The city of Boston is looking at a new, futuristic addition to its streets: driverless cars. In a partnership with the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Boston Consulting Group(BCG) , the capital of Massachusetts will be launching a program that will be testing autonomous vehicles (also known as AVs) on the streets. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh has announced that this collaboration also involves the Boston Transportation Department and the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, as well as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

So far, only a few details have been made public. The planned starting date for on-street testing of the self-driving cars will be toward the end of this year. It is not yet known how many vehicles will be taking part of this study or what manufacturer will be producing them.

According to an official press release by the Mayor’s office, this project will last for one year and was created with the intention to “advance the safety, access and sustainability goals identified by the public during the Go Boston 2030 transportation planning process.”

Go Boston 2030 was launched in 2015 as a City of Boston initiative that aims to improve public and private transportation in and around the Boston area. During this project, citizens were given the opportunity to share their ideas and visions, which would then be included in the development of an Action Plan in the later part of 2016.

The year-long program of testing driverless cars is only one of the projects that could lay the foundation for a better, more modern transportation environment in the Greater Boston area and the United States in general. This pilot program “will be instrumental in guiding Boston and other cities through the process of integrating, and maximizing benefit from, new mobility technologies,” Mayor Walsh explains.

According to the WEF, self-driving vehicles will not only be able to reduce up to 90 percent of the 1.3 million car-related fatalities each year, but also introduce a completely new business industry and many opportunities for economic growth. The WEF also explains that there are three possible scenarios for how self-driving cars could change transportation: the introduction of a highway truck platoon, the use of on-demand autopilot, and the shift from regular to robo-taxis. However, the WEF emphasizes that every city has to evaluate its needs and decide for itself what is most beneficial for its streets.

The BCG has also conducted studies on the future of transportation and development of autonomous vehicles. They suggest that 2017 will be the first year when self-driving cars will be introduced to roads in larger numbers. By 2025, they expect that 25 percent of vehicles in the car market will have autonomous features. Furthermore, the results indicate that by 2035 more than 12 million fully autonomous and 18 million partially autonomous cars will be sold worldwide.
It is estimated that this market will increase between $42 million to $77 million. According to BCG, this growth will lead to “tremendous economic and societal benefits, and with it, far-reaching implications for automotive companies and other players in the value chain.”