Shift Magazine - October 7, 2019 - 13

Trying to promote
the wide deployment of
highly automated AVs
with a crumbling road
infrastructure is a bit like
installing a new chandelier
in a house that's on fire.
John Peracchio
Acting CEO, Conduent Transportation

The fate of the interstate highway
system will be crucial. About 25 percent of U.S. vehicle miles are traveled
there, and the freeways "are the most
likely venue for all sorts of initial niche
applications for AVs, such as platooning demonstrations and self-driving
trucks," said Chris Hendrickson, professor emeritus of Carnegie Mellon
University and a member of the National
Academy of Sciences study committee
on the future of the interstate.
At the state level, there's lots of
talk about new gasoline taxes, and
even increased sales taxes. A potential Achilles' heel in boosting gasoline
taxes, of course, is the expectation that
all-electric vehicles will become a significant part of the fleet in the years ahead.
EVs' growth is one reason for more
consideration of tollways and per-mile
road-use charges on interstates.

Cities also could use congestion
pricing. New York is set to become the
first city in America to implement a
toll on vehicles heading into its most
crammed areas, in the hopes of tamping traffic growth and raising money
for
infrastructure
improvements,
much as London, Singapore and other
cities have done.
Then there's also the matter of
smarter roads, which could help make
human-driven vehicles as well as
pedestrians safer. Smart roads can
incorporate vehicle-to-infrastructure
communications, which use markings, sensors, feedback systems
and wireless networks embedded in
streets, abutments, traffic signals and
elsewhere to keep cars from crashing
into one another.
However, any concerns about the
capabilities of smart infrastructure to

support an AV system "may be overblown," in the words of Paul Appleby,
CEO of data-analytics provider Kinetica.
That's because vehicles themselves will
be required to carry most of the artificial
intelligence. Just as the most sophisticated safety systems in today's vehicles - such as adaptive cruise control
and lane-departure warnings - depend
on the electronic capabilities of the car
itself and not on input from the external
infrastructure.
In the meantime, Collin Castle, intelligent-systems program manager for
the state of Michigan, said states are
focused on "future-proofing" investments in infrastructure. "If you're
spending $200,000 or $250,000 to
modernize a signaling intersection,
you'll add incremental costs to support
connectivity for cooperative automation in the future," he said. n
october 2019 * shift

Shift Magazine - October 7, 2019

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