AASHTO Journal - AASHTO Issues Connected, Automated Vehicle Policy Paper

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials recently published a policy paper outlining the ten key policy principles needed for connected and automated vehicles or CAVs – a paper intended to be a “living document,” reviewed and updated every year to reflect changes in technology and policy.

[Above photo of Google autonomous car via Wikimedia Commons]

“To safely advance and deploy CAVs and Cooperative Automated Transportation [CAT] technologies, a national strategy must include innovative and flexible Federal infrastructure investment, funding for CAV pilots and deployments that leverage public–private partnerships for digital and physical infrastructure,” AASHTO noted in the paper.

“Advancing CAV requires interoperable, reliable, and consistent infrastructure, a cohesive national vision, collaborative partnerships, funding, and clear policy,” AASHTO emphasized. “The vision and related readiness strategy must be collaborative, with active input from infrastructure owners and operators or IOOs, industry, communities, local governments, and other transportation stakeholders, representing the populations their respective transportation systems serve.”

Those are but a few of the reasons why federal CAV policy must also maintain traditional federal and state roles when it comes to managing CAVs and the infrastructure supporting them, AASHTO said.

The policy paper also re-emphasized that deploying CAVs will “greatly improve” the safety, mobility, equity, and sustainability of the nation’s transportation system. “CAVs are an important part of multi-modal transportation system” AASHTO added, with its policy paper advocating a focus on CAV technology investments that advances community-driven needs and increase access to desirable mobility options.

The organization noted that IOOs – including state departments of transportation – play a “fundamental role” in advancing, operating, and maintaining the physical and digital infrastructure necessary to support transportation technologies such as CAVs, which is why uniform federal policy is so critical.

To view the AASHTO CAV Policy Principles paper, click here.

For questions about AASHTO’s CAV policy, contact Matthew Hardy, Ph.D. – AASHTO’s senior program director for planning and performance management – at mhardy@aashto.org.