Asked who she’d like to have read the state’s report about its strategies to adopt a more driverless future in Minnesota, Kristin White went straight to the point.
“Anyone and everyone — anyone in Minnesota who uses transportation,” she said. “We want to make this a collaborative process leading into the future.”
White is the innovation director for the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s Office of Connected and Automated Vehicles. A sci-fi catchy “CAV-X” for short.
She and others from the office went around the state in the past year, coming to Duluth in November, soliciting input from minds across the transportation sector. The effort has yielded a five-year plan released in July with 65 recommendations about how to prepare for a further-aided and potentially driverless future.
(Previously:
A driverless Twin Ports? Local planners consider future of transportation
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The plan calls for the state to make modest strategic investments, “recognizing that CAV technology is in its infancy and will change quickly.” It also calls for nimble-minded approaches that question assumptions and embrace new ideas and partners. A third and final principle of the state’s approach: be transparent with the public.
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White seemed to embody that point with the News Tribune by offering a frank assessment about industry’s preparedness to start rolling out space-age cars.
“Fortunately for us,” she said, “the timelines for self-driving vehicles are much further out than vehicle manufacturers would like us to believe.”
Throughout the past year, companies such as Tesla, GM, Uber and Lyft have backtracked on projections, she said, already allowing for CAV-X to make its first shift in understanding — that waves of adaptations will come before full automation.
In fact, White said, three existing vehicle technologies are already changing driving — both lane-keeping and blind-spot assist, and automatic emergency braking.
“With those three features in a vehicle we can eliminate highway deaths by one-fourth — 10,000 lives a year (in the U.S.),” White said. “Those three automated features are already available.”
The Minnesota Legislature has shown signs of responding to a new transportation era. This year, it authorized commercial truck platooning systems of two vehicles within 50 feet of one another. Synchronizing the rigs makes for a safer, more fuel efficient and better flowing drive.
In Duluth, MnDOT is preparing to spend almost $1 billion to rebuild the Twin Ports Interchange and Blatnik Bridge in the next 10 years. Reconciling those investments with a changing landscape means “being strategic in our investments,” White said, positing that the future projects could be targeted for things such as the traffic signal phasing which reads traffic and creates better flow at intersections.
Connected corridors have already made their way to the Twin Cities, where the fiber optic infrastructure is amply built out. It seems unavoidable in the case of connected and automated vehicles that many of the developments will take place in metropolitan centers. But White insisted that MnDOT is aiming its attention at rural communities as well as pedestrians and bicyclists.
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A lot of the next five years’ worth of CAV-X recommendations come in the form of demonstrations, pilot projects and testing, and White sees a place for Greater Minnesota to be involved.
“The trend we’re seeing nationally and in Minnesota is that in trying to be strategic we're conducting demonstrations in the Twin Cities metro or Duluth and Rochester,” she said. “We always want to make sure rural communities, like Grand Rapids, see the benefits of the technology.”
To that end, the CAV-X office has plans for continued outreach by promoting internal awareness across MnDOT and developing public outreach strategies, including continued workshops with professionals and engagements with the public.
With the technology still in a dynamic phase, rapidly developing and shifting, White hopes to reach Minnesotans and give them a chance to shape the future.
“It’s important for communities to engage now,” she said. “Industry needs to hear from people. Convening these conversations and having the public thinking about these changes can jumpstart conversations within large national industries.”
One thing White was clear about: Minnesotans won't be dragged kicking-and-screaming into new technology. MnDOT's position is for residents to have the freedom to move the way they want, provided it's legal.
Said White, "Everyone should be able to, for example, drive a truck and have a boat hauled behind it."
