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From Rust to Robots: How the Midwest Could Become a Hub for Advanced Transportation
Car and Driver ^ | January 26, 2017 | Pete Bigelow

Posted on 01/27/2017 7:40:32 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks

A new collection of transportation agencies and universities is taking one small step toward transforming the Rust Belt into a place associated with the future instead of the past. Eleven agencies and institutions located in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have formed the Smart Belt Coalition, which will spur joint efforts on the testing and deployment of autonomous and connected cars.

The collaboration comes on the heels of a legislative overhaul of Michigan regulations last month, which have been relaxed to spur the testing of self-driving technology on the state’s public roads. Ohio and Pennsylvania do not have laws on the books governing autonomous vehicles, but in their absence, both states have encouraged such tests.

All three states have attracted their share of autonomous testing on their own, in some cases competing with one another for projects. Together, the efforts of the three states may serve as a regional counterweight to the autonomous testing that has proliferated in California, Arizona, and Nevada.

“While there’s competition in all these things, in the aggregate there’s a lot of benefit to cooperating, too,” said Jeff Cranson, the Michigan Department of Transportation’s director of communications.

The Michigan DOT is a member of the coalition, as is the American Center for Mobility, a proving ground for autonomous and connected cars on which construction crews broke ground late last year. Few places better symbolize the hopes these states hold in using advanced transportation as a means of economic reinvention. When completed, the ACM will sit on the grounds of the former Willow Run factory in Southeast Michigan. Both Ford and General Motors had used the assembly plant, which in its heyday was a manufacturing site for airplanes during World War II. Until recently, it had stood as a polluted reminder of industrial neglect.

In addition, the coalition includes the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, Ohio Department of Transportation, Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Ohio Turnpike and Infrastructure Commission, Ohio State University, and the Transportation Research Center, another independent proving ground under development in East Liberty, Ohio.

First, the coalition members intend to prioritize projects that evaluate autonomous and connected technologies in construction zones, including finding ways to make the areas more uniform and offering real-time information to nearby motorists. They’ll also focus on projects that involve truck platoons, the likes of which were tested by the U.S. Army last summer along I-69 in Michigan. Separately, Ohio permitted Otto, a subsidiary of Uber that is pursuing self-driving truck technology, to test its trucks along the Ohio Turnpike and Route 33 in the Buckeye State in late 2016.

Ohio is spending $15 million along a 35-mile stretch of Route 33 to outfit the road with high-capacity fiber-optic cables as well as embedded and wireless sensors from which researchers can observe and obtain data in real time. While that effort began before the Smart Belt Coalition formed, it highlights the type of work researchers intend to do across the three-state spectrum.

The Transportation Research Center and the American Center for Mobility (ACM) are nonprofit venues that hope to attract private testing. The ACM was officially designated as an Automated Vehicle Proving Ground by the U.S. Department of Transportation last week. Earlier this month, the ACM, Ford, Delphi, and AT&T announced a partnership to test new LTE networks in connected-car environments. The city of Pittsburgh, where Uber has deployed a pilot project involving self-driving vehicles and an experiment that uses smart traffic lights to improve traffic flow, also received the same U.S. DOT designation. Last summer, the U.S. DOT named Columbus, Ohio, its first Smart City and gave it $40 million to allocate toward mobility projects.

The Smart Belt Coalition aims to build on these strengths.

“It’s been the subject of discussion among these entities for quite some time, including coming up with this name,” Cranson said. “It’s a nice way to reframe the Rust Belt narrative.”


TOPICS: Business/Economy
KEYWORDS: atandt; automatedvehicles; autonomousvehicles; carnegiemellon; columbus; connectedvehicles; delphi; driverlesscars; fakenews; fort; globalistagenda; hoax; infrastructure; lte; mdot; michigan; michiganstate; odot; ohio; ohiostate; ohioturnpike; otto; paturnpike; penndot; pennsylvania; pittsburgh; smartbeltcoalition; smartcars; socialism; technology; transportation; truckplatoons; uber; uofmichigan; win; winning

1 posted on 01/27/2017 7:40:32 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

I can just see it now out among the midwest corn fields a spaceship being built...NCC 1701!


2 posted on 01/27/2017 7:42:06 AM PST by Daniel Ramsey (Thank YOU President Trump, finally we can do what America does best, to be the best!)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

I will predict here, on Friday, January 27, 2017.

The autonomous vehicle industry will never get off the launching pad. It will be strangled in it’s crib by the personal injury bar after the first large-scale accident.


3 posted on 01/27/2017 7:43:03 AM PST by Buckeye McFrog
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To: Buckeye McFrog

Laws will be changed to accommodate for machine errors.

Machines will eventually have the capability to move us around faster and safer than humans can think. You cant stop that kind of progress because of a few mistakes


4 posted on 01/27/2017 7:47:40 AM PST by varyouga
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To: varyouga
You cant stop that kind of progress because of a few mistakes

Westinghouse, Toshiba, and the rest of the nuke plant industry would beg to differ.


5 posted on 01/27/2017 7:49:29 AM PST by Buckeye McFrog
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To: Buckeye McFrog

The only chance it has of working is if it is required for everyone. Even a few “unpredictable” human drivers throw the entire process dangerously off. Are people really ready to trust their lives to cheap, under educated, H1B programmers?


6 posted on 01/27/2017 7:58:47 AM PST by Ingtar (.)
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To: varyouga

Laws will not be changed to accomidate machine error because Hillary and the globalist agenda this is part of lost.

More winning.


7 posted on 01/27/2017 7:59:05 AM PST by MrEdd (MrEdd)
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To: MrEdd

As for me, I never underestimate the ability of the legal profession to gum-up the wheels of progress.


8 posted on 01/27/2017 8:05:57 AM PST by Buckeye McFrog
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To: Buckeye McFrog

Nukes can irradiate an entire state. A few car crashes less than the human error crashes we experience today and less than airliner crashes are nothing in comparison. Dont think it will be a big deal


9 posted on 01/27/2017 8:13:49 AM PST by varyouga
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

They fail to mention the one project that may actually impact transportation costs and timing in a big way: the Great Lakes Basin Rail project:

http://www.greatlakesbasinraileis.com/background.html

$8 billion, privately funded. Not a dime of taxpayer money but obviously will require regulatory approval and perhaps assistance with land acquisition. Before jumping onboard with the opposition, read the generous terms of the purchase offers being extended to landowners. The problem is, the closer you get to Chicago the more idiotic things get.

This project will impact freight rail, nothing remotely like passenger transport or high-speed boondoggles.


10 posted on 01/27/2017 8:20:40 AM PST by bigbob (We have better coverage than Verizon - Can You Hear Us Now?)
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To: varyouga
You cant stop that kind of progress because of a few mistakes

Mistakes? I think we are out in front of our headlights. Yes these things will happen. But it will take time to work out the bugs and there will be stops and delays along the way.

11 posted on 01/27/2017 8:26:59 AM PST by plain talk
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To: bigbob; Toddsterpatriot
I'm in favor of this project. Does that make me Willie Green?

Seriously, I remember reading somewhere that certain rail freight companies reach Chicago, unload the containers onto a truck, truck the containers through/around Chicago, and then reload them onto a train farther down the line just to avoid the bottleneck.

12 posted on 01/27/2017 8:46:46 AM PST by 1rudeboy
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Considering it snows - a lot - in parts of these states, it ought to be interesting to see how they plan to autonomously deal with that.

Probably by just shutting the whole system down until spring...


13 posted on 01/27/2017 9:33:17 AM PST by chrisser
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Why is the FedGov giving some random city $40M for projects on a non-federal non-waterway? Why are our tax dollars going there?

I disagree with the state spending so much on some of this stuff, but at least that’s local to them.


14 posted on 01/28/2017 7:10:15 AM PST by Svartalfiar
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