Regulatory and Policy

Like any technology, connected and autonomous vehicles are value neutral, and offer both promise and peril. While the Federal focus on highway safety and vehicle security is critical, it will be important for state and local governments to swiftly adopt policies to ensure AV’s contribute to achieving our economic, environmental, and equity goals. Specifically, unregulated AV use could increase congestion and VMT, increase climate pollution, and widen the opportunity divide between those who can afford new technologies and those who cannot.

A key question for transportation professionals is “What mix of policies/regulations will minimize potential negative AV consequences while maximizing potential benefits?” Key topics could include:

• Congestion: Which AV policies would minimize the “empty miles” from zero and single passenger AV’s, which could increase VMT and worsen congestion?
• Equity: How can AV policy expand access to jobs, education, and daily needs for low income, disabled, and minority people?
• Climate: Which AV policies would reduce VMT and increase use of cleaner vehicles?
• Data: What data are critical to informing and managing both private and public sector decisions?
• Financial: How can governments best recover new infrastructure and service costs for connected and autonomous vehicles? How can we use financial policy to reduce congestion and climate pollution?

This workshop will discuss how in particular Federal and State regulations and policies will influence smart city development with autonomous first/last mile solution;

The role and method of testing and operation of automated vehicles safety and security aspects that need to be considered in the regulation.

Regulation and policies effect on private/public business relationships.

In order to follow regulations and policies the key question is to which degree system validation as well as infrastructure preparation is required.

• 15 min for a brief introduction of the moderators and the participants
• Let’s first give a 15 min overview to the breakout group about important innovations in the field rules and regulations related to CV/AV/EV deployment
• Let’s create 3 workgroups to discuss – the emphasis should be on CV/AV/EV testing
  • a) where should be the priorities of regulation and policy development for smart city development and
  • b) which processes and infrastructure need to be in place to enforce policies and regulations – time about 30 min
• Each workgroup is presenting the discussion results for 15 min including discussion with the panel