LOUIS NELSON: Good
morning, everyone.
AUDIENCE: Good morning.
LOUIS NELSON: Excellent.
A little fire in the belly
for a Saturday morning.
Welcome to UVA, and
let me welcome you
to the driverless future--
asking the big questions.
My name is Louis Nelson, and
I have the great pleasure
of serving as the Associate
Provost for Academic Outreach
here at the University
of Virginia.
Now, today's event
finds its genesis
more than six months
ago as a conversation
between research faculty,
public officials,
and local entrepreneurs.
The conversations
hovered in the space
between enthusiastic
optimism for innovation
and a safer future, and
the deep understanding
that seasons of
disruption and change
can be fundamentally
destabilizing.
Autonomous vehicles are going
to dramatically transform
the way cities function.
While many see
these technologies
as introducing extraordinary
efficiencies and increased
safety, others are more
cautious about their impacts
and the futures
that these suggest.
And while the first experiments
are already well underway,
most research is framed around
the successful integration
of this new technology
into the complex systems
that govern very large cities.
But there is much
that we don't know
about how this future
impacts the majority
of American cities--
cities like ours.
As a small city with
a progressive ethos
and the advantage of a
major research university,
Charlottesville presents an
extraordinary opportunity
to examine the ways that these
new modes of transportation
will impact small and
mid-sized cities not only
physically, but also socially.
So to that end, the
mayor of Charlottesville,
the city of Charlottesville,
the office of the governor,
the Autonomous Systems
Center for Excellence,
and the Virginia
Secretary of Technology
have partnered with the
University of Virginia
and Perrone Robotics to host
this day long conversation
about the ways that autonomous
vehicles could transform
our city and others like it in
Virginia and across the nation.
Now, today's event is a
public conversation, not
an academic
conference, which means
that we're going to focus less
on what we do know and more
on what we do not yet know.
How will this future impact
the physical design of cities,
large and small?
What is the future impact of
this technology on community
well-being, and how can public
policy address those impacts?
How will autonomous vehicles
impact public transportation
systems?
How can we best prepare the
economically disenfranchised
for this coming future?
This conversation will help
identify critical research
still required for cities
like Charlottesville
to best prepare for
this new future.
Now, reflecting the University
of Virginia's commitment
to public inquiry,
our collaboration
began this summer with a series
of intentional engagement
events with two
specific communities--
single working parents
and the elderly.
These conversations
were spearheaded
by Tanya Denckla Cobb, the
director of UVA's Institute
for Environmental Negotiation,
and with volunteer support
from Cody Fleming, who
I just saw a second ago.
Thank you very much,
Cody, for serving
as our volunteer local expert.
Tanya, Cody, and their
staff initiated a number
of public conversations at
Charlottesville Senior Center
through the summer, and at other
locations across the community,
to introduce autonomous vehicles
and to ask the public what they
wanted to know about
their potential living
conditions in this new future.
Representatives from
these public conversations
have joined us today, and
we're really glad you're here.
Another outcome of
this conversation
has been a collaboration--
a predictive investigation
between the faculty from
the University of Virginia
and staff from the
city of Charlottesville
to better forecast the policy
and infrastructure changes that
require to realize the
health, well-being,
and economic benefits
throughout our community.
And for this, I'd like to
thank City Manager Maurice
Jones and his staff,
and their willingness
to make large data-sets
available to research
faculty at UVA's Center for
Transportation Research.
These data-sets include
data on public transit,
on traffic patterns
and traffic count,
signal timing,
roadway incidents,
and parking data
that will be used
as a foundation for
research on existing
conditions and
predictive modeling here
in Charlottesville.
Our city's willingness
to share this data
will quickly foreground
Charlottesville
as a critical case study
in current and future
transportation research here
at UVA and by our research
partners across the country.
And I'm also very pleased
to say that that data set
and the use of those data sets
have already found their way
into some predictive
design modeling
in the School of Architecture.
Lucia Phinney is running
a studio this semester
based on city of
Charlottesville's autonomous
future.
Today's event is
framed around a series
of four one-hour
moderated conversations
on the subject of technology
and economics in the morning,
and urban design and community
well-being this afternoon.
The first two sessions will
be followed by lunch, and then
remarks from both me or Mike
Signer and Governor Terry
McAuliffe.
And as long as you register
for today's program,
you're welcome to join
us for lunch, which
will be held right upstairs.
In addition to these
four open conversations,
Perrone Robotics has agreed to
provide an autonomous vehicle
demonstration which will be
running a circuit from a route
here on grounds at Darden.
Perrone has also
brought with them
a few earlier models as well--
a bit of a petting zoo
of autonomous vehicles,
if you will.
Those of you that are interested
in writing in an autonomous
vehicle are encouraged
to wait for a turn
as the car is operating.
And I'll just say, you all
parked in the parking garage
right here, we're at
one end of Darden.
The parking lot from which the
demonstrations are happening
and the petting zoo is
located is at the other end.
So you just go outside
and walk to the right
until you can't go any
more, and then you'll
see cars without any people
in them moving around.
Terrifying.
Let me close by offering
a few words of thanks.
First, to the Darden
School of Business
for offering to
host us today, and
for their extraordinary staff.
They've been
remarkably flexible.
I'd like to thank also Becca
White from UVA's Department
of Parking and Transportation.
Becca was an essential
ally in this work,
and her patience and
creativity helped
us navigate the extraordinary
twists and turns that
brought us to today.
And lastly, let me
offer a special thanks
to my assistant Amy
Stoops, who was entirely
unaware that
conference planning was
part of her job description.
Today would never have happened
without her careful attention
and her long suffering patience.
And it is now my great pleasure
to introduce UVA's president,
who has tirelessly supported our
efforts in community engagement
and in academic outreach,
and who regularly
reminds us all of
the public mission
of this extraordinary
university.
President Terry Sullivan.
Good morning, and let me
welcome you again to UVA.
Thank you for coming here
today to discuss and consider
our driverless future.
I'm actually standing in this
morning for my provost, Tom
Katsouleas, who could
not be here this morning,
but who has been extremely
interested in this
and has helped offer
the university's
support to this project.
I think a lot of
you know that I came
to Virginia from the
University of Michigan,
where I had been provost.
Now Michigan is the one
state in the union that
is most dependent upon a
single industry, that being,
of course, the
automobile industry.
In Michigan, when you meet
someone for the first time,
you have the
obligatory conversation
about the weather--
for much of the year, that's
lamenting how bad it is--
and that is followed by
the inevitable question--
what do you drive?
It is an important
element of identity.
In fact, when I was interviewed
for the position of provost,
the president of
the university asked
me to meet her at the
airport and drive her
to the location
for the interview.
I later discovered that was
to ascertain whether I drove
an American-made vehicle--
an unwritten but important
qualification for the job.
Well now, we see that the
millennials, the 18-year-olds
who are coming to join us as
first year students every year,
often do not even have
a driver's license.
The number of teenagers
getting driver's licenses
has been dropping.
We don't permit first year
students to have cars,
but they can have cars
in their second year,
and yet we find that even as
our student body has grown
a little larger, the number
of cars that are registered
has dropped.
There is a change in the way
the younger generation seeks
to get around.
That's one of the
reasons that I think
that this is such a timely
topic for the university
and for the city
of Charlottesville.
I know that if you're ever on
University Avenue on any Friday
afternoon, you won't
believe me that the number
of registered cars has dropped.
That is what our data show.
So this academic forum
on autonomous vehicles
is going to look
at how the emerging
technology of
driverless cars can
transform a small-
and medium-sized city,
such as Charlottesville.
This is important because
much of the current work
is going on in the
nation's largest cities,
but most of the
nation's people don't
live in the largest cities.
This conference is
the first of its kind,
and I think it's also
notable because it's
going to have an emphasis on
the broader societal impacts
of driverless cars.
Look at all the
people in Michigan
who will lose a
sense of identity
if we now have driverless cars.
That's perhaps a bit of a
humorous example for those
of us here in Virginia, but it
is true that for many people,
identity and the car have
been closely associated
with each other.
We have faculty here from
both the School of Engineering
and the Department of Urban
Planning, who I believe
can add a lot to
this conversation.
This conference today is a
public-private partnership.
This is an example of
the kind of collaboration
that lets us work through
quality of life issues
with our fellow citizens.
And so with that in
mind, I want to thank
the city of Charlottesville
for co-sponsoring this event
with us, and thank
Mayor Michael Signer.
Mike brought this idea to Tom
Katsouleas, and in so many ways
it is his brainchild.
Paul Perrone, CEO of Perrone
Robotics, is also a co-sponsor,
and he's here today.
Thank you so much, Paul,
for bringing your research
and development
into our backyard,
and for bringing your driverless
cars in the petting zoo
here today.
I encourage all of you
to take the opportunity
to ride on the closed
course we have set up
today thanks to
Paul's generosity.
The Commonwealth of Virginia
is another co-sponsor
for today's forum,
and later on today,
you will hear from
Governor Terry McAuliffe.
Also with us is Virginia
Secretary of Technology Karen
Jackson, to lend her
expertise and to moderate
two of our panels.
We've had outstanding support
from the state in this area.
We want to thank our
state government partners
for recognizing this
as a potential growth
area for Charlottesville.
And not just
Charlottesville, by the way.
This will have application
for many other mid-sized
communities across
the Commonwealth.
I also want to thank the Darden
School for hosting the event,
and thank our experts
from around grounds
and around the country who have
come to share their knowledge
and their vision for the future.
Louis Nelson, Associate Provost
for Academic Outreach and Amy,
of course, deserve
our thanks for having
organized this event.
And now, I'm pleased to
introduce Paul Perrone.
Paul is an industry
leader and a visionary
whose company,
Perrone Robotics, is
providing autonomous
vehicle technology to car
manufacturers.
He is the inventor of a general
purpose robotics software
platform known as
MAX, and is now
leading the company's
effort to commercialize
MAX for widespread adoption.
Music fans here today, as
well as car aficionados,
will probably be most
interested to know
that Paul worked with
the musician Neil Young
to automate his extended
electric range 1959 Lincoln
Continental, which now goes
by the name LincVolt. Paul has
more than 14 years of autonomous
vehicle experience, and more
than 20 years of high
tech industry experience.
He earned his bachelor's degree
in electrical engineering
from Rutgers University in
1992, and his master's degree
in electrical engineering from
UVA in 1995, and so he is a Hoo
and we welcome him home.
Welcome, Paul.
PAUL PERRONE: Thank
you, President Sullivan
and Professor Nelson.
I do want to say
that although we
do have a petting zoo out there,
we highly encourage that you
not attempt to feed the robots.
You do not know what they'll do.
So, when I was 10
years old, I was
spending part of
my summer vacation
at my grandfather's house
in Oakland, New Jersey.
Oakland was a small town on
the west side of southern New
Jersey, and there wasn't
very much to do at times,
so I occasionally took to
drawing at an old dining room
table that my grandfather
converted into a place
to build puzzles, plastic
models, play games,
and to draw.
And despite the eye
strain that came
from trying to draw beneath a
vintage 1970s fluorescent desk
lamp, I managed to
crank out some sketches
of what the future might
eventually look like.
And after my
grandfather passed away
and we cleared out his house,
I found one of these drawings,
and I was surprised to see
a drawing of a spacious car
with people in it, but
nobody was driving.
This robot car also had some
necessary creature comforts
in it from the perspective
of a 10 year old's mind,
such as an Atari 2600
video game console,
a freezer to store Otter
Pops brand Popsicles--
you might know what those are--
and, as I recall, I think
there was a small swimming
pool either on the roof, or
being tugged behind the car.
It was a typically humid
inland Jersey summer.
My grandfather didn't run
the air conditioning units
all the time.
So this had a profound
influence on the future vision
of automotive design.
But later on in 2004,
I started creating
my first actual driverless
car, about 13 years ago,
and I've been working
in the space ever since.
And more recently, I've been
reflecting on that drawing
from 38, some odd years ago--
so I've just dated myself.
And in the driverless car space,
we talk a lot about safety
and the enormous economic
boom that will be
brought about by this industry.
And those are important topics.
But it's interesting
to introspect
and try to figure
out what was going
on in the mind of a 10-year-old.
It certainly wasn't safety
or money that was on my mind
back then.
Rather, from the simplicity
of my point of view back then,
it was that, A--
being stuck in a car is boring.
B-- being stuck in a car for
long trips is even more boring.
C-- I need entertainment.
D-- I need food and snacks.
These are important things.
And on long trips, I
really need all the things
I would want to
do at home with me
in the car, which
apparently includes
taking a dip in a
swimming pool, but we
didn't own a swimming pool, so
that was clearly pure fantasy.
But why was the car driverless?
My parents or grandfather
could have been driving,
I could have drawn
in a chauffeur,
and I think after all these
years, I finally got it.
It's about two things--
living your life
and empowerment.
So what are these two things?
Living your life.
The robot car I drew would
allow Dad to take a nap,
Mom to read a book, and
Grandpop to play a game with us,
but really, in general,
would let us, as a family,
do whatever we normally
do at home together.
We'd not waste our life sitting
forward and staring straight
ahead, not looking at each
other, confined to our seats
with seat belts, as if in
some sort of straitjacket.
Being stuck in a car wouldn't
be boring anymore more.
We'd be entertained.
We'd have more time together.
We'd be free to live
our lives again,
as we did when not in a car.
And as an adult, I see the
purity of this simple vision
for driverless cars.
It may be, in fact, the key
benefit for driverless cars.
Yes, the added safety
is critically important,
but perhaps the real benefit
is reclaiming and essentially
extending our lives.
And then think about this--
the average American spends
over an hour and a half
each day driving,
which works out
to about 38,000 hours
over an average lifetime,
and that equates to about 4.3
years of driving nonstop, 24
by 7--
that's 24 hours a day,
seven days a week.
That's 4.3 solid years
of our life driving.
And we probably spend twice
that just being in a car,
whether we're being
driven or driving.
So driverless cars give
us a significant portion
of our life back.
We might look at driverless
cars as extending our lifetime
an extra four plus years.
And in that time, we can choose
to work, play, sleep, or have
more time with our families.
Driverless cars give
us more of our life
to live the way we
want to live it.
A second advantage of
driverless cars is empowerment.
In the mind of a
10-year-old, a robot car
would take me to
where I want to go.
As a kid, my robot
car could take me
wherever I'd want to go
whenever I want to go,
without requiring an
adult to drive me.
At least that's what I imagined.
Whether or not my parents
would have actually let
the robot car take
me on that trip
didn't factor into the calculus.
But today, that's
the litmus test
I keep in mind as I myself
now design and build
driverless cars.
When will I feel like
the car is safe enough
to put my own child in the car
and let it drive him somewhere?
It's hard to even
imagine this, ever
letting it happen for
fear of physical security
and other reasons.
But will we let
driverless school buses
take our children to school?
Will we let driverless
emergency vehicles take us
and our children to hospitals
and even an emergency?
Will we let driverless cars
take our kids to soccer practice
when we just can't drive them?
I use the example of putting
children into driverless cars
because it tends
to drive a higher
standard and expectation.
And once driverless vehicles
reach that standard,
think about the empowerment
it will actually offer.
Not only may we let our
kids get transported
to soccer practice in
a driverless vehicle,
but the elderly and
people with disabilities
will now have more freedom
of mobility as well.
Anybody can go wherever
they want to go,
whenever they want to get there.
Initially, the cost
of driverless vehicles
will be higher.
But as we've seen with
computers and cell phones,
widespread adoption
of a technology
always puts power in
the hands of individuals
that once was only
affordable by the wealthiest.
It may take time,
but as the technology
is being extended not only to
cars, but to lower-cost golf
cart sized and personal short
range transportation vehicles,
the cost of owning or
using a driverless vehicle
is going to decrease.
And what's more, on-demand
driverless taxis and cars
will make costs to the
individual even more
manageable.
Over time, buying a
basic driverless vehicle
may cost as much as it
does to buy a computer,
and paying for a
driverless vehicle ride
may cost as much as it
does to buy a can of soda.
Driverless vehicles
will empower more people
with more freedom of mobility.
And the freedom that comes
from living more of our life,
and the freedom that comes
from more empowerment,
is, in my opinion, central
to the benefits and reasons
for pursuing driverless cars.
But this matters little unless
we know driverless cars will
be safer to drive.
So, will driverless
cars be safer?
The answer is yes.
These cars will ultimately
drive safer than human drivers,
and sometime in the not
too distant future--
we don't know when that may be--
driverless cars may become
nearly impervious to accidents.
Driverless vehicles have
and will have sensors
all around them, on every
surface of the vehicle, that
can see things no pair of
eyes on a swiveling human head
in one seat of a car
can possibly see.
What's more, these
sensors can and will
be able to see in all sorts
of conditions and situations
that we can't match
in human capability--
sensors that can see warm-bodied
deer before we do, night vision
sensors, sensors that see
better through fog and rain
than we do, all in a
vehicle with computers
that have reaction time
much better than our own.
Driverless vehicles
will be safer.
Driverless vehicles
will eventually
become nearly
impervious to accidents.
That's the hypothesis.
The road to nearly impervious
driverless vehicles
will not be without
bumps in the road.
The pathway to safer commercial
flight was a long one.
Many flapping-winged attempts
at air travel ended in failure,
and even the founding fathers of
aviation, the Wright Brothers,
experienced tragedy in their
early trials along the way.
Such hiccups along the
path of development
are often the case with any
sort of technology pioneering
that involves new forms
of mobility or large
physical structures
of some sort.
These are the risks humanity
takes to make a better world,
but in the end, we all stand
to benefit and involve.
So in closing, 38 years ago,
when I was sketching out
what a robot car might
look like in the sweltering
heat of a dining room at
my grandfather's house--
and as I think about
that, I may have actually
been hallucinating from
the heat at the time--
so I'm not sure if what
I was thinking about then
would ever translate
into something that would
become a reality some day.
And 13 years ago, when I started
to build my first driverless
vehicle--
it was for the now historic
2005 DARPA Grand Challenge Race
of Autonomous Vehicles
across the Mojave Desert--
I wasn't sure if such cars would
be hitting the public roads
anytime soon then.
That was 13 years ago.
And here we are, 13
years after that event,
with technology that
has already begun
to drive better and safer in
many situations than we can.
And we are improving
it everyday.
I've borne witness to the
doubling of improvements
every year, even
within my own company,
and technological
endeavors right here
in Charlottesville, Virginia.
And it's happening elsewhere,
in Silicon Valley, Detroit,
Pittsburgh, and
all over the world.
You're now bearing witness
to the proverbial tip
of the iceberg for a revolution
in how human beings will soon
achieve a freedom
of mobility, first
across their own local roads,
then across the country,
eventually across the
planet, and ultimately, maybe
across the universe and space.
I just think it's a
wonderful time to be alive,
and it's a wonderful
time to be participating
in this mobility
freedom revolution,
and it's particularly
wonderful to be
doing all of this within an
environment of natural beauty,
and around the inherently kind
and happy people of the city
of Charlottesville, Albemarle
county, the Commonwealth
of Virginia, and my
graduate schooling
Alma mater, the
University of Virginia.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Paul.
We're going to take a two
minute break while secretary
Jackson comes up,
and I'm going to get
started on our first panel.
KAREN JACKSON: All right,
good morning, everybody.
We're going to
kick into this just
to make sure that we
keep as close on time
and allow optimum questions.
And everybody's going
to have some questions.
I'm Karen Jackson, the
Secretary of Technology
for the Commonwealth
of Virginia.
I have been the Governor's point
person on automated systems,
actually, since 2010.
So I was in the
previous administration,
served as a Deputy Secretary,
and had the lead on it
during that tenure.
During that time, we became
one of the FAA's six test sites
for aerial drones.
We've obviously got
a very long history
in automated systems with
our military background,
as well as the smart road that
we have out at Virginia Tech.
That investment was
made over 25 years ago.
So we've been at this
a really long time.
So it's very exciting
for those of us--
I was not there when the first
investment was made at Tech.
Let me just be clear about age.
But we've all been very excited
about the economic progress
of what we've seen over
the last couple of years.
This is a
multi-multi-multimillion dollar
industry for Virginia.
Whether it's on the land,
in the air, on the sea,
this is going to be a big deal
for us for many, many decades
to come.
And we're really just starting
to scratch the surface.
We've done as best
we can to make sure
that Virginia has a very, very
policy-friendly atmosphere
for autonomy.
We've fought very,
very hard to make sure
that we don't put arduous
regulations in place.
We don't do things that
will stifle the industry.
And so far, I think
we've done pretty well.
But the fight is not over.
As advancements
continue to come,
the policy challenges are
going to continue to come.
And technology, if
you haven't noticed,
is way outstripping
in pace the ability
of our policy to keep up.
and our ability for any kind
of regulatory environment
to even start to keep
pace with what's going on.
So the first panel
that we have here today
is really going to be on the
technology side of the house.
I'm excited to have
three great panelists.
And I can tell you
that if you really
feel like you need to go back
to school, and some of you
may not be out of school
yet, try to read their bios.
Because in reading all the
accomplishments of these three
individuals that are
up here, I realize
that we've got such big
brains up here with us,
that I needed to
go back to school
and figure out
some of the things
that you guys have already done.
So thank you for being
with us here today.
I'm going to start at the end
of the table with Virginia.
Virginia Lingham is responsible
for playing an instrumental
role to help spread innovative
practice in our Virginia
Department of Transportation.
She is the Program Manager
for Autonomous Systems.
And she is a Special
Assistant to the new VDOT
Chief of Innovation She reads
a cross-functional staff,
representing the Chief
Event Information
officer, and the development,
the Oversight Coordination
and Reporting, to ensure
statewide performance
of various programs, including
Virginia Transportation
Research Council, VDOT's
Office of Strategic Technology
Programs, and VDOT's Office of
Public-Private Partnerships.
She also leads the Corporate
Consolidation, and coordination
of all connected and
autonomous vehicle
initiatives within VDOT,
under the Chief of Innovation.
Previously, Miss
Lingham supported VDOT
as its Connected and Automated
Vehicle Program Manager.
She has a long history.
She was at the Metropolitan
Transportation Commission
in the San Francisco Bay Area,
where she was the Connected
Vehicle Team Lead, and also
worked at the Wisconsin DOT.
Also joining with us
today is Cody Fleming.
He is on the Systems and
Information Engineering faculty
here at UVA since 2015.
He received his Doctoral degree
in Aeronautics and Astronautics
at MIT, where he
focused on formally
and rigorously integrating
safety analysis
into early concept development
of complex systems.
He holds a Bachelor's degree
in Mechanical Engineering
from Hope College, with
honors, and a Master's degree
in Civil Engineering from MIT.
Prior to returning to
MIT, he spent five years
working in Space
Systems Development
for various satellite
and laser projects,
specializing in
dynamics, design,
and systems integration.
Finally, and certainly
not least, is Brian Park.
Brian is an Associate Professor
of Civil and Environmental
Engineering here at the
University of Virginia.
He's a recipient of the
PTV American Best Paper
Award, Outstanding Reviewer
Award from the American
Society of Civil Engineers.
And he is Editor-in-Chief
of the International Journal
of Transportation, and Associate
Editor of This American
Society of Civil Engineers
Journal of Transportation
Engineering, and a Journal
of Intelligent Transportation
Systems, and an Editorial Board
Member of the International
Journal of Sustainable
Transportation.
He has published over 120
journals and conference
papers in the area of
transportation system
operations and managements,
and intelligent transportation
systems.
His research includes
cyberphysical systems
for transportation, connected
in an automated vehicle safety
assessment microscopic
simulation model application
and transportation
system sustainability.
Please help me join
our auspicious panel--
welcoming our auspicious panel.
[APPLAUSE]
So the question that
we're all here today
to answer is technology, how
might cars and their management
systems change over time?
And so Brian, I'm going to
turn to you first and let
you kick off the discussion.
CODY FLEMING: [INAUDIBLE].
KAREN JACKSON: Oh,
OK, so my panel
has established their own order.
And Virginia is
going to go first.
[LAUGHTER]
VIRGINIA LINGHAM: All
right, hi everyone.
Good morning.
It's a pleasure
to be here today,
to speak with this
community group
and exploring the
conversation on how we move
towards a driverless future.
I'm Virginia Lingham.
I'm the Special Assistant to
the Chief of Innovation at VDOT.
It's a new position.
And like was mentioned, I've
been Connected and Automated
Vehicle Program Manager
for about a year now.
And it's been
really encouraging,
being at VDOT and in Virginia.
Because there's just so
much activity and so much
interest in this space.
And it just makes it
a great place to work.
So I guess I want to
start off by talking
about the number-one reason
why we might be looking
at this driverless future.
And it was mentioned
earlier already.
But safety.
I mean, safety is
the biggest driver.
So many deaths and so many
injuries on our roadways
today, in our
transportation network.
So I focus more on the
connected vehicle piece of it,
and the implementation towards
that driverless future.
So you'll see in
my presentation,
I'll kind of focus
on how we're dealing
with the transition
towards driverless cars,
and the value of
connected vehicles
that we can get as we transition
into our driverless future.
So the USDOT has reports
showing that thousands of lives
can be saved with just two
simple connected vehicle
applications being
deployed across the fleet.
Just simple assistance
with intersection movement
and left-turn assistance
could save over 1,000 lives
if deployed.
And then with additional
vehicle-to-vehicle and
vehicle-to-infrastructure
applications,
as they get into
our vehicles, we'll
be able to save
more and more lives.
And up to 80% reduction
in crashes and injuries,
as the applications
are deployed.
So when we talk about driverless
cars, there's a spectrum.
So we're not going to go
straight into driverless cars.
Well, we could.
But as it rolls
out, personally, I
don't think that that's
what we're going to see.
We're going to see these
levels of automation roll
out slowly over time.
So I just want to
touch on this because I
think it's important to set
the stage for the conversation
that we're going to
have throughout the day.
It's not going to
be an instant jump
in to having your kids
in a driverless school
bus going to school.
So Level 0 is no automation.
Level 1 is something that
you might see on a car
today, with adaptive
cruise control,
or lane-keeping assist.
Level 2 would be combining
those two systems together,
as you see in some cars today
that you can buy on the lot.
Level 3, Audi
announced a car that
would be able to do
Level 3 automations.
So that's limited self-driving,
or limited automation
on certain roadways.
Level 4 is more of the whole
self-driving capabilities,
but only in certain situations,
on certain roadways,
where the driver would
still be expected
to take control of the vehicle.
And then Level 5 would be the
fully self-driving vehicle
that you just get in,
and it would take you
where you need to go, and you
don't need to interfere at all.
So at VDOT, we really
see a lot of benefit
in the concept of
connected automation.
We feel that we'll have greater
mobility benefits, greater
safety benefits, if these
self-driving cars are
connected, and they're
able to talk to each other,
and they're able to talk
to the infrastructure,
to share information, like
where potholes might be,
or icy patches, or
where a crash might be.
So we're really committed
to that concept.
And then a lot of
agencies, a lot
of even just the community
are wondering, what do we do?
How do we prepare for
our driverless future?
How do we prepare for connected
and automated vehicles?
And I really like this graphic
that the Governor's Side
Highway Safety
Association prepared.
And they said, the number
one thing is to be informed.
So attending events
like this today,
participating in webinars,
reading news articles,
just staying on top
of the conversation,
is one thing to do.
That's really important.
Second is if you're in an agency
or part of different groups,
is just to really be a player.
Be active.
Be engaged.
Number three would
be to understand
the role of the states.
Number four, which I think we're
doing a great job in Virginia,
is not to rush into passing laws
and establishing regulations
until the industry
is more understood.
And number five is
just to be flexible.
We don't really know how
this is going to roll out.
So be flexible and
be able to adapt
to new changes, new technology,
different things that
are coming our way.
So next I want to
talk a little bit
about what we're doing at
VDOT, with our Connected
and Automated Vehicle Program,
in hopes that it kind of spurs
some ideas on where we're
going, and maybe how
we could partner with you all.
So our mission, which is pretty
straightforward, but "Plan,
deliver, operate and maintain
a transportation system
that is safe, enables easy
movement of people and goods,
and enhances the economy and
improves our quality of life."
OK, that's great.
But how does it relate to
connected and automated
vehicles?
Well, we really
want to capitalize
on the safety and the
operational benefits
of these technologies.
And we want to position Virginia
as the most attractive state
to deploy, test,
operate, and evolve
connected and automated
vehicle products and services.
We see a future environment
where connected and automated
vehicle applications
provide connectivity
between the vehicles,
between roadside equipment,
and wireless devices, in order
to increase safety, improve
mobility, reduce our
infrastructure investments,
and enhance our traveler
information that's
going out to the public,
to make better decisions.
So one of the things,
if you've been listening
to others at VDOT talk about
connected and automated
vehicles is this
concept of reducing
infrastructure investments.
And our Chief Engineer has
talked a little bit about what
happens-- he's going to
just probe everybody--
if we don't have
signals anymore?
And I think that's been a
really intriguing concept,
we spend so much money
on our signal systems.
But how could we design our
roadways to not have signals?
Is that possible?
And my own professor at UC
Berkeley, Carlos Daganzo,
he recently retired.
But it took me back to
my traffic flow classes.
And I found this book that
was in a hallway at Berkeley.
And I grabbed it, because I
thought it was interesting.
And it's called Intersections
Without Traffic Signals.
And it's from proceedings from
an event back in the '80s.
But just thumbing
through it, it really
got me thinking about how
you could really design
roadways to not have signals.
So how are driverless cars able
to navigate roundabouts and J
turns, and different
things like that,
with much more reliability than
our human drivers do today?
So just kind of think about
what the options are out there.
And it's not really
clear what the steps are,
that are going to be
for the driverless cars.
But things like this, looking
to the back, looking to the past
to figure out where we're
going to go in the future,
is something that you
definitely need to keep in mind.
All right, so these
are the things
that we touched on within our
Connected and Automated Vehicle
Program.
Definitely outreach
and coordination.
Events like this, as well as
coordination within the agency,
planning for connected
and automated vehicles,
policy recommendations when
different policies come out,
we can make comments and
provide guidance on that.
We provide leadership.
Not only within VDOT, but
also on a national level,
at different
committees and forums.
And then we actually have
deployments out there
in the field too.
And I will get to one of
them in a couple slides.
And then these are
the key resources
that we see are
unique to Virginia.
And they're really demonstrated
here in Charlottesville
very well.
So VDOT owned-and-operated
roadways
is a unique feature, compared
with other places like Michigan
or California, that have more
complicated roadway ownership.
An open-for-business
regulatory environment
is really important.
We have a mature and robust
cloud-based data services.
We also have research
and testing capabilities
from universities,
like University
of Virginia, or Virginia
Tech, or ODU, or George Mason
University, a lot of different
research capabilities here.
And then local leadership
in cybersecurity
and that sort of thing.
So I just have a
couple more slides.
But I wanted to mention our
Virginia Connected Corridor.
So our Virginia Connected
Corridor was launched in 2014.
If you're interested in testing
or deploying technology,
please coordinate with us.
And we can get you access to
the Virginia Connected Corridor.
We have over 50 dedicated
short-range communication units
out there in our Northern
Virginia test bed.
Typically the technology
is tested first
in the smart road
at Virginia Tech.
And then once it's OKed,
we could install things out
there on our test bed in
Northern Virginia, which
is along 66, 495, Highway 50,
Highway 29, and State Route 7.
So I just wanted to give a
little plug for our Virginia
Connected Corridor,
and encourage,
if any entrepreneurs or
developers are in the audience,
to reach out to me,
and we can get you
more information about them.
So what's next?
It could be these
dedicated roadways
with connected, automated,
self-driving vehicles
in them, that are in an eco
lane or speed harmonized.
Maybe even charging on
the roadway as they drive.
I think that this slide is good.
Because it shows that we
will have a mixed fleet.
I think it's safe to
anticipate that we'll
have a mixed fleet
for quite a while.
So we need to plan
and anticipate that.
It could be
situations like this,
more like a campus
environment, where
you have shared automated
vehicles or pods helping
with mobility on
low-speed-type environments.
But one thing's for sure, is
that we have to remain flexible
within VDOT and within
the Commonwealth,
to be able to accommodate
whatever comes our way.
So thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
KAREN JACKSON: So
Brian's up next.
BRIAN PARK: Good morning.
It's truly an honor to be
here and share some thoughts.
A little bit of research
I'm doing at the UVA,
with great people like Cody,
and support from VDOT and FHWA.
I see the future of
driverless cars as big C word,
called Cooperative control.
If I could talk
about some details,
this is what's happening of
impact of transportation.
We spend billions of hours
on the road, waste of time.
And a study estimates every
commuter, everyday they
commute, they add up
the total time wasted
for commuting because of delay.
It adds up to about
36 to 38 hours.
So if we make roads
without congestion,
every commuter will have a one
week worth of vacation time.
We know about greenhouse
gas emissions.
And crashes are just miserable
and costing not only just
lives, all the costs
involved with it.
And then grief goes with it.
So anything we can do to
improve, safety is a big deal.
And still, we have
about 32,000 people
die of a crash on the
US highways every year.
So anything we can
do to make it safer,
as Paul clearly
mentioned in the morning,
driverless car is safer.
I'm going to show you
why, a little bit.
As I said, the big
C word, I think
the connected and
automated vehicle has
a co-operative way of doing it.
If you think about
say, traffic light.
When you are a
little bit mature,
traffic lights are
doing pre-timed.
They have a set of a time based
on historical traffic volume.
And they don't adjust based
on how many cars are coming.
And throughout
the '80s and '90s,
with the technology
development, we actually
put the sensors on the road.
We start knowing where cars are.
And most of the
intersections in the US,
over 90% of intersections
are what we call actuated.
It can do reactive way
of responding your deeds.
So at close to midnight or
very light traffic conditions,
you are the only car
approaching at the intersection.
And if you wait about
four, five, six seconds,
you'll get the
green time, knowing
that no cars are coming.
So that's great, reactive.
But it has limitations.
If you can talk to
each other, cooperation
could give you a
lot more benefit.
So the connected and automated
vehicle has an advantage.
You can automate the vehicle
knowing what's going on.
And you can also talk to other
cars and other infrastructures.
So you could
cooperatively control
I'm approaching the
intersection, give me a green,
just like those emergency
vehicles getting green time
right now.
It's doing a little bit of
a two-way communications.
So you had a great potential
to know what's going on nearby,
and also talk to each
other to make a better
cooperative control.
So this is an article back in
2004, in the Control magazine.
And this is research,
obviously, dedicated
to know how school of
fish is doing this.
And it's the whole
mathematical way of doing it.
And at the end,
to me, the answer
is if humans are not
having their own egos,
we could probably do this.
And this was proven
in, actually,
smaller city called
Christiansfeld in Denmark.
They decide to get rid of
all the signs and signals.
And people thought this
could make disaster.
But they have to actually do
some sort of an eye contact.
Hey, I'm approaching
at the intersection.
Can you wait for me?
I go first.
They show that over that
time, number of crashes
are much, much reduced.
So this cooperatively
controlling
could have a huge benefit.
So I'm going to show you a
short video clip doing this.
This was actually a movie.
A director made this to show--
maybe go about 10 seconds
later--
[MUSIC - "MR. SANDMAN"]
And it's all coordinated,
including humans, bicyclists,
cars, trucks.
And those, they could do
this cooperative control
in real world someday, not now.
So that's a potential as
Virginia had mentioned.
If we could remove
traffic lights
at every component of the
system, including bicyclists
and pedestrians, and cars
cooperatively controlled,
this could happen.
This is the research we have
done here at UVA, with the Oak
Ridge National Laboratory,
NJIT at the New Jersey,
and DGIST in South Korea.
So we developed
algorithm without egos.
Cars can communicate.
Cars can have sensors.
So they are creating conditions
of trajectory adjustment,
and make sure that when they
go through intersection,
those approach makes conflicts.
They adjust accordingly
to make this intersection
control happen.
Obviously this will give a
huge advantage of fuel savings,
travel time savings.
Get rid of those
waste of the delays.
And that could give more time
for vacations, obviously.
So it depends on a number
of cars and conditions.
But definitely over
50% reductions higher,
reductions in travel time,
greenhouse gas emissions,
and fewer consumptions.
So future with this
automated vehicle,
having communication
with each other,
with the cooperative control,
it has huge promising advantage,
compared to what we have.
As a few of the people
mentioned about will driverless
car be safer?
I think so.
Because poor lady, I think
she's just doing that.
She's not really doing
texting while driving.
Our Study shows that while
driving, you're texting,
it's three times more dangerous
than your DUI conditions.
It's basically taking your
eyes away, doing other things,
thinking different things.
Really, really dangerous.
And research done
about cause of crashes
could be possibly roads are bad.
Could be cars are not good.
And a lot of times, drivers
are not paying attention to it.
So this was a study
done back in 1979.
They have not done
it since then.
They know this is true.
Everybody agrees that 93%
of crash or similar range,
even in the current days, are
mostly due to human behavior.
You're not paying
attention to it.
That's one big cause of a crash.
So if we have a
car who they do not
need to have a driver's behavior
on response and reaction times,
we could have a lot better
or safer conditions.
Human reaction time depends
on how you are alerted,
varies from 0.56 seconds
to couple of seconds.
And that time, if you are
traveling at high speed,
there is the
potential of a crash.
But if cars can
think about itself
and controlling, especially if
they can cooperatively control,
and they can actually avoid
a lot of potential crashes.
So I definitely see, based
on the human behavior
errors and the response
times and reaction times,
driverless car
having good sensors.
While it has
errors, is obviously
vulnerable to cyber
attacks and malfunctions.
But still, better
than human drivers.
I'm going to touch on
the technology side
out driverless cars.
And you probably know
Google's driverless car.
They have a small company
to start making it now.
The technology used in this
is obviously top of the notch.
The cost of having
this sensor, it's
called a 360-degree
lighter sensor,
is probably twice as
expensive as the car itself.
So that technology is great.
And Google is doing
it for their demo,
and getting the maps around
the entire US roadways,
and testing.
Leaves a very, very long
time to make it affordable,
a person like me,
or some of you.
So Tesla has started
doing autopilot.
And their mission
is clear, that we
want to make it affordable
that can actually be used,
even nowadays.
And the autopilot
they developed is not
using $60,000 lighter sensors.
But they are using
multiple sensors,
with [? visions ?]
and radar sensors,
those are affordable prices.
And they were very clear, this
is, as I forget to mention,
that they're Level 0.25.
This is a Level 3.
The driver has to be
aware of the situation,
and ready to regain the
control if anything happens.
And some of you
might know, the crash
happened in Arizona with the
autopilot Tesla fatality.
And the person was not really
ready to gain the control,
it was determined.
So that's the technology that's
coming down to affordable,
but needs our help.
And some point,
this is a possible,
that we could have this
technology affordable level,
that can have a Level
5 control option.
And also the fuel consumption
is something that I am aware of.
By car, shows the real
time gasoline mileage.
And I often try to be
frugal or be sustainable.
And I try to reduce my
acceleration slowly,
try to do slower acceleration,
which helps of saving fewer.
And also, slowly
decelerating as well.
We were testing with
the driving simulator.
So we have an algorithm
that automated, a vehicle
can do perfect eco driving,
by talking to a traffic light.
So traffic light tells I have
a remaining time of x seconds.
And car knows where
that vehicle is.
And it can do cruising or
slightly accelerating, slightly
decelerating, and then go
through the traffic light,
without changing a
lot of accelerations
and decelerations.
We actually asked human
beings, mostly students
at UVA, 28 of them,
we guide them,
this is the best
eco-driving condition.
Try to follow that eco guidance.
And some are lousy
driver, couldn't be
worse than not giving at all.
And some are doing very well.
It all depends on
compliance of those.
So in general, we
see the potential
of saving 15% for
automated vehicle doing
perfect eco guidance following.
And 5% for human driver
getting guidance.
And we raise the
question, if there
is no eco guidance in my car,
but I'm following automated car
doing echo guidance, will I
gain benefit of eco guidance?
Yes.
If you are just
following the automated
car, based on our simulation,
you could save 6%.
So if you see automated
car, just try to follow.
And there's a joke
about when you
see an automated car, that car
has to yield to whatever I do.
So that's an opportunity
to cut into the freeway
ramps or any roadway.
And that could be possible.
But you'll lose the gain
of saving fuel condition.
This is something I am really
excited about having, speed
harmonization.
So the same idea,
automated vehicle
is doing a perfect eco guidance.
This is what we call
speed harmonization.
This may be something
not easy to understand.
But when you actually
have a freeway crash,
and it creates a
bottleneck situation,
that bottleneck
reduces capacity.
Maybe each lane can
carry about 2,000 cars.
Now you carry less
than a few hundred cars
because of a crash.
And when more cars are
coming into that area,
they are queuing, stopping.
Takes a longer time to
regain to the normal flow.
So the best option is to have
the vehicles slow down, join
in slowly, and to have a quicker
recovery from that bottleneck.
And it's been implemented
in Northern Virginia, I-66.
And you might have seen the
yellow sign of a speed limit--
we call variable speed limit--
that kind of gives
you a new speed limit.
And most people don't comply.
I trust that if
I were to comply,
that I would probably get
honking sound from the back.
So what we are
doing here, is what
if we use these connected and
automated vehicles that is
doing its own pace car impact?
they are all doing this
speed harmonization.
And they force other drivers
to follow that speed.
And this is really
happening in real world.
A place in Germany,
they actually
have shown something like, there
is a crash inside a tunnel.
And they try to deploy
three large trucks
and try to slow down people
by showing, we are pace cars.
And we are traveling
at 30 miles per hour.
So you try to make
that more effective.
So this is the idea.
Very similar to you making
pledge to a pace car.
I could not find
the one in Virginia,
unfortunately,
Commonwealth of Virginia.
I found one from Rochester.
So this is a local
community, and a speed limit
of 25 miles per hour.
If 30% of people pledge and go
with that 25 miles per hour,
they could achieve
traffic calming.
But most people, they
don't travel at 25.
They go 35 and 40.
That creates problems.
So that's end of my
expectation, that
more of these driverless
car becoming pace cars.
And we can have a much-improved
traffic operations.
That's all.
Thank you very
much for listening.
[APPLAUSE]
CODY FLEMING: All right.
So I want to talk about
three things, roughly.
First, I'm going to
assume that many of you
don't actually know
how these cars work.
So I'm going to give you
a one-minute baptism,
and just to try to
understand a little bit.
And then, of course, you can go
out and test one of these out.
And it will be roughly
doing what I show you.
The next thing I
want to talk about
is the challenges,
with respect to--
so Paul talked
about, the bar is,
are we going to let our kids
get in one of these alone?
And what are the challenges
to getting there?
And I'll really focus on
one of those challenges.
And then lastly, I want to
talk about transportation
as a service, or mobility as a
service, and what that means,
in terms of the technology.
One of my colleagues,
Donna, she's up there.
I think I see her.
She's interested in this area.
And she'll talk about it maybe
from a slightly different
perspective.
So those are three things.
That was Chris [INAUDIBLE].
He was the head of
the Google project.
This is what the car sees.
So you can see, it's trying
to classify, basically,
these purple boxes
are other cars.
Here is-- I don't know
how to pause this.
I'd like to pause this.
But this is a car sitting
at an intersection.
We see the LiDAR scan.
It has this point cloud.
And it's using algorithms
to try to figure out--
I guess someone's
pausing it for me.
That's pretty awesome.
[LAUGHTER]
Thank you, whoever you are.
Oh, hey.
So the LiDAR sensor
that Brian talked about
is generating this point cloud.
They'll have cameras.
They'll have radars, depth
sensors, inertial navigation
units.
And then on the algorithm
side, the software side,
it's trying to figure
out what's around it.
So it's classifying.
In the yellow, you
have pedestrians.
In purple, you have other cars.
Based on what it's
classifying things as,
it will try to
decide what to do.
So it might do
something different
if it sees a car
along its side, going
in the same direction, versus if
it sees a pedestrian wandering
around randomly.
And pedestrians are a
major unsolved problem
for autonomous cars.
So urban driving is going to
be a really big challenge.
It is a really big challenge.
And you can see, this is a
fairly cluttered environment
with pedestrians.
So the magic person in the sky,
if you could run this again?
[LAUGHTER]
And so you can see,
a truck goes by.
And then, based on how it's
classifying everything,
it generates this green
path, which is the trajectory
that it's going to follow.
So that's autonomous driving
101, in about one minute.
Here, you can see it
identifies a police car.
So it actually stops and
waits for other cars to go by.
Here it sees a bus.
It actually stops.
You saw the car next
to it kept going.
Autonomous cars tend
to follow the rules.
And here is a cyclist.
And it recognizes that it's
a cyclist and slows down.
Which I ride my bike around
Charlottesville, and not all
the human-driven cars
actually do that.
So I would appreciate if
the driverless cars actually
can pull that off.
So those are driverless cars.
So this is, more or less, what
the cars out in the parking lot
will be doing.
You won't be able to see
all this data, necessarily.
And they're taking in massive,
massive amounts of data,
and making fairly
complex decisions.
One of the things that's
interesting is to think about,
this is a picture, on the
right, over by the corner.
And when you're
driving, just think,
we're making so many
decisions subconsciously.
And actually, fairly complex.
And now we're asking
machines to do that.
Before we get to a
driverless future,
we still have the
opportunity to drive.
Actually think about
what you're doing.
And just navigating
this intersection,
we use a lot of nonverbal
communication, eye contact,
go ahead, go ahead.
What is that going to be
like when there's nothing
sitting there?
And again, that's a big unsolved
problem for autonomous cars,
is figuring out what
the heck people do.
Because we have egos,
like Brian said.
And we make random choices.
Here's an article that just
came out a couple weeks ago.
So GM bought a company called
Cruise, about a year ago.
And this announces
that they've come out
with the first mass
production self-driving car.
And so you might read
an article like this
and think, oh, so tomorrow I'll
be able to ride one of these
around.
When you see one
of these articles,
make sure to actually read it.
So when you read it, you see
there's still a lot of work
to be done.
And that when the software is
ready, which is saying a lot.
Because the
software's not ready.
The software is not
anywhere close to ready.
So we have questions about
how to make the sensors work
better, how to drive down
the costs of the sensors.
But in my opinion, the
big underlying challenge
is how do you make decisions
on what to do in real time?
And so with that, I'm
going to change gears
slightly, and actually
give you all a quiz.
So what is this?
What do you think this is?
AUDIENCE: Social Security.
CODY FLEMING: Social
Security number.
Whoever said that,
you get an A. So why
am I talking about a
Social Security number
in a driverless futures talk?
What is this?
AUDIENCE: A credit card.
AUDIENCE: A credit card.
BRIAN PARK: Credit card.
Good.
So you're all getting
an A. What is this?
AUDIENCE: Credit report.
CODY FLEMING: So it turns out to
be a pretty good credit report.
So is everyone familiar with
what happened-- when was this?
I lose track of time--
recently, a week ago?
AUDIENCE: Announced
two weeks ago.
it happened several months ago.
CODY FLEMING: Yeah, it
happened several months ago.
But it came out in the news.
So why am I talking about credit
and social security numbers?
Any guesses?
AUDIENCE: Hackers.
CODY FLEMING: Hackers.
So this is a big problem.
If you're going to
drive around in a car
that has a bunch of
computers running.
I don't want to freak
you out too much.
NEWSCASTER: What started as an
ordinary highway drive quickly
turned terrifying
for Andy Greenberg.
ANDY: OK.
Hold up tight.
Hold up.
NEWSCASTER: As
hackers remotely took
control of his
2014 Jeep Cherokee,
sending him into a ditch.
Greenberg, a reporter for Wired
magazine, did this on purpose,
working with cyber
security experts, hackers,
to show how some connected
cars can be vulnerable.
ANDY GREENBERG: It
ceased to be fun.
So I can only imagine,
if the same thing was
done to you without any
forewarning whatsoever, how
much fear that could instill.
CODY FLEMING: So
you can Google it.
So this is 2015.
Chrysler had a pretty big
bug in their software.
And again, no
offense to Chrysler.
Everyone's going to
have problems with this.
This is not to totally freak you
out, but to give us all pause,
and think about the fact
that you've probably all been
exposed to or know
someone who's been
exposed to cyber vulnerability.
We're doing work on
this here at UVA.
People all over the country
are doing work on this.
It's not an unsolvable problem.
But the question for this forum
is, how are the management
systems going to change?
And they're always
going to be changing.
Because there's
always going to be
challenges, with respect
to cybersecurity.
And you're going to
have to adapt to them.
And so a little bit sobering,
but exciting for us,
is people doing research.
I'm going to switch gears
again now and actually talk
about mobility as a service.
Let's see, do I have
a laser pointer here?
So here we are at Darden.
And say after this
event you want to go
have dinner downtown
at the mall.
So here's your destination.
You don't have a car.
And I just pick
randomly, Lyft and Uber.
It turns out there is a couple
people on the next panel
from Lyft and Uber.
So this is not an endorsement
of either service.
Sorry, but I actually use both.
So in a situation like this,
I would toggle back and forth
between the apps and see that
these red and orange lines mean
there's bad traffic.
Lyft would basically tell me,
in this case, these pink cars,
that I'm going to
get a ride faster.
And furthermore,
they're all here.
And these cars are just
driving through slow traffic.
So what are the
management systems
going to look like in the
future, when right now, I
get to potentially choose
between different services?
There's a possibility
of a future where
instead of owning a car,
you subscribe to a service,
just like you
subscribe to a phone.
Or you're going to
subscribe to more than one.
If you subscribe
to more than one,
how are these types
of companies going
to compete for your
market share and deal
with a situation like this?
And how would you choose?
What's a better service?
How much will you pay?
So this is an
interesting question.
Here's another question
that's related.
So say you have two
people that are starting
at roughly the same place.
So this is just north of grounds
at UVA, not too far from here.
One is trying to get
here, at the hospital.
And the other is trying
to get over to Belmont.
And you're a driver.
Say you're an Uber driver.
And currently, you
get to decide what
rights you take as a driver.
So which one would you take?
OK, former student of
mine said, it depends.
Which one would you
take, if you're a driver?
What do you suppose?
The longer one, right?
Because you get paid more.
Right.
So this guy or girl
would most likely
pick this blue one,
because they're
going to make more money.
Now, what if this is
an elderly couple who
is trying to get to a medical
appointment at the hospital,
and this is a young
person, going to have lunch
at a fancy place in Belmont?
And I'm getting a little
bit away from technology
into a policy component.
But if we're talking
about equity,
how does that get embedded
in the technology?
So you could imagine, you
have a security certificate
on your computer.
You can imagine having
a similar certificate
on your phone that
basically says,
I have to go to the hospital.
How do we decide what gets
prioritized over what?
And how does that
then get embedded in?
Instead of how are management
systems going to change?
Right now, it's a driver that
has to decide whether they're
going to accept a ride or not.
Here we have a dispatch system.
So there, if it's
driverless cars,
there's some
centralized controller
of a fleet that has to say,
Car A has to go this way.
Car B has to go this way.
Car C has to go this way.
How does that dispatch
system decide?
And how does it create
a better society for us?
Lewis mentioned that I engaged
with a couple different
stakeholders in the city.
And we engaged with
senior citizen communities
and single parents.
How does that information get
encoded in the technology,
so that these fleets of cars
are doing something that we
consider to be equitable?
And then lastly, Paul kind of
stole my thunder this morning
on this.
But what would it
take for you to put
your kids in one of these cars?
And from a technology
perspective,
how do you know that the
kid is actually in the car?
You might be able
to track the car.
Can you track the kid?
How do you match them together?
So these are open questions.
Right now, one thing
that's interesting,
if you've taken an Uber
at a big airport, there's
all these people
waiting for Uber.
And there's all these Uber
cars coming in, or Lyft, sorry.
And you're making eye contact.
And you're trying to
figure out, it's me.
It's me.
It's me.
What's that going to be
like, if there's no driver?
It'll be interesting.
So I'm looking
forward to the future.
A lot of fun, from a
research perspective.
And hopefully it will
be good for the city.
And with that, I think we're
open to questions now, right?
KAREN JACKSON: So we're going
to take a few questions here.
[APPLAUSE]
I'm going to actually lead off.
We've talked a lot about the
technology inside the cars,
on the roadways.
But part of what's driving--
no pun intended--
the conversation
is about all the data.
Because there's tons
of data collected.
They're collected on the
cars, where they are.
And if anybody's followed
any of the policy
debates in recent years
around license plate readers,
and whose property
your license plate is,
and the privacy
aspects of all this,
how do you see, first of
all, the volumes of data?
Especially for cities
and communities,
there's going to be
so much data created.
What happens with it?
Who gets access to it?
Because it's a
veritable treasure
trove of consumer-behavior-type
information.
So from the data
perspective, give us
some thoughts on how you
see that progressing what
the data gets used
for, ultimately,
and then some of the
privacy conversations
that you see coming
down the path.
And Brian, since
you're next to me,
I'm going to throw
that to you first.
BRIAN PARK: OK.
There will be tremendous
amount of data, for sure.
Because cars will
have more sensors.
It's called the ECUs.
Right now it's probably
70-ish with the advanced cars.
It could go up to
a couple hundred.
So car itself knows what's
going on everywhere.
And then conditions
that could help
to ensure safer conditions.
And then obviously, more sensors
could make it robust, in case
you have hacking on
one of the readers.
You would know easily that
that's probably bad data.
Technologies seem to
be catching up a lot,
as you can probably notice.
If you go to New
York City, there's
an old phone booth that is now
converted into Wi-Fi hotspot.
And they're putting the
Wi-Fi hotspot in the buses.
And they create a
mesh network that
could carry all the
volumes of a data network.
I forgot the exact
numbers, but it's there.
But with these driverless cars,
it's going to be tremendous.
So for now, if
you agree that you
want to take advantage
of those Wi-Fi access,
and you agree to share
your phone's GPS location
and other things,
and that possibly
will turn into the
ways of making profit.
They have to make money
to run the business.
So to me, privacy
is a big concern.
Maybe I am sort of
optimistic in a way.
If I recall, when we had
a first EZ-Pass came out.
A lot of people concerned
about Big Brother issue,
and I'm not going to use it.
But if you live in New York
area, if you don't own EZ Pass,
you are probably close to idiot.
Because you have
to wait long queue.
[LAUGHTER] That
That's a no-brainer.
My benefit overcomes
my concerns.
But still, issue of
hacking and others
are remaining to be reserved.
KAREN JACKSON: So Cody,
what are you thinking?
CODY FLEMING: Yeah.
So the privacy is
obviously a huge issue.
There's technical issues
with how much data there is.
I'm looking, staring right
at one of my colleagues
right now, who's actually an
expert in cloud-based data
management and decision making.
And so there's a lot of
active research in that area.
I'm going to actually draw
an analogy to medicine.
So one of the things is
machine-learning techniques
are going into medicine.
So the more you can learn about
the way the body responds,
the better you can decide what
to do, or adapt your plan.
The problem with that is
medical data is very sensitive.
And the more data you have
across the population,
the more you can learn,
in terms of medicine.
There's ongoing work on
privacy-preserving machine
learning and artificial
intelligence, where
you can still make decisions
based on whatever salient
features in the data, while
masking the identity that gets
shared.
And there's a lot of work
at UVA on that topic.
But I think they'll be
analogs into driving.
And you can imagine
advertisements
in the back of these cars,
that it knows who you are.
So why is this a Target ad?
I just left Target.
Just shopped at
Target two days ago.
It's a little bit creepy, right?
So a lot of challenges,
but a lot of ongoing work.
KAREN JACKSON:
Virginia, obviously
being at state level,
state agencies, DMV, VDOT,
get a lot of attention during
the legislative session,
when a lot of privacy
laws come through.
So how is your group,
your secretariat,
really looking at how to
handle this going forward?
VIRGINIA LINGHAM: I don't
know that I can speak
for the secretariat really.
[LAUGHS]
Yeah, I would defer on that.
But I think that
privacy is definitely
an issue that we need to
track and pay attention to.
I like the term
privacy by design.
So if we how we ensure
privacy by designing
the systems to maintain
the information
that they're
supposed to, and only
share the information
that has been agreed
to be acceptable to enable
the applications that people
desire, then you can
stay in a safe space.
And you stay out of trouble.
So I really like the
term privacy by design.
And I feel like 10
years ago, privacy
was even more of a concern or
a hot topic than it is today.
Our phones are tracking us 24/7.
And we agree.
We say OK to that, because of
the benefit and the convenience
it offers by giving
us personalized ads,
or giving us directions and
different things like that,
that we're able to access
through our cell phones.
So I think our cars are
going to be similar.
We'll definitely be pushing
that boundary in the next year
to five years, and seeing
where those lines are.
And there is going to be
some issues that come up.
But I think that we'll be able
to address them, and hopefully
realize some benefits
as we collect that data.
CODY FLEMING: I think another
thing that's really important
is education.
So I think we don't realize that
we're signing our lives away
when we log into our phone.
So the little window
pops up, and you just
want to get it out of the way.
And you just basically gave
up everything to Apple,
or Samsung, or whoever it is.
And I think there's not a
lot of education on that.
And so I think one
of the points of this
is to be engaged citizens.
And the costs and
benefits are explained,
and that we dig into it, and
understand that we're making
a choice with what's shared.
And we understand what
the consequences are.
KAREN JACKSON: So does
anybody in the audience
have a question?
I have a lot.
But yes, sir?
AUDIENCE: We're talking
a lot about micro issues
of privacy, interaction with a
car coming, the communications
between different cars.
But what are the implications
for national security?
What [INAUDIBLE] completely
converts to automated vehicle.
How easy would it
be to not have this?
And then to shut down,
completely, transportation,
and create huge vulnerabilities
among this country?
Or anywhere?
KAREN JACKSON: OK.
That's a macro question
I'm going to liken it
to the electrical grid.
I think we have systems that are
like that in place right now,
the financial systems.
First of all, I think
we're a lot of years
off before we hit that level.
But there are groups that
spend day in, day out,
doing nothing but securing
those types of applications.
And the nice thing is that
the security technologies
are advancing, as
are the policies,
in a way that I think eventually
we'll be able to stabilize it.
Right now, we don't
think a lot about hacking
the electric grid.
I mean, we do, people
that wake up every day
and spend a lot of time
thinking about that.
But it becomes an inherent part
of the day-to-day operations,
where it's not right now.
I think we've hit on
the vulnerabilities.
There was a team here.
And we took a very long
walk off a very thin limb
several years ago.
And we actually had a
team led by somebody
here at UVA that hacked a
Virginia State Police car.
If you want to ever put
your career in danger,
put yourself out
as somebody that's
going to go down that path.
A couple of days before the
event, it was a Ford Crown Vic.
Standard old issue
State Police car.
We actually got a
thank you from Ford,
for actually taking this on,
and opening up the conversation
about vulnerabilities.
And their take on it
was, the more people
we get thinking
about it earlier,
the better their solutions will
be by the time it's necessary.
So I'm confident that
people are securing things,
like our financial systems
and our electric grid,
from a macro standpoint.
And I think by the time
we get the transportation
system to that point, there will
be equal attention and security
placed on that.
I'm just going to throw
that out as an opinion,
a personal opinion.
But if anybody else would like
to throw in, please feel free.
CODY FLEMING: So that's
of great concern.
But to me, that's more of a
policy or public consensus.
There is a research
done in the area that
demonstrates the concerns
or dangerous situations
with those.
Let me give you one example,
that House and Senate,
US Congress is allowing to have
automated vehicle on the road.
They decided to exclude trucks
having over 10,000 pounds.
If you think about
this, what they call it,
Cooperative Adaptive
Cruise Control System,
it has many, many challenges.
We have seen demos
of same vehicles
doing nice, platooning all
the vehicles and moving.
But if you have a trucks doing
it, because of its weight,
the consequences of it
is a much, much bigger.
And also, having different
weights in the same car
could be a challenge to fine
tuning, to make it work,
and vulnerable to cyber
attacks and others,
even though the
benefits are very large.
Trucking companies are pushing
that when they do platooning,
they save 20% of a fuel
zone following cars.
And also with
automated truckings,
They can save a lot
on the time that they
have to wait and
rest at the places
on the interstate highways.
But still, we are conscious
about the dangers.
So try to slow down and make
sure that technology catches up
to allow it.
KAREN JACKSON:
Virginia, did you have
anything you wanted to add?
OK, we had one down here.
Mr. Mayor, I'll get back to you.
AUDIENCE: There's been a lot
of discussion in the media
lately about the moral and
ethical decision making,
and how well a
computer will decide
who to kill, basically, right?
If it has an infinite
number of options,
but if all the top
options are bad,
how will it choose
the least-bad option?
Hit the pedestrian, hit the
school bus, go off the cliff?
But what are your
thoughts on that?
KAREN JACKSON: Who wants to go?
CODY FLEMING: Yeah, so those are
really interesting questions.
So one thing is,
how do you decide?
We don't, right?
It's like, holy crap, I'm
about to hit something.
And you just-- whatever
happens, right?
And a lot of the autonomous
cars now are trained on data.
So they're so-called
artificial intelligence.
So they're trained
based on a data set,
that whoever the designers
are thinks are fit.
This is roughly how we think
the thing should behave.
And so in some ways,
it's up to whatever
data set that you're
training it on
to be representative of
whatever ethical consideration.
So I'm not absolving
the technologists,
just this is a technology panel.
Maybe you can ask one
of the next panels.
It's an ethical thing.
But we don't generally
make ethical choices
when we're getting in accidents.
So I wouldn't even know what the
data set should be that we're
training these systems on.
AUDIENCE: I know one thing they
talked about now, from a safety
perspective, at least in this
area, is hitting a deer, right?
And most people, oftentimes,
swerve to avoid the deer.
Because they are
making that decisions.
So I want to kill this
deer and hurt my car,
but then they swerve into
a stand of trees, right?
So I think it's a
similar discussion again.
But hit a pedestrian that's
standing in front of me,
or go into oncoming traffic.
That mind must be able
to make it, quick.
And then, how do I program
that into my setting priority
list, that says, here's
the least amount of damage.
BRIAN PARK: If I may?
So great question.
But one thing
technology might help
is looking at this as a cyber
fiscal system environment.
So if we have
internet of things,
everyone communicates
with each other.
Not for deer, but
possibly later.
We know that there is a Car A,
Car B, pedestrians, see these.
And they are all possibly
cooperatively cyberly
connected.
And we detect those in advance,
try to avoid those conditions.
in the physical world.
So we'll reduce
those possibilities
with the technology.
KAREN JACKSON: All
right, we're going
to take one last question,
Mr. Mayor, because we're
running out of time here.
AUDIENCE: So practical question.
We see all these stories
about driverless cars
in deployment in this area.
This Northern area, it's
driving in the country.
What's happening with all these
systems that are unfiinished?
Are they being
operated manually?
is there not any systems?
What's actually happening
there on the roads,
whether it's in Detroit or
San Francisco, or Washington.
Or if you go in
Northern Virginia,
I've heard all these stories.
KAREN JACKSON: Virginia?
VIRGINIA LINGHAM: I'll.
just take a stab at that.
But they're testing.
You know?
They're gathering data.
Testbeds are popping up
all over the country.
Someone mentioned
cruise automation.
Cruise automation
does have the vehicles
running around San Francisco, at
this time, driving driverless.
But they're collecting
all of the data
so that they can refine
their decision-making systems
that are in the vehicles to
be more production ready.
So we're seeing more
and more prototype.
Prototypes are advancing
for some driverless vehicles
and other connected-vehicle-type
applications.
So they're not quite
production-ready yet.
Someone mentioned self-driving
adaptive cruise control
for trucks.
So that is nearly
commercially ready.
But they're still
gathering data,
still figuring out what their
different use cases are,
before they feel
comfortable, and before it's
OK to put it out on the road.
So that's kind of
where we're at.
We're nearing that
operational phase,
as we're wrapping
up the research
phase on some
products, while others
are more early in their
production schedule.
CODY FLEMING: And just
to close the loop,
literally what's happening, is
there has to be a human driver.
And the second
they hit the brake,
or grab onto the
steering wheel, the logic
is designed such
that it shuts off.
So when you go out there
today and take a ride,
there'll be a person
sitting there,
able to take over the car.
Maybe that's what
you're wondering too.
Yeah, there's an
interesting experiment now,
going on at Virginia
Tech, where a guy actually
wears the seat
cover over himself,
just to see how people
react to it if there's
nobody in the car.
But technologically,
we're not there yet.
KAREN JACKSON: OK.
Well, let's thank our
panelists one last time.
[APPLAUSE]
And according to
the schedule, we're
due to be back here with the
next panel in about 10 minutes.
So take a quick break.
And we'll be back in
just a few minutes.
[SIDE CONVERSATION]
All right, if we can get
everybody to take their seats,
please.
All right.
So thank you for
hanging in here.
We are going to get started.
The next panel is actually
a very interesting one,
not that the first
one wasn't, gentlemen.
I didn't mean anything by that.
But this one is a little more
near and dear to my heart
because it has to do with
economic development.
We're seeing, as time progresses
and technology progresses
and innovations whoops
in, new business models,
business models that we
never even anticipated.
We were talking
about transportation
as a service earlier
in the previous panel.
And so we really
are seeing not only
a morphing of the
technologies themselves,
but also the
business environment.
The whole ecosystem, the
whole consumer market
is starting to look
very, very differently
than what we saw before.
So with this panel, I
think we outed earlier
that we do have a
couple representatives
from a couple of the major
new business model companies
that are out there--
Uber and Lyft.
And so what I would like
to do is just give some
quick introductions.
And then get right
into the conversation
because I think this one is
going to be very interesting.
From a consumer standpoint, all
of you are consumers, as am I.
And we're going to see a
lot of shifts in the market.
But for Virginia,
autonomy generally
is estimated to be a $270
million market by 2020.
That is not chump
change for a state.
That is a significant
economic development driver.
And so I'm very interested
to hear their perspectives
on where they see things going
and how, particularly, Virginia
can take advantage of that.
So with that, I'm going
to introduce first,
we have David Strickland.
The Honorable David
Strickland is currently
a partner at the national
law firm of Venable, LLP
and counsel to the Self-driving
Coalition for Safer Streets.
He served as the 14th
administrator of the National
Highway Traffic
Safety Administration
from 2010 through 2014.
And during his tenure,
he oversaw the creation
of the first national fuel
economy program in conjunction
with the EPA, the launching
of the safety pilot
for the vehicle to
vehicle communications
program for the USDOT, and
issued the first statement
of policy regarding the
testing of automated systems
on public roads.
Prior to his appointment
to the NHTSA,
Mr. Strickland served as a
senior counsel to the US Senate
Commerce Committee where he
was responsible for the staff
oversight to the Federal
Trade Commission, the Consumer
Product Safety Commission, and
the NHTSA from 2001 to 2009.
Also with us today is Rob Grant.
Rob is the senior director
of public policy at Lyft
where he spearheads Lyft's
legislative and policy
priorities throughout
the US and abroad,
including on
autonomous vehicles.
He previously worked
at the US Senate
in the Federal Housing
Finance Agency.
In his 10 years in the Senate,
Rob played an integral role
in addressing some of the
most complex issues faced
by the Senate Banking
and Judiciary Committees,
including the Dodd-Frank Act.
Rob earned his BA from UVA--
welcome home-- and his JD
from Tulane University School
of Law.
He lives in Reston with his
wife, Colleen, four sons,
and their Irish Setter, Rosie.
Finally, we have
with us Colin Tooze,
who is the director of public
affairs for Uber Technologies.
In that capacity, here
oversees Uber's public policy
and communications initiatives
for over 50 markets
in the southeastern
United States.
Before joining Uber's
public affairs team,
Colin served as the director
of government and corporate
affairs for the online
travel company Expedia, Inc.
Colin studied English literature
at the University of Richmond.
We have a spider in the house.
And is a 2002 graduate of
the Notre Dame Law School.
So join me in welcoming
our new panel members.
[APPLAUSE]
And I think I actually got my
act together on this panel.
And our lead off speaker
is going to be Colin.
So Colin, it's all yours.
COLIN TOOZE: Thank
you and good morning.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor
and Madam Secretary
and all of the conference
organizers for having us
this morning.
I'm excited to
share Uber's vision
for self-driving
technology this morning.
But I wanted to anchor it,
yes, in economic development,
but also in Uber's broader
vision for the future
of urban mobility.
How all of us and
future generations
are going to move
around the cities
they live in, which we think has
very significant implications
for economic
development, but also
for how we can cut
congestion, pollution,
and parking while improving
access to transportation,
and all by using private
cars for public good.
And I'll share my
thoughts on how
we can use new technology
and today's infrastructure
in order to get there.
But before we get to
all of that, let's
just talk about the car.
So it's easy to
demonize the car.
There are over 1.2 billion
cars in the world today.
That's more cars
than the populations
of the US and Europe combined.
The problem isn't so much
that these cars exist.
It's how we use them, which
is mostly individually.
I drove here myself
this morning.
I know David it.
I think Rob did.
Probably many of
you did as well.
And the next time you're
at a stoplight, just
take a look around.
Whatever city you're in
the US, if you look around,
you'll see most people
sitting in their cars which
can seat four people or six or
eight, and they'll be alone.
So we say when you drive
alone you're in good company.
Of course, all of this
individual car ownership
comes at a considerable
public cost.
In LA, where I was last
weekend, anyone who's been there
knows that traffic is
horrendous, so horrendous
that people waste two working
weeks per year just sitting
in traffic in LA.
I was recently in Mexico
City where the problem
is more than twice as bad--
five working weeks per year
per commuter just sitting
in traffic.
And that comes, of course,
with a whole load of stress
that no one needs.
And what's more and more
serious is congestion increases
pollution.
And so today, 22%
of all CO2 emissions
globally come from cars.
Sadly, though, that's
just 5% of the problem
because our cars sit
idle 95% of the time
when we're not using them.
And as a result, up
to a fifth of land
in our cities in this
country are dedicated just
to storing these hunks of steel,
not homes, not schools, not
parks, not affordable housing,
but parking lots and parking
spots in our cities.
In the US, there are eight
parking spaces for every car.
And if you add that up,
that's 12 times the area
of New York City.
So there's a tremendous
opportunity cost to parking.
And it's just not
something we really
measure or talk about that often
in making planning decisions.
This is space that
could otherwise be used
for a host of other purposes.
Maybe parking is
the best use of it,
but we should entertain the
question and engage with it.
And really, this is one
of the animating features
of how we design cities today.
And so people are pushed
into car ownership
by design, by urban design.
And even in a city like New York
that has a great public transit
network, the subway isn't able
to reach everyone's front door.
2.7 million cars reach
Manhattan every day.
And the haphazard nature of
the transportation system
and the way it's been
designed over time
means that far too many
people today really
have no choice but to
drive their own cars
to get where they need to be.
And this is especially
true, unfortunately,
for people with lower
incomes because it's
expensive to live next
to public transit.
Research by the
Brookings Institution
has found that 30%
of jobs in the US,
if they were to be
reached by transit,
would require a
90 minute commute.
And that's not realistic
for some people.
So for some people, the best
option is to buy their own car
and drive it.
And once you're a family who
owns a car with all the costs
that go along with that--
storing it, insuring
it, repairing it--
you tend to keep using it.
To be honest, when our
founders started Uber,
they weren't thinking
about any of these things.
They were just
excited about the idea
that you could push a
button on your phone
and have a car show up.
But once Uber got
going, once ride-sharing
as an industry took
off, we realized
there are a whole host of really
interesting societal questions
in the background.
And as we reflected on this,
it became apparent to us
that transportation
today is inefficient.
It's really insufficient
to meet people's needs.
And it's also
unequal in many ways.
But there's good news here.
And the good news
is that there is
an alternative to
a world that looks
like a parking lot and
moves like a traffic jam.
It's a world where more people
share rides, more people choose
public transit because
it's available to them.
And you know, I
think the question,
and what we're all here
to talk about today,
is how do cities get from where
we are today to that future?
And we think, at Uber,
that the answer in part
depends on providing affordable
and reliable alternatives
to individual car ownership.
So let's start with
reliability, the first piece
of that question.
In LA, which is an area
of over 100 square miles,
Uber today is able to reach
all corners of the city.
You're never more than
a 10 minute wait away
from a car that can take
you where you need to be.
And it's the same
thing in Paris,
which is very differently
configured city.
But as we've grown to reach
all parts of the city,
particularly using technology
that powers dynamic pricing,
we're able to make sure that
even after a big soccer match
or even on a rainy night people
are able to get a car quickly
and easily.
And in fact, Uber's busiest
hours, our rush hour,
tends to be late at night
precisely when it's the hardest
to find another form
of transportation.
The subway might be closed,
if you're in DC, for example.
It can be hard to get
a taxi late at night.
And this is exactly
when a lot of people
just shouldn't be behind
the wheel of a car.
And this points to
a nice side effect,
which is the impact of
ride-sharing on reducing DUI
related fatalities.
Right here in Virginia,
Secretary Holcomb, the DMV
commissioner,
announced last year
that year on year in the two
years since Uber and Lyft
started operating
in Virginia, there
had been a 56% reduction in
alcohol related fatalities.
So there's a real
impact here that
can be pretty exciting
at a broader scale.
So as we've said, it
doesn't matter who you are
or what part of the city
you're starting from,
what part of the
city you're going to,
you can always get there.
And that's true even in New
York where, as we've grown,
and it's now the
case that you're
likely to find a ride
in the outer boroughs
as you are in midtown
Manhattan, where historically
the taxis have been most
densely concentrated
and where the subway
network is also densest.
And this really matters
to people's lives
because studies have shown
that access to transportation
is the single biggest factor
in giving people an opportunity
to escape poverty.
And if your train
or your subway just
can't get you all the
way home, then we're
able to fill in that last
mile gap, even late at night.
And so by complementing
mass transit systems,
we're able to extend their
reach at no extra cost
to the taxpayer.
So we've talked about
reliability, but what
about affordability?
Policymakers have been talking
about carpooling for years,
since World War II.
And then, again, it
kind of flared up
as an attractive option during
the fuel crisis in the 70s,
but it never really took off.
At its peak, about 20% of
Americans were carpooling.
Today, that's less than 10%.
And the reason is that it's just
hard to design a system that
can really break through.
We're getting into this area.
A few years ago, our
engineers discovered
as they looked at patterns
that a lot of trips in cities
looked the same.
They were starting from
roughly the same part
of the city going roughly to
the same part of the city.
And so the insight
that our engineers had
is if we can use
mobile technology
to match those trips
up in real time
and put two people
in the same car
or three people in
the same car, then you
have one driver who's
happy because he's
got less time waiting in
between trips for a ride.
Passengers are happy
because the cost of the trip
can be reduced.
And hopefully, city
leaders are also
happy because we're using one
car to accomplish what it would
normally take two or three
cars to achieve and take cars
off the streets.
But the question was, will
people really do this?
Will people really share a ride
with a stranger for a discount?
And it turns out the answer
was a resounding yes.
And in the cities where we
offer this option, which
we call Uber Pool, 20%
of passengers on average
are choosing to
share their ride.
And on this slide here, you
see San Francisco on the left
is a representation
of what traffic would
look like if all Uber
passengers at that moment
were taking an Uber trip alone.
And then on the right
is the same density
with Uber Pool trips.
And then as an extension
of that idea right now,
in Northern Virginia we're
doing a commute pilot
where we're making it easier
for people who normally drive
themselves to work
to share their ride
with a coworker or a neighbor.
They can get reimbursed for
part of the cost of that ride.
And we'll see where that goes.
The attractive feature
there is that both sides
can get access to
HOV lanes as a result
and maybe make their commute
a little quicker and easier.
More good news-- we're
already seeing attitudes
to car ownership change.
And today, 10% of
Uber riders under 30
say that because they
have another option
available to them, they are
either no longer planning
to buy a car, or
they've given up the car
that they used to own.
So if you have a child
or a niece or nephew
under 10 years old today,
what are the chances
really that the
first thing they're
going to want to do when
they turn 16 is run out
and get a driver's
license as I did?
I couldn't wait to start
driving when I have 16.
My wife's a high school
teacher in Falls Church,
and she says it's just a
different attitude today.
It's no longer an aspiration
to own a car in the same way it
was in the 70s or 80s or 90s.
And really, this is just
starting to take hold.
Today, 4% or so
of miles globally
are ride-sharing miles.
But Morgan Stanley estimates
that by 2030, that'll
be closer to 25%.
So just imagine the
sort of societal impact
of people's habits changing in
such a dramatic way so quickly.
So that's sort of the Uber
piece of it before self-driving.
So we're excited about
those possibilities.
Sorry.
I'm just trying to
start this video.
We're excited about
the possibilities.
Sorry.
In the booth, are we
able to start that video?
OK.
Well, we can wait on this.
But here's a close up of
one of our self-driven cars
currently on the
streets in Pittsburgh.
Today, if you show up in
Pittsburgh or in Tempe, Arizona
you can request an Uber.
And you could
potentially be matched
with a self-driving Uber.
And you have a sort of
face to face encounter
with this technology.
And I know there are some
demo trips going on today
with another company's cars.
The success of these
cars will, of course,
depend on technology.
In its very early
days, the cars today
struggle with bad weather.
Sometimes there are moments
where they're confused,
like if there's a FedEx truck
that's double parked in front
of the car, it'll just wait.
And there are other
situations like that
that make it necessary to
have what we call a safety
driver in the front seat
who's available to take over
if the car becomes confused, or
if something unusual happens.
And over time, that
necessity will go away.
But what we're excited
about are statistics
like those from
the OECD that show
that a shared self-driving
network that's used by people
and embraced on a
widespread scale
could reduce the number of cars
on the road by 90% or more.
And with that, our cities would
really become unrecognizable.
With so much of the stress
and so much of the costs that
we associate with city
life today just gone.
So we think that the places
that embrace ride-sharing today
and encourage people
through incentives to share
their rides with a
neighbor or a friend
will make cities more
ready for a future
where self-driving
cars are a bigger
part of the
transportation landscape.
So while this
technology advances,
we just need to get people
used to changing their habits,
not through coercion, but by
providing an option that's
superior so that
people choose it
instead of choosing to own
and drive a car themselves.
And really, that's our
hope for the future
is that cities of
tomorrow will be greener.
They'll be cleaner.
They'll be easier to get around.
And they'll serve all people
in the city in a way that's
not possible today.
Mass urbanization is
one of the defining
features of this generation.
And there's so much that's great
about living in a city today.
But we think with the embrace of
shared modes of transportation,
a better future is
within our grasp
where, again, more
people have access
to affordable
transportation where
they spend less of their
income on this inefficient way
of moving around cities
and less time spent
behind the wheel, where cities
are less congested, less
polluted.
And what we use today for
parking lots and parking spots
can be used for affordable
housing or parks or schools
or other productive uses.
So thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
KAREN JACKSON: Thanks, so David.
DAVID STRICKLAND: Thank
you, Madam Secretary.
And good morning, everybody.
There's a number of
things that we've all
talked about for folks that are
working in transportation today
and especially for the
hope of self-driving.
I know the technology
panel touched
on a couple of these
massive benefits.
First, I have some
bad news about what's
going on in terms of
traffic crashes in America.
We lost 35,092 people in
2015 IN traffic crashes.
That was a 7.2%
increase over 2014.
It's looking like in
2016 we're probably
going to be looking almost
at a 10% increase year
by year in traffic
crash fatalities again.
So after about 50 years
of general success
in reducing fatalities
because of a number of efforts
on the part of the federal
government, state governments,
state police departments,
working on behavior,
manufacturers building
better vehicles that
are more crash worthy, i.e.
they survive a crash
better when a crash happens
protecting the
occupants and other road
users in a number of ways.
We are seeing a retrenchment
in terms of what we've seen
has been incredibly
tragic for a long time.
And people don't really
think about how many people
we lose to traffic crash
fatalities in total.
But it is one of our
largest public health issues
that we've had in America
for the incredibly long time.
It's usually approximately
in the top 10
of how people die in America.
Good news is the
numbers of reductions
have pushed it down so much, but
there's a little more bad news,
the opioid crisis actually
is now, unfortunately,
killing more people.
But this shows you
that the number
of people that are
affected by this
is an incredibly important.
And about and around that,
there's also $850 billion
in economic loss
because these crashes,
not only just with fatalities,
but property loss, congestion,
all these things that
are sort of wrapped in.
So thinking about
the intersection
of how this technology
for self-driving
can address traffic crash
is incredibly important.
And the reason
why, and I believe
it was mentioned in the last
panel, about 94% of all crashes
have an element of human error.
Which is if we get people
that are driving drowsy,
that are driving impaired,
that are driving distracted,
that are regressive,
that are speeding,
if we think about all of
these, frankly, risk factors
that we all face
on a daily basis,
and we pull that out of the
transportation ecosystem,
not only sort of our
societal benefits increase,
frankly, our economic
benefits increase.
And that's what I'm going to
talk a little bit about today.
And why there's so many
companies like Lyft,
like Uber, a number of the
original manufacturers, i.e.
the car companies, have
leaned in so heavily
to this anticipated prospect.
And why it's our opportunity
to really address
the future transportation,
and frankly,
the future of livable
communities in America.
With that, while there's huge
benefits, which frankly should
be the top priority, we can't
take our eye off the fact
that there are going to
be some changes in how
our economy works with
this type of technology.
And I don't think
anybody is going to say
that this is not a small feat.
I work with Uber
and Lyft every day.
The other members of the
coalition that I support
includes Waymo, which is
Google's self-driving program,
Ford Motor Company
and Volvo cars.
We all recognize the
question about what
happens when you have
vehicles drive themselves.
What does this
look like in terms
of not only the livery trades,
taxi drivers, truck drivers, et
cetera, but what are the
opportunities of growth
in terms of being able to
move resources and provide
transportation in
a different way?
How do we think
about if there is
going to be some level of
disruption which we nobody
really knows or quantifies?
How do we think about
having a smoother transition
than frankly the typical
disruption that we've
seen over the centuries?
When you had the
horseless carriage
displace horse carriages and
stables and all the things
that were impacted.
We think about the turn
of the 20th century.
Or you think about a
lot of these other types
of disruptions
which have happened,
and the economy
has absorbed them.
But I think everybody sort
of looks at these issues.
And how do we do that better?
And for us, collectively,
folks in working
in the policy space here
trying to address this
is an incredibly
important issue.
First and foremost, I will say
that the data is unclear as
to how the economy
and job impact
picture is going to look.
It's very fuzzy.
We don't know.
Because at the point
is that while there
is a number of business
models, including
two that are represented
at this table,
and there's a number of
others that are out there that
have widely different models
on how they're going to provide
services and transportation,
nobody can say,
absolutely, there's going to be
this massive amount of growth.
And there's not going
to be any transition.
Or if those that
are thinking that,
yes, there is going to be
significant disruption.
And we're going to
have to think about
how do we move these
other human capital
resources to other areas.
Nobody really knows.
And the data is bad.
And so I'm just going to
be honest with everyone
in this room about this.
But with that being
said, this isn't an issue
where we think of this as there
is only going to be negative
and there's no positive.
My feeling is from a
number of situations,
especially in the
technology space.
I think that we have
a number of things
to point to where I
think that we are going
to have tremendous
positive upside as we think
about self-driving ecosystems
being more integrated
in what we do.
A sort of a classic
example in this space
is automatic teller machines.
I know a lot of folks have
sort of worked on this issue
and talked about this
as a business case.
Everybody thought
with ATMs there
was going to be a massive
reduction in bank teller jobs.
[INAUDIBLE] time when people
thought bank tellers did
was distribute hard cash.
If you have machines doing it
automatically at several points
in the city that are
outside of physical banks,
what are you going to do
with all the bank tellers?
The interesting
thing that happened
with ATMs and the use
of ATMs, it actually
spurred a huge push of growth
for actual physical bank
locations that actually
hired more tellers.
Why?
When you got rid of the rote
task of counting out money
to people, they were
able to sell and provide
different services, which
actually made physical branch
locations more effective
and more profitable.
And therefore, had a tremendous
increase in bank-telling jobs.
One example.
I'm sure there's others who
could talk about other ways
at impact.
But if you think about the
model of how self-driving
could impact the
ecosystem economically,
thinking about automated vehicle
technicians, data analysis,
other pipelines of opportunities
for folks that are working
in the trades in addition to
numbers of business models
that'll grow around self-driving
in terms of not only location,
but service provision,
beyond driving things.
It really is a
wide open question
that we to look and to embrace.
Second, how are we
going to get these folks
to be able to participate in
the self-driving revolution?
Clearly, institutions like
the University of Virginia
and frankly a number
of other institutions
around the country,
frankly around the world,
are generally scholars right now
at the technical and the policy
levels to deal with this.
But we're going to be
needing, frankly, more
support and more pipelines from
a lot of other institutions
that are not traditional
four-year institutions.
We're going to
need trade schools.
We're going to need
institutions that
are going to do
technical training
on electrical engineering
and software and computing.
And there is going to be a
huge growth at that thinking
about this transformation.
And so how do we, once
again, prepare and think
about supporting,
which is already
a shortfall in a
number of these trades
already in the United
States and working
on these issues, how do
we build for the future
so that we have a
workforce that is not only
meeting but exceeding
the needs of building,
frankly, this new ecosystem,
this new structure.
More specifically on
the livery trades,
the one thing that
folks are talking about,
which I know that Uber is
involved with specifically
in medium duty and
heavy duty trucking,
is what you do about
long haul trucking?
I will say that long
haul trucking is probably
the one occupation that
probably benefits the most
from some levels of automation.
It's hard work.
It is really dependent
upon the physicality
and the attentiveness
of a driver
that, frankly,
there's been wrestling
with at the state and
federal level of how
do you improve driver safety.
How do you make sure that
drivers are fit for service?
How do you make sure that
hours of service laws
are being complied with?
How do you deal with
all these issues
which, frankly, increase
the risk of every road user
if you have a truck driver
that isn't maintaining
a careful execution
of the driving task.
On the flip side of
it is that if you
have an automated
driving system,
you're impacting a profession
of approximately 220,000 drivers
today.
And on medium duty, probably
about 80,000 drivers.
And what do you do about
these folks in these trades?
One answer, which is
really the underlining one,
it's a profession that is
under actually extreme levels
of stress because they can't
get enough drivers anymore.
Young people, millennials
aren't interested in being
in a truck driving
across country.
They're just not.
They're not interested
in driving locally.
Right?
That's what we've been
hearing from folks.
Thinking about why they're not
entering this line of trade.
There's approximately a
shortfall of about 50,000 truck
drivers in America today.
If you guys have satellite
radio, a number of the stations
you're hearing
constant repeated ads
about truck driving companies
trying to hire drivers.
That's why.
It's a huge competitive space.
Automation can help
fill that shortfall.
So while you're dealing with
the situation of not having
enough drivers, you can have
some level automation help
fill that gap and
continue having
commerce continue to move
across country by over the road
trucks.
Second, I think what a lot of
folks, including the trucking
trades, the professional
trades and truck companies
are talking about
now, you may not ever
have an opportunity to really
have a heavy duty truck being
completely without a
driver because there's
about nine or 10 different
agencies that oversee trucking
in the United States at the
federal and state level, which
have different obligations which
really can't be purely handed
over to a machine.
Second, the notion
of being aware
about a possible
weaponization of the vehicle.
If you have a human driver
there in the cockpit,
they can be have
situational awareness.
They could communicate
and have some assurances
beyond what could be hit on by
machine at this point in time.
So there's a number of areas
I think that are of concern,
and we should talk about them.
But the trucking
industry probably
is really going to be
able to be supported
by increased automation to help
support the driving task more
so than there being a
complete substitution
in this particular space.
And lastly, in terms of
economic opportunity,
is what I don't think
we talk about enough.
And it's really hard to because
it's fairly abstract unless you
have members of the certain
community speak for themselves.
But it's the limitation
of transportation choices
for the disabled and
limitation of transportation
the choices for seniors.
Specifically for
the disabled, you're
talking about a
population of about 25
to 30 million people
that have, frankly,
because of these
limited transportation
choices also have limited
opportunities to participate
fully in the workforce.
So when you have these
choices or these opportunities
for individual mobility
for the disabled,
you now are unleashing
a whole group of people
to be able to participate
more fully in our economy.
Which is going to, frankly,
have tremendous benefits
in terms of underutilized human
capital, which we have not
been able to unleash despite
our best attempts at trying.
But it really is going to
be the opportunity for us
to be able to expand the
notion of how we could better
integrate all aspects
of our society
because we'll have
greater and more flexible
transportation
choices, which then
engenders levels of growth.
Also for the
opportunities for seniors
to be able to have individual
mobility as opposed to relying
upon what transportation
access programs in communities
which are hard to schedule.
It's hard to
anticipate your needs
for day 48 hours
in advance of when
you might need transportation.
You could actually have two
companies like Lyft and Uber
be able to say at some
point in the future
a person who is limited
by frailty and fragility,
they can get on-demand
transportation within a very
short period of time, as
opposed to 48 hours in advance.
Which means they can
participate more fully
in going shopping, going to
the doctor, going to the bank.
Once again, which also
has heightened aspects
of service and for growth.
So while, yes, there is a
number of questions and issues
about what does
self-driving mean
for the economy writ large?
And there's tons of
questions about that.
I think that our
opportunities before us
thinking about saving lives and
saving those economic burdens
because of loss of life and
loss of productivity because
of crashes all the way down
to creating new markets,
I think that self-driving
as a technological pathway
engenders tremendous hope
and growth for all of us,
whether you're here
in Charlottesville
or you're anywhere in the
United States of America.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
KAREN JACKSON: All
right, Rob, you've
got the anchor slot here.
ROB GRANT: Well, good morning.
Wah-hoo-wah.
I'm a proud UVA graduate.
I'm happy to be here.
I want to thank the mayor and
the city of Charlottesville,
the university, Perrone
Robotics, and the Commonwealth
for putting this together.
My father used to say better to
keep your mouth shut and have
people think you're
a fool than open it
and convince them of that.
So I'll try to be brief,
probably to save myself.
I think where to
start on this, there's
been a lot said about
the macroeconomics
by both David and Colin.
What I'd like to
start with is what's
happening right here in
Charlottesville for Lyft.
Hopefully, everyone
is familiar with Lyft.
We're a ridesharing
application, fastest growing one
in the United States, trying
to catch up with another four
letter person in the space.
But here in
Charlottesville, we've
been operating for
about five months.
We have 1,000 or so drivers.
We're giving thousands
of rides a week.
And what does that mean for
the city of Charlottesville?
Well, our studies
show internally
on cities of like sizes
that when people use Lyft
they stay out more.
They spend more in
their communities.
They spend more at
local businesses
in their communities.
They spend more time
eating out, going shopping,
taking their kids around.
So for the consumers,
they're using
it to spend money right
here in Charlottesville,
which is great.
For the drivers, these are
all folks that live and reside
in Albarmarble County.
And they're making
supplemental income right here
and keeping that
money here and helping
them spend money in this city.
And most of our
drivers are part-time.
80% of them drive 10
hours or less a week.
They're using it to either
supplement existing work,
to spend money to
cover unexpected bills,
to pay down their car payments.
When I was here last, which was
in June for my 20th reunion,
I took Lyft all over the place.
And I'm always
talking to my drivers.
And one of them
was a med student
helping to pay down their
medical school bills
while they were in school.
Another was a retiree who
just told me he got lonely.
He wanted to meet some people.
And he liked the people in the
community that he drove around.
So I think where I'm
starting with that
is that from both the city
side, from the consumer side,
and from the driver side there's
real benefits to ridesharing
as it is now.
And where does this all go
in a self-driving future?
I think what a
self-driving future
means for something, a city
the size of Charlottesville,
is more economic opportunity.
I think one of the
professors here before,
a tall, handsome
guy with a beard,
I can't remember his name.
Cody?
He was saying
transportation as a service.
He took kind of some of
my thunder about hey,
we could have Lyft
as $8 a month.
You could get Lyft as
a subscription service.
And you could take
it wherever you want
in the city of Charlottesville.
Imagine having that
access to transportation
at that cheap of a price?
That opens up your ability
to spend more time purchasing
things from the fine folks,
probably many business
owners here.
I know that would make
Paul Perrone happy
if all those trips were
happening in his vehicles.
And then, additionally,
what we find
is that opportunities
for economic mobility
are often tied to your
access to transportation.
So if you're not able to get
around because you can't either
afford a car or because
public transportation is not
available, it's hard to
maybe get that right job that
allows you to progress.
If you have to worry
about how you manage
your children in terms of--
I've got four kids, so I got
a fraternity as people say--
I know my wife is always running
around trying to figure out,
well, how do I get from point
A to point B and then do work.
And I'm not that helpful
because I'm in places like here
on the road or other places.
So having the ability to not
only take care of your family,
to search for a job, and have
that access to transportation
at an affordable rate, that's
going to help local economies.
It's going to help local
people in their everyday lives.
So I think the
driverless future,
I think there is going
to be displacement,
as David mentioned.
For Lyft, the way
we see it is there's
always going to be a
role for our drivers.
Our co-founder Logan
Green the other day
said, we have 700,000
drivers nationally.
He doesn't ever see
that number going down.
He only sees it increasing.
And there's two
reasons for that.
One, there's going to be
all sorts of opportunities,
new economy jobs
as we call them,
as we move into a
driverless future.
There will always
be people who need
help to get in and
out of the vehicles.
There'll be folks
that will be there
to help elderly or
disabled folks to get
in and out of vehicles.
There'll be folks there
to perhaps monitor
what's going on in the
vehicle for children
who are in the vehicles.
Additionally, I think what
we see happening is in order
for people to really accept
the future that we see--
and I'll get to
that in a minute,
and then I'll stop because
I know people here have
questions--
you're going to need to
have a network like ours
that people are familiar with.
In order to make
people familiar with it
and have ubiquity so
people want to use it,
we have to get out there now.
And the way we do that is
with the fine folks that
drive for us, those folks
that I talk to every day,
that hopefully you talk to you.
If you get in a Lyft after
this, talk to your driver.
They're fantastic people.
You know?
I always tell them when I get
in the car--I don't tell them I
work for Lyft--
I just ask them questions.
And then when I tell them
I work for Lyft, I said,
you know what,
you're the face Lyft.
These are the people that make
this company a great thing.
These are the people
that you meet.
This is your
experience with Lyft.
So I think just talk to them.
And you'll see what
great folks they are.
And what power they have to
bring communities together.
As we think about, lastly--
and I swear I'll be quiet--
in the future one thing that
we really want to emphasize
is that this is going
to be a transition.
We're not going to see a
turnover of whether if it's
our fleet or just
fleets that are sold
by folks like GM or
Ford, it's going to be
a slow kind of transition.
But it starts today.
And it starts with
discussions like this.
From my end, it starts with
working with policymakers,
both at the state,
local, and federal level
to ensure that what we're
putting in place now
is the Rosetta Stone for
how this industry is going
to be regulated going forward.
So I think having your feedback,
having consumer feedback,
having the population
feedback as to how
these things should progress,
what are your concerns?
What do you want to know
about self-driving cars?
These will help not only
educate folks like myself,
but like Secretary
Jackson and the mayor.
These are the things in
these type of forums are
what we really rely
on to understand
what are your concerns.
I have concerns.
They could be esoteric.
Right?
I want to know what
real folks want to know.
What can we do to ensure
that as we move forward
to a self-driving future
that the folks in this room
are comfortable with that?
So with that, I'll end it and
leave some time for questions.
[APPLAUSE]
KAREN JACKSON: So just
one tiny little anecdote
about talking to your driver.
And I won't out what
company I was in.
We were in Providence, Rhode
Island for the National
Governors Association.
And I took one of the
services to go do something
that I wanted to do.
And my driver
immediately told me
that he had driven
Sean Spicer's mom.
And we had a very--
does everybody not
know who Sean Spicer is
because that was a lot less
reaction than I expected.
But needless to say, my
ride went very quickly
because of the anecdotes that
he had about his experiences
with Sean's mom.
So you do get into some very
interesting conversations
with your drivers.
And sometimes it's the
opposite way around,
not the passenger
talking to the driver.
So with that, who's got some
questions for this panel?
Yes, ma'am.
AUDIENCE: So I've
done some research
on this topic for Federal
Highway Administration now.
And one of the big
concerns about trajectories
of change with sharing
mobility, Uber, Lyft, et cetera
is kind of what Cody brought
up in the last session.
There's a big difference between
sort of cooperative dispatching
of automated vehicles
versus competitive sort
of decentralize the dispatching.
So like today, we pretty much
have decentralized dispatching.
And the drivers sort of decide
where they're going to go
and how they're going to
get there and so forth.
And when you multiply
that by the potential
of automated
vehicles to be doing
that same thing
in that same way,
but doing it 24/7 and
never stopping driving,
right, because
they don't have to,
you could just have huge amounts
of vehicles on the roadways.
There's a potential there
for it to really subtract
from the reduced number of
cars potentially with a reduced
congestion.
So a cooperative
dispatching perhaps still
with different private vendors
operating the shared ride
systems with automated
vehicles may be a smarter way
to go in terms of having
more efficiency benefit.
Do you feel like
that direction is
feasible within the private
market given that they'll
probably continue to be private
vendors, such as at least two,
Uber and Lyft and et cetera
given the way our market works.
What do you think?
Can we move towards
cooperative dispatching?
Do we need it?
DAVID STRICKLAND: Sure.
I can sort of start.
And actually, that
touches upon a panel
later this afternoon
talking about provision
of these services for those
that are more economically not
in position to participate as
folks that are more well off.
I would probably say
this, and I think
from a societal
transplant point,
and frankly, the federal
government, and specifically
National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration
and other entities are sort of
dealing with possibly having
a top down control mechanism for
the distribution of resource.
Those programs
never go very well.
They just don't.
And I can speak, song, chapter,
and verse about those things.
And I know Rob can
too, sort of working
in his own space in the Senate.
I would probably think that
in terms of making sure
that there is not
overcapacity and congestion,
there's probably going to be a
number of things from a policy
standpoint that cities
can do in addition to,
frankly, I think both of
the ride share services,
they are in transportation.
But both of them
are effectively,
they're logistics companies.
They poll data to
see what is needed
where in the most
efficient way possible.
Having excess capacity
impacts their bottom line.
That's the last
thing they want to do
is have too much
capacity on the road,
which is the reason why you
have dynamic pricing in the ride
share space and other ways to
be able either to insit more
cars onto the road
or to allow there
to be less traffic on the road
because there isn't demand.
And I think that will probably
be part of the overlay.
But not to take too long
to answer your question,
I think the other issue
which you kind of brought up
and the gentleman brought up
partially in the last question
is, how do you deal with if
ride share and self-driving is
the runaway success.
It's the new iPhone
of technology.
Everybody's using it.
Everybody wants it.
And everybody moves 65 miles
away outside of the city center
because you could get a bigger
house and a better school
system, and you commute in.
There's going to
be policy choices
having to be made at, frankly,
the federal, at the state,
and the city and the local
level about how you manage that.
It could go anywhere
from incentives
as to how do you drive
in the city center,
not to say that we're looking
at a London style congestion
pricing system.
Like if you want to
drive in the city center
at particular times of day,
it's going to cost you a lot.
You know?
So you better be ready to be
able to pay [? that fee ?]
if you want to drive in to
create incentives to pool
or to do other things.
So I think you're
right in terms of how
do we think about
the distribution
of these resources.
But I don't think
a top down control
of assigning or triaging a
distribution of transportation
for individuals in particular
needs sectors versus, once
again, a dynamic system that's
built upon demand that's
making sure there's
access available,
but using other mechanisms,
which is frankly
I think less of a actual
opinion being made
by individual at the government
level on who gets rides where.
KAREN JACKSON: You
don't think there'll
be an FAA for ride sharing?
DAVID STRICKLAND: I would just
say very quickly, you know,
about traffic safety and
the federal government,
my old agency,
which I love dearly,
it is 630 people total to
control about 265 million
vehicles in the United States.
600 people versus 260 million.
They are a data
collection agency.
They pill things out.
They parse things.
They investigate things.
They are not built to be--
the FAA is about
57,000 employees.
The model is not there.
And that's not going to change.
So I think we're going
to have to rely upon,
once again, the individual
market forces to help
sort of manage this issue.
ROB GRANT: All
I'd add to that is
that I think part of what's
Lyft Line and Uber Pool
was about trying to get
consumers comfortable
and change consumer behavior
around shared rides.
I think there's
policy [INAUDIBLE]..
The government needs to
also create incentives
for certain types of behaviors.
But if the private
market around you
is trying to understand how do
we move towards a shared line
model So for instance, when
we've introduced the product,
[INAUDIBLE] we've seen
rapid adoption of this.
So 60% of our rides in San
Francisco are shared rides now.
So that goes to show
you that there's
an appetite for
changing behavior.
So we provide,
obviously, incentives
for riders to do that,
incentives for drivers
to take those rides.
And I think if you combine
that with [INAUDIBLE] policies,
you can start to shape
behavior in the future.
And so our vision is
just to be up front
is that we have a shared
[INAUDIBLE] number
where these rides are
utilization [INAUDIBLE]..
So you [INAUDIBLE]
talking about.
We've collected a
tremendous amount
of data about where the most
efficient routes are, about
where hot spots are [INAUDIBLE].
Colin spoke about their
experience in Paris
where you can plan ahead for
the [INAUDIBLE] soccer match.
We can do that now in
all sorts of places.
So I think there is the
private sector incentive
to move toward this
model, as well as I
think we could have public
policy incentives as well.
KAREN JACKSON: Colin, anything?
COLIN TOOZE: I don't think
I have anything to add.
KAREN JACKSON: OK.
Anybody else have-- yes, ma'am.
AUDIENCE: This question
might be better addressed
at a later panel.
I'm not sure.
And your focus is understandably
on the urban situation.
That's where the problems are
that you can work at and solve.
And they're easily solved there.
But Albamarble
County, for example,
is I think like
640 square miles.
And we're seeing right now
the foreshadowing, I guess,
which is [INAUDIBLE]
issues where
we have very limited broadband
access outside the urban areas.
And it's a problem.
And I'm wondering
what the thinking
is about this in terms of rural
access to driverless cars.
DAVID STRICKLAND: No, it's
an excellent question.
And I think the panel at
2:30 in the afternoon,
which I'm moderating, is going
to talk about sort of these.
Once again, how do
we service those
that are not sort of in the
broader discussion, the sweeter
economic spots for companies?
How do we deal with
areas of town which
aren't well-served by livery?
How do we deal with
rural services?
I would argue, and
I think there's
a number of companies that
are in the transit space,
like Trans Dev and others, which
are working on transit, more
specifically automated transit,
in a way that's efficient
so you can have an efficient
and profitable means
to be able to create service
for rural communities.
That's kind of one
of the problems.
The problem is a density
problem for rural communities.
And if you have some
variation of micro transit
being able to serve
rural counties
and be able to build
those economies of scale
because you don't have the
other economics issues that
are built by having human
capital and capacity
to provide rides.
I think there is a
future of transit--
I think a lot of
folks are looking
at this hard-- to be
able to use self-driving
to be able to extend and
provide those types of services
for folks that can't afford
buses and bus lines that
don't necessarily
have capacity to be
able to make it profitable.
ROB GRANT: And I would just
add an interesting thing
about automation is this,
it's not limited just
to the [INAUDIBLE].
So I know one of
the folks that I've
been talking to [INAUDIBLE],,
I look to other industries
to [INAUDIBLE].
And agriculture is
one where automation
is coming very quickly.
So we talked to
folks, where they're
manufacturers of equipment, such
as John Deere or [INAUDIBLE]
ConAgra, Monsanto,
and how they're
pulling in automation
into what they're
doing in rural communities.
And so the issues
of spectrum come up,
the issues of how do we
service something out
there when it's hard to get
to or is an expensive piece
of equipment?
What are you going
to do in terms
of the data that's collected
[INAUDIBLE] rural area, things
of that nature.
So I think while the
transit folks had the issue
that David's talking
about in terms
of service levels
and density, we
are trying to [INAUDIBLE]
other areas that
are dealing with rural
issues at the same time.
KAREN JACKSON: I'm
going to take one little
tiny swing at the whole
broadband equation
in the Commonwealth.
That's been something that
we've been trying to deal
with for about 20 years.
It's a question of
affordability, availability,
and really desirability.
Because what we find
is in many communities
where broadband is
brought in, unless there's
a reason why somebody wants
it, even if it's there,
they won't subscribe.
And so for years
we've looked at it.
Telehealth has been one that
has been a tipping point.
In more recent
years, it's somebody
has a grandkid that
they want to Skype with,
or it's somebody that's
deployed in the military.
And so even if the line
passes right by their house,
there's a big difference between
availability and adoption.
And so until you find
that right tipping point,
and I think a lot of
this new technology
is going to be the same
thing, unless they see
a personal benefit
from accessing it,
just the fact that
it exists is not
going to be enough to make
them want to participate.
And so the broadband
conversation still goes on.
We haven't been
able to crack that.
Unlike a lot of these
other regulated industries,
broadband is one
that's unregulated.
So no matter what
we do, we can't
force a provider to go
and provide services
to the last mile.
And it makes it a much
more daunting challenge
than a lot of the other things.
I saw you pick up your mic.
You haven't said a thing
since your presentation.
So it's all yours.
COLIN TOOZE: Just to speak
to the rural question.
You know, I think it's a
really interesting question,
but one just
observation I'll have.
First, I'm not going
to promise that,
because no one knows exactly
how this is all going to develop
or in what order at what pace.
But I think there
are reasons to expect
that the same features of
self-driving technology as we
described on the panel,
the same reasons that
will be attractive to
people in large cities,
will be true of people
in rural communities.
So I would expect
demand, at least,
taken a longer time [INAUDIBLE]
would be on par with what
demand would like in a city.
If people have long
commutes to a city center,
or if they have to travel
farther to go to the pharmacy
or to the grocery store,
they're going to want an option.
But the great thing about
a distributed network,
like Rob described
a few minutes ago,
is that there's not
the same added costs
that you would associate with
extending a rail line from DC
to Charlottesville.
It's a network that's
available sort of system-wide.
And I think [INAUDIBLE]
that this technology
will become sort of
commoditized over time
where it's widely available.
And you could retrofit
an existing car with it,
or apply the technology to--
who knows what this will
look like, if they even look
like today's passenger cars.
But I think my point
here is that there
are reasons to think
that this would
be available in
rural communities
just like it is in
urban communities.
But it will depend on
what people expect out
of their community leaders
and what sort of consumer
demand there is
for these products.
KAREN JACKSON: All right.
Well, we're out of time.
So help me thank [INAUDIBLE].
[APPLAUSE]
TOM KATSOULEAS: And give
me a round of appreciation
also for Secretary Jackson.
[APPLAUSE]
It's been a fantastic
morning session.
And I want to now invite
us to head upstairs where
lunch will be waiting for us.
I'm going to ask
for our speakers
to actually sit
at separate tables
so that folks can look
for you and ask questions
of the various speakers.
So please distribute yourself.
The way this is going to work is
we'll go upstairs to the dining
room by the stairs.
Find a table, sit a table,
and then the servers
are going to call us up
to the buffet by table.
So don't go directly
to the buffet.
[INAUDIBLE]
[SIDE CONVERSATION]
MAURICE JONES: Good
afternoon, everyone.
Good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
I'm Maurice Jones,
the city manager
for the city of Charlottesville,
and it is my pleasure
to welcome you to this
session on urban futures,
where our talented
speakers will take
on some of the big
questions facing
cities, both small and large,
in our driverless future.
As a local government
administrator,
I'm well aware of the
sometimes glacial pace
that localities take in
responding to changing trends.
Many of us are still
trying to figure out
how best to deal with the
sharing economy, for instance.
Uber and Airbnb and
the ramifications
of their arrival on the
scene, caught many of us,
and our friends at the
state level, by surprise.
But in our defense, I think
we are becoming a bit more
nimble in embracing
new technology,
identifying future trends,
and preparing for them.
In our session this
afternoon, our three speakers
will provide us
with their insight
on how communities
throughout our country
will need to adjust
to what promises
to be a seismic shift
in our way of life,
and how we should be planning
for this exciting future.
It's an honor to
introduce our panelists
in the order of their
presentations this afternoon.
Andrew Mondscheine is
an assistant professor
of urban and
environmental planning
at the University of Virginia
School of Architecture.
He studies transportation
systems and travel behavior,
seeking to foster equitable,
sustainable accessibility
in cities and regions.
He addresses a rapidly
changing terrain
of transportation and
information technologies,
identifying means to
assert social imperatives
during a period of engineered
urban transformation.
Recent projects of his include
a community based control
of local streets during
vehicle automation, web based
cognitive mapping approaches
to understanding walkability
and well-being in Delhi, India,
and wearable mobile sensing
to enable community
centered planning and design
in urban streets.
Andrew teaches a range of
transportation courses,
as well as masters
and PhD methods.
He received a B.A.
In architecture
from Yale University, and an
M.A. And PhD in urban planning
from UCLA.
And he also practices as a
transportation and land use
planner at Gruen
Associates in Los Angeles.
Donna Chen is an
assistant professor
in the Department of Civil
and Environmental Engineering
at the University of Virginia.
Her research focuses on
sustainable transportation
systems, in particular,
the impacts of new vehicle
technology systems
on travel behavior
and the environment, travel
demand modeling, transportation
economics, and vehicle
and bicycle crash safety.
Her most recent research
examines the impact
of a fleet of self-driving
electric vehicles
that continuously serve
sequential trip demand.
She is a member of the
transportation research board's
committee on alternative
transportation fuels
and technologies, and
the American Society
of Civil Engineers
Transportation and Development
Institute Committee
on Public Transit.
Prior to joining academia,
she worked in the consulting
industry as a transportation
planning engineer,
and has experience with roadway
design, cost estimation,
and traffic operation analyses.
Greg Rogers is a policy
analyst at the Eno
Center for Transportation,
and the assistant editor
of Eno Transportation Weekly.
In this dual role, he
has advised Congress,
the US Department
of Transportation,
and state government
on creating policies
for autonomous vehicles.
Greg has been on the front lines
of reporting on AV policies
across the country,
and is a co-host
of the Mobility Podcast.
Please join me in welcoming our
three panelists this afternoon.
[APPLAUSE]
And Andrew Mondscheine will
kick off our presentation.
Great.
ANDREW MONDSCHEINE: All right.
All right.
Thank you very much, Maurice.
I'm very glad to be here.
And what I'd like to do
is start off the afternoon
by talking about the effects
that driverless vehicles might
have on cities, and
how we might actually
deal with some of those issues.
So, in order to do that, I
want to talk a little bit
about how I think
we can all think
about the context around
driverless vehicles
in cities, what the implications
of driverless vehicles
are for cities, and then
what we can actually
do, both things that we probably
should be doing right now
and also thinking
about for the future.
So, I think that one of
the most important ways
to think about the future
is to look to the past.
And I think that, in fact, good
for the historians in the room,
but I think that one of the most
important things we need to do
is remember that 100 years ago,
when the first automobility
revolution came along, it wasn't
something where technology
just magically appeared
and just changed the way
streets operated forever more.
It was an active process.
And in fact, we have
a historian here
at UVA, Peter Norton,
who wrote a book called
Fighting Traffic, that
talks all about the fact
that city managers,
planners, policymakers,
and communities made
a choice to change
the way the streets operated.
In that case, really
to take it away
from all of the things that
used to happen in streets,
like walking, and to put it
in the hands of vehicles.
And I think there's
an opportunity, again,
to think about what
that means for us now.
There's also a history
about 50 to 70 years ago
of suburbanization, of after
World War II, making decisions
to invest in infrastructures
that allowed us to solve
an actual housing crisis,
after World War II
through suburbanization.
And now, again, of course,
we're faced with a new housing
crisis in many cities
here in Virginia,
and around the
country, and how are we
going to solve that problem?
And do driverless
vehicles have something
to do with solving that problem,
for better or for worse?
And I'll talk more about both
the good and the bad on that
side as we go forward.
So, the other aspect
of all of this
is really, well,
you've heard people
talk about the
technologies, you've
heard people talk about
some of the potential ways
we can utilize
those technologies.
But how does it all
add up for cities?
One of the things we need
to keep in mind is well,
does this change the
way we drive today?
Well, the research I think
you might have heard already,
but it does.
The estimates are
the amount of driving
could go up, in the sense
that the capacity of roadways
might go up anywhere
from 25% to 500%.
There's a lot of broadness
to that estimate,
but we know it's up.
The ease of travel
should increase,
we fundamentally
know this, right?
If we have a level five,
which means all the way,
fully automated
vehicle, that means
we're not doing anything but
hanging out in a vehicle,
and so that's going to
feel really different.
And of course, for good and
for ill, but mostly for a lot
of good, the young and old
will travel more on roads.
And I think that that means a
lot for who uses city streets.
So, the other side, it's not
all about the driving itself,
it's about pedestrians,
it's about bicyclists.
We have some interesting
innovations and thoughts
that we might think about.
Do driverless vehicles
that are safer,
this amazing benefit
that they provide,
make pedestrians and
bicyclists feel better
about being on
sidewalks and streets?
That might happen, and
that could be really good.
Do the efficiencies
we gain from parking,
from actually not having to
use parking lots as much as we
do in central cities,
allow us to densify,
to make walkable places denser,
and actually put destinations
closer to one another?
Those are all possibilities
that driverless
vehicles make possible.
And transit, which we'll
hear a little bit more about,
and how we actually get
people around as a service,
that may go up or go down.
There's a lot of
questions behind it.
So, I want to tell
you a little bit
about how I've been
thinking about what this all
means for cities.
And the way that I've looked
at it, in one project called
Reprogramming Mobility, has
really been around the fact
that it's not just
about technology,
it's about governance, and
it's about behavior as well.
And when we look at
all of those things
at the same time, what
we get are possibilities.
So, I want to talk a little
bit about the possibilities,
and how we might approach some
futures that we may really
want, or we may not
be so happy about.
So, if we extend
present trends, and you
know, my co-authors and
I, we kind of thought
about assigning
cities that we all
know pretty well to the
future, in some ways.
We could go anywhere
from Atlanta
to Boston, and maybe beyond.
But Atlanta, as you might not
be surprised to think about,
is sprawl, but
sprawl double down.
And if we don't do very
much with our land use
planning and other aspects
that we have to control here
in cities, we might
just see that, oh,
if we can have better
mobility but not do anything
about housing,
well, people might
say a three hour commute isn't
so bad, if I'm not actually
behind the wheel itself.
And that's one possibility.
But then, Los
Angeles, by the way,
is just things not working
out very well at all.
So, I'll skip on to New Jersey,
which actually, you you may
or may not be
surprised to hear this,
but it is a place of
small railroad towns,
of towns built around centers.
And in this scenario,
what if we decide
that we want to continue
that dense development
in the centers, and
really control growth
around the center, and
manage the type of mobility
that we provide, so that
driverless mobility is actually
a public service as well, and
integrated with existing rail,
and growing rail, service,
we might have a future that's
actually really much
like what we might
envision in a lot of these--
and a lot of the visions we
have in our community plan,
for example, here
in Charlottesville
itself, we can do that.
We could go from
Atlanta to New Jersey.
And Boston, by the way,
is basically the matrix.
It's the drones that
we've heard about,
it's delivering anything
we want through drones
and virtual reality.
Which, those technologies
are there as well,
so that we can live ever
more densely, smaller packed,
and smaller packed communities.
Sort of like Boston or
New York, but even more.
On steroids, to some degree.
All of those things are
possible, is the point.
And it's the policies
we set that matter.
So, what can we do?
So, how do cities
actually control
what is possible from
driverless vehicles?
Well, we can do things that deal
with land use and the street
itself, and we can
encourage policies
at the regional and
federal level as well.
So, I think it's
important to say
that if we look at
this map of commuting
in Virginia from 2012, there's
already a lot of places
very close to Charlottesville
where on average, people
commute more than 30
miles a day, one way.
That's a lot of driving
that already occurs.
And so, we have to think
about what connected automated
vehicles will do for that.
Will Charlottesville
be a bedroom suburb
for Northern Virginia?
Will Richmond be a bedroom
suburb for Hampton Roads?
Or will even Roanoke
be a bedroom suburb
for Northern Virginia?
These are questions we
need to consider seriously.
And what we can do about
it might be visiting things
like growth boundaries.
Policies that
actually help us say
what we want to
happen in a context
that we never expected to face.
Statewide, commonwealth wide,
countrywide, region wide,
those are some of the policies
we need to think about.
And I think it begins
in Charlottesville,
and other cities,
looking at our land use
and deciding what we
really want to preserve,
and where we are really willing
to accommodate development.
We do that already,
but I think we
have to be prepared
for an influx of people
coming for the quality of
life, or in some cases,
affordability.
It depends on where you are.
So, there's a land
use policy side to it.
Let's see where I can click.
But then there's
the street as well.
And I think there are some
important considerations where
we need performance
standards for streets
that are adequate to
driverless vehicles.
So, it's not just about
speeds, but it's also,
how close can a driverless
vehicle get to a bicycle
or to a pedestrian?
It's do we set actual
minimum occupancy
standards for
vehicles to say, we
don't want zero occupancy
vehicles on our streets.
There are all kinds of things
to consider that cities
do have some control over.
And I think we
need to be thinking
about how we implement those
tools already at our disposal.
So, I want to end on
not just a warning note,
because I think there are
things to think about,
but also a really
hopeful note as well.
There are some
exciting possibilities
that automating mobility
and connecting mobility
provide to us.
It's not just about
managing traffic,
and it's not just about
safety, although that
is incredibly important.
It's about extending trends
that are really good in cities
right now, and using driverless
vehicles to actually push those
even further.
So, for example, today we think
about these things, good word
or not, tactical urbanism, or
reclaiming parking and curb
sides for the parks and for
activities, even food trucks,
things like night
markets, all of these ways
that we use the
public right of way,
which is what the street
is, in flexible ways.
Well, driverless
vehicles actually
present an opportunity
for flexibility
that has not existed
for 100 years,
since we hyper regulated the
street, when vehicles arrived
in the first place.
And so, when human drivers are
no longer behind the wheel,
and maybe this isn't
three years from now,
maybe this is 20 years
from now, or whenever
our amazing technologists
get us there,
we might think
about, well, do we
need to have roadways that
a human driver is expecting
to function, or can
we actually program
in complex networks that meet
the needs of communities?
And so, to give you
a vision of this,
I think it's a little
funny to go back to 1895.
But when the street was actually
a place where people could
play, they could play
kickball, in this case
it's probably stickball,
they could shop,
they could walk around,
they could see their friends
and neighbors, we
do that already
through all these amazing
things happening in cities,
like Saturday Streets,
Sunday Streets,
all kinds of ways we close
streets for periodic purposes.
What if communities,
through technology,
could control that on their own?
What if we could build
that in as a given
right to communities, to
have public rights of way
as their front yards again?
It's kind of amazing
to think what
we can do with the
technology of cars,
where people aren't
driving, and networks
of information technologies,
that allow us to one day
decide we're going to play
kickball on our street,
and it's going to be safe.
Like I remember doing--
wow, I'm sounding
very nostalgic.
It's kind of funny.
That I remember doing as a kid.
Or what would it mean
if we want to have
a night market on a street?
We could program that,
and we could reserve that.
And driverless vehicles
make it much easier,
than when we have to rely
on human drivers, who
only know maybe one or
two ways to get somewhere.
So, I will leave
it at that for now,
because I want to hear
from our other speakers.
But I think, to say, AV's
are just a technology.
What's important are
the decisions we make,
and how we use that technology.
And I think, if I
can make any warning,
is that the time is now for
cities to make those choices.
Because it'll probably be
too late in 20 to 25 years.
So, anyway, thank you for the
opportunity to come and speak.
[APPLAUSE]
MAURICE JONES:
Thank you, Andrew.
And while Donna comes up
to prepare for her talk,
just wanted to make sure that
you all understood that we're
going to go through each
one of the presentations,
and then we'll have significant
time for Q&A after that.
So, Donna?
DONNA CHEN: Thank you, Maurice.
It's a pleasure to be
here with you guys today.
I just wanted to make a
note that, by the way,
Andrew is a huge foodie.
I have tasted his homemade
brisket, and it is awesome.
So, apparently, if we
have driverless vehicles,
he will be starting a food
truck, where you can maybe
taste his brisket as well.
Ha ha.
So, my name is Donna Chen.
I am an assistant
professor in the Department
of Civil and
Environmental Engineering,
here at the University
of Virginia.
I am here to sell
you on the idea
that driverless vehicle is
a future where you're not
only free from the idea
of sitting in your vehicle
and having to drive and
having to be in congestion,
but the idea that you can be
free from vehicle maintenance,
from having to go wash your car
every once in a while when it's
dirty, from having to think
about maintaining this very
expensive capital investment
that we all currently are tied
to, and all it does is
sit there and depreciate
when we don't use it.
So, our speaker from,
I think, Uber and Lyft,
mentioned earlier about the
idea of shared mobility.
But right now, Lyft and Uber, as
Colin showed in his slide show,
is primarily being used
as a supplementary mode.
And by that, I mean,
people use Uber and Lyft
often late at night when
they go out to the bars.
It's really great for decreasing
driving under the influence.
But so far, shared mobility,
in its current form,
has not made a dent in urban
congestion the way we know it.
Because as traffic
planners, we're
mostly concerned
about that driving
to work hour in
the morning, that
driving home hour in the
afternoon, when congestion
is at its worst.
And my group at
University of Virginia,
has been focused
on trying to model
what does it mean to
have pervasive shared
mobility in a city-wide model,
where this mode can take you
anywhere.
If we think about the idea that,
I think up until this point,
the vehicle has been very much
so a defining part of someone's
identity, right?
What you drive.
There is a very
big identity issue
with whether you are a sports
car driver, whether you
have a commuter vehicle.
But this is really changing.
As we have urban
congestion, as people
are wasting more hours sitting
away frustrated at traffic,
vehicles are becoming
more and more utilitarian,
or the perception
of them really are.
And now, with smartphone
technology and the shared
economy, really what
we value is access.
Not necessarily,
the vehicle itself,
but the ability to complete a
trip and get to the destination
we want.
So, we can think
about a future where
we have a fleet of shared
autonomous electric vehicles,
what our research group
calls SAEV's, that will
be available for all to use.
And you just summon this vehicle
right from your smart phone,
and it comes to
you as you need it.
So, if we are able to
do that, and that's
great, if you're able to have
access to mobility whenever you
would like, we can add
this additional component
called ride sharing.
So, this is when
we say, all right,
if you have a common starting
point and a common destination,
then you can share
a ride with someone.
So, if you see this
red vehicle here,
it's going to pick up the
passenger at D1, at its origin,
then going to pick up
passenger 2 at origin 2,
and then dropping off the first
passenger at the destination
D1, and then the second
passenger at the destination
D2.
And if we do this, and
we have modeled this,
with 10% of all urban
travel demands in Austin
and in Seattle, the number of
trips one of these vehicles
can serve in the
day is 8 to 13 times
the number of trips a
privately owned vehicle
that is driven
manually can serve.
And let me explain
that a little bit.
So, right now, let's say
you own your vehicle.
How many trips on average do
you think that vehicle drives
on an average day?
Any guesses?
I'm sorry?
Three.
Three.
Perfect.
3.01.
So close.
Ha ha ha.
Ya.
[LAUGHTER]
Three trips a day, and the
rest of the time, your vehicle
is sitting in a garage,
in a parking lot,
just wasting away, depreciating.
So in this case, when these
vehicles can sequentially
serve traffic, so once
it picks you up, picks up
someone else going the same
way, drops you guys off, goes on
to pick up the next
person, these vehicles
are serving roughly
24 to 39 trips a day,
if my math is correct,
in the urban area.
And so, this is
really great, right?
So, we can greatly reduce
our parking capacity,
our parking needs.
But the trick is because
these are autonomous vehicles,
and after they drop you off
they must go pick someone up,
about 15% to 20% of the
times they're driving,
those miles are empty.
There's no one in the vehicle.
And that's going to be
quite a sight to see,
because that's something
that we don't see today.
But what I want
to emphasize here
is that we may see
this future where
we say, oh, wow, that vehicle
is driving with no one in it,
what a waste of space.
But in reality, if we
introduce ride sharing,
even though some of
the miles are empty,
we are still adding
system efficiency.
And let's put it this
way, even if we did not
have ride sharing, even
if it was just you calling
your own private autonomous
vehicle coming to pick you
up and drop you
off, and you don't
want to share your
ride with anyone else,
these vehicles can still
replace roughly four
to seven privately owned
vehicles, with about 10%
empty vehicle miles traveled.
So, one in 10 miles you
drive will be about empty.
But if we do our-- and if we're
successful in introducing ride
sharing, and getting
that to be a culturally
pervasive phenomenon,
and everyone's very
open to the idea of ride
sharing, from a system
perspective, if we can match
all of your rides, about 35%
of all vehicle
miles traveled will
have at least two passengers.
So, think about that.
One out of three miles traveled
is going to be a shared ride.
So, when we're looking at
dynamic ride sharing we said,
wow, this is great, who's going
to need to own a car anymore?
Will people still take
buses, because now you
can share rides on demand?
So, we started
looking at the fact
that as you share rides
with more and more people,
there's going to be
additional times,
right, associated with going
a little bit out of the way
to pick up that other person.
There's going to be more
miles traveled that way.
So, in this system, from
an operator's perspective,
if I was Uber or Lyft, I will
want to put as many people
into these vehicles as
possible, because as these two
graphs show, your fleet size and
charging stations, because this
is an electric
fleet, dramatically
decrease as you increase
the number of occupants
in the vehicle,
that's what's one,
two, three, four on
that bottom line, that's
the number of people
in the vehicle.
However, as a passenger,
my average wait time
and travel time
increases as you increase
the occupancy in a vehicle.
The addition, after
the second passenger,
so when you get to a
third or fourth passenger,
those benefits of ride
sharing start to disappear,
compared to the additional cost
of extra travel time and travel
miles.
And your wait
times will increase
from average 11 minutes to
something like 20 minutes.
So, we ask ourselves,
would you really do that?
So, then we thought,
so, we want to be
able to put more people
in a vehicle efficiently.
Where are some examples where
that's already occurring?
Oh, it's called transit.
We already have that, right?
So, we said, OK,
so maybe what we
want to do is to be able to
use these shared autonomous
electric vehicles to get
more people to transit, which
is a system that we have
been operating for decades,
and works well during
peak hours in most places.
So, we said, if you think
about transportation
on the scale of flexible to fix
transportation, where flexible,
there can be more
individual transportation,
and as you get more collective
it's going to be more fixed,
which is what our models
show, makes sense.
At the upper right hand
corner, the most collective
and the most fixed is your
existing transit systems.
Your bus rapid transit,
your train systems.
They work very well.
So, we want to be able to have
a fleet that then increases
access to public transit.
So, here, we're thinking
about the idea of,
right now, what is
it that prevents you
from wanting to ride the bus?
Let's say, the
Charlottesville example.
Well, I don't live
anywhere near a bus stop,
and I can't walk to a bus
stop that's three miles away.
That's a very reasonable
reason to not take a bus.
Why else?
Well, the bus only
comes every 30 minutes.
I have to make this trip.
It's only 10 minutes long.
I'm not going to wait 20
minutes for a bus that
only comes every 30 minutes.
Very true as well.
But these are problems
in the transit system
that can be helped,
if we can bring more
riders to the transit system.
If we have more ridership then
we can offer that bus service
more frequently.
So, now it comes every 10
minutes, every five minutes,
and you don't have to wait 30
minutes to catch the next bus.
So, in our models, we were
working with Seattle data.
We looked at one
particular problem.
So, in some cities,
they have this idea
called a park and ride.
You're probably familiar
if you've been to DC.
So, they say, all
right, you can't
walk to the bus stop
or the train station,
so what we're going to do
is provide parking for you
to drive your individually own
cars and park at a parking lot,
and then hop onto
the train system.
However, they're experiencing
problems with this.
Number one, these parking
lots are getting full.
So, they're getting
so much demand
from these park and rides that
the parking lots are full.
And then when the
next person comes
they're having trouble
securing parking,
and they say, well, if I can't
find a parking spot for my car,
I then can't take the train.
What do I do?
Secondly, these lots are
very expensive to maintain.
The Seattle statistics
is on average,
a spot like this costs
$8 per day to maintain.
$8 per day to supplement
one roundtrip transit.
Because someone comes in the
morning, parks their car,
right?
Gets on the train, goes
to work for the day.
Their car is sitting
in a parking lot.
They come back on the train,
take their car, and go.
And if that parking
spot is free,
in terms of maintenance
and capitalized
costs, over the lifecycle,
it's $8 per day.
That's not a smart
financial model.
So, we thought, all right, so
here's a perfect application
for shared mobility.
Let's get these cars out
of these parking lots,
and bring the people into these
stations on shared mobility
services.
So, if we do this, we
can imagine, in a city
like Charlottesville, so here's
an animation of our simulation,
we have created a station--
I do not have a laser pointer.
I don't.
If you will notice in the
lower right hand corner,
there is a red spot where
these vehicles are going.
The blue spots with
the people in them,
those are all the passengers
requesting a trip.
The green moving
bubbles are vehicles
that have capacity
and are on their way
to pick up a passenger.
And then the red moving things
are vehicles that are full.
So, if you watch, I think
there is a vehicle going
to the transit station soon.
So, if a red vehicle
approaches the transit station,
they then will drop
off the riders,
and then become green
again, and become available.
So, when we simulate this--
so, I made this nice graphic
in Charlottesville, but
our actual simulation
was done based in Seattle data,
around a train station called
Tukwila Station.
And we used 2016 data for
a roughly 7 and 1/2 mile
by 6 mile service area, we
found that one shared vehicle
with dynamic ride sharing can
replace 20 to 34 park and ride
vehicles.
One vehicle getting
rid of 20 to 30 parking
spots at a park and ride.
That is a huge impact.
And that's using
existing demand.
That's who's currently using the
train station, because they're
willing to drive to the train
station and ride the train.
Imagine if you had a service
like this, all the other people
that might consider
using the train,
because they weren't able to
drive and park at the station
before.
So, I'm going to show--
engineering professor, here.
I've got to show a
couple of charts.
So, I wanted to compare these
results to what if you did not
have ride sharing.
So, here, I have occupancy.
In the top pie chart, that's
occupancy with ride sharing.
So, the darkest
color there, 20.33%,
that's the number of
empty vehicle miles
traveled, so the vehicle
is traveling empty.
And as you go lighter
in color, that's
occupancy one passenger, two
passenger, three passenger,
four passengers.
So, as you can see there,
40% to 45% of travel
actually carries two
or more passengers.
That's more than the citywide
case, where I said it was 35%.
And why is that?
Well, it's actually pretty easy.
As it turns out, when
your passengers have
either a common origin
or a common destination,
it's easier to carpool.
Makes sense.
But if you compare that to
the non ride share case,
that's the bottom graph, if
you only allowed one passenger
into each of these
vehicles, then
you would have 38% empty
vehicle miles traveled,
and then that 61% of the
time when these vehicles are
traveling with one person.
We can also look
at this in terms
of how can they help congestion.
So, here, I have a graph
of use by time of day.
So, on the x-axis, or
the horizontal axis,
we have hours in operation,
all the way from 4:00 AM
until midnight.
That's when the system
was in operation.
The top is a graph
of what happens
when we have shared rides.
So the solid line you
see at the very top--
so, you see there's more
rides at the 8:00 AM peak,
morning peak, and more
rides in the afternoon
peak about 18, which is
what, 4:00 PM or 6:00 PM.
The solid line shows the number
of passenger vehicle miles
traveled, so that's how
many miles there is someone
occupied in the vehicle.
That dashed line
you see right below
it is the number of
vehicle miles traveled.
So, just because you
see on that graph,
the black line is
actually higher.
We have more passenger
miles traveled
than we have vehicle
miles traveled,
because we have ride sharing.
Right?
So, during the peak hours ride
sharing is more prevalent.
Compare that to the
non ride sharing
case, which case the
dashed line is much higher
than the solid line,
showing you that when
you don't have ride sharing,
during the peak hours,
you have much more empty
vehicle travel, which
is the last thing you want.
You're adding more
to congestion,
because you've got
these vehicles driving
around empty during times when
you have the worst congestion.
All right.
So, with that, I'm going to
wrap up with my conclusions.
There are many different
implementations
for these shared autonomous
electric vehicles to impact
the future of urban mobility.
If we use them, instead of
driving our own privately owned
cars, we can greatly reduce
parking infrastructure.
If we add a ride
sharing component,
we can reduce congestion
and, of course,
transport related
urban emissions.
And if we use these to
complement existing transit,
get that bus to work
more frequently,
we can potentially
increase transit ridership,
and that will result in more
equitable transportation
access for all populations.
So, my questions
to you is are you
ready for this
transportation revolution?
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
GREG ROGERS: First of all,
thank you for having me here.
My name is Greg Rogers.
And I'd like to start off
by telling you a story.
So what we're going
to do is we're
going to go 100 years
in the past first.
And we're going to get back to
the basics of transportation.
And then we're going to
head back into the future.
This is William P. Eno.
He was traumatized by
traffic in the late 1800s.
And I think we are all somewhat
traumatized by traffic.
But it was a special case for
him because it was late 1800s.
And he went into the
city with his mom
in a horse and buggy and
then this roundabout.
And as you can imagine, horses
were making a mess, as it were.
And there was a
lot of congestion.
And he was looking every which
way down all of the roads
that connected the roundabout.
And they're empty.
But all of these
horses and buggies
are just stuck in one place.
So he came up with one
crazy revolutionary idea.
What if we just stop so
that we can go, and we take
turns effectively
sharing the road?
So William P. Eno
ended up writing
the first rules of the road.
And these were adopted
in New York City, 1909,
thanks to his trauma.
This was what established the
world's first city traffic
plan.
And then it was adopted
very quickly afterwards.
And the reason
this is important,
and Andrew mentioned this
before, it's that government
has a critical role to play.
And the way that we
formulate our policies
has a really
critical role to play
in not only managing
our infrastructure,
not only building
infrastructure,
but creating the new
rules of the road.
And these separate roles
have evolved over time.
States were the first ones to
create gas taxes because they
needed to have more funding
to create paved roads that
would actually facilitate
automobiles traveling around.
And the states were the first
to actually institute gas taxes.
Oregon, in 1919, started.
Over the next decade every
other state passed it.
And then, of course, as
usual, federal government
comes along a decade
later and says,
OK, we should probably do this.
And then President
Eisenhower in 1956
created the interstate
highway system.
So here's why this is important.
Over the last 100
years, the fact
is that we've been
watching how government
plays a critical role
in transportation.
And this is still
going to be true.
But I just want to leave
you with one thing,
if nothing else, it's that
the future of transportation
isn't going to be
that remarkable.
There will be
autonomous vehicles.
There'll be self-driving cars.
We already have
self-driving cars.
I don't know if you're
familiar, but you
can download Uber and
Lyft, and that car
will drive itself for you.
And then whenever you're
riding in a self-driving car,
the fact is that
when you get into it
if it's scary or
exciting to ride in,
we probably didn't do it right.
They're going to be
safe, and they're
going to be underwhelming
for the most part.
So I have two half-truths
to share with you.
It's that government is
capable of innovating
and government is not.
This is how we approach
this at the Eno
Center for Transportation.
We're an independent,
nonpartisan think tank.
And we work with people who are
transportation professionals,
who are policymakers,
who are regulators,
and automakers and tech firms.
What we try to do
is build consensus
around creating sound
policies for autonomous
vehicles in every other
mode of transportation.
But our focus recently has been
on autonomous vehicles, or AVs.
And we just released a
report earlier this year
called Beyond Speculation.
We brought a ton of
tech firms, automakers,
policymakers
together and figured
out how to create the
best policies to enable
AVs to safely develop.
And out of this, we
built some best practices
for federal government
and states as well.
And just for our purposes here,
we'll be skipping over this.
But the federal government
is responsible, basically,
for making sure that you can
buy a vehicle in California.
You can drive it all the way
across the country to New York
without having to stop
and get it reinspected
and having any of
these other issues.
They will continue to do
this by focusing on how
autonomous vehicles are safe.
And for that reason, the focus
of cities should instead be on,
how can we give them a safe
environment to operate in?
The objective of
the state is to say,
how can we manage
our roadways better
to allow them to operate?
We also work with
Virginia DOT on creating
a list of best practices
for allowing a state
to adopt autonomous vehicles.
And this involves the
state really maintaining
infrastructure and
focusing on how
do we have an environment
that encourages
innovation but promotes safety.
So what can cities
like Charlottesville
do to prepare for AVs?
I'll start by saying again
that it's not about focusing
on just the exciting parts.
It's about getting all
of your stakeholders
together and deciding
what your goals are.
And then maintaining
your roads properly.
Autonomous vehicles don't need
a bunch of fancy infrastructure
to operate.
Every time automakers
go before Congress,
all the members
will ask, so what
do you need for
autonomous vehicles?
And every time I just say,
no potholes, no fading lines,
and adequate signs.
We don't need a ton of
fancy infrastructure.
What we need are things that can
actually benefit all road users
and continue to provide
public transit services
and look at how AVs can
interact with this larger
ecosystem of transportation.
And AVs are just
not a silver bullet.
There is no silver
bullet in transportation.
There's still going
to be congestion
even if you expand the highway.
We need to look at it as
a whole, holistically.
But here's some
actionable things
that cities should be doing.
First of all is
creating pilot programs,
like the ones that
Donna mentioned,
that these are the way
that we sort of get
this better understanding of
how to implement the technology.
Establishing road
use fees, we'll
get into this in a second.
And then creating shared use
mobility zones or SUM zones.
With pilot programs the
cities should always
start with their goal in mind.
It should always
start with why are we
trying to address this issue?
Why do we want to
incorporate an AV?
And then ask, how
do we want to do it?
Do we want to have it connect
to transit stations, transit
stops?
Do we want to be reducing
the amount of miles traveled?
And then, what should we use?
Should we use the
driverless shuttles?
Should we use a driverless bus?
And then look at all of
the other alternatives.
Arlington, Texas was
one of the best examples
of this in that earlier this
year they signed an agreement
to rent two driverless shuttles
that can carry about 12 people.
But before this, Arlington
would have this legacy
as being the largest
city in the US
that didn't even have a
public transit system.
But they were trying to
re-imagine, how do we
improve those connections
between all the places
that people want to go?
And how do we make it easier
to operate our entertainment
systems and connect people
to their parking structures?
So that's one good
example of seeing
how you can actually
incorporate this new technology.
Infrastructure funding
is kind of always
and has always been an issue.
Figuring out where
the city's going
to get the money to
replace potholes and repair
the roads is difficult.
And the gas tax has
not, the federal gas tax, hasn't
been increased in 25 years.
And as electric vehicles
are being put on the road,
there's less and less revenue
coming from the gas tax.
So I'm going to make
a radical proposal.
It is we establish a
road d Because vehicles
are going to be
connected, because they're
going to be automated, because
we have these computer systems
in them, what we can
do is we can have,
basically, tracking of how many
miles they've been driving.
We can track the
number of miles.
And you can also manage
how much a driver is asked
to pay in road use,
basically taxes,
based upon when they're
driving, if they're
driving during rush hours,
and use others for carrots
and sticks.
And the way this
would work is, imagine
that you purchase your vehicle
from Audi, for example.
And it's an automated
vehicle from Audi.
The vehicle is driving you.
And you will probably
be, with the way
that these services
which are being imagined,
you'll probably be paying a
subscription fee for them.
So the automaker
would then track
the amount of miles
you're traveling,
factor in any
demand-based pricing.
So if Charlottesville
says we don't
want to have vehicles driving
on the road during 6:00 8:00.
We want to
disincentivize driving
between 6:00 and 8:00 AM.
They can do that.
And then carrots and
sticks, one good example
is if you're sharing
your vehicle,
maybe you would pay less
in your road use fee.
There are ways to
incentivize this
and to sort of tinker with this.
The last part is
think about parking.
Curbside space is
always under contention,
how we use it in our cities.
And as Donna mentioned earlier,
about one third of traffic
is caused by
non-recurring incidents.
I used to be a Uber and
Lyft driver in 2015.
I did what any good
millennial would do.
I quit my job as a lobbyist
where I was very comfortable.
And I called my mom, and I said,
Mom I'm going to be a blogger.
She said, OK.
What are you going
to blog about?
Self-driving cars.
How are you going
to pay the bills?
I guess I'll drive for
Uber and Lyft or something.
And so I did it full
time for six months.
But one of the things that
I always had trouble with
was finding a place
where I could pick up
passengers in Washington, DC.
There's no curb space.
And what happened was,
inevitably, I would get a call.
And I'd pull up to the location.
The person, obviously,
wouldn't be outside yet.
And I'd have to just put my
hazard lights on and just
sit there.
Cars honking behind me.
You know, taxi drivers just
making obscene gestures at me.
And one of the things
that I realized
was that we are not looking
at how our use of curb space
is shifting.
Uber and Lyft drivers need
to be able to pick folks up.
E-commerce means that there are
even more deliveries happening
with FedEx and UPS, et cetera,
and Amazon now at this time.
And then AVs are going to
change the trip structure.
So if we look at, this is
Gramercy Park in Manhattan.
You see that there are
45 spaces for parked cars
and then three for
commercial trucks.
And then there is a bicycle
lane going down here.
Now you can see all
these places are full.
And this red zone is
just commercial loading.
But if you look closely,
you can see right
where the red line starts.
There is also a
commercial truck parked
in the middle of the
road, even though there's
a loading zone there.
That's causing
unnecessary congestion.
So what if we rethink this?
What if we set curb space aside
and create some zones of shared
use mobility zones.
or Lyft can quickly
pull in and drop you off
without having to stop in
the middle of the road.
Truck drivers during the day
can do deliveries in that spot.
And then when we
have AVs, it will
be a lot easier to coordinate
those pick-ups and drop-offs,
especially when there
isn't a human driver
to call you and make
sure that you get there.
And so that's
effectively what this is.
It's looking at ways
to re-imagine how
we use our space on our roads.
And there's also a
great application
here for paratransit services.
Because one of the
biggest issues is you
have to be able to find a
curb space to drop someone off
if they are in a wheelchair
and also have to find a ramp.
And just so we'll
update from Washington,
the House recently passed
the Self Drive Act,
a bill that will,
for the first time,
maybe create laws
around self-driving cars
if this were to pass.
And the Senate is now
considering the AV START
Act, which was just
released on Thursday.
And this is somewhat similar.
I think we're going to have
about six or more months
until it actually passes.
But I would probably defer
to David on that one.
And the USDOT Secretary
Elaine Chao recently
released guidance for how
cities and states should
prepare for AVs.
And what this shows is
the federal government
is looking at it.
Virginia is obviously
looking at it,
as you guys heard from
Governor McAuliffe earlier.
And cities now
should be focusing
on what their role
can be in allowing
AVs to continue to develop.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
PRESENTER: Thank you to
all of our presenters.
And now we're going to open
this session up to you all.
We'd love to hear from
you any questions that you
may have from our panelists.
And are we just
taking questions,
or am I going to do Phil Donahue
and run out the audience?
That's me.
All right, who would
like to ask a question?
AUDIENCE: I have a question
about parking relative
to economy.
Economy was the last group.
And this group has talked
more about parking.
And I'm noticing how
many, how very many,
parking spaces in
Charlottesville and urban
Albemarle are right where
businesses are located
and people are located.
What do you see are the
possibilities of the shared
vehicles being a boon
for economic development
in those areas?
PRESENTER: So I think in our
studies that what we're showing
is that you won't need nearly
as much parking if we all
shift toward this
shared mobility mode.
And you're right, some of the
most highly sought after land
in Charlottesville, we have to
fill it with some parking spots
right now for people to be able
to access those businesses.
But in the future, you can
imagine we probably will always
have some parking, but certainly
we can reduce greatly reduce,
the amount of land dedicated
to parking, especially
in very high value zones
like the downtown area.
Also if you think about
the application, what
I was specifically
talking about,
just the fact that we
have all of that parking
dedicated to Amtrak
right there on West Main
in the middle of town,
right next to what could be
much, much denser development.
So I see a very exciting
future for that.
PRESENTER: I think that
makes perfect sense.
All I want to add
is that it speaks
to why planning for
bicycle and pedestrian
infrastructure at the
same time is so critical.
Because I think that part of
Last Mile will be vehicles.
And part of Last Mile will
be biking and walking.
And so I think that that
is an essential part
of this same force that's
driving us toward driverless
or that we might be able to
use driverless vehicles, as
well, to reduce parking needs.
PRESENTER: That was exactly
what I was going to say.
PRESENTER: The conundrum right
now for a lot of localities
is making decisions about
parking with the pressures
that we're receiving from
businesses and others.
We want to see
parking right now.
We want to see it
close to downtown.
But then trying to prepare for
that anticipating that whatever
we build now is supposed
to last 30, 40, 50 years
but not knowing what type of
shift we'll see in parking
needs in the future.
So it's just something
that localities are really
dealing with right now.
PRESENTER: And I think
that it's important to say
that, I mean, to commend
the city of Charlottesville.
Moving forward on
a parking policy
is an important part of that.
Because ultimately, we still
are in the present era.
And we still do need
to accommodate vehicles
if we're expecting a certain
level of economic activity.
And I think that moving
away from vehicles
generally is part of that.
And then managing the
parking as best we can
is hopefully a holding
action, actually,
until 20 years from now.
But I think how we manage the
parking is then the question.
PRESENTER: It's a delicate
balance, absolutely.
Other questions?
In the back.
AUDIENCE: My question is,
you've got the mayor here,
you have the city
manager here, you
have the head of [INAUDIBLE]
here from the city
of Charlottesville.
If they could do one thing next
year, what would each of you
recommend?
PRESENTER: Is the
media still here?
PRESENTER: Can I phone a friend?
PRESENTER: I would say it
depends what their goals are,
right?
First of all, making sure
that you have the stakeholder
group that has a set of goals.
And then work with them on
creating a pilot program
for testing out how you can
use AVs in Charlottesville.
Do you want help people
get to transit connections?
Or do you want to help students
get around a little bit easier?
Do you want to improve
access to the city for people
who live on the outskirts?
First of all start, with
what your goals are.
Start with the why.
How do you want to do that?
Do you want to do it with
a driverless shuttle?
And then, what is the
best way to approach that?
PRESENTER: I'm going to take
the easy way out and say
that this conversation
we're having here today
is a step in the
right direction.
I think this is one of
the very few forums I've
spoken to where we invited
the general public to ask
their questions and give input.
And it has, I think,
given all of us
a different way to
think about this.
But also following
on what Maurice
was saying about parking
policy, I think we, as cities,
as planners, we
should still stick
to the basic principles of
what our ultimate goal is,
which is efficient
access for all.
And in this case, even
before a ton of vehicles
come onto the
market, we can start
thinking about stopping
to subsidize parking
and having people pay
what they actually incur
as expenses in transportation.
That way they're already used
to thinking about transportation
in that way.
And when the technology
comes along, it becomes
a smoother transition
for them to say, hey,
you know what, I had to
pay for parking before.
But now I can take this
shared ride vehicle.
I had to pay for the ride.
But I no longer have
to pay for the parking.
Getting the market place
more real in the first place
will help that transition.
PRESENTER: All I
would add, and I
hope I don't get in trouble
with Maurice for saying this,
is that there's a comprehensive
planning effort going
on right now in the city.
And I honestly think every
chapter in that document
should acknowledge driverless
vehicles in some way
or look at future mobility
rather than current mobility
in some way and make it part of
the engagement process as well.
And I know that's a lot of
work so sorry about that.
AUDIENCE: With
autonomous vehicles,
what might a football game
at Smith's Stadium look like?
And then what might an
evacuation plan look
like for the city as well?
PRESENTER: OK, sure.
So let me background this answer
by saying that typically we
look at transportation
planning as a typical day which
had to satisfy 85th
percentile demand.
So something like Scott
Stadium football game
would be 95th, 99th
percentile traffic.
It would be a
special circumstance.
That being said, right
now, for us to be like,
Charlottesville, that is
the perfect opportunity
to pilot something
like shared mobility.
When we say, hey, instead of
everybody driving their car
to the football game, what
if we somehow bring you guys
onto shuttles and buses that
can take you there easier?
I think that can be done even
prior to the introduction
of autonomous vehicles.
But certainly if we had
autonomous vehicles,
the ability to also have them
situated in various places
to bring then the access to
these larger density vehicles
can help with that effort.
PRESENTER: That's what
I can already check off.
We already offer
that on football day.
So we have the
trolley from downtown
that have folks park in one
of the garages downtown.
And then we take folks to
the game and back at the end.
So yes, ma'am?
Over here, I think we have time
for one more question, Louis?
AUDIENCE: Is [? there ?] an
emergency evacuation route
[INAUDIBLE]?
PRESENTER: Emergency
evacuation route, I
think he wanted it to
touch on that if we could.
PRESENTER: Yeah, I think that's
a question that I don't think
has really been thought
through a lot quite yet.
But it depends what
sort of ownership model
we're looking at.
If we're going to have
shared fleets where there's
Uber and Lyft have a lot of the
AVs, or a lot of the companies
have them, or if you
have your own AV,
that's a big sort of
question how this works.
But I think it
should be something
that the companies maybe
could be considering.
Maybe that could be part of
you having a subscription
to your self-driving
car service.
And there's a potential here for
National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration, or even, I
don't know, FEMA, or Homeland
Security to sort of look at how
we would address these issues.
But I haven't heard this
discussed very much yet.
PRESENTER: Well I think that
prompts just a little bit more,
which is to say that I think one
of the most important things,
that again falls on
cities, again, and regions,
is that the technologies
behind all of this
are highly networked.
They're highly complex.
And I think the resiliency
of those systems
is important, and not just
built into the system,
but in the network that
is the city as well.
And so we really
have to think about
if we become reliant
on these vehicles
how do we ensure that if
they fail, and maybe it's
when they fail, how we continue
to have evacuation plans, all
of those sorts of things.
That is critical.
And we're not there
yet, for sure.
PRESENTER: And let me
just add one more piece
to that, which is the
idea that if we need
to have this tie-in to
private vehicle ownership
to guarantee a baseline
performance for something
like an evacuation,
I can say that's sort
of a false sense of security.
We know now that if
everybody got in their cars
and tried to evacuate an
urban area at the same time,
with even two
people in a vehicle,
there's not enough roadway
capacity for everyone to do it.
You'll just get
stuck on the road.
So that already
is not a solution.
So I think having networked
transportation where
you have different options--
you can take a bus, you
can take a shared ride,
you can take a shared ride to
a train-- having more options
and having the ability to shift
resources from, let's say,
a statewide model if we're
having a coastal evacuation
from Norfolk.
And we can shift resources from
other regions towards that area
for the temporary evacuation.
We will still be better off
with a networked strategy
than we would having everybody
saying, I'm getting my car,
and I'm getting on the highway.
AUDIENCE: My question
is about transit.
I appreciate in this session
we've been bringing up transit.
And I think that it's a key
part of the conversation.
But I don't see many transit
agencies or stakeholders
in this group.
So one of the things I'm
interested in your opinion
on is, how do we bring
transit into this conversation
in Virginia, in Charlottesville?
And how do we--
Just your ideas on
modernizing the transit fleet
and bringing those
transit stakeholders up
to speed with
self-driving futures?
PRESENTER: That is
the million, if not
billion, dollar question.
To start off, I think
that transit agencies
have just in general been
resistant to the idea
of autonomous vehicles.
In some ways they feel like it
could endanger their business
model.
some have been very, very
proactive about adopting them.
Contra Costa, California, is
testing driverless shuttles
on it.
But I think it's about really
reaching out and starting
the conversation.
And the potential here is
great for automated buses.
And the technology is
going to be there to where
we can have a dedicated lane.
And we can have bus
rapid transit services
for autonomous buses way
earlier than most of us
could actually buy our own
fully self-driving cars.
And it's also a challenging
workforce question.
There are definitely
some unions who
are concerned about losing a
lot of those drivers' jobs.
But I like to say
that we can think
about how the career
of a bus driver
might change to be more
of a transit concierge.
That person, their driving is
really only 10% of their job.
The other 90% is taking
care of passengers.
It's letting people with
disabilities get on,
collecting fares, et cetera.
PRESENTER: I think it ultimately
becomes a financial question,
a question of cities and
cities' responsibilities
to their population,
to some degree.
And I think that if we think
that mobility, subsidized
mobility, is important, then
that is transit in some way.
And if it's in an automated
vehicle, a connected automated
vehicle, or a fixed
route, whatever
makes the most sense to supply
the most people is probably
what we should do.
But then we have to think
about how we spend our money.
And I think it gets
to your question
about striping the roads.
I don't think we always know how
to pay for striping the roads.
So I think it's a matter
of public priority setting
for how we spend money.
And I think that,
hopefully, we continue
to care about providing mobility
to those who can't afford it
in a private context.
What it looks like, though,
could be many different things,
I suppose.
PRESENTER: And I
would also like to add
to that that I
think we are making,
perhaps, baby steps
in that direction.
So I, for one, have been
attending the Virginia Transit
Technology Roundtable.
And this is a point
of discussion,
though it's still a little bit
off, perhaps, not immediate.
But I think we could start
with these pilot programs.
So in Seattle, which I showed
the demos, the reason why
we were doing that work for
them is because the transit
agencies there are starting
to have partner pilot
programs with Uber and with Lyft
to resolve that very problem
I was talking about.
But, again, it has to be
financially driven for them.
And with the expense of
maintaining those park and ride
lots, that drove them to say,
we need a different solution.
So in that case, they were
looking for, perhaps, just
a very limited
solution in addressing
how do we address this
extensive parking problem.
But really the solution is
much more expansive than that.
It includes shared
mobility as a whole.
So I think, perhaps
more conversations
like this and maybe
an organized strategy
to say, hey, let's look at what
shared mobility options could
there be to complement
your service.
I think there is
a lot of interest.
I think we're all just
a little unsure as
to where to start in
terms of pilot programs.
AUDIENCE: Hi, yes, I
wanted to piggy-back
on the great question about
what should we do next year.
I also wanted to piggy-back
and kind of add that
to Greg's comment.
I think with this
type of technology,
it's very tempting to think
that we won't be able--
Who knows?
How can we possibly
predict what might happen.
And to kind of take a
very passive approach
to being prepared.
Whereas Greg said
we actually already
have prototypes of
what it's like to have
a self-driving car when we
take Lyft and Uber, even just
taxi cabs and stuff.
So I'd actually like to
say while we have people
like Maurice and
people here, what
are the three
prototypes we could try
next year in
Charlottesville to simulate
some radical rethinking
of our downtown
suburban spaces' transportation
options to get a sense of what
it might be like--
what works, what
doesn't for different groups of
people within Charlottesville?
PRESENTER: And is this for
just the future of mobility
in general or for AVs alone?
AUDIENCE: Well, I think that.
[INAUDIBLE]
What I took as your
point was, don't wait.
You don't have to have
driverless cars [INAUDIBLE]
prototype and
[? prognosticate ?]
what it would be like to have
a very different shared use
type of [INAUDIBLE]
PRESENTER: Yeah, a lot of the
solutions to our transportation
problems look a lot like
AVs because they basically
are, could be, AVs.
An example of trying out, just
having a bus rapid transit
system, a dedicated lane
for a bus going both ways.
And then you see
what that looks like.
And then you see what
the frequency is.
And you see how the city reacts.
And you see if people
actually want to use it.
It's like everyone is
using driverless shuttles,
like the Easymile one that
I showed earlier, to have
those transit connections.
And the third one,
I mean, I'm just
going to push my own idea here,
but try out SUM zones for you.
PRESENTER: All I
would add to that
is that we should make
sure then we're doing--
You know, if we're
looking for experiences
that model the
future, we should also
be trying to close
streets more often
and have festivals and
do the sorts of things
that a future with
driverless vehicles
we should want out
of that future.
So yeah, I think
that's a great idea.
PRESENTER: I think
at a local level,
I've had some
conversations with JAUNT,
because they have, basically,
kind of a mobility on demand,
though it's reserved
24 hours and ahead kind
of model, to see
whether there are
any synergies between
a service like that
and having this automated
feature that could really
help them be more efficient.
PRESENTER: All very good ideas.
A number of things are
ideas that we've actually
had some conversations
with here in the city
and with our friends in
Albemarle County as well.
Bus or rapid transit being
one, especially the possibility
of doing something
like that on 29.
It is wonderful to have
those types of conversations
in rooms like this.
But when you go
outside, you tend
to get some opposition
and pushback.
And so that's part
of that discussion
that we have to
have as a community.
Where do we want to
be in the future?
What are we willing to give up
at times in order to get there?
And that's certainly an
important conversation
that we will have
as a community,
as a shared community, with
Charlottesville and Albemarle
County and the whole
region, especially
on the issue of transit
and the future of transit
in our community as well.
And we're having that
discussion right now.
Just a couple of weeks
ago, the City Council
met with the Board
of Supervisors
and agreed to a regional
transit partnership
where we're going to
study these issues
and develop a partnership
that will be, I think,
very proactive in looking at
all of these types of issues
and the impact it's going
to have on our community,
not just in the next
two or three years,
but the next five
10, 15, 20 years.
And it goes well beyond
Charlottesville and Albemarle.
We're having discussions with
folks in the Shenandoah Valley
about commuter efforts
between Waynesboro, Stanton,
Harrisonburg, and
Charlottesville and back.
So a lot of really important
communications between these
localities that are
happening right now.
And I'm looking
forward them because it
is a very exciting time to
talk about these issues.
Thank you to our panelists
for being here and thank you--
[APPLAUSE]
And thank you to the
University of Virginia
and the Darden
School for hosting
this wonderful symposium
that we're having today.
And thank you all
for being here.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
PRESENTER: Absolutely,
would love to.
It'd be an honor and privilege.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
PRESENTER: Well I'm pretty sure.
I think I'm not a
horrible lawyer this time.
I usually don't have my card.
Let me give you my card.
I think I already have,
but please reach out,
would love to.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
PRESENTER: Fantastic.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
PRESENTER: Would love to.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
PRESENTER: Oh, yeah.
Well, that's
[? about to say. ?] We'll
keep those guys on the
straight and narrow.
They're working hard over there.
AUDIENCE: What are your plans?
What would you like to be
doing at the end of five years?
PRESENTER: Next three
to five years, gosh.
AUDIENCE: For the
next two years?
PRESENTER: I'm putting out
fires on almost a daily basis.
I'd love to really start
thinking about the long term
strategy for having
the most rigorous
and thoughtful and
integrated test bed.
We're all innovators who
can be able to really get
this technology done.
No, I mean really, at
the end of we need data.
I mean, for us to be able
to grow consumer acceptance.
AUDIENCE: Did you hear
what Steve's doing?
PRESENTER: No, I know
what Steve's doing.
But I mean that's what--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
PRESENTER: But I
mean, that's what
we need in the bottom line.
Being is, for me as a
former administrator,
being able to protect the rights
and the intellectual property
of folks.
But being able to
not having these guys
competing on safety so that
we really can sort of commonly
identify edge cases.
But I mean, it's hard.
It's a hard balance.
So are they just going to
be that sort of rounding?
And And then after that,
we can start building
towards the consumer
acceptance issues.
So folks can really be able
see and feel that technology
in a fairly broad way.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
PRESENTER: I mean,
that's really ultimately,
you know, you heard from my
guys that I work with every day.
And there is some
things that they're
willing to band
together and share.
There's a lot of things
that they aren't.
And that's how do you
sort of [INAUDIBLE]..
PRESENTER: Well,
we are here to try
to support integrated needs.
The we is Waymo, Uber,
Lyft, Volvo, Ford.
And we're focused on level 4 and
level 5 vehicles specifically
to try to eliminate the
regulatory patchwork.
So we could be generating
the opportunity to test it,
ultimately with [INAUDIBLE].
So a possible
automation, how do we
get that rolled out nationwide?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
PRESENTER: Well they
have the alliance.
They have global.
I mean, this is an
integrated group of folks.
We have two ride share
companies, one engineering
company, and two OEMs.
So we're actually
integration of tech
and an alternative
business model
and OEMs, which is a different
integrated policy path.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
other group?
PRESENTER: There's
the Auto Alliance,
it's always been
there for decades.
Yeah, and Global Automakers,
which are the Asian automakers.
Let me go grab my
[? passwords. ?]
We'll catch up later, OK?
Thank you.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
PRESENTER: We're all different.
[INAUDIBLE]
PRESENTER: Please
let them know that.
Because I'm not a techie person.
And I'm talking about health
and all these other things.
PRESENTER: I got you.
I got your back.
Couple of questions,
are we still doing
Jenny, Tanya, and then your
wrap up and do you have--
PRESENTER: No, I'm first.
PRESENTER: You're
going to be first, OK.
PRESENTER: I'm
first, then Jenny.
and then Tanya.
PRESENTER: OK
perfect, and do you
have one of your constituents?
PRESENTER: No that wasn't
me, that was Tanya.
PRESENTER: That was Tanya.
Is she doing that still?
PRESENTER: I don't know.
I haven't spoken to her.
I've only spoken to Jenny.
PRESENTER: OK, we'll hang here.
And when everybody comes down--
PRESENTER: We'll see, yeah.
PRESENTER: Get it figured out.
[SIDE CONVERSATIONS]
DAVID STRICKLAND:
Hello, everyone.
Let's reconvene so we could
hopefully finish our day really
close to on time and get to
the rest of our weekends.
I'm David Strickland, again.
I am the partner of
Venable LLP, and I'm
the general counsel
for the Self-Driving
Coalition for Safer Streets.
And my background,
I guess I'm probably
more affiliated with
95% of the speakers
that we've heard today.
Which is I worked
in transportation
for going on 16, 17 years.
And I was at the leading
edge of self-driving policy
when I was the administrator
of the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration in 2010.
Small sidebar story to that.
There's nothing worse than
being the head of auto safety
for the United States
and Google deciding
to put a self-driving
vehicle in the middle of San
Francisco on Lombard
Street, which
is the crooked
street in the world,
and having the White House
leadership call you saying,
what do you know about that?
And being able to
tell them nothing.
And there's nothing worse than
having a responsibility rolling
downhill.
Actually, there was a
dirtier version of this.
It was called by then
Chief of Staff Rahm
Emanuel for President Obama.
And Mr. Emanuel is known to
have a very salty tongue.
So it was a very vibrant
conversation to me
about what was going
on with these vehicles.
And it was a very vibrant
competition for me
to the Google leadership,
ordering them into my office
immediately to tell me
about self-driving cars
and what their plans are
and what they're doing.
But with everything that
we've learned about and talked
about today, what we
ultimately are thinking about
is how are we improving
the lives of people.
We talk about technology.
We talk about business plans.
We talk about
regulatory balance.
We talk about all of this stuff.
But it really comes down
to how are we improving
everybody's daily living.
And it's a broad
construct of conversation,
and I'll say at the beginning,
a lot of the improvements
that we've seen in the
transportation sector, when
you're talking about
livable communities,
and you're talking about a
better pedestrian balance,
I will say personally,
being in leadership
at the Department of
Transportation for four years,
is that a lot of these
benefits have really
supported middle class
and upper class folk.
When you're talking
about bike lanes
and about better walkable
communities and building
commerce, you're
talking about places
where the bikes can go to
get coffee and wine bars
and these types of things.
And I don't think that we
have done an excellent job
policy-wise, writ
large, about how
we serve those that are
not on the Starbucks
side of the street.
And we're working on our best
efforts of how we do that,
and we're usually moving, trying
to retrofit policy solutions
for those that could support
new modes of transportation.
And then we think
about how can we
reach out to help those that may
not be in this same position.
Well, this panel, to me, is--
I'm really excited and
honored to work and hear
from three amazing
thought leaders
in talking about how
we take care of people
and how we build environments
to make everybody's life better,
which makes me very excited
to talk about this with this,
today.
This panel, about
community well-being,
and how do we impact
the well-being
of those that are socially
and economically marginalized.
And with that, what
we mean by it is this.
My hope for the future
is being a person
who's working in the
tech and policy side.
How can we work going
forward to make sure
that the advantages that
we all hope for and seek,
and improvements, in
frankly, society at large,
are built in to
advantage all of us?
And how do we communicate with,
build policy structures to,
build infrastructure for those
people that frankly, have
always had fewer
transportation choices,
and limitations which
have impacted them
in a number of ways, in terms
of being able to get to jobs,
being able to get to a
broader variety of schooling
for their children, and frankly,
building a stronger future
for everyone.
So that's what
this panel is going
to be talking about today.
So these three scholars,
they're not tech people.
They're not transport
people, per se,
but they frankly have the
most important interface.
How do we help and support
those that we are not reaching
down effectively today?
And how do we make
plans for the 20 or 30
or 40 year future
of self-driving
so that we can advantage
these communities?
How we can help the disabled.
How can we help those that
are economically marginalized?
How can we pull this all
together so that all boats rise
with the investments
in the [INAUDIBLE]
we're talking about.
That being said, let's talk
about our presenters for today.
Going first will
be Camille Burnett.
She is the Academic Director
for Community Engagement
and Partnerships and is
an Assistant Professor
and a scholar.
With extensive professional
experience in public health,
public management,
and on population
health-related boards at
the international, national,
and local level in public
health research and consulting.
Dr. Burnett's
program of research
examines policies
related to violence
against women and
the impact that
contextual and structural
influences have
in shaping policy as an actor.
Our next speaker will
be Tanya Denckla Cobb.
She was appointed as a
Director of the Institute
for Environmental
Negotiation in 2015.
Miss Cobb is a seasoned
mediator and facilitator
on environmental public policy,
an author, and a teacher.
Throughout her
career, she worked
for the federal government,
the state government,
and was among the
first certified
in 1993 by the
Virginia Supreme Court
to mediate court referred
cases and conduct
training in mediation.
She's a senior practitioner
at the National Roster
of Environmental Dispute
Resolution and Consensus
Building Professions.
Last, but certainly not
least, is Miss Jenny Roe.
Miss Roe is the Mary
Irene DeShong Professor
of Design and Health and
the Director of the Design
and Health Center and the School
of Architecture here at UVA.
She's an environmental
psychologist
exploring the relationship
between people and place,
with particular expertise
in restorative environments
and mental well-being.
With that, actually,
let me switch.
I apologize.
Camille will be going first.
Tanya will be going last, and
Jenny will be going second.
But first, please welcome
to the stage, Dr. Burnett.
CAMILLE BURNETT: Good
afternoon, everyone.
It's a pleasure to be here
and to be a part of such
a distinguished panel.
I wanted to begin-- and that
was a fabulous introduction.
Thank you so much, David.
By really identifying
and talking about health.
And with the lens that
oftentimes I don't think
we have the
opportunity to explore.
So I'm going to do some of
that exploration with you
here today.
So my background, as you heard,
was in population and public
health.
And when we talk about health,
and we talk about well-being,
we are really talking about
the level of population health
that we're going
to get to today.
So what we're talking about
the health of individuals
and communities, we're
talking about health
not in the terms of
an absence of disease.
We're talking about health as
a resource for everyday living.
And so what that means is
when you consider health
as a resource for
everyday living,
you have to introduce social
justice into the context.
And if you introduce
social justice
when you consider
people's health,
then you have to have a
fundamental understanding
of two premises; one
that health is a right,
and that health should be
accessible to all people.
And so if we're trying
to look at how we're
going to improve
people's health,
we also have to
recognize that there's
different factors in
the community that
determine people's health.
And those factors are income
and education and housing.
All of the things
that most of us
have the benefit of enjoying.
And those are more of
the social factors,
but again, there's
also structural factors
that determine people's health.
So we're thinking about policies
and laws and regulations
and resources.
And when you combine
those, you have
to recognize that
health is determined
by social and
structural factors,
and that because of that,
we can create inequity,
and we can create injustice.
So I think it's important
for us to set that foundation
and recognize that the health
of our local community,
in some areas that
David identified,
is riddled with poverty.
There are some
neighborhoods that
are facing poverty, that are
facing unemployment, that
are facing underemployment,
that have limited access
to social mobility.
And in addition to that, they
have a huge historical trauma
that they are
struggling with that
has been layered on with the
most recent events that have
happened within our community.
So you have all of these
aspects of someone's health
that are interfacing to--
that are going to be
determined by whatever it is
that you layer on top of that.
So I think it's really
important that we
have an understanding
of that type of impact
autonomous vehicles
will have when
you're laying it on top of
that type of health foundation.
In addition to that,
you have communities--
especially socially
marginalized communities--
that face a lot of
structural violence.
And structural violence occurs
within systems and policies.
And that looks like racism.
That looks like bias.
That looks like exclusion
from opportunity.
That looks like oppression.
And that looks like
limitations of power.
And so I just wanted to
set that as the foundation
for understanding when we're
talking about well-being
and health, we're
talking about that
from a much broader spectrum.
My second point that
I'd like to raise
in trying to answer
this question
is really considering
our approach
and looking at
this question using
the socioecological model.
And this is a model that is
not something that I invented.
It's often used across all kinds
of public and population health
programs.
But central to the
model is you'll
see that the individual's
at the center.
But you have to recognize that
with that individual comes
a context.
And so the individual
is surrounded
by this greater context that
influences their ability
to be healthy.
That influences their
ability to have well-being.
And because of that,
anything that you introduce,
whatever level of
technology, you
have to consider all of these
aspects of the individual,
of the community,
of the structures,
and then of society.
And specifically, when we
talk about the community,
we're not just talking
about a specific one
area of population,
we're talking
about segments of a community.
We've been talking about
neighborhoods, et cetera.
And at the structural
level, we're
talking about policies
and resources and some
of those things that I
mentioned earlier that will
impact and affect a community.
And so that area tends to be
where I do a lot of my work,
because that's
where you're going
to see a lot of
unintended consequences,
that if you don't consider
them now, when you do introduce
this type of
technology or advances,
that you're going to see
the ramification of those
at a community level,
and then you're
going to see that trickle
down to an individual level.
And then within that, we
have our societal level,
where we have our morals and
our values and our ideology.
And that shapes
all of the policies
that we implement, because
they're designed by people.
And people come to
the table, and they
bring those aspects of
themselves with them
to the table.
And so I just wanted
to kind of situate
the context by which
we have to consider all
of these aspects of technology.
And the third point that
I wanted us to consider--
and it's ironic.
As I was sitting here, I wrote
notes as people were speaking.
And the one thing that
I wrote down today,
when I was sitting in the dining
room, is where are the people?
Where is the community
and representation
from all aspects
of the community?
The end users, the
people who are probably
going to be impacted
by this in a way
that David had mentioned before.
Some of the most socially
and marginalized people,
where are they?
So part of our
strategy has to be we
need to value their
knowledge by asking them.
And by asking them, that
means we have to engage them.
We have to engage them
in this dialogue, so one,
they can co-create
the narrative by which
we communicate this technology.
And also ask them because
it helps us to build trust
with these communities.
And doing that is
important for us
to engage community partners.
And many of the partners--
and I'm not talking about
traditional partners.
So we have a lot of
technology people.
We have a lot of design people.
We have city people.
I think that's fabulous.
But I'm also talking about some
of the nontraditional partners.
The people who are deeply,
deeply rooted and entrenched
in these communities with
those who are socially
and economically marginalized.
They should be our
partners at this table
when we're looking at how
it is that we're going
to introduce this technology.
And they have already built the
trust with these communities.
And I'll tell you, we
have many nursing students
who go into some
of the areas that I
would consider being socially
and economically marginalized.
And trust building
within these communities
are paramount before you
can do anything else.
And so I don't want us to
overlook that as an aspect
that we can just negate and
assume that, yes, of course
we want this technology
to be introduced,
and we want it to have
a positive impact.
And we think it's
really going to be
beneficial to
individuals' health,
but unless we start
to build that trust,
we're not going to get
anywhere with the community.
And so I'll leave you with
some more questions that were
raised for me than answers.
And I wish I could have come
here and answered this for you,
but I think my answer is
to pose more questions
and to make you think a
little bit more critically
and contextualize the
impact that this potentially
could have.
So one of my bigger
questions was
to identify upfront
what are some
of the potential intended
and unintended consequences
of introducing autonomous
vehicles into our community,
and how can we upfront
start to mitigate
that in a proactive way,
not run around and react
at the end of it in trying
to help other people.
Let's build them
into the conversation
and try and think
about that up front
and think about how we
can start to mitigate
some of those impacts.
And then what we
have to do is we
have to use that insight to
help guide our decision making.
Because if we identify
what these things are,
there should be an
expectation that we
do something about them.
And we do something
about them upfront,
and we do something
about them in partnership
with the community.
The other aspect
that I think really
needs to be explored
further is really
looking at what the
health implications are
across different settings.
And again, using that
broader definition of health.
What are the implications
within a rural community
versus an urban context?
Because how that rolls out
will look very, very different
across those settings and
across the populations
that are socially and
economically marginalized
within those
geographical spaces.
I also wondered, what
would success look like?
What is health and well being?
What does that look like,
and what does that look like
according to the community?
And how are we going
to measure that?
How are we going to evaluate it?
How are we going
to identify that?
What are we striving for?
What is that benchmark?
I think we need to
know these things
upfront before we
move a little bit too
quickly ahead of ourselves.
And I'd also want to know what
are the strategies that we're
going to use to
really address some
of the structural
violence that might be
an unintended
consequence of bringing
in this level of technology,
and what are those strategies
that we can identify,
again, proactively.
And finally, with my population
and public health hat on,
I often think about
many of the strategies
that are already in place.
We talked about building
walkable communities.
We talk about the
built environment
and all these other strategies.
And how will these two
very different paradigms
come together to coexist?
I think we have to explore that.
Because if we're looking at
having people accessing more
transportation, but we know
that a lot of the initiatives
that we've done in
the past to create
these walkable communities, to
have better built environments,
have really been to combat the
epidemic of chronic disease
prevention.
So we do have to look at where
the praxis of those two very,
very different paradigms
overlap, and then we
need to explore how we
can coexist with those two
ideologies together.
And that's all I
have for you today.
Thank you.
DAVID STRICKLAND: Thank
you very much, Camille.
Professor Roe?
JENNY ROE: Thank you.
[INAUDIBLE]
DAVID STRICKLAND: OK.
The clicker should [INAUDIBLE].
There it is.
Very top.
JENNY ROE: [? I can't see ?]
[? without my glasses. ?]
DAVID STRICKLAND: [LAUGHS]
JENNY ROE: Thank you.
Good afternoon, and
thank you very much,
David and Camille, for that very
thought provoking presentation.
I'm an environmental
psychologist.
My interest is really in how
the world shapes human behaviors
and how we shape that world.
I'm going to talk quite a
lot about human behavior
in relation to
technology adoption.
I don't-- as David
said earlier--
know a lot about
driverless cars,
but I do know a bit about
behavior and human behaviors.
So I'm going to start off
with an old English proverb.
You can lead a horse to water,
but you can't make it drink.
So people, like
horses, will only
do what they have a mind to do.
We all make choices
that sometimes
go against our self-interest
and our health and well-being.
We know, in this
room, I think, there
are many potential
benefits to health
from this driverless
technology that
can make getting from
A to B less stressful,
particularly if
you're used to driving
on the other side of the road.
It will result in improved air
quality, reduced carbon dioxide
emissions, improve respiratory
health issues, asthma,
increased safety, and so on.
But we also know that ideas and
technologies introduced often
fail to take hold because the
individuals and communities
that they are designed
to benefit never really
truly embrace them.
So what I'm going to do over a
relatively short presentation
is introduce you to
some frameworks that
can help us tease out how
we might change behaviors
in the types of communities
we're talking about today.
So altering any behavior,
be it a health behavior,
or technology behavior,
requires three things.
It's called the COM model.
Tried and tested in many
fields, including health.
We need Capability,
Opportunity, and Motivation.
Within the transport
sector, capability
might mean, say, personability,
cognitive functioning,
and agency.
Very important.
Agency is our ability to act.
It's really about
having control within us
to take those actions.
And we know in the
types of communities
that Camille has
been talking about,
agency and empowerment and
self control is pretty poor.
So we have to learn how to
build that, first of all.
You have to have
the opportunity,
obviously, to access
the technology.
The previous presenters were
talking about that opportunity.
About the need for assistance
to be available, easy to access,
safe.
About the time constraints,
possibly, in using that system.
So you have to have all
of those things in place.
And finally, you have
to have motivation
to use the technology.
There has to be, with respect
to transport behaviors,
a destination and a
personal intention.
Now we know with
behavior change,
drivers, if those intentions
are intrinsic, i.e,
if they're driven by
internal rewards rather
than external rewards, the
uptake of the technology
will be greater.
So you have to start
with that model.
And then there are 93 ways
in which to change behavior.
We could be here all afternoon
talking about those 93 ways.
Fortunately, some clever folk
at University College London
have factored those down
to 16 core components.
And I began to start
thinking about what
some of those core components,
behavior change techniques,
we call them, might look like
in relation to driverless cars.
So of course you can--
the top four, actually,
the four behavior
change techniques
most frequently used
and most often used in tandem.
For the first, you can offer or
you can provide disincentives.
So you make it more
difficult for people
to actually use that private
car to get into the city.
This generally
penalizes the poor
and supports the
wealthier in our society.
So I'm not suggesting
that's what we do,
but it's commonly used.
Shaping knowledge
sounds fairly obvious.
You have to communicate
the benefits.
You have to give
demonstrations, and you have
to provide hands-on trials.
Reward systems; saving
money, financial incentives,
these are all techniques
that we know work in relation
to behavior change.
And very importantly, I
think, in the community
that we're trying to
target, social support
and social relationships.
So what we know
works in relation
to behavior change
and technology
adoption is that recruitment
of community change
agents, early
adopters, are really
critical in that system, and
also optimal communicators.
Who are those people
in the community
that can help drive this
change at a local level?
In London, we had our Docklands
Light Railway Transit System,
and for the first
couple of years--
it's a driverless system.
OK?
The first couple
of years, there had
to be somebody situated at
the front of the carriage,
almost pretending to drive it,
because people were frightened
of this driverless technology.
So travel buddies
or peer travelers
in the context of
driverless cars
may be one way forward in
eliminating those fears
and creating adoption.
There are very many
other techniques
we could discuss today.
I'm going to move on.
But really, what I'm trying to
relay is that this is complex,
and that there are different
frameworks that can help
us understand behavior change.
So why am I showing you a slide
of an Indian woman cooking
a chapati on a wood stove?
Partly because I used this
behavior change framework
in Kenya, actually, not
India, to understand
how we could encourage the
uptake to cleaner cook stoves.
I learned two things I
want to share with you.
So biomass stoves cause 4
million premature deaths
in the world annually.
So you would think, perhaps,
that the health messaging
in terms of trying to convert
change to cleaner technologies
would be the most
powerful driver.
Well, the first thing I learned
here in this study in Kenya
was that the
motivators for change
are not what we think
that they might be.
So health messaging was not
the main motivator for change.
The main motivating
factors were actually
financial, the
added convenience,
and the aesthetic and
aspirational appeal
of the stove.
So what the designers
had to do was
get down at this ground
level with the women who
cook on these stoves
and understand
the process of cooking.
And I think that we
can translate that
into this context in
charts, but we really
need to understand
people's current travel
behaviors, the barriers,
and the motivations
to using those types
of travel behaviors.
The second thing
I learned, really,
was that understanding
behavior change
is truly contextual and local.
And just to really reiterate
what Camille has been saying,
we really need to dig deep here
and understand this context
in both individuals,
households, and communities.
The final point
I want to make is
I'm a little concerned
at the moment
about the research that's
being done in this field.
And I think we really need
to look at it from a very
holistic perspective.
I call it inside
out, outside in.
What I see at the
moment in the field
is a lot of research about what
it feels like to be in the car.
You, today, have had the
chance to experience what
it's like to be in the car.
But what about the
people on the streets?
This is a very
delicate ecosystem,
and we don't want to
upset its balance.
In fact.
We want to improve and
extend the possibilities
for active living
and urban mobility.
This is what all of my
research is designed to do.
Andrew was also talking
about this earlier.
So am I, as a mother, going
to let my 9-year-old child
cycle down a road
with a driverless car?
Am I, as a 90-year-old
stepping out off the curb
into the pavement going to
feel confident to do so?
So we need to look at this
from a holistic perspective.
And then finally, we
were asked to throw out
some research questions.
Camille has already spoken
about the need to build trust,
so I'm going to park that
question, because it's already
out there.
How do we confront the
fear of the unknown,
and what are the gender
and the age barriers?
We know a little bit that there
are barriers by age and gender.
We need to tease those
out and also understand
where are the opportunities?
How do we identify and use these
change agents in a community?
Who do you think they are?
They're very likely going
to be our young people,
the people who are
used to technology
and fearless of technology.
And finally, how do we make
access inclusive and diverse
whilst also avoiding stigma?
As somebody who has used
the public transport
system in
Charlottesville, I sense
that there's a kind of
stigma to using a bus,
and that we really need to
try to avoid this in relation
to making accessible driverless
cars to particular sectors.
So those are my
thoughts and reflections
on how we might build
health from the bottom up,
really focusing on behavior
and behavior change
as the way to build health.
Thank you.
MODERATOR: Professor,
thank you so much.
Director [INAUDIBLE],,
the floor is yours.
PRESENTER: Great.
Thank you.
It's a real pleasure
to be here today.
I think I feel very at
home with this panel.
Dr. Burnett was talking about
how are we actually improving
people's lives, how do we do it.
And one of the things
that you said is we ask.
Well, I was asked to ask.
So I'm here to report
on what I learned.
And I want to start
a little bit with--
just a little bit of a personal
story, as my step daddy
is 89 years old.
And I was asked to
talk with seniors.
And I was thinking about how
he would think about this.
He is still teaching Shakespeare
and stuff down at the college
for continuing learning
down in Asheville.
But darn, he does not
belong on the road, right?
He does not.
But he has said--
and I won't say the
expletive deleted.
But he said pounding
the table, literally,
in front of us that nobody's
going to take my car away
because it is his independence.
It is his sense for his
generation, probably not
the millennials we heard this
morning, but independence,
and his identity.
His identity is wrapped up
with his independence, right?
So I went into--
I'm thinking about this.
And going into the focus
group for seniors, which was--
we were fortunate enough
to be able to pull together
a group of eight seniors who are
at the Mary Williams Community
Senior Center at the
Jefferson School,
and thinking about what is
it that is important to them,
and really hoping that we
could elicit some of this.
And I think I have some
things that may surprise you,
that may interest you.
Certainly, I was
surprised along the way.
So let me just
share a little bit
about the first group,
which was the seniors.
And they were eight.
And four of them we
wanted to see well
how many own a vehicle today.
And what is your
level of independence?
Half of them, four,
owned vehicles.
You'll notice that only really
they didn't have a lot of use.
If the average earlier--
I am trying to remember
who it was-- earlier
said that the average use
per day is three trips a day.
That's not really
happening with the seniors,
that there were some that
used them once a day up to--
and a few used them only
a few times a month, OK?
So think about all those
unused car hours, and the space
if it's $8 a day, which I heard
to maintain that parking space.
What an expense for the senior,
right, that it could save,
that could be saved.
Two of these car owners
drove themselves and two--
so now we're getting
down to really only
two out of the eight were really
willing to drive themselves.
Because two of them
used their cars
but preferred them to
be driven by others.
So we're really seeing that
they like the independence
but maybe they don't
necessarily need to be driving.
So immediately,
you're thinking, well,
maybe these AVs
are good for them.
The non-car owners used the
public transport bus, taxi,
friends, family.
Uber, what's that?
Yeah, no.
Seniors we're not using Uber.
They all used John.
This is really huge, I think,
because it is a subsidized--
and I'll come back to this.
It is a subsidized
form of mobility
for seniors who may be
lower income and challenged
in that way.
How do they use their vehicles?
Excuse me.
They use them for things
you would imagine,
no big surprises here,
groceries, other errands,
medical appointments,
social outings,
a lot of visiting family, and
going to the senior center,
and church.
So let me just see here.
So what were their concerns?
I can't tell you
how much time we
spent on the issue of safety.
So in terms of a motivation
for an incentive,
for adopting something new that
Jenny Rowe was talking about,
is they have to be
convinced that it is safe.
And one of them--
I brought this here.
I wanted to quote
this, that nothing
would make them feel safe
in this autonomous vehicle
unless it was made by God, OK?
Nothing.
And others were
saying it would have
to become wildly adopted
first before they
would become adopter.
So they would not be
early adopters, right?
And they would want a
few years of testing.
But one of the things that
I think was most interesting
is the idea of the
safety driver, which I've
heard through the day
is actually a thought
that many are having, because
for them, that's critical.
And let me tell you why.
This is where some
of the fun is.
So they had tons of questions.
So would an ID be required?
They call a car,
an AV, how do they
know that that's the right one
for them, that's programmed
to go to the place that
somebody may have called
for them on their behalf?
So how is an ID done?
Is insurance required?
Do I need to carry insurance,
like airplane insurance, right,
or I'm renting a car somewhere?
You're asked to
carry car insurance.
What-- you're going
to love this one.
What happens if there is
damage during the trip
while you're in it.
Coffee is spilling, or what
if somebody throws up, right?
Who is responsible
for cleaning it up,
and who's responsible
for paying for it.
And so I'm thinking,
well, I could
think of a younger
generation that
might be using AVs that might
be worried about that too.
This might be college students
who might be equally worried
about those very same things.
And how does a car know that
it has actually been fouled up
and needs cleaning, right?
So we know renters of houses.
I was thinking, well, what
are they talking about.
I'm thinking about
rental cottages
down in the Outer Banks or
something-- it's a cleaning
crew comes through,
and cleans the house,
and you see it's been fouled,
and it needs a deep cleaning.
How does the car know
that it has to stop
and can't just go on to
pick up another client that
opens the door, goes, ew?
So yeah, crazy things that
certainly I never thought about
were real concerns,
like not just funny.
These are serious concerns.
For me to feel safe,
to start using this,
is I need to know that
it's got cleanliness,
that it's going to know that
it's me, that it's going
to deliver me on time, that
I'm not responsible for what
happens to it while
I'm there, right?
So other special needs
that they identified
for seniors were that there
will need to be ramps,
there will need to be
special audio visual options
to assist sight impaired, or
vision, or hearing impaired.
I think it's hearing
and vision impaired.
I did a--
OK.
And then that there will
be extra room needed
in these vehicles to
accommodate wheelchairs.
And most importantly for seniors
in terms of their safety--
still, safety is paramount--
is what happens if something
happens to me medically?
How can I call?
How can this car know that maybe
it needs to change its route
and take me to the
hospital, or that somebody
needs to come and get me so that
when it goes to its next stop,
there isn't somebody finding
me on the floor of the car?
Very serious concerns,
that they're worried about.
So digging a little
deeper is how would they
want to use this?
We said, OK, it's clear
nobody in this room
is going to want to use it.
But let's imagine a time
when it has been tested,
and it's well proven, and
it's years into its use,
and now you're able to use it.
How would you want to do that?
What would be your reasons
for wanting to use it?
And same kinds of things.
They'd want to use it to be
able to get to food markets,
to the senior center,
family, other activities.
But here's some
interesting things,
is they started to
think more creatively.
And they said, this would help
us get out in bad weather,
and whether that we would
never take our cars out,
or we wouldn't even
take public transport.
But this might feel safer than
trying to go to the bus, right?
And so it might also help
us after business hours.
It also might help us
get to his destination
that now we can never imagine
going to, like New York City,
or even DC, really dense
and difficult to navigate,
that maybe we could do these
occasional jaunts to places
we couldn't normally get.
What are their needs?
They need a
low-dollar commitment.
They were not interested,
and a monthly subscription,
unless it had a
rollover capacity,
because you could see their
use was pretty low, right?
So for cell phone use today,
you get so many hundred minutes.
They don't like even
that because they
have all these unused minutes.
Unless you can roll that
over into the next month,
they're not interested.
They want a per use
fee, or family plans
where it can be shared.
One of the things that they
really urged us to do is, hey,
it's great you're talking
to us and the city.
But you know the people
who really need this?
The people who are
really going to benefit
are out in the rural areas
because they're shut in
and they can't
get into the city.
So that's who you
need to go talk to.
Pets?
One of the biggest
surprises, pets.
Will we be able to use these
to send our pets on their own
to the vets, right?
Why not.
And, of course,
you think about it,
because for them, it's a
big problem to get out,
and to go there.
And maybe it's a bad day for
them, but the dog needs to go,
or the cat needs to go.
So thinking about that is big.
All right, so the next group
that I was asked to ask,
single working parents.
And I think that this
is really getting
at some of the issues
of our disadvantaged,
our challenged, our
low income population
Frankly, I was not able to
do that because after August
12 in our community, this part,
this segment of our community
was really tapped out.
It was a trauma, as you
talked about, Camille,
and our social services
were tapped out and trying
to handle this aftermath.
So we tried to think creatively.
So we talked with
people who serve
the single working parents.
But I will make
a couple comments
before I close on
some thoughts of what
we might want to think
about going forward
in terms of asking, which
is huge and important.
But first, let me share
with you the few things
that we were able to elicit.
One is safety was not
the biggest concern,
like the seniors.
The most, as you might
imagine, the biggest concern
is affordability, that
it's got to be less than
or equal to public transport.
And they've got to have the
ability-- so their need is--
one of the issues you'll see
was protecting their jobs.
Many of these single
working parents
are, in fact, Uber drivers.
That was a surprise for me.
This is how-- and we heard
it from an earlier speaker
that they might be doing 10 to
15 hours a week to supplement
their income to help fill
out their needs of what
they need to pay for.
And so what was
really heartening
to me was hearing that we
would not be losing jobs,
is we might actually be gaining
different types of jobs.
And so thinking about how
when we transition to this,
how can it serve the needs
of single-working parents
because they have the need
to be able to transition
frequently between jobs
and different shifts.
So they're pulling lots of
shifts, different strange hours
of the day.
They need to be able to get
to different places quickly
and reliably.
And how can they do that?
Their biggest
interest will be can
I use this to transport
myself and my children?
So one of the big questions
is what's needed--
and the seniors raised this with
regard to their grandchildren--
is will we be able to put
children into these cars
and know that they're safe?
So will it be like child care?
Do there need to be certified
childcare drivers on board
watching the children making
sure that nobody else is
getting on board, that
the kids are getting off
where they need to get off, all
of those very important safety
issues.
And last but not least
is also the cost issue,
is that similar
to the seniors, is
that they are more likely to
be interested in a per use,
in a per ride payment,
or the subsidized-- they
were very interested in
a subsidized form of AV.
So we would want to think
about in terms of city policy,
is how can we start building
this into our policies,
that we are going to be
thinking-- and this could be--
I'm thinking in terms
of our next steps
for pilots, that we need to do
more engagement as has already
been suggested,
and in the pilot,
the pilot maybe should be
thinking about piloting it
with some of these
very challenged members
of our community who
are stressed because
of low income, stressed because
of special needs, et cetera.
And so I also was very inspired
by Andrew Mondscheine's vision
at the end.
I want to share just a
thought that's been stewing,
brewing in my mind.
It's that we were talking
about reclaiming our streets.
And one of the thoughts
that I have is parking
is a huge piece of what's
required in any development,
right?
And the cost associated
with that is huge.
So if we were to
start thinking about--
and I'm thinking
about the issue that
was said at the very
beginning, that transportation
is one of the key components
of helping people climb out
of the cycle of poverty.
So we need-- in
this future vision,
we need to be really
deliberately intentionally
thinking about how we're
going to help them do that.
So could we imagine a city where
not only are there requirements
for affordable
units, but there are
requirements for subsidized
AV as part of the development
package?
Instead of parking, you're no
longer going to need parking.
Parking may on the very
urban, on the perimeter
of the city, where the
cars go and park themselves
at night or something, right?
So instead of requiring
parking, requiring
maybe the subsidized
way of helping people
have that transportation
so there are not
unintended consequences.
Can we think about also not
only reclaiming our streets,
but reclaiming our parking
lots, so that these
become areas for urban farms
and parks for our people
of the community to grow
food for their table,
that or maybe it's a
commercial urban farm?
Who knows?
But there are ways to
reclaim that space that
will start to feed the wellness,
psychological well-being
of our people with
these green spaces
and green infrastructure.
And I think I'll stop there.
Yes, the main thing
I wanted to leave on
is that we have to be thinking
about increasing mobility
for our low income
single working parents,
for seniors, as a way of
breaking the cycle of poverty,
and for seniors, for
making sure that they
stay connected for their
health and well being.
Thank you.
MODERATOR: Tanya,
thank you so very much.
And before we open
for questions,
I just wanted to have
a quick overview.
And I think all of our
speakers spoke of this,
is that us supporting
those that are economically
and socially marginalized,
there's capacities,
because we have so many
more issues before us that
are right in front of
her face, that frankly,
these three leaders and scholars
work on every single day,
and public health workers,
and social workers
in the medical community are
working through every day,
and frankly, government leaders
are working through in terms
of how do we come
together as a people
and deal with the inequities
across our society.
And especially for this very
beautiful, special community,
what happened on
August the 12th?
While it does seem
a little futuristic
to be talking about public
health, and wellness,
and economic opportunities
in a futuristic way,
in a beautiful campus, in a
beautiful business school,
I am a true believer
as a former head
of a regulatory agency you
have to walk and chew gum
at the same time, right?
So while yes, we have
so many issues that
are before us to improve
the lives of so many people
that need it, I think we need to
spend a little time and effort
to think about how do
we plan for this future
so we don't, frankly, create
the same market failures--
when you use the economic
model-- that we see today.
And this is a technology
is moving quickly.
And I think that having
an opportunity to have,
frankly, three amazing
scholars thinking
about how this environment,
and how these people can
be integrated into this
process, as well as everybody
that is so invested
in it today, I think
is incredibly important.
So I really want to
thank the three of them
for their thoughts and
efforts in addition
to the work they're doing every
single day on the front lines
of trying to help folks
that are really suffering,
and I think is
incredibly important.
So I thank all three of you.
I really do appreciate you
taking time out with this.
Any questions in the last few
minutes we have for the panel?
Yes, sir?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] to seniors
and single working parents.
[INAUDIBLE] our
community [INAUDIBLE]
unfortunately is people with
developmental disabilities.
[INAUDIBLE]
PRESENTER: Yeah, I
think that's right.
I think that's right on.
And another part of
the community-- we
really tried hard.
And we were almost
there three times,
but we just couldn't connect, is
the IRC, our refugee community.
And so I think that they
also would have probably
slightly different
shades of interests
and needs for the AVs
that need to be explored,
still need to be explored.
PRESENTER: I would
just add to that,
that even though it wasn't
explicitly mentioned,
I'd just be assured
that when we talk
about marginalized
populations and peoples,
there is many
variations of that.
And that would be
inclusive of people
who have developmental
disabilities
or behavioral challenges and
all the host of other aspects
that we mentioned.
So it's not just specifically
one population or the other.
There's different aggregates of
those populations that do fall
under being marginalized.
Thank you.
PRESENTER: And just
as a carry over,
being the not smart
but technical end
of our panel, really, what
we're talking about here
is not only making
sure that there's
a variety of vehicle
design that can accommodate
the variety of needs
across the populace, which
I think with
self-driving vehicles,
and the economy as
a scale, I think
is more achievable than we
have today in status quo
when we're having to
redesign vehicles that have
a cost of $15,000
to $45,000 a vehicle
for those that
are special needs,
and especially with physical
and developmental disabilities.
But I think it's
also a huge question,
is about chain of
custody, being able to put
in your child or
your grandparent
into a vehicle
making sure that A,
they're going to the
right place, and B,
there was a hand off.
There was somebody at the other
end of that self-driving trip
to assist them out
and to get them to,
which is, again, when you're
thinking about how the business
models develop, it is-- so
you're going to need people
on either end of that,
especially when you're talking
about those with special needs.
And I think that's
incredibly important.
[INAUDIBLE]?
PRESENTER: Can I just pause
at something there in relation
to intergenerational sharing.
So with housing,
for instance, we're
seeing young people
stepping in to share housing
with older people,
and to share some
of the responsibility for that.
I do think we need to
look at our younger people
as tools and facilitators
for some of this,
and what their
motivations might be
to assist at those junctions
in the transport system
where help is needed.
MODERATOR: Next question?
AUDIENCE: I'm sorry.
Can we--
PRESENTER: OK, I just
want to really briefly add
that I do think that actually
race is another research
question, specifically around
the ethical considerations--
and I don't know how much time
we spent talking about that.
I missed some of the
earlier sessions.
But I do think it begs the
questions around some of those,
the chain of custody
aspects, and as well
safety in terms of
decision making,
in terms of an algorithm
to make a decision
where if, god forbid, the
autonomous vehicle has
to make a decision about if
the passengers in that vehicle
might be injured, or a
pedestrian on the street,
how does that vehicle
make that determination.
So there's different
levels of ethical concerns
that I think really do need
to be raised and explored.
MODERATOR: Absolutely agree.
Definitely was touched
on in an earlier panel.
But believe me, it is a
much longer discussion.
But definitely, especially for
those that don't necessarily
have the same physical or
mental capabilities to be
able to manage particular
risks, that we frankly think
is common.
So I think it's a great point.
Next question?
Oh, yes, ma'am?
AUDIENCE: I think
it's interesting.
We kept talking about all
the lost jobs of bus drivers.
And it does seem
like there's going
to be at least a
job as a concierge,
that it's like when we went
for self-operating elevators.
And for a while there, we still
needed the elevator operator
because people were afraid
to use this push button
elevator that didn't
have anyone in it,
and they would be unsafe,
and they'd be alone,
and what if they got sick,
and all the same fears
that were there during
that interim period.
And so there may be an
interesting new job opportunity
for transit concierge
that pays attention
to the children in the vehicle
and to the older adult.
The other thing that
I keep thinking about
is the economic benefit of
transporting older adults
and reducing the amount of
caregiver absenteeism, which
probably some of you are award.
I think it's-- I just
looked it up again.
I think it's something
like $25 billion a year
that the American economy
is loosing because
of adult workers who are
having to take time off
to be caregivers for
aging parents or someone.
And a lot of that time is spent
driving those people around.
So people are taking
something like six days
a year off from work
to drive their parent
to the doctor, et cetera.
Now, you'd still want
to be at the doctor,
so I don't think you can
totally eliminate it.
But if you could at
least meet them there--
so interesting opportunity.
But I think that whole
role of the facilitator
is still very much needed.
Even if the vehicle
itself drives,
the people are
still [INAUDIBLE]..
MODERATOR: No, thank you.
I think that's an
excellent point.
I'm sorry.
Tanya?
PRESENTER: It's not quite
related to what you're saying,
Hannah.
But what you're
saying makes me think
of the connectivity
that's needed for seniors,
is right now families
playing that role.
But there's also other
types of connectivity
that seniors could
benefit from with this, is
that so many seniors, they
just won't go out at night.
It's so hard to drive.
So maybe they can
finally do social events.
Maybe they can
finally be connected
to other parts of
their family who
don't want to come-- this is
what made me think about it--
is it's who may not be have the
time to go and pick up Grammy
or Grandpa, but they'd
love to see them,
but maybe if the AV
brings them for dinner
and then can take them back,
that relieves the burden
on the working
parent who doesn't
have the time to go do it.
But it could really
serve to increase
the connectivity between
seniors and lower
the isolation that they feel.
MODERATOR: No,
thank you so much.
I think we're getting
close to our time.
I wanted to also
highlight, I think
once again, talking
about opportunities,
is that when you think
about self-driving vehicles,
and [INAUDIBLE] seeing the
under-served communities,
and especially in last
mile issues in terms
of getting folks to
train terminals, transit
terminals, et cetera.
And when you have shift
workers working late at night--
and frankly, I lived
in Washington DC,
and we had a fairly significant
issue with taxi drivers not
wanting to take people
to certain neighborhoods
in Washington, and frankly,
preying upon people
at Union Station
at midnight when
people getting off
of Amtrak trains
and they wouldn't
go to Anacostia.
And they were just
cherry picking people.
And one of the great things
about innovation with the ride
share services and
other folks, you
began to address
some of those things.
But there are still issues, even
with the right share services
in that.
And hopefully the notion
of a self-driving vehicle,
Where it is a
machine that is going
to go where it's been told
to go regardless of what
neighborhood it's in I
think is, once again,
one of those possible
great opportunities
for us to deal with the
racial divide, if you will,
in the provision of
transportation services,
as well as all the things
we've been talking about.
And I think that as we think
about our community together,
and how we bring
each other together,
and how we provide similar
services and opportunities
together, I think
this is, once again,
another foundational
opportunity for all of us
if we get it right.
Ladies, thank you so
much for your leadership
and your thought.
And frankly, we're
going to need you
a lot more as the
months, weeks, years
go on as we develop
this technology,
making sure that we are bringing
all of the constituencies
to the table, and making
sure that we really
do have a transformation in
our society based upon better
opportunity in transportation.
Thank you all so
very, very much.
PRESENTER: Thank you.
PRESENTER: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
MODERATOR: [INAUDIBLE] .
I really appreciate that.
I'm going to let you
all-- if you don't mind--
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
MODERATOR: No, go to your seats.
I'm going to offer
just a few quick words.
I want open the floor,
just for a second.
And then I'm going to close
this with some comments
from the mayor as well.
This has been an
extraordinarily helpful event.
It's critical for us, who play
a leading role in encouraging
research at a university
like University of Virginia
to ensure that we're
bringing multiple disciplines
to the table.
Too frequently, we
default to the supposition
that a single discipline
can solve something, right?
And as soon as you bring
in reality, communities,
human communities, real
places, and real spaces,
it becomes immediately apparent
that a single discipline
is never going to solve
an overarching problem,
especially when you're dealing
with something as complex
as a community, a
community that has
economic networks,
a community that
has social networks, a community
that's made up of real places
with racial and economic
and cultural divisions.
So I'm enormously
encouraged by some
of the conversation
about the capacity
for a gradual
transition towards--
and market forces to be able
to accommodate those things.
But I'm coming away from
today with some real questions
about the responsibility
of the public.
What is the role of
public institutions,
like the University of Virginia
or city government, state
government, and the
federal government
to step in and ensure public
good and public access
to these resources?
And I think these are
really critical questions.
In the morning, we heard
the essential responsibility
of ethicists.
And I think Camille returned
to this again this afternoon.
We must have ethicists at the
table with software developers,
right?
Because software developers
are going to be writing code
that make decisions about
how these cars function.
Ethicists have to be at
the table at the same time
to ensure that those that code
is making ethical questions
about how to navigate
questions of injury and life
at the table.
And I think it's
really interesting
to think about the ways
that coding might actually
begin to mediate against racial,
social, and economic bias.
David, you were suggesting
that at the end here.
It may be that the
coding actually here
could actually really be
a collective social good.
And that would be
really interesting.
It seems to me that there are
some strategic decisions that I
think designers need to
help us move forward with,
and engineers as well.
How do we navigate the
transitional season
of the next five to
eight to 10 years?
Many of you were
asking questions.
And I was encouraged by--
what do we do next year?
What can Charlottesville
do in the next 12 months
to begin to experiment?
That's exactly the kinds of
questions that we want to ask,
even if it makes that
mayor sweat a little bit.
It's good.
He hasn't had enough of that.
It's important for us.
It's important for
us to ask questions
about action steps
that can be immediate,
but also to project necessary
steps that will carry us
forward for the next five to 10
years this season transition.
And so I heard a
great deal of emphasis
on the necessity for multiple
multi-disciplinarity,
and some creative thinking about
immediate short-term steps.
Before I give the floor
to our final hosts,
and invite them both
back up, Paul and Mike,
I wanted to just open
the floor for a second.
Did you hear a research
question that you
would want the university
to try to pursue?
And Cody here is going
to be taking notes.
So if you heard of
a critical problem
that you want us to
be sure not to miss,
some intersection of questions,
the floor is now yours.
Yes, ma'am?
AUDIENCE: Well, mine
is a political problem.
And that's [INAUDIBLE].
MODERATOR: So
what's the question?
AUDIENCE: Can we please get
[INAUDIBLE] county involved
in this very important issue,
whether they want to be or not?
MODERATOR: OK.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
MODERATOR: It's
critical that we bring
a regional approach not just
a local government approach.
I agree with that entirely, and
there's no question about that.
In fact, I was chastised that
on my way to the men's room
as well.
So you're not the first
person to [INAUDIBLE]..
This has come up before.
Yes, ma'am, in the back?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, this [INAUDIBLE]
senior driving in rural areas
to be particularly isolated.
Because the roads, especially
in [INAUDIBLE] are gravel
and dirt-- there are
no line markings--
[INAUDIBLE]
So that is even more
than a [INAUDIBLE]
if you need to have the lines.
Maybe paint on gravel or
something, But the rural area--
MODERATOR: That's
a great question.
All right, I'm going to leave
that for someone who may be
able to answer that,
because I certainly can't.
And maybe it will remain
unanswered for the short term.
But that's a great question.
What happens when you
move out of the more--
where you have
weaker infrastructure
in remote country roads?
Other critical questions?
Yes, sir?
AUDIENCE: I just take
that a step farther.
A lot of people talk about
rural and urban in general,
and looking at political
maps, and what's
happened at elections, not just
what you can do with autonomous
vehicles, but what can
urban planning people
do to maybe move
things out of the city,
and to more transitional
rural areas.
The autonomous vehicles
could then bring people
in a shorter distance.
Like you said, it's
multidiciplinary.
There's so many different
pieces of the puzzle.
All But that seemed
like almost a key source
of a huge number of
problems we're experiencing
in our country right now,
and the communication
between rural, and
the ability to get
to know people who who are from
different areas, and how do
you put all that together
into a research question
where you can solve
that fundamental problem
in our society right now.
MODERATOR: So some really
creative I think maybe design
work--
I'm looking at
[? Lucia ?] here--
thinking about some really
creative design work
that might be able to create
infrastructures that bleed back
and forth between city
and county as a way
of helping to break down some
of those political and economic
divides.
I love that.
Great.
Yes, ma'am, in the back?
AUDIENCE: I'd say
probably how [INAUDIBLE]..
MODERATOR: Yeah, yeah, so
certainly this final session.
But it started to emerge even
before the final session.
The critical responsiveness--
so much of the conversation,
I think on the national
stage is about the transition
of the Uber to the
driverless Uber,
which presupposes a
healthy, single individual,
a healthy, fairly economically
well-off single individual
moving around an
urban environment.
But that's not entirely
what Charlottesville is.
And so trying to think about
transfer of younger children,
as you've just pointed
out, how do these systems
properly accommodate the elderly
and the physically disabled,
developmentally disabled?
I think these are really
critical questions that it
may be there that policy
and creative policy-making
needs to step in on that front
to help substantiate that this
is not just a system
or a technology that's
available for people
like yourself and myself.
There is a question
just in front there.
Sir, do you want to
ask your question?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
I'm just wrestling with
this issue, dependency
on this type of technology.
What are the implications
of this, the bigger picture?
For example, we had
to evacuate Houston.
We had to evacuate
Florida recently.
And in those situations, it's
all one-way traffic going out.
And that wouldn't work,
[INAUDIBLE] automated vehicles.
We'd have to bring people
in because there's not
enough of those in these
areas to export everybody.
And just the idea of
vulnerability, and network
[INAUDIBLE] whatever, that's
what I'm wrestling with.
MODERATOR: Yeah, that's
a critical question.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
but then most dependency.
And then what happens when
the system breaks down?
MODERATOR: Right.
So Donna [? Chen ?]
in our third session
actually was asking
some of those very same
critical questions,
thinking through what
kind of infrastructures
would need
to be in place for extraordinary
conditions, not just
the ordinary.
How do we ensure
health and safety
in the extraordinary,
not just ordinary,
which is critically important.
One last other observation,
a critical research question,
or--
yes, ma'am, in the back?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
critical research question.
But have they ever talked
about having [INAUDIBLE]??
MODERATOR: Yeah, that raises
a really interesting question
about both
surveillance, privacy,
but also security and safety.
Absolutely.
And there, we need some
policy interactions.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: The one that
came up in the focus group
that I didn't mention is
how is priority, especially
in emergency
situations, or really
big event situations where
the neighborhood, or the city,
or the community is
overwhelmed with need.
How is priority identified.
MODERATOR: Right.
And that also becomes both an
ethical question as well as
equity policy question.
I think that's right.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
priorities.
MODERATOR: Yeah.
Yeah.
And can you program priority?
That's also another question.
And that came up in
the first session.
Yes, ma'am, and we'll have
this one be our final one.
Yes, ma'am?
AUDIENCE: So I was thinking
about [INAUDIBLE] question
that everybody
asked, [INAUDIBLE]..
How about bringing two
technologies together,
self-driving, and AI.
[INAUDIBLE] artificial
intelligence [INAUDIBLE]
camera, or whether that's
some kind of a [INAUDIBLE],,
and talk to that person without
talking to a real person,
but acting like a real person,
help our bringing different
[INAUDIBLE] together.
MODERATOR: I'm sure people are
beginning to think about that,
but that's well
beyond my pay grade.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] university
has that kind of [INAUDIBLE]..
MODERATOR: Yeah, absolutely.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
different group
of technology that
holds together,
to make it all solve more
problems with [INAUDIBLE]..
MODERATOR: That's great.
Absolutely.
All right, so with
that, I'm going
to ask Paul to come up to
offer some concluding comments.
And then I'll ask Mike
to come up as well.
PAUL: Well, I like
to tell stories.
So I'll tell another
one here today.
So 12 years ago, ironically
on this very day,
I was at the now historic 2005
DARPA Grand Challenge events
that were being
held in California.
I was there with my
first autonomous vehicle,
which was built out
of my basement just 15
miles from here in
[? Crose, ?] White Hall,
depending on where
you consider that.
The DARPA Grand Challenge, for
those of you who don't know,
was an event set up by
an arm of the Pentagon,
where they held out a $2
million prize for someone who
could build a fully autonomous
vehicle that could race across
the Mojave Desert over
a stretch of 132 miles,
no driver on board, no
human in remote control.
And it was incredibly
ambitious for the time.
This was 12 years ago.
Just one and a
half years earlier
during a 2004 DRPA
Challenge event,
no one who entered the race
even completed the course.
The farthest any vehicle
traveled was seven miles down
the course.
And most of the entrance
faltered at the starting gate,
or just went a half mile or so.
However, one and a half
years later during this 2005
challenge, five teams actually
completed the 132-mile stretch
of desert terrain.
It was amazing.
It was a huge leap an
autonomous vehicle technology
in just the span of
a year and a half.
And before the event,
during the opening remarks,
one of the race
officials proclaimed,
you are the material that
will fill the history
books that someday
schoolchildren
will Marvel over.
They'll be interested because
in their family garages,
there will be
autonomous vehicles.
And I led one of the
40 odd teams that
were invited to the events
in Fontana whittled down
from 400 and so
initial applicants
over the course of the year.
We didn't have much money,
maybe one-hundredth of some
of the bigger team purses.
And at the time, it was just me
writing software in my basement
and doing some of the
research and design
and leading a small
team of volunteers.
And our focus was really
on proving out the software
that we had created in this
architecture for autonomous
vehicles.
But we made it to the event.
And we had built our
first autonomous vehicle.
And that was 12 years ago.
And here we are
today, 12 years later,
not only forging a career
out of this for ourselves
at the company, but working
with an auto manufacturer.
And so we're well on
our way to realizing
the dream of putting autonomous
vehicles into family garages.
And when Google started
making news in 2010 or so
with their driverless
car, the auto companies
began upping their game.
And the race was on
for the development
of the driverless car
for end consumers.
As traditional auto companies
continued the struggle
with determining which
approach to take,
and different
architectures to consider,
other newcomer auto
companies, such as Tesla,
began throwing their
hats in the ring.
Even the Apple Computer company
has gotten into the game.
Forbes technology
contributor Chunka Mui
wrote an article in 2013,
which is a really fascinating
article, by the way--
I highly recommend it--
titled Fasten Your Seatbelts:
Google's Driverless Car
is Worth Trillions.
And more recently,
Intel corporation
predicted a $7 billion market
for autonomous vehicles
by 2050.
Intel purchased an autonomous
vehicle sensor supplier
this year for $15 billion.
And I'm proud to say they
made a small investment in us
last year as well.
But the stakes are high.
This is a trillion
dollar opportunity.
Partially autonomous
technologies,
such as adaptive cruise
control and self-parking,
have already made their way
into commercial vehicles
that are on public roads today.
But there's a fairly
significant quantum leap
required for companies to get
to the ultimate prize of fully
autonomous cars, which
require no human intervention
whatsoever.
We call that
level-five autonomy.
And the companies
are scrambling.
No one is completely sure
which approach or approaches
will win out.
And as a result, there are
enormous acquisitions occurring
and huge investments.
And with such money coupled with
the complexity of the problem
to be solved here,
there are unfortunately
many questionable claims being
made with slick marketing,
looking to get rich,
and some companies
getting burned along the way.
Nevertheless, with
the money being spent,
full autonomy is coming
to a public road near you
and coming fast.
So it behooves everyone
here and everyone
in the community to
become more aware of this
because it affects all of us.
And that's why forums
such as this are so great.
And that's why last year when
Randy [? Castlemen ?] had
suggested that Mike
[? Seignior ?] and I talk about
doing something local,
I jumped at the chance.
Mike already clearly was
well-read about this technology
and understood the importance
of driverless car technology.
And I was immediately
interested in thinking
about a local consortium with
the University of Virginia
to lead it.
And we had discovered too that
the University of Virginia
had already been discussing
this with a lot of thought
leaders, this broader
implications of driverless car
technology for
local communities.
So it was great to see
this sort of convergence
of minds come together,
to bring together
a forum like this, and
with UVA leading the way.
And I hope that this continues.
I hope it doesn't stop
here because I think it is
an incredibly important topic.
And I don't think
it will stop here.
And the benefit and
rewards of driverless cars
are just enormous.
But so too can be the
risks if we're not first
made aware of what they
are and if they're not
properly addressed.
Nevertheless, I'm
amazed at how far we've
come in the international
driverless car community,
and over 12 years just
in my own small company
as well here in Charlottesville.
We've managed to create vehicles
that drive to a destination
wherever you are, see and
avoid people along the way,
navigate intersections,
merging, pacing behind vehicles.
And we're pleased to be doing
all of this here in Virginia.
Our specific region here
offers prime conditions
for the development of
autonomous vehicles.
We've taken advantage of the
region's natural resources
of affordable land relative
to places like Silicon Valley,
and for the establishment
of test tracks
next to a large
workshop and an office.
The region also has a
tremendous natural local talent,
and of course, a
rich R&D environment
at the University of Virginia.
And for resource growth,
we have the magnet
of a beautiful college
town and countryside
complete with a panoramic
mountain range, excellent cost
of living, quality of lifestyle,
and a happy populace that just
makes living and working
here on autonomous vehicles
a dream come true.
And what's more,
the Commonwealth
has one of the most favorable
regulatory conditions
for developing and testing
driverless cars in the country.
So the opportunity for growth
under these conditions here
in Virginia and our immediate
region is extraordinary.
And given the trillion-dollar
stakes at hand,
it's an opportunity that we
not only cannot afford to miss,
but it is also a new technology
that we have to prepare
for, accelerate adopting, and
leveraging now for the benefits
of all of our citizens.
So thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
MIKE: All right.
Well, thank you all very much.
I just want to reiterate again,
thanks to Perrone Robotics
and Paul for being
a private sector
partner in this
University of Virginia,
the Office of the Provost,
the governor's office,
secretary of technology, and
also the city manager's office.
There are resources
and partnerships
coming in through all those
to make this possible.
And I understand
it is being filmed.
And all of this
talent and discussion
will be available to bigger
audiences, which will
be terrific, coming up soon.
So just to close
out this discussion,
cities are a very
interesting place right now.
It was said by Justice
Brandeis a long time ago
that states were the
laboratories of democracy.
In a particular way, cities have
become a new kind of laboratory
for democracies
around the world.
You've seen a lot of interest
with the increasing dysfunction
of the federal government
and the log that you see.
And this is not to
discriminate against counties.
Counties are wonderful
places as well.
But there has been a move back
to cities, demographically.
So cities have taken a lot of
energy, and a lot of dynamism,
and a lot of innovation
are happening in cities.
So when I hung out at the
US Conference of Mayors,
for instance, there is a ton of
energy around that new sphere
of activity.
And mayors are seen as the
front of a lot of new ideas.
That creates challenges, and it
creates opportunities as well.
Cities like Charlottesville
specifically,
which are hot cities--
population is up 12%
in the last six years,
population value is
increasing, a lot
of attention, even when we don't
have international scandals
once or twice a year.
There's a lot of attention to
cities like Charlottesville.
So people think about them
a lot, and they move here,
and they focus on
issues in cities a lot.
So, to me, the two
frameworks that we constantly
should be looking at in a
city like Charlottesville,
is innovation and equity.
We're a progressive city.
Our political values
are progressive.
There are plenty of cities
that are not progressive,
but that is in the social
values of this particular town,
political values.
So what does that mean with the
government, and the policies,
and the society, and the
institutions we're creating.
I can think of two ways that
the prosperity and the dynamism
of cities like Charlottesville
can be addressed in the equity.
I think this was a fantastic
panel to close out the day on.
I really appreciate it,
Dr. Burnett, your comments,
everybody's.
One is that you can do what--
not to drop a fancy--
but John Rawls
said help the least
well off before you
help the most well off.
So if you have lots of riches
flowing into your coffers
from being a hot city,
you help the least
well off with those rewards.
That is part of your
design of your budget
or the way your government runs.
Another one is that you just
set the rules differently
so the rules
benefit more people.
They benefit
marginalized populations.
So either or both
of those are a way
to set up your social
contract for your city
so that you're
living together well
and you're being
progressive in your values
and in the track of your city.
Just give you a quick example
just from this last year.
I think probably the thing I'm
most appreciative of that we
were able to do in city council
was double our contribution
to the affordable
housing fund this year.
We put almost $9 billion more
into the affordable housing
fund, which we were able to do
because our revenues went up
significantly because the
city is doing quite well.
And so we just last week
allocated almost $2 million
toward the direct creation
of over 100 new units
of affordable housing in
the city of Charlottesville.
And that's a
complicated thing to do.
You have to work
with developers who
are experienced in using federal
tax credits to make it last
for 30 years, that you have to
have a plot of land that will
work in a 10 square mile city.
So none of this
happens on its own.
It requires care and
tending relationships.
And I will tell you it
doesn't require even
seeking credit a lot of the time
because the amount of emails
or phone calls that we got after
we did direct creation I think
is zero about the actual
creation of those over 100
units of affordable housing.
So there is a part
of the discussion
we're having now about what
do we do as cities where
the dialogue in the media
sometimes can so far outstrip
or can be so unrelated to what
you're doing in government.
There's a lot of hard
workman-like work
that want to do because it will
be good for the outcomes you're
seeking.
It's not because it's
going to work on Twitter,
or because there will be a
lot of articles about it.
So all of that brings me to
the doorstep of this question.
How do we deal with
driverless cars?
When I go to these conferences,
or talk to other mayors, or--
this is described as
a tidal wave coming
toward us that is unstoppable.
The amount of capital,
the amount of innovation,
the amount of voluntary people
taking part in this sector
is it's going to happen
whether we like it or not.
The question is, if it comes.
How do governments
and the communities
in which they sit trying get
it better rather than worse?
That's the discussion
we've been having today.
And I think that the
reason this was so valuable
was we set this up.
And this was Lewis's
insight, I think,
in one that was as questions,
not as advocacy, not
as evangelism for futurism.
It was this will go a whole
bunch of different directions
depending on the
questions we ask
and the answers that we come
out of it as communities
and as governments that
reflect the community.
So to me, I could go through
the political challenges that we
deal with already as a
government of a 50,000-person
city.
Parking comes up constantly, and
it is really hard to deal with,
and it's expensive.
We have parking requirements for
buildings that are for zones.
So we just put $2.9
million to the acquisition
of a property near downtown
because we have a parking
crisis, and we want to be
able to build parking there.
But if we build a parking
garage, in 30 years,
if that garage's purpose
is mooted or changed
in some way by driverless cars,
do we build it differently now?
Does it become more
manipulable or changeable
into something else?
That's a capital question,
that capital budget.
That's a building architectural
planning question.
It really matters, and we
can get it really wrong.
Zoning, sustainability,
transit-- to me,
these open up questions
for us as a government,
but they create opportunities
too based on our values.
And that's why transit equity,
which has been coming up a lot,
I think that was the
original question
that we wanted to do this on.
Progressive community,
get this question right.
Don't just be here
as evangelists
for millennials who want to
be able to drink more and get
back and forth
from their brewery
more easily to their house.
Who cares about that?
The really interesting
thing is how could this wave
be adapted to suit the social
purposes of communities
like this.
And it is a real problem when
somebody has two or three
part-time jobs, and a
situation with a kid,
and a situation with a parent,
and they live in the outskirts
of town, and they can't afford--
either they have a beat-up car,
or they have to borrow one,
or they can't afford
their own car.
Transportation is a
huge issue for them.
And it really sucks having
to take a bus for an hour
and a half between three
or four different spots,
and then go and take the
bus to go do your shopping,
go to the Food Lion.
So if this can solve, address
some of those problems, that
was the originally question
for this gathering here today,
these opportunities
we have based
on our values to not
just take this technology
purely on its own.
And that creates
municipal opportunities,
because we do subsidize transit.
We do have public transit.
We do have all kinds of
public private opportunities.
Who knows how this
is going to go?
But I think that so many
of the questions that
were raised here--
the transit equity piece is one.
But we got in all kinds of
really important questions
about the design of our city,
the way that streets feel,
the experience of somebody
on the outside of these.
How were we intending,
for Charlottesville
to get a handle on this tsunami
coming toward us in a way that
will make our city
even more world class,
even more attractive,
even more charming?
We were just ranked number one
charming city in the country.
So [INAUDIBLE].
Also, AAA [? bond rated ?]
Virginia's lowest unemployment,
and spend money in
our restaurants.
But so I just think that the
benefits are , as Paul said,
they're so sweeping and
important for society at large,
setting aside cities
like Charlottesville.
Reduce 35,000 people
not dying a year
from these accidents,
environmental benefits,
erasing this excess of parking
acreage that we have to have--
that is huge-- and then the
opportunity for transit equity.
But I think that we've talked
about some really important
flip side questions,
like the job
loss that we're worried about.
Some other big
questions that I would
add, what's the experience
like of being in these cars?
If the car becomes a pod,
what do you do in that car?
What's that part of your life
when you're sitting in a car
and it surrounds you?
And how does that fit
into our new lives?
That's a very
interesting question.
But I think that for me,
and where I end on this is
this still ends up in collective
choices through government,
through social action,
through the social contracts
we have to live
together as communities.
And I think that this
conference has not just
asked a lot of questions but
provided a lot of folks here
and people who watch later
some beginnings of some answers
to how we can collectively get
the best of this technology
for where we want to
go for this society.
So thank you all
very, very much.
I think we're
right at 4 o'clock.
So thank you.
I really appreciate it.
[APPLAUSE]
And so with that,
I will close this.
These videos will
be available for you
hopefully within about
a week on the website
of the executive vice
president and provost
of the University of Virginia.
If you just google "The
Driverless Future, Asking
the Big Questions,"
within about a week we'll
have some content on
there that summarizes
many of the observations
we've had today.
Thank you so much
for staying with us.
I hope you all had a
chance to ride in the car.
I did not.
So have a good afternoon.
[APPLAUSE]
