There's no question a stormwater management system requires regular maintenance, and can fail.

That's why New Jersey requires that,for "Major Developments"' any project,including roads,that disturb 1 acre or more of land or adds 1/4 acre or more of new impervious coverage,the "owner" have an "Operation and Maintenance" manual.

That manual has to be approved ,and must include signed "logs" for each maintenance or repair task.
Those logs are supposed to checked by the municipal stormwater coordinator (the title varies by jurisdiction).

In fact,the coordinator is also supposed the check all of these systems,even on private property,to make sure they are working.

One of the things I design are Intersection Improvements.

Right now we do use "smart" traffic lights.

They use cameras to "see" if there are any vehicles at cross streets,day or night.
No vehicles,the primary road stays green.

Not only that,the cameras "count" the cars on the side street,and adjust the phasing accordingly.

We also "sync" the lights along a corridor.

The system also uses sensors to turn intersections "all red" when emergency apparatus need to go thru.

There are limitations however.
Snow,fog and even heavy rain can temporarily mess up the cameras.

I would think it would do the same thing with a self driving car.

You also see all these stories about how fragile things like our electric grid are to hacking.

What if they hack the self driving cars'computers ?

Again, I think NJ is ahead of the game here. The signals in Downtown Cincinnati haven't been updated in several decades. The signals are timed to get people efficiently east to west and vice versa so they can get to I-71 and I-75 on ramps quickly, but now there are significant issues trying to move north to south because of a flurry of development downtown and in Over-The-Rhine. If you are traveling east/west you often move very quickly, but if you are traveling north/south you hit every light, even when there is not traffic east/west. The city is undertaking a traffic study now to identify improvements but it should've been done years ago, and definitely should have been done before they opened the streetcar line traveling north/south through the urban core.

I would still drive if given the option not to... Sometimes...

I enjoy driving a lot of the time, and will do it just because I enjoy it. At the same time when I'm sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic I would gladly pay for the luxury of letting the computer takeover while I read BobcatAttack on my phone.

There's an article in today's The Post that says Athens entered into an agreement with DriveOhio to be considered as as a test site for autonomous vehicles.

I'm a major proponent of autonomous cars, but this really is an interesting point and something I've not thought of. I wonder if this would then require that all cars would have to have some passenger in them and cannot be a personless car.

Autonomous cars will be able to talk to each other and to the infrastructure so it'll know if a car is coming or not.

Interesting article on this in today's The Record by Tom Kisher of the AP.

I never knew Pittsburgh was a hot bed for development and testing of autonomous vehicles.

The article goes into why autonomous vehicles won't be coming soon :

1.When roads get snow covered,vehicle cameras can't work.
According to the article, this is one thing researchers haven't been able to get around.
The article says this is why most testing is done in warm weather locations.

2.Heavy falling snow and rain,as well as fog and sandstorms obstruct cameras and
lasers bounce around.
Radar also has issues identifying the shape of objects it detects.

3.Pavement lines and curbs aren't uniform,or in some cases don't exist.
They use the "Strip District" in Pitt. as an example.
That would mean a vehicle would have to be able to learn and adjust to wherever it is.

4.Autonomous vehicles are programmed to follow set rules.
Human drivers and pedestrians aren't.
Things like double parking,stepping out from between parked cars, cause all kinds of problems.

5.Left turns into to traffic seem to be another big problem,unless there is no oncoming traffic.

another thing that would make pittsburgh a difficult, but apt testing ground is how easily a GPS gets confused in that city. Stacked roads and highways mess with the locators big time. narrow streets and tall buildings probably make it more difficult too.

Unrelated to AVs but this is already happening and has been for years. A majority of Ohio counties have lost population over the past couple of decades. Only a handful have seen meaningful growth, mostly in the the Cincy and Cbus metro areas. Rural areas in the Midwest and South are emptying out as young people move to cities/suburbs and old people die or move to retirement destinations.

That phenomenon was more of a 1990s and 2000s one than a current one. The current trend is for growth in the central city. For example, Blue Ash has grown about 0.7% since 2010, while downtown Cincinnati has doubled in population. Even boom town exurbs like Mason have seen a slowing of growth. Mason grew 92% in the 1990s, 40% in the 2000s, and only 8% since then. Looking at Columbus, Dublin grew 92% in the 1990s, 33% in the 2000s, and 14% since 2010. At the same time, neighborhoods near downtown are booming with new construction. Similarly, downtown Cleveland now has over 20,000 residents. There's a lot of research that says that people tend to view 30 minutes one way as the limit for a comfortable commute. Some are willing to go over that but the average is about a half hour. With that in mind, it's just not feasible to keep sprawling outward endlessly. The infrastructure investment it would take to keep developing into the hinterland is just unrealistic.

An interesting question for demographers to study in the future will be how long the building boom will continue in cities. How long will people continue to gentrify areas and or build condos in old warehouses etc. For example when William Levitt built Levittown and the suburban boom began, there was a general feeling that people were tired of being cramped in city apartments. There was an instant appeal to backyards, backporch barbecue and nearby malls and strip malls. Television was in its infancy and there was no advertising campaign that matches what we see in popular culture about how cool it is to live downtown. The trend roughly started with the TV show Friends and continues onward promoted in almost every sector of social media and entertainment. Roughly translated; young people living in cities are deemed by these social media folks as educated, hip, cool, diverse and forward thinkers, people living in suburbs and rural areas are not. As you can imagine this doesn't sit well with those of us who came from rust belt towns and rural areas.

In Columbus, there probably hasn't been this much building and renovation downtown since the turn of the last century. A familiar pattern emerges young single people or married people move downtown and if they they start a family move to places like Bexley, Grandview and Clintonville. The problem comes if the trend stops and young people don't want to move downtown or can't afford to as prices continue to skyrocket.

Recently I am struck by how some, whom I have taught are moving out past Clintonville, Grandview and Bexley and into suburban and rural areas from their downtown condos. This cuts across economic and racial lines. They seem to have come to this decision from various points of view. There have been so many downtown condos and lofts built, one wonders if in 2040 we will conclude that they were overbuilt. Time will tell.

Odd and short sighted prediction. Condos and apartment in the downtown area are at roughly 95% occupancy so the new builds are staying just ahead of the demand to live down there. Companies are moving more of their offices and employees as well. Nationwide Insurance has all of its corporate employees either downtown or in the Grandview Yard. CoverMyMeds is building corporate headquarters in Franklinton where it will be able to expand hiring.

Look forward to your 2040 prediction though.