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Cities Should Start Testing Autonomous Transit: Planner

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Burney Simpson

Cities should begin testing Level 5 autonomous vehicles now in last mile/first mile transit applications to stay ahead of the coming changes brought by driverless technology, according to Grush Niles Associates, a transportation planning consultant.

Implementing Level 5 transit on an incremental, application-by-application basis will help it to expand and spread as demand grows, the consultants write in “Getting Past the Hype” in the new Thinking Highways, North America.

Level 5 vehicles, defined as fully autonomous and capable of operating without a driver, have been successfully used in several cities in Europe during the CityMobil2 project. Cities include La Rochelle, France; Lausanne, Switzerland; near Helsinki, Finland; and Trikala, Greece.

The providers include EasyMile, Navya, RoboSoft, and 2getthere. Specs vary but a typical vehicle is electric-powered, has a range of 50 miles, and can carry 12 passengers. They have onboard navigation systems and obstacle detection systems, and are monitored from a control room.

EasyMile is scheduled to begin operations at a business park this year in California (“Driverless Shuttle Gives Momentum to GoMentum Station“).

“These vehicles run in controlled loops through residential areas to a work area,” says Bern Grush. “Level 5 (vehicles) are here for constrained, simple transit.”

TRANSIT LEAP

Transit Leap approach from Grush Niles Associates.

Grush calls his approach Transit Leap, where “public-use, robotic, shared-mobility applications” will encourage consumers to shift to transit and away from single-owner cars.

His goal is a transportation system where 40 percent of trips are done on public transit, 40 percent are provided by a private transit owner (Uber, for example), and 20 percent in a privately-owned car.

In comparison, today about 90 percent of trips are done in a privately-owned car, with the remaining 10 percent delivered either by public transit or a private transit provider like Uber or a cab company, says Grush.

Grush’s goal contrasts with the concept seen in the futuristic driverless cars showcased by Mercedes and Volvo at events like CES 2016. These still have a steering wheel and play on the desire by many consumers to own a car, he says.

“If they have a steering wheel, it’s designed to be a (consumer) vehicle,” said Grush. “If not, then it’s transit.”

The future vehicles from the auto OEMs generally have an autonomous technology of Level 3, or conditional automation. Drivers must take the wheel on congested, complicated city roads but the car will run on its own for highway driving.

These vehicles, possibly widely available by 2025, encourage the owner to live further from work, says Grush. That will lead to more car ownership, more congestion, and increased public demand for more large highways.

That’s not the way to go, as Grush Niles explains on its End of Driving website:

“(T)here is a risk to municipalities and their populations to be overwhelmed by a new wave of private, low-occupancy automobile dominance that collectively detracts from community livability, adds to sprawl, increases infrastructure costs, and degrades the environment.”

HYPE CYCLE

While the move to autonomous vehicles seems inevitable, municipal planners still have some time to experiment with the concept. That is, if technology consultant Gartner is right with its Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle.

Last July Gartner put autonomous vehicles at the very top of its Peak of Inflated Expectations in the Hype Cycle. That was when one expert after another said the technology would end hunger, bring peace, and reunite the Ramones.

emerging-tech-hc (2)The next step in the Hype Cycle is for driverless to enter the Trough of Disillusionment, possibly after an accident or cybersecurity breach that shows its fallibility.

However, the technology will comeback, and go on to reach a Plateau of Productivity when it is working efficiently and is widely accepted.

That’s why planners should begin testing CityMobil2-style vehicles now to work out the bugs, says Grush.

“Municipalities need the experience. This is still a few years away,” says Grush. “The Trough gives us the opportunity.”

Maryland Moving on Autonomous Vehicles

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Burney Simpson

Maryland recently launched the Autonomous Vehicle Working Group to research the impact of driverless technology on safety, insurance, licensing, privacy, cybersecurity, and other major issues.

The group includes about 20 leaders  from its state agencies, along with reps from auto and trucking trade groups.

The second meeting of the working group ended last week with a sense that autonomous technology could impact virtually all ground transportation in the state. Indeed, the group decided to rename itself the Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Working Group to better reflect the growth of connected technology.

During the meeting there were presentations from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) of the Transportation Research Bureau (TRB).

Nat Beuse, NHTSA’s associate administrator for vehicle safety research, discussed the U.S. Department of Transportation’s call for $4 billion in driverless research dollars, its plans to release this year a model state policy on autonomous vehicles, and the Smart Cities competition.

TALKING CYBERSECURITY

Beuse noted that NHTSA is talking cybersecurity with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Md.

Ray Derr, NCHRP project manager, said his organization receives $40 million in pooled funds annually from the states. It is in the midst of several research projects related to driverless technology, including its impact on society, regulations/policies, freight, and transit.

Derr said that trucking freight firms may be early driverless technology adopters as they consider platooning of trucks.

Platooning, also known as tethering, refers to the practice of two or more trucks connected on the highway with Wi-Fi communications technology. The trucks travel closely in tandem, improving aerodynamics and lowering fuel costs by 5 to 10 percent. (See “Truck Slow Down Could Speed Truck Platooning”).

MOVING RAPIDLY

Tethering makes sense for “firms that make multiple runs, where a truck visits the same place several times on the same day,” said Louis Campion, president of the Maryland Motor Truck Association.

Trucks operated by Wal-Mart and other large retailers make these kinds of trips between their stores and distribution centers, Campion said. “This is moving fairly rapidly,” said Campion.

If platooning catches on, trucking firms will need more talented and trained technicians, he said.

Beuse and Derr also made several next-step recommendations.

In the near term, start looking at current laws that will be impacted by the technology, said Beuse.

Keep your eye on aftermarket technology and ‘shade tree mechanics’ that want to install driverless equipment in their vehicles, said Beuse. This is all so new its unknown how the technology will perform.

AVS 2016

Derr suggested working group members attend the Automated Vehicles Symposium 2016 to be held July 19-21 in San Francisco. The event, sponsored by the TRB and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, will include seminars on issues the working group is considering, said Derr.

In the meantime, check out what such leaders as California and Michigan are doing in the driverless arena, said Derr.

Long term, be prepared for public push back when there are accidents or the technology doesn’t perform as promised by some of its advocates, said Beuse.

In addition, there will be discussion on privacy issues related to the data collected by the state from connected technology.

The Maryland working group is chaired by Christine Nizer of the state’s Motor Vehicle Administration.

Members include reps from Maryland’s departments of disabilities, information technology, aging, legislative services, and others. The Maryland Insurance Administration, the state police, the State Highway Administration, and the Transportation Authority (tolls), are also involved.

There are also reps from AAA–Mid Atlantic, the truck group, and an auto manufacturer’s trade group.

The working group met as Maryland’s legislature failed to pass a proposal that would fund its own study group (See “Autonomous Vehicle-Testing Dollars Entice States”).

Nissan Video: Fossil Fuel is for Fossils

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Burney Simpson

Nissan believes our auto future is an all electric, autonomous, and sustainable-powered vehicle - no fossil fuel here -  that generates enough energy to power its owner’s home, according to this new video from the auto OEM.

The vehicles will garner their power from solar/wind/what-have-you sustainable sources.

They will communicate with each other to schedule alternating visits to the Vehicle-to-Infrastructure wireless recharging stations that have been implanted in the streets.

The car will be emission free, so it can drive INTO your office, then take itself to the closest recharging station. That’s apparently right down the hall from the kitchen so you can watch Nessy get a charge up while you get your coffee.

The video makes it look effortless. I expected to see butterflies floating through the model city here that has replaced its parking lots with parks. (By the by, what happens to all the lovely gas stations we enjoy today?)

It’s fascinating that a major auto OEM — revenues of $104 billion in fiscal 2014 —  is working to end the use of fossil fuels to power vehicles. (At least that’s what they say).

And it let’s potential buyers know of one of the major side-benefits of electric vehicles. That is, buy a Nissan Leaf  and get both an economical car and a power source for when the lights go out.

The video by Nissan Europe and Foster + Partners was released at the Geneva Motor Show.

However, the video doesn’t address some of the other radical changes that driverless technology may bring to firms like Nissan.

For instance, by 2030 Mary Consumer will opt for a car-share service instead of buying a car. That means GM’s $500 million investment in Lyft will prove to be farsighted when it evolves into Transport MegaCorp X, and supplies Metropolis Y with 500,00 vehicles that its 10 million residents share.

So it’s possible that Nissan will stop selling cars to consumers. Perhaps by 2030 it will have morphed into an energy company that markets its batteries. Naah, I don’t see that either. But it could become Transport MegaCorp N.

Anyway, check out the ‘Fuel Station of the Future’ video. It’s well made and offers much to think about.

 

Time for Driverless and a Guide for Governments

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Burney Simpson

It’s Time for driverless vehicles. And government types just got a helping hand on understanding what’s coming down the pike.

Time magazine this week has a two-part cover story on the promise of driverless vehicles, and it is very positive, “The Increasingly Compelling Case for Why You Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Drive”.

This may be the article you share with friends and family when they ask what the heck it is you work on. But, as of today, the stories were not free online.

The article’s view in a nutshell is, “They’re going to change everything. The economic and safety benefits will be staggering. … Safer, smarter, faster, more comfortable. Why not?”

Much of the material has already been covered but the writing is breezy, informative, and pretty thorough.

There’s the promised benefits of greater safety, reduced deaths and accidents, cuts in congestion, and improved productivity.

On the challenge side there’s licensing questions, the ethical choice of hitting the kid or a wall, the possible end of auto insurance, cybersecurity threats, and data privacy issues.

The second part gets into technology like AndroidAuto and CarPlay and how this is already transforming driving. There’s a graphic on sensors and cameras, a snapshot of Virginia Tech’s testing grounds, and a mention of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) technology.

PRIMER FOR POLITICOS

Parsons Brinckerhoff has released “Driving Towards Driverless: A Guide for Government Agencies” (this links to an intro page with a link to a document pdf).

The guide is brief and free.

It offers a handy, readable introduction to and overview of the industry for public officials. The timing is right considering somewhere around 30 states are looking at the technology in their current legislative sessions (See “Careful Steps on Driverless Laws for Tennessee, Virginia”).

The approach is a big picture view of planning issues that transportation departments and 20-year urban plan writer-types are thinking about.

It is written for government officials, from local to federal, including legislators and staff with DOTs, planning organizations, police, insurance, and so on; in other words all those offices that will be impacted by this coming technology.

Transportation consultants, auto OEMs, suppliers and others on the business side that interact with government could find it helpful as well.

The guide doesn’t get into the latest autonomous technology, connected vehicles, or specific issues like cybersecurity.

PB is a long-time consultant on transportation issues. The author is Lauren Isaac, a PB manager of sustainable transportation based in the firm’s San Francisco office.

Controlling the Disruption of Autonomous Technology

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Burney Simpson

Autonomous cars could be the disruptive technology that disrupts just about everything.

A new conference in Canada, “Automated Vehicles: Planning the Next Disruptive Technology” is designed to update transportation experts on the technology and help them prepare for its impact.

The event from the Conference Board of Canada will run April 19-20 in the One King West Hotel in Toronto.

The conference will address autonomous technology and its impact on urban planning, security and privacy, transit, and the movement of commercial goods. See the agenda here.

The conference arises in part from a 2015 paper from the consultant Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence (CAVCOE), and the Conference Board. (See “Autonomous Vehicles to Save Canada $54 Billion, Many Lives”).

One year later, the Conference Board is organizing the event and the timing is right, says Barrie Kirk, executive director of CAVCOE, a conference sponsor.

For instance, a test of autonomous vehicles on public roads began near Toronto in January, and the government just released its 10-year strategic transportation plan that includes some mention of autonomous technology. The Toronto test could bring driverless cars traveling on everything from Highway 401 to suburban side streets, according to the Ontario Ministry of Transportation.

“We’re seeing the winds of change blow through our federal government,” said Kirk. The newly-elected Liberal government “is more open. They seek partnerships. And policy groups are seeing disruptive technology coming.”

CAVCOE is taking advantage of the open mood to request that 1 percent of the 18 billion (Canadian) the nation spends on infrastructure be devoted to smart infrastructure, says Kirk. That 180 million Canadian converts to $133 million U.S.

Smart infrastructure covers a lot of ground, notes Kirk, including autonomous vehicles, emissions, data and privacy, cybersecurity, weather, and distracted drivers.

The conference is also sponsored by the Canadian Automobile Association and BlancRide, a Canadian carpooling service.

Photo by CAVCOE.

GM: Give the Car Away, Sell the Connection

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Burney Simpson

GM has fully embraced ridesharing and car-sharing as the future of consumer ground travel, according to comments last week from three top executives.

Consider this from Mary Barra, GM’s chairman and CEO, during the automakers 2015 fourth quarter conference call with analysts. She begins with a quick recap of a great quarter — revenues of $40 billion, record net income of nearly $10 billion. But what does she want to talk about?

GM’s $500 million investment in Lyft.

“We gained considerable momentum in the fourth quarter and early this year on game-changing personal mobility initiatives. First, let’s talk about ridesharing.

“Our announcement with the strategic alliance with Lyft is very significant because we believe together we can work and put an autonomous fleet of sharing vehicles available for use quicker than anyone else. We also believe in the short term the arrangement that we have with Lyft will allow us to capitalize on providing and being a preferred provider for short-term-use vehicles for Lyft drivers that will support not only General Motors’ performance, but also Lyft’s performance.”MBarra1

These on-demand transportation services are growing as the young and urban populations decide they don’t want to own a car, and they aren’t satisfied with expensive, highly-regulated cab companies.

Barra noted that GM has a carpooling pilot in Shanghai with 500 employees. And she gives a plug to its just-launched Maven car-sharing service, now operating in Ann Arbor, Mich., and set to begin in New York City and Chicago.

Now check out this interview with Jon Lauckner, GM’s CTO and chief of its venture capital group.

“So Lyft is built off of the concept that the automotive ecosystem is changing. We’ve had this owner-driver model in place for I don’t know how many years. Now we see ride-sharing really gaining traction,” Lauckner told Business Insider.

“We see the startup companies in this country. We see ridesharing in Israel. We see it starting to take hold in South America. And so we see this as not a phenomenon that is not unique to the US. In fact, every geography has experienced this whole concept of ride sharing,” he said.

AUTOMOBILE AS DIGITAL PLATFORM

To Lauckner, GM began creating the connected-vehicle future in the 1990s with the introduction of its OnStar communications service providing emergency, navigation, and security products. OnStar’s connected capabilities have been limited but that is changing as GM expands its 4G LTE services.

Lauckner is looking a few years ahead, when the combination of GM and Lyft, along with the coming connected capabilities brought by 5G technology, means selling wireless services to vehicle riders of all stripes.

“(The automobile) has been directly tied to connectivity. Connectivity has opened a lot of doors to create an automobile as a digital platform,” said Lauckner.

Meanwhile, at the Connected Cars USA 2016 conference in Washington, D.C., GM’s Harry M. Lightsey said the Lyft and GM deal represented “the future of personal mobility” with the two partners one day offering a ride-sharing service with on-demand autonomous vehicles.

GM believes car-sharing and ridesharing will “grow substantially. We want to be part of that. We see ourselves as a personal mobility company,” said Lightsey, GM’s executive director of global connected customer experience.

He came to the automaker from ATT, where he experienced the sometimes stodgy telecom industry transformed by technology.

“Before I left ATT, we were no longer a land-line firm. We’d became a wireless firm. You see the auto industry doing the same thing,” said Lightsey,

GM is changing and could one day “sell the connection, and give the car away,” said Lightsey. “Ride sharing is kind of like that. We have to be open to all possibilities.”

 

Photos copyright GM. Cadillac CT6 2016 offers a number of connectivity features, including 360-degree camera view, Enhanced Night Vision, park assist, 4G LTE with WiFi.

Sustainable Mobility and Autonomous Vehicles: a Q&A with Stanley Young of NREL

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Burney Simpson

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of Q&As with leaders in the automated, connected and driverless vehicle industry.

SYnew1Stan Young is a research scientist with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) who has been active in automated transport systems for more than 20 years. He was critical to the growth of the Advanced Transit Association (ATRA), serving as president for six years, and conducted research on intelligent transportation systems as an engineer at the University of Maryland. At NREL Stan is helping to initiate research into the sustainability implications of emerging automated vehicles and the services they enable.

 What is your role at the NREL, a division of the Department of Energy that promotes sustainable energy?

NREL recognized that as vehicles become automated, there may be drastic changes in how vehicles are used, and how people make trips. Trip making patterns have really not changed much for several decades. Over the past few decades vehicle energy consumption has largely been a straight forward accounting problem -track the fuel economy for each type of vehicle, estimate the portion of each type of vehicle owned by individuals, and estimate miles driven … then add it all up appropriately.

graphic-sustainable-mobility-initiativeWith the onset of fully connected and automated vehicles (and the services they enable), how we access our jobs and recreation will likely drastically change. We are seeing the front edge of this wave of change in services like Uber, Lyft, car-sharing, and ride-sharing. These have all been enabled by the information revolution. Coupled with the automation revolution, well … hang on for an interesting ride.

In the long run, many of the common trips we take like driving to work, or the grocery store, may be served by an automated taxi that chauffeurs you the entire way, without the hassle of parking, fueling, or ever having to go to the DMV, and do so at a cost that is less than what we typically pay for our private vehicles now on a cost per mile basis.

NREL recognized it needed to understand mobility from a behavioral modeling perspective, and understand how automation can and will change trip making patterns in order to understand how surface energy (and greenhouse gas emissions) may be impacted. That is my role with NREL, bringing the more traditional mobility modeling into the mix to complement their vehicle drivetrain expertise.

You’ve also been involved with the Advanced Transit Association (ATRA) and Personal Rapid Transit. Why is PRT important?

Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) was envisioned in the 1960s and demo systems were built in the 1970s. Even as recently as the 2000’s some PRT systems were put into service, but it has never proliferated due to the expense of building exclusive roadways or guideways for its operation.

The mobility service provided by PRT is very similar to that envisioned with automated taxis – small vehicles providing individualized service for people. As such, many of the system studies and lessons learned in PRT demonstrations and research inform planners and researchers on the scope of service that can be anticipated from automated vehicles harnessed for public mobility.

Although the PRT industry continues to move forward, recently adopting the term Automated Transit Networks, they do not receive the attention that concepts emerging from automated vehicles have received in recent years.

SY6 Suncheon-BayHow does advanced transit overlap with autonomous and connected vehicles? Are these transit vehicles driverless?

The two worlds are merging. Technology and business barriers from legacy operations are dissolving. ‘Transit systems’ are traditionally thought of as municipally-owned and operated services, while ‘vehicles’ are traditionally thought of as individually-owned and operated.

Recent advances in shared vehicles and shared rides, combined with ubiquitous communications through smart-phone yielding services like Uber and Lyft, have already disrupted these old paradigms. So that when we think of automated vehicles – many people are considering what the impact would be if they were managed as a fleet to provide point-to-point connectivity.

That idea is similar to the concepts of PRT that have been fostered for decades.

What current/recent projects do you see as leading the way in showing the capabilities of driverless transit?

Google’s pod cars are by far the forerunner. There are industry rumors that Google will introduce a campus or district system, meaning their automated vehicles will be confined to a specific area within a city. At the 2016 CES show Ford President Mark Fields said that he expects full Level Four automated vehicle capability to be available before the end of the decade in ‘geo-fenced areas’, meaning specific districts/campus/pre-defined locations.

There are several shuttle systems, such as the vendors supporting CityMobil, that are working toward the same concept, providing fully automated transit shuttles on public streets. Demonstrations and initial projects are expected before the end of the decade.

CityMob3aReducing the use of fossil fuels and shifting to sustainable mobility is an important part of advanced transit theory. How do you convince transit vehicle OEMs to build electric powered driverless vehicles?

Electrification has made in-roads, but is still a tough sell. If there is a fleet of vehicles providing individual automated taxi service within a district, that fleet will be optimized by the fleet manager for efficiency, cost, and customer satisfaction. That is where there may be opportunities for alternative fuels that are more sustainable – be it electric, hybrid, fuel-cell, and so on.

The size of fleet vehicles will likely match the demand better than what current private ownership does, and the fleet is more easily managed for re-fueling, maintenance, etc., items that are critical in introducing alternative fuels into the market.

My sense is Americans will be less open to this kind of transit than Europeans. Is that a fair assumption?

Hmmmm … I think it is more a demographic and generational divide. Most of the momentum in the U.S. is for urban and city areas, similar to Europe. In these areas, everyone is looking for better connectivity, something to relieve the congestion, and make life more convenient. I think it will be awhile before we see any of these services in less densely developed areas. That is where automated driving of the more traditional variety (individually-owned vehicles) will likely see inroads.

I mention a generational divide because many younger people see vehicle ownership as a burden and are seeking better mobility.

How do you convince commuters to switch to a driverless bus or train?

Just provide them a better service than what they currently experience. I do not want to force anyone out of their car, I just want to get them to their end destination faster, safer, more conveniently while using less energy.

Thanks Stan.

Michigan Launches 330-Acre Autonomous Vehicle Test Site

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Burney Simpson

Mcity is about to get a big brother. A very big brother.

Michigan will develop a 330-acre test bed for autonomous vehicles, joining the state’s 32-acre Mcity site that opened last July in Ann Arbor.

The new site overlaps much of the historic Willow Run area where B-24 bombers were built as part of the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ in World War II, said Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat.

“This will be a state of the art autonomous vehicle test ground,” said Peters who was speaking at MobilityTalks, a seminar for Capitol Hill politicos held a day before the 2016 Washington (D.C.) Auto Show.

The site in Ypsilanti Township will be called the American Center for Mobility, according to reports.

ARSENAL OF TECHNOLOGY

The new test bed ramps up the competition to be the leading autonomous vehicle testing ground for auto OEMs, parts suppliers, state DOTs and others. In November, Ford began testing its technology at Mcity.

Virginia Tech Transportation Institute operates several testing sites in its state, and GoMentum Station in California’s Silicon Valley has attracted the likes of Daimler and Honda.

Willow Run produced nearly 8,700 B-24 Liberator heavy bombers during the war. It changed hands several times post-war and in 2010 General Motors closed a powertrain plant there during the Great Recession.

“If our country is to survive we’ve got to have more manufacturing,” said Peters. “And you don’t have manufacturing without an auto sector.”

The MobilityTalks panel discussion featured leaders from Toyota, GM, RideScout, and the Federal Trade Commission.

The seminar was sponsored by Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association (MEMA). The trade group reports that motor vehicle parts suppliers generate nearly 750,000 direct jobs, and 1.3 million indirect jobs in the U.S.

Photo – Kaiser-Frazer Plant, Willow Run, Michigan by Wystan, 2013.

Driverless Transit to Dominate in 2040: Planners

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Burney Simpson

What will transit look like in 2040? Lots of autonomous vehicles, lots of walking, and a bunch of Uber-style personal transit vehicles.

That was the answer for about two-dozen transportation and transit experts at the Envisioning Automated Transit (EAT) event hosted by the Advanced Transit Association (ATRA).

ATRA is an international non-profit that seeks to increase the knowledge of advanced transit systems. Members include academics, researchers, consultants, and businesses.

ATRA held EAT at the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology (CATT) at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md. ATRA is celebrating its 40th year.

This year, the ATRA leadership met the day before the start of the Transportation Research Board’s 95th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

Participants in the EAT challenge are asked to ‘solve’ the transit needs of a community, though they are only given a few hours to research the area, brainstorm, and come up with a solution. The concept is more to get ideas flowing and ask folks to think outside the box.

“I don’t believe there’s a silver bullet (solution). All ideas will come into play, all have strengths and weaknesses,” said Peter Muller, president of PRT Consulting, and president of ATRA.

This year participants were split into three groups, each one tasked with creating a transit solution for a community in the Washington, D.C., metro area for 2040. The three areas were – downtown Washington, D.C., Annapolis, Md., and White Oak in suburban Maryland.

One assumption – technology will have reached the highest level of automation as described by The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That levels means that a vehicle can drive itself, with or without a passenger.

Other than that planners were allowed to be creative in their approach and find something that worked for their area.

*For downtown Washington, the team suggested an auto-restricted area, expanded bike lines and pedestrian sidewalks, consolidated delivery/pick-up areas for freight, and priority transit corridors for autonomous buses and other vehicles.

*For Annapolis, planners sought to take advantage of a historic city built for pedestrian and horse travel. Private cars will be banned from the central business area, replaced by driverless shuttles using existing roads. Commuters, state legislators and tourists will get to the central area via perimeter stations.

As a city surrounded by water, the planners said a gondola or skyway-style system might be built to carry travelers over inlets.

*For rapidly growing White Oak, planners suggested an Uber-style personal travel system delivered by the private sector. The area is now primarily served by personal auto and some public buses. Developers have suggested the area could double in population by 2040.

All three groups seemed to agree that today’s bulky bus, operated by a driver, running on a fixed route and serving several dozen passengers, would go by the wayside by 2040. The participants also generally agreed driverless systems would probably replace most human drivers.

In addition, there would be much less personal ownership of autos. Instead, private companies would meet transit needs and there may be greater ride sharing, at least among some travelers.

The Sponsors of EAT were the National Center for Intermodal Transportation, University of Maryland National Transportation Center, the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology (CATT), PRT Consulting, and Leitner-Poma.  

Consumers Insist on Steering Wheels in Driverless Cars, and Canadians Say Yes to Driverless Tech, Sort Of

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Burney Simpson

Two new surveys indicate the public has high demands but mixed feelings about driverless vehicles, though they are aware of some of the challenges that auto manufacturers face as they develop the technology.

Nine out of 10 consumers demand that autonomous vehicle occupants have the ability to override the vehicle controls at any time, according to a survey of 10,000 consumers worldwide commissioned by Volvo.

At the same time, 81 percent say the auto OEM should be responsible for an accident that occurs when the vehicle is in autonomous driving mode. Further, 90 percent say that an autonomous car should pass a driving test just like a human driver.

“People have told us that they need to feel in control and have the choice of when to delegate driving to the car,” said Volvo’s Anders Tylman-Mikiewicz, in a press release. “Today, that need is ultimately fulfilled with the presence of a steering wheel. … Therefore, a steering wheel is necessary until those needs change.”

A survey of Canadian consumers found mixed feelings there as well.

About 25 percent of Canadians are excited about the cars, about 25 percent are wary, and about half say it depends on the technology, according to a survey from Kanetix.ca, an online insurance comparison shopping site based in Toronto.VolvoSafer_drive_VCC08684_ListItem2

Canadian men are twice as likely as women to say they would use a driverless car, and people aged 18-34 are the most enthusiastic about the technology. These advocates say the cars will mean safer roads, more relaxing drives, and easier parking.

And nearly one in five Canadians think driverless cars would be just “plain cool,” Kanetix reports.

Folks in Canada’s two Eastern provinces – Quebec and Ontario – are more excited about driverless than those in the West.

That is fortunate as Ontario on January 1 officially began allowed the testing of driverless vehicles, joining states like California and Michigan. As of last October, the province and partner businesses had promised they would invest about $3 million in the testing.

The Ontario Centres of Excellence Connected Vehicle/Automated Vehicle program is coordinating business and government investments in the activity.

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