BEST PRACTICES
ITH PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PARTnerships,
and its ability to guide legislation
in a direction that promotes
innovation, the Contra Costa Transportation
Authority (CCTA) is curating a
landscape ready to accept and integrate
autonomous vehicles.
As the long-range transportation
planning agency for Contra Costa, our
agency prepares a Countywide Transportation
Plan approximately every
four years. For the most recent plan,
our agency conducted extensive public
outreach to fi nd out how we could best
serve the needs of the county. We received
more feedback for this particular
cycle, than we had in all of our previous
eff orts combined. A common theme was
that citizens were interested in using
transit to get to their destinations, but
the lack of suffi cient fi rst/last mile connections
was a big obstacle. Increasing
transit ridership is key to our agency’s
long term vision of managing congestion
and facilitating a multi-modal network
that provides options for all members of
our community.
Aft er a search for a solution, CCTA
launched our shared autonomous vehicle
(SAV) pilot project focused on testing
electric, low-speed, multi-passenger
autonomous vehicles manufactured by
Easymile. Th ese vehicles lack a steering
wheel, brake pedal and accelerator. Th e
program launched in 2016, upon passage
of Assembly Bill 1592 by the California
State Legislature which allows CCTA to
conduct testing of shared autonomous
vehicles. In order to fully and properly
run simulations of autonomous vehicles,
CCTA and its partners needed a privately
owned, fully-secure, city-like facility.
As luck would have it, CCTA did not have
to look far for such a testing space.
GoMentum Station — a 5,000 acre
decommissioned naval weapons station
located in Concord, California — is the
largest secure autonomous vehicle testing
facility in the United States, complete
with paved roadways, tunnels, curbs,
sidewalks, railroad crossings, potholes
and a mini-city. Access to this space allowed
CCTA and Easymile to perform
initial phase testing in a controlled environment
as they worked toward a debut
on public streets. In March 2018, aft er
fulfi lling the necessary steps with both
the U.S. Department of Transportation’s
National Highway Traffi c Safety Administration
(NHTSA) and the California
DMV, CCTA obtained the fi rst license in
California to test a SAV with no steering
wheel or brake pedal on public streets.
Shared autonomous shuttles off er
safe, accessible, aff ordable service that
could provide fi rst/last mile transit
solutions in offi ce parks, campuses,
suburbs, town centers and transit hubs,
while easing congestion and reducing
harmful emissions. For our particular
pilot program, the goal is to operate
the SAV’s as a complement to transit —
helping our residents bridge the fi rst/
last mile that had previously prevented
them from utilizing transit. In fact, our
regional bus provider, County Connection,
and regional light rail provider, Bay
Area Rapid Transit, are both partners
in the program to help inform how to
best serve their systems. Th e signifi cant
milestones met by CCTA’s SAV program
to date off er important insight into how
shared autonomous vehicles can be fully
integrated within an existing transportation
system to support existing service.
34 | Mass Transit | MassTransitmag.com | JULY/AUGUST 2018
T THE DENTON COUNTY TRANSportation
Authority (DCTA), we recognize
the benefi t of public-private
partnerships which enable us to provide
more innovative mobility solutions for
the many communities we serve. In May
2018, DCTA partnered with the city of
Frisco, Frisco Station Partners, HALL
Group and Th e Star to form the Frisco
Transportation Management Association
(TMA) to improve connectivity between
several mixed-use developments in Frisco’s
“North Platinum Corridor.”
With DCTA already providing on-demand
service in Frisco, being a Frisco
TMA partner was a natural fi t. In addition,
DCTA’s mission is aligned with the
FMTA’s key focus on mobility solutions
such as improving walkability, ride-sharing,
connected vehicles (with traffi c signal
data sharing), and introducing driverless
vehicle service between Th e Star, HALL
Park and Frisco Station developments.
Th rough this partnership, the Frisco
TMA works in cooperation with Drive.ai,
a California-based self-driving company,
to launch a pilot program to deploy an
on-demand self-driving car service to
the city of Frisco off ering rides to area
employees and residents in self-driving
vehicles within a geofenced area.
Th e initial pilot launched in mid-July
2018 and will operate for six months, beginning
with fi xed pickup and drop-off
locations for 10,000 offi ce employees at
HALL Park and Th e Star entertainment
development, with planned expansion
into Frisco Station.
Leveraging technology through public
private partnerships is a way DCTA
can increase operational effi ciency, provide
more real-time mobility solutions,
improve convenience of travel, as well as
complement existing modes of traditional
transit. We also expect to gain some
insight on community acceptance of autonomous
vehicles and gauge the public
opinion of using this mode of service
for travel.
Autonomous Mobility
Operators / Private-Public Partnerships / Sustainability
Kristina Holcomb
Vice President of Planning
and Development
Denton County Transportation Authority
A
W Randell H.
Iwasaki
Executive
Director
Contra Costa
Transportation
Authority
Walnut Creek, Calif.
Lewisville, Texas
Read the complete responses at MassTransitmag.com/12418790
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