

The report, titled “Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030: The Disruption of Transportation and the Collapse of the Internal-Combustion Vehicle and Oil Industries,” argues that transportation-as-a-service (TaaS) will disrupt current modes much more quickly than traditional analysts have forecast. The report posits that the confluence of technological leaps forward in artificial intelligence and electric vehicles will produce a mass migration to self-driving electric cars by 2030. In the main, it contends, these cars will be owned not by individuals but by fleet operators. Individuals will buy subscriptions in much the way they buy wireless communication plans today.

Economics will drive the mass migration, the report’s authors argue. “Using TaaS, the average American family will save more than $5,600 per year in transportation costs, equivalent to a wage raise of 10 percent,” they write. “This will keep an additional $1 trillion per year in Americans’ pockets by 2030, potentially generating the largest infusion of consumer spending in history.”

Read more at The Boulder Daily Camera.