[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
SMART MOBILITY:
IT'S A COMMUNITY ISSUE
=======================================================================
FIELD HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 25, 2019
__________
Serial No. 116-51
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
38-135 PDF WASHINGTON : 2020
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman
ZOE LOFGREN, California FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma,
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois Ranking Member
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon MO BROOKS, Alabama
AMI BERA, California, BILL POSEY, Florida
Vice Chair RANDY WEBER, Texas
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania BRIAN BABIN, Texas
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas
KENDRA HORN, Oklahoma RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas
BRAD SHERMAN, California TROY BALDERSON, Ohio
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee PETE OLSON, Texas
JERRY McNERNEY, California ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
PAUL TONKO, New York JIM BAIRD, Indiana
BILL FOSTER, Illinois JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington
DON BEYER, Virginia FRANCIS ROONEY, Florida
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida GREGORY F. MURPHY, North Carolina
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois
BEN McADAMS, Utah
JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
VACANCY
------
Subcommittee on Research and Technology
HON. HALEY STEVENS, Michigan, Chairwoman
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois JIM BAIRD, Indiana, Ranking Member
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas
BRAD SHERMAN, California TROY BALDERSON, Ohio
PAUL TONKO, New York ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
BEN McADAMS, Utah JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
BILL FOSTER, Illinois
C O N T E N T S
October 25, 2019
Page
Hearing Charter.................................................. 2
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Haley Stevens, Chairwoman,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 7
Written Statement............................................ 8
Statement by Representative Michael Cloud, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 9
Written statement............................................ 10
Written statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson,
Chairwoman, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S.
House of Representatives....................................... 11
Witnesses:
The Honorable David Coulter, Oakland County Executive
Oral Statement............................................... 13
Written Statement............................................ 15
Mr. Mark Dowd, Executive Director, Smart Cities Lab
Oral Statement............................................... 20
Written Statement............................................ 22
Dr. Raj Rajkumar, Director of Mobility21 and George Westinghouse
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie
Mellon University
Oral Statement............................................... 28
Written Statement............................................ 31
Dr. Tierra Bills, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental
Engineering, College of Engineering, Wayne State University
Oral Statement............................................... 40
Written Statement............................................ 42
Mr. Scott Averitt, Technical Expert and Manager of Public/Private
Partnerships, Robert Bosch LLC
Oral Statement............................................... 50
Written Statement............................................ 52
Discussion....................................................... 64
Appendix: Additional Material for the Record
Letters submitted by Representative Haley Stevens, Chairwoman,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 82
Presentation submitted by Mr. Scott Averitt, Technical Expert and
Manager of Public/Private Partnerships, Robert Bosch LLC....... 102
SMART MOBILITY:
IT'S A COMMUNITY ISSUE
----------
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2019
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:01 a.m., at
Livonia City Hall, 33000 Civic Center Drive, Livonia, Michigan,
Hon. Haley Stevens [Chairwoman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Stevens. This hearing will come to order.
Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recess at
any time.
Good morning. Welcome. It's truly significant to be here
today in Livonia, Michigan. I am delighted to host today's
hearing and extend my warmest welcome and thank you to my
esteemed colleagues, Congressman Bill Foster of Illinois and
Congressman Michael Cloud of Texas. We thank our Chairwoman
Eddie Bernice Johnson and Ranking Member Jim Baird, who could
not be with us here today for the hearing but are supportive
partners of today's event.
We also recognize our recently departed colleague,
Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland. Mr. Cummings was a
known and calming presence in the halls of Congress. Reflecting
on his legacy and his wishes for our Congress, Mr. Cummings
would be doing exactly what we are doing here today: Figuring
out ways to advance our country and to help his district.
He had a significant emphasis in our Congress, incredible
talents, and a voice that spoke truth. As his body lay in state
yesterday in the Capitol, my colleagues and I said goodbye to a
man who worked up until his last living moments on this earth.
May we all be so lucky to witness such service to others and
love of the beautiful country we call home.
We are here today to examine the use of smart technology to
improve the abilities of small cities and suburban communities
to provide safe and efficient mobility solutions. Smart
mobility: It's a community issue.
Michigan's 11th District has been on the forefront of these
innovations, playing a key role with our industry leaders and
best-in-class workforce, so it is only fitting that we gather
here today to discuss how to make technology more effective
through collaboration between public, private, and academic
stakeholders.
These are some of the questions that compel the work of
Congress: How to best use government to yield the best results
for regional economies like ours. Recent developments in
connected and autonomous vehicles, combined with increasing
computing power and travel data, have enabled rapid advances in
regional planning and mobility. Smart mobility technologies
have already begun to shape how Americans move around and live.
They are being used to reduce traffic congestion and cut
emissions.
A 2019 study by Texas A&M University found that national
gridlock costs our country $166 billion per year. The most
recent highway bill, the Fixing America's Surface
Transportation Act, the FAST Act, provides some funding for
smart mobility, including $60 million per year for the new
Advanced Transportation and Congestion Mitigation Deployment
Program and support for several University Transportation
Centers focused on improving the mobility of people and goods.
While these investments are important, like most of our
transportation and infrastructure investments, we must do much
more to meet the scale of the challenge and opportunity.
Smart mobility technologies also have the potential to move
us toward the goal of a society with zero traffic fatalities.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced
just this week that overall highway fatalities decreased by 2.4
percent in 2018, the second year of declines. However, nearly
40,000 people lost their lives on our roadways. The same report
showed that pedestrian fatalities increased 3.4 percent and
bicycle fatalities increased 6.3 percent.
Finally, these technologies have the potential to provide
affordable and reliable transportation to basic services like
health care and employment for those living with disabilities,
older adults, and others who do not have access to individual
transportation. We need to start having a broader conversation
about how smart technology can be applied in all communities.
What works within major city limits may not work in the suburbs
or small towns in which mobility options are more limited. The
solution involves working with our communities, including our
city councils, township boards, and county commissions across
America with their unique needs in mind. Research is essential
to achieving this goal.
In addition to supporting near-term deployment and testing
of new technologies, it is important to invest in long-term
research that looks beyond the horizon of today's capabilities.
When America becomes a leader in the equitable development of
mobility solutions, we will yet again set the standards and
norms the rest of the world will follow.
So welcome to this insightful dialog on the transformations
and capabilities of the 21st century mobility technologies in
the home of American transportation.
[The prepared statement of Chairwoman Stevens follows:]
Good morning. It is truly significant to be gathered here
today in Livonia, Michigan. I'm delighted to host today's
hearing and extend the warmest welcome and thank you to my
esteemed colleagues, Congressman Bill Foster of Illinois and
Congressman Michael Cloud of Texas.We thank our Chairwoman
Eddie Bernice Johnson and Ranking Member Jim Baird who could
not join us for the hearing but are supportive partners of this
effort.We also recognize the recently departed Congressman
Elijah Cummings of Maryland. Mr. Cummings was a known and
calming presence in the halls of Congress. Reflecting on his
legacy and his wishes for our Congress, Elijah would be doing
exactly what we are doing here today - figuring out ways to
advance his country and help his district.
He had a specific emphasis on our future, incredible
talents, and voice that spoke truth. As his body lay in state
yesterday in the Capitol, my colleagues and I said goodbye to a
man who worked up until his last living moments on this earth.
May we all be so lucky to witness such service to others
and love of the country we call home.
We are here today to examine the use of smart technology to
improve the ability of small cities and suburban communities to
provide safe and efficient mobility solutions.
Michigan's 11th district has been on the forefront of these
innovations, playing a key role with our industry leaders and
best-in-class workforce, so it's only fitting that gather here
today to discuss how this technology can be made more effective
through collaboration between public, private, and academic
stakeholders.
These are some of the questions that compel the work of
Congress - how to effectively use government to yield the best
results for regional economies like ours.
Recent developments in connected and autonomous vehicles,
combined with increasing computing power and travel data, have
enabled rapid advances in regional planning and mobility. Smart
mobility technologies have already begun to shape how Americans
move around and live. They are being used to reduce traffic
congestion and cut emissions. A 2019 study by Texas A&M
University found that national gridlock costs our country $166
billion per year.
The most recent highway bill, the Fixing America's Surface
Transportation Act, the FAST Act, provides some funding for
smart mobility, including $60 million per year for the new
Advanced Transportation and Congestion Mitigation Deployment
Program and support for several University Transportation
Centers focused on improving the mobility of people and goods.
While these investments are important, like most of our
transportation and infrastructure investments, we must do much
more to meet the scale of the challenge.
Smart mobility technologies also have the potential to move
us towards the goal of a society with zero traffic fatalities.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced
this week that overall highway fatalities decreased by 2.4% in
2018, the second year of declines. Which still means that
nearly 40,000 people lost their lives on our roadways. The same
report showed that pedestrian fatalities increased 3.4% and
bicyclists fatalities increased 6.3 %.
Finally, these technologies have the potential to provide
affordable and reliable transportation to basic services like
healthcare and employment for those living with disabilities,
older adults, and others who do not have access to individual
transportation.
We need to start having a broader discussion about how
smart technology can be applied in all communities. What works
within major city limits may not work in the suburbs or in
small towns in which mobility options are limited. This will
involve working with our communities including city councils,
township boards, and county commissions to develop mobility
solutions with the unique needs of our communities in mind.
Research is essential to realizing this goal. In addition
to supporting near term deployment and testing of new
technologies, it is important to invest in long-term research
that looks beyond the horizon of today's capabilities. When
America becomes a leader in the equitable development of
mobility solutions, we will yet again set the standards and
norms the rest of the world will follow.
Welcome to this insightful dialogue on the transformations
and capabilities of 21st century mobility technologies in the
home of American transportation.
Chairwoman Stevens. Before I recognize Mr. Cloud for his
opening statement, I would like to present for the record a
robust set of letters of support from Pratt Miller, Ford Motor
Company, BASF, Toyoda Gosei, Rolls-Royce, Harman International,
General Motors, ZF North America, and ITS. Thank you all so
much.
And now the Chair recognizes Mr. Cloud for an opening
statement.
Mr. Cloud. Thank you, Chairwoman Stevens. I appreciate the
invitation to be with you here today in Michigan's 11th
District. I am excited to be here and look forward to the
conversation today. Thank you, witnesses, for being here, and
thank you all for caring about this issue and showing up. I'm
looking forward to a very healthy conversation on an issue
that's really important as we look forward.
All of us on this Committee are aware of the challenges our
Nation is facing with our aging infrastructure. But as we look
to address these issues and support and that we take time to
look ahead and dream about the future that can be to ensure
that our public policy skates to where the puck is going so to
speak.
Fundamental research can drive innovation that yields
better and safer commutes for our constituents. These
technologies, like enhanced safety features in vehicles, smart
infrastructure, and wireless communication between vehicles and
infrastructure, have the potential to benefit folks from rural
south Texas or the suburbs of Detroit. Smart mobility has the
potential to increase safety and reduce congestion, and as we
work, we must ensure that smart mobility technologies also
advance a better quality of life for all communities.
Citizens in urban, suburban, and rural communities rely on
our transportation infrastructure to go to work, to attend
school, to keep medical appointments, run errands, and travel
to recreational activities. According to the Texas A&M
Transportation Institute, the rural transit system in Texas
faces increasing demand from a growing population of older and
disabled residents. These men and women are impeded by long
travel distances to medical care and social services. Texas
Department of Transportation data shows that rural transit
districts saw an increase of ridership from 2016 to 2017,
providing about 5.4 million trips Statewide.
Individually, communities, especially rural ones, have a
limited capacity and capability to develop and to deploy
mobility advanced solutions. In Texas, to assist in addressing
this challenge, the Texas Department of Transportation has
created the Texas Innovation Alliance. This alliance is a
network of local, regional, and State agencies and research
institutions that develop a portfolio of advanced mobility
projects across the State of Texas, where I'm from. This
alliance provides a platform for cities and regions to leverage
resources and expertise to address some of the State's most
pressing mobility challenges.
Like the Alliance, I today, too, look forward to hearing
from our witnesses about the research, development, and
technology activities being conducted by research institutions
and the private sector and applied at State and local
governments. And as a representative of a diverse district with
both large, small cities, and many rural communities, I also
hope to hear from our witnesses about how your work can benefit
both the metropolitan and rural areas and specifically how it
can best assist these communities for planning and preparing
for the future.
I want to thank you all for being here today again, and
thank you all for being here. We look forward to just an
awesome conversation. I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cloud follows:]
Good morning Chairwoman Stevens. I'd like to thank you for
convening today's hearing and for inviting me to visit
Michigan's 11th District. It's great to be here.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses this morning
about how communities can, and are, using smart technologies to
provide safe and efficient mobility solutions.
All of us on this Committee are aware of the challenges our
nation is facing with aging infrastructure. To effectively
address these challenges, we must support and maintain basic
research to aid and inform our state and local governments as
they make transportation investments.
Such fundamental research can also drive innovation that
yields better and safer commutes for our constituents.
These technologies, like enhanced safety features in
vehicles, smart infrastructure, and wireless communication
between vehicles and infrastructure, benefit folks from rural
south Texas or the suburbs of Detroit.
The promise of smart mobility is vast-it has the potential
to increase safety and save lives, reduce congestion and
pollution, and save taxpayers' money. However, we must ensure
that smart mobility technologies also advance a better quality
of life for all communities.
Citizens in urban, suburban, and rural communities use
public transit to go to work or school, keep medical
appointments, shop and run errands, and travel to recreational
activities.
According to the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, the
rural transit systems in Texas faces an increasing demand from
a growing population of older and disabled residents impeded by
long travel distances to medical care and social services.
Texas Department of Transportation data shows that rural
transit districts statewide saw an increase in ridership from
2016 to 2017, providing about 5.4 million trips.
Individually, communities, especially rural ones, have
limited capacity and capability to develop and deploy mobility
advanced solutions.
In Texas, to assist in addressing this challenge, the Texas
Department of Transportation has created the "Texas Innovation
Alliance." It is a network of local, region, and state agencies
and research institutions that develop, launch and sustain a
portfolio of advanced mobility projects across Texas. The
Alliance provides a platform for cities and regions to leverage
resources and expertise to address some of the state's most
pressing mobility challenges.
Like the Alliance, I look forward to hearing from our
witnesses today about the research, development, and technology
activities being conducted by federally sponsored research
institutions and the private sector, and how these advances are
being utilized by state and local governments.
As a representative of a primarily rural district, I also
hope to hear from our witnesses about how your work can be
beneficial to rural areas and how we can best assist these
communities for planning and preparing for the future.
I would like to thank all our witnesses for coming today
and sharing your thoughts on the future of smart mobility.
Thank you and I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairwoman Stevens. Thank you. Well, if there are Members
who wish to submit additional opening statements, your
statements will be added to the record at this point.
[The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]
I want to thank Chairwoman Stevens for organizing this
important hearing. As a longtime Member of both the Science,
Space, and Technology Committee and the Transportation and
Infrastructure Committee, I have great interest in how
technologies are being developed and deployed to improve
mobility, mitigate congestion, and reduce the environmental
impact of transportation.
I am from one of the nation's big cities, Dallas, that has
been investing heavily in both public transit and so-called
micro-transit options such as scooters and bike shares. Texas
is known for our love of big cars and we are continuing to
expand our roadways to accommodate increasing traffic. However,
we also recognize that we must invest in more comprehensive and
forwardlooking mobility solutions. According to U.S. Census
Bureau data, the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area gained more new
residents in 2018 than any other metro area. As economic
opportunities continue to expand in Texas, this trend will
likely continue. We must find new and innovative ways to move
all of our city's residents around safely, efficiently, and
quickly, taking into account the unique needs of different
segments of our population. Moving goods around efficiently
will also be important to maintaining our economic growth.
As cities like Dallas continue to experiment with new
mobility solutions, we must build partnerships with other
cities to share data and best practices. We must also look to
our neighbors in less dense communities outside of our city
limits to ensure connectivity and flow of people and goods
between the cities and suburbs, and to help share lessons that
may be applied across diverse communities.
The suburbs will face their own unique challenges. Most
suburban communities have limited or no public transit options.
In many suburban communities, the population is aging, and
increasingly, those individuals want to age in place. We must
develop and implement mobility solutions that ensure that
people who can no longer drive themselves have safe and easy
transportation to supermarkets, medical appointments, and other
essential services. In many cases, these solutions will involve
public-private partnerships, including with ride hail
companies.
However, we must proceed with caution. Younger people may
be perfectly comfortable using a smart phone to order a ride
and jump in a car with a stranger behind the wheels. Older
people may be less comfortable with both the technology and the
idea of getting in an unfamiliar vehicle. Understanding these
attitudes and receiving community input into the design of new
mobility solutions will be essential.
Today's hearing brings together an important and diverse
set of perspectives from the public sector, the private sector,
and the research community. This is an important discussion and
will not be the only hearing this Committee will hold on the
future of smart cities and communities. I thank the panel for
contributing their time and expertise to our Committee.
Chairwoman Stevens. And at this time, I'd also like to
introduce and recognize our incredible collection of witnesses
who have joined us here today.
Our first witness is the Honorable David Coulter. Mr.
Coulter currently serves as Oakland County's third County
Executive. He previously represented southeastern Oakland
County on the Board of Commissioners from 2002 to 2010. During
the time on the board, he was a member of the Finance
Committee, which oversaw Oakland County's balanced 3-year
budget, and he also recently served as the Mayor of Ferndale.
Mr. Coulter earned a bachelor's degree from Michigan State
University and an executive education certificate from the John
F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Our next witness is Mr. Mark Dowd. Mr. Dowd is the Founder
and Executive Director of Smart Cities Lab, a nonprofit that
provides a venue for cities to share what works and partner
with the innovation community to forge new solutions. He is
also a visiting scholar at the University of California
Berkeley. He previously served in several roles in the Obama
Administration, including Senior Advisor in the White House
Office of Management and Budget, Senior Advisor in the White
House Council of Environmental Quality, and a member of
President Obama's Hurricane Sandy Task Force as a senior member
and also, let us not forget, as a senior member of the
President's Auto Task Force. Mr. Dowd holds degrees from
Rutgers College and Seton Hall University School of Law.
After Mr. Dowd is Dr. Raj Rajkumar. Dr. Rajkumar is the
Director of the Metro21 Smart Cities Institute, the T-SET
National USDOT (United States Department of Transportation)
University Transportation Center for Safety, and Mobility21, a
USDOT National University Transportation Center for Mobility.
He is also the George Westinghouse Professor at Carnegie Mellon
University's (CMU's) Department of Electrical and Computing
Engineering. Dr. Rajkumar's work is primarily in cyber-physical
systems such as autonomous driving and vehicle networks. His
research interests include operating systems, wired/wireless
networking protocols, model-based design tools, and power
management. Dr. Rajkumar received his Ph.D. from Carnegie
Mellon University.
Our next witness is Dr. Tierra Bills. Dr. Bills is an
Assistant Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering
Department at Wayne State University. Much of her research
focuses on investigating the social impacts of transportation
projects. She develops activity-based travel demand models to
investigate individual and household-level transportation
equity effects for the purpose of designing transportation
systems that will provide more equitable returns to society.
Dr. Bills holds a bachelor's degree in civil engineering
technology from Florida A&M University and a master's and Ph.D.
in civil and environmental engineering from the University of
California Berkeley, although she is a hometown gal.
Our final witness is Mr. Scott Averitt. Mr. Averitt works
in the Corporate Government Affairs Group for Bosch located
here in southeastern Michigan, where he serves as a technical
expert and manager focused on advanced R&D (research and
development) projects, public-private partnerships, and
government-funded projects. He collaborates across all four of
Bosch's business sectors, including mobility solutions,
industrial technology, consumer goods, and energy and building
technology. Mr. Averitt holds a degree in electrical
engineering from Lawrence Technological University right here
in Southfield.
As our witnesses should know, you will each have 5 minutes
for your spoken testimony. Your written testimony will be
included in the record for this hearing. When you have
completed your spoken testimony, we will begin with questions,
and each Member will have 5 minutes to question the panel.
And it should also be recognized that we have a robust
audience in attendance here today representing the stakeholders
in southeastern Michigan who are relying on these mobility
solutions, working on these mobility solutions, and
proliferating new technologies so that regions like ours will
lead the world.
We will start with Mr. Coulter for a 5-minute testimony.
Mr. Coulter?
TESTIMONY OF THE HON. DAVID COULTER,
OAKLAND COUNTY EXECUTIVE, OAKLAND COUNTY, MICHIGAN
Mr. Coulter. Thank you, and good morning to everyone and
especially esteemed Members of the Subcommittee on Research and
Technology. I'm honored to be here and grateful to
Congresswoman Stevens and her colleagues for the invitation to
testify on smart mobility.
As the Congresswoman said, I'm Dave Coulter. I'm the County
Executive for Oakland County, Michigan, which is the home of
Fiat Chrysler headquarters and Engineering Center, General
Motors' Proving Ground, Nissan Research and Development Center,
and hundreds of suppliers and other companies working on the
development of smart mobility technologies.
Oakland County is also home to 1.25 million residents and
1.14 million registered vehicles. That's about 912 cars for
every 1,000 residents, which far exceeds the national average.
We like our cars. The Road Commission for Oakland County, which
is a separate entity from the county, maintains the largest
county road system in Michigan.
Now, in 1967 Oakland County had 6.8 deaths for every 100
million vehicle miles of travel. Fifty years later in 2017 that
number was reduced to 0.53 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles
traveled. It's a huge improvement over 5 decades, but we still
have a way to go to prevent fatal and injury traffic crashes,
the barriers to reduce if not outright eliminate traffic
fatalities. Oakland County believes the solution lies in
public-private partnerships that will enable cars to utilize
smart mobility technology to talk to each other and the road
infrastructure around them.
Today, I'd like to give you just a brief snapshot of how
Oakland County is partnering with other governments,
nonprofits, and private industry to advance smart mobility
development. Our biggest project to date involves P3 Mobility,
a Toronto, Ontario-based company, which was selected by Oakland
County to develop a business plan for a connected vehicle
infrastructure using smart mobility technology. The contract
between Oakland County and P3 Mobility was signed on January 23
of this year. Our partnership with them is launching a pilot to
use roadside units placed at intersections to test both smart
mobility technology and multiple revenue-generating
opportunities.
Advanced safety technologies provide consumers with
improved vehicle innovations that save lives. We believe these
new technologies can eliminate 94 percent of fatal crashes
involving human error. If a successful business model can be
developed, this will guide Oakland County in generating revenue
to offset the cost of the deployment of connected vehicle
infrastructure to Oakland County's 1,600 signalized
intersections and create a safer road system.
This pilot program has explored funding options with
traditional infrastructure financing entities but has
experienced resistance. We believe that resistance will
continue until a State or Federal vehicle safety mandate is
established and/or the industry further advances smart mobility
technology to make it more cost-effective.
There are other smart mobility projects occurring around
Oakland County. The Michigan Department of Transportation
(MDOT) is utilizing its modernization of I-75 in Oakland County
from 8 mile to M-59 to install smart mobility technology
infrastructure so Congress can receive information about road
conditions on the freeway, on weather and road conditions,
backups, curve warnings ahead, and that sort of thing. It's
worth noting that the auto companies will use this stretch of
I-75 as a testbed for smart mobility technology.
Another MDOT smart mobility project that runs through
Oakland County worthy of mention is roadside units, which will
be placed up along Woodward Avenue from downtown Detroit to
Pontiac. These roadside units will make drivers aware of real-
time traffic information, will perform greenlight
prioritization to move traffic through an intersection, and
offer a safety message network which will alert drivers to
traffic threats such as vehicles approaching an intersection at
a high rate of speed.
Related smart mobility infrastructure projects by MDOT are
also either underway or will be in the near future on major
roads in Oakland County like Telegraph and M-59, I-696, and I-
96, among others.
So, as you can see, smart mobility is of immeasurable value
to Oakland County and its businesses and residents because it
will improve traffic safety and quality of life and attract
jobs by driving business development. Oakland County is proud
to be on the leading edge of this development of smart
technology and will continue to work with our public, private,
and nonprofit partners to move smart mobility solutions
forward. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Coulter follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Stevens. Thank you, Mr. Coulter.
Mr. Dowd, you now have 5 minutes.
TESTIMONY OF MR. MARK DOWD,
DIRECTOR, SMART CITIES LAB
Mr. Dowd. Thank you. Good morning, Chairwoman Stevens,
Congressman Cloud, and Congressman Foster. My testimony will
focus on how small towns and suburban communities can begin the
journey of providing safe and efficient smart mobility
solutions.
A little bit about the lab, Smart Cities Lab, it grew out
of the work I did in the prior Administration. We set up the
lab as a city-facing organization focusing on helping
communities, cities, and regions to decipher and engage in
innovative mobility solutions. The lab is comprised of 12
cities that have a wide range of population from under 100,000
people to over 4 million, different growth patterns from dense
to suburban, and diverse political compositions.
Our mission is to find ways for cities and communities to
collaborate with each other and to share what works and, more
importantly, what doesn't work in the area of smart mobility
and equity. It is true that smaller communities and cities
often lack the expertise and capacity to engage in this space,
but I believe it is only through collaboration with similarly
situated communities that you'll be able to find the ability to
engage in smart mobility.
I wanted to provide some of the best practices that we've
found over the past 4 years in working with communities, and I
think there are nine of them. I'll move through them quickly.
First is resist the pull of the shiny technology-driven
solution. It's often very hard for communities not to go for
the thing that looks good instead of going for the thing that
they need.
Second and probably most important best practice is
understanding and defining your community's needs and
challenges as the first thing you do. It is often to rush
toward the solution rather than focus on what it is--the
problem, and then use the technology and innovation to try to
solve that problem.
Collaborating and partnering with other local and regional
universities: The ability to work with universities expands the
capacities of local communities to be able to do and see much
more of the opportunity that's out there.
Conduct deep community engagement. Understanding what your
community needs rather than guessing what your community needs
is a critical tool in being able to deploy smart mobility.
Developing regional and Statewide communities of practice:
I think that this is an important piece, and I wanted to spend
2 seconds on this because Congressman Cloud mentioned the Texas
Innovation Alliance. The lab works directly with the Texas
Innovation Alliance to develop--we've developed four
communities of practice. Those four communities of practice, we
drive--the capacity piece I was talking about that many of the
communities in Texas and many of the cities and communities
that I work with don't have the ability to do the things that
they need to do. They don't have the data scientists. They
don't have experts like Raj. They don't have them at their
fingertips. But cities like Pittsburgh work directly with CMU
to work to try to get that done and then share that knowledge
with the other cities and the communities of practice.
Those communities of practice focus on four areas. The four
areas that we focus on are: Seamless mobility, the ability to
move seamlessly from one place to the other without having to
get necessarily in your car. The second piece is real-time
data. It's often very difficult for communities to both develop
and then also ingest all that data so they work on that piece.
Equity and access, it is often very difficult for people who
are transit-dependent to be able to get to the places where
they need to get to and being able to get people to work, and
so we work on equity and access in that space. And last is
energy and sustainability in trying to deal with the fact that
transportation is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in
our country.
The sixth best practice is breaking down the silo barriers
that I'm sure that even the County Executive would agree that
even within your community that many people work in a vertical
way rather than a cross-functional way, and once you start
working cross-functionally, you can actually start breaking
down some of those barriers.
Not all private sector companies make good partners. That's
a very important piece to understand. Obviously Bosch I believe
is one of those companies that is a good partner. I know that
our experience in the lab that General Motors has been an
excellent partner. And then there are other companies who are
not very good partners. And it's very important for communities
to understand the difference between those two things. And
again, to the extent that the company is out there co-creating
a solution with you as opposed to selling you something, that's
the better road to go.
Preparing your workforce for an automated future, that's a
really important piece that it's hard to do, and the capacity
within southeast Michigan to be able to prepare your community
for this with the companies that you have here would rely on
their expertise and their ability to be able to help you make
that transition.
Last one is making transportation affordable. It is really,
really hard right now for communities that are car-dependent
for the people who don't have cars, for the people that don't
necessarily have access to those and they have to take an Uber
or Lyft, it's $15, $20. It cost me $27 to get here, so
affordable transportation in rural communities and in suburban
situations is really important. Thank you very much. I
appreciate the time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Dowd follows:]
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Chairwoman Stevens. Dr. Rajkumar, you now have 5 minutes.
TESTIMONY OF DR. RAJ RAJKUMAR,
DIRECTOR, MOBILITY21, AND GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE
PROFESSOR OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING,
CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
Dr. Rajkumar. Good morning, Chairwoman Stevens, Congressman
Foster, and Congressman Cloud. Thank you for this opportunity
for me to testify before this important hearing today. I am Raj
Rajkumar from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania.
I want to thank this Committee for its interest in smart
cities technology. My academic career and success as an
entrepreneur for AV (autonomous vehicle) technologies have
benefited directly from funding from the Federal agencies whose
missions have been shaped by this Committee. These agencies and
you have helped make possible a revolution in innovation that
has helped to sustain U.S. economic leadership. I would like to
acknowledge in particular Mark Dowd's leadership during the
previous Administration in this regard.
My testimony today will highlight three key strategic
elements that are vital to realizing a revolution in smart
cities and mobility. One, continued U.S. commitment to
advancing the basic sciences that underpin smart city, smart
region innovation; two, a focus on integrating research and
innovation with deployment at the regional level; and three, an
emphasis on smart city strategies to create a supportive policy
environment that blends workforce and rural development
initiatives with innovation.
Smart city applications depend upon the integration of
technologies that span the domain of cyber-physical systems.
Fundamental research on cyber-physical systems, computer
networking, AI and machine learning, robotics, human-machine
teaming, cybersecurity, and privacy at NSF (National Science
Foundation), DOT (Department of Transportation), DOE
(Department of Energy), DOD (Department of Defense), NASA
(National Aeronautics and Space Administration), and NIST
(National Institute of Standards and Technology) will continue
to be vital to advancing these capabilities.
This continued support of basic research should also be
aligned with cross-disciplinary collaboration. Smart city
innovations involve the science of systems integration. A smart
city research initiative could include the development of a
roadmap for filling gaps in the science of systems integration
and interagency coordination.
My second key point is that fundamental research in
enabling technologies needs to be effectively combined with
application initiatives. At CMU, we refer to this model as
research development and deployment, RD&D. We engage with local
governments to identify mission targets, develop projects, and
pilot solutions that can be scaled once proven successful.
For example, an initiative to deploy AI-enabled traffic
signals to improve traffic flow and lower emissions started
with nine intersections and is now being deployed in cities
across the Nation. Our follow-on project enables persons with
disabilities to use smartphones to communicate with traffic
signals. The system can recognize their presence and
accommodate their small movements through the intersection,
giving them confidence that they will have the time to cross
safely.
The RD&D model also accelerates the technology transfer
process. Carnegie Mellon started several startup companies
emerging from our projects, which are disseminating innovation
to cities across the Nation and beyond. The RD&D model also
lends itself to creating networks of communities to share the
best practices. The MetroLab Network established as a 501(c)(3)
organization by CMU links together a virtual community of
government-industry partnerships across the U.S. engaging more
than 40 cities, 60 universities, and over 100 projects.
Another model of collaboration produced by Carnegie Mellon
is the Smart Belt Coalition, an effort across Michigan, Ohio,
and Pennsylvania to establish a dynamic and proactive
collaboration that brings together universities, transportation
authorities, and industry to foster a dialog and undertake
specific projects that focus on informing the regulatory
environment for connected and automated vehicles. Therefore,
new funding that supports smart city initiatives should combine
basic research with support for deployment initiatives such as
grand challenges in specific funding areas.
My third key point is that smart city research initiatives
should also focus on the effective policy building blocks to
ensure broad adoption. One essential area is the critical need
to build the workforce to support smart city development. This
must include both a focus on specific technical degrees and
focus on fostering community capacity building.
Funding research programs that incorporate educational
components can have a catalytic impact on building the
technical and community-based talent pipeline that smart city
innovations depend on. The deployment of smart city innovation
also creates a very natural pathway to engage communities and
neighborhoods in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics) education.
Another major policy challenge that's impacted by the
design of Federal science policy relates to the critical
challenge of engaging rural and suburban communities in smart
city innovations. For example, in the earliest phases of our AI
traffic signal project, a suburban community was selected for a
parallel deployment. Two years ago, Mobility21 launched a smart
city challenge competition targeted to draw in participation
from outlying suburban and rural communities while the
competition fostered capacity-building collaboration between
the university and communities across four neighboring
counties.
Recently, with support from the DOE, Carnegie Mellon has
launched an initiative to develop mobility solutions that
address problems ranging from job and healthcare access to food
insecurity in Greene County, a rural county of Pennsylvania
with a high poverty rate and an elderly population. The
targeted outcome is the piloting of a Rural County Mobility
Platform that can be replicated in other counties.
Federal research agencies can enhance the growth of such
collaborations in rural areas by incorporating grand challenges
into Federal smart city research initiatives, as well as
supporting targeted education and outreach programs that
incentivize urban, suburban, and rural collaborations. These
efforts will be enhanced by national networking efforts that
foster best practice learning, tech transfer, and innovation
across communities.
In summary, the work of this Committee and the programs it
has authorized have led to a technology revolution in
computing, communications, autonomy, and artificial
intelligence. The application of these breakthroughs to cyber-
physical systems creates the potential to fundamentally improve
the economic, social, and environmental fabric of our
communities.
By focusing on a three-pronged effort to: A, increase core
investments in foundational disciplines; B, foster greater
interagency collaboration to support research, development, and
deployment; and C, support agency strategies to incorporate
workforce development and bring urban, suburban, and rural
communities to collaborate, I believe this Committee and the
Congress can have a dramatic positive impact on scaling the
deployment of smart city innovations across America. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Rajkumar follows:]
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Chairwoman Stevens. Fabulous, thank you.
Dr. Bills, I'm going to recognize you for 5 minutes of
testimony.
TESTIMONY OF DR. TIERRA BILLS,
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL
ENGINEERING, COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING,
WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY
Dr. Bills. Thank you, Chairwoman Stevens and Members of the
Committee, for inviting me here to testify today. As mentioned
earlier, I'm an Assistant Professor in civil and environmental
engineering at Wayne State University, and it is my pleasure to
share about my current research on smarter transportation
technologies and their usefulness for addressing transportation
inequity.
Much of my current research focuses on investigating the
social impacts of transportation projects. My latest project,
for which I'm a co-investigator, is funded by the National
Science Foundation, and it aims to improve the ability to
represent the distinct travel needs of transport-disadvantaged
communities. And this is using mixed modes of sampling and data
collection. My objective is not only to provide a clear picture
of how transportation systems affect society but to support a
design of more sustainable transportation interventions that
meet the needs of all segments of society.
As we know, smarter transportation technologies, which
range from GPS data generation to connected autonomous vehicle
technology, are transforming our transportation landscape as we
know it today. These technologies hold the promise of
significantly reducing traffic incidents and traffic delay and
enabling new and more far-reaching transportation services in
terms of ridesharing, shared ridership, and micro-transit.
However, few research efforts and industry efforts have
focused on potential benefits and impacts to transportation-
disadvantaged communities, and these are low-income, minority,
and transit-dependent travelers. And without efforts to
investigate how well smart transportation solutions and
connected autonomous vehicle technologies can serve as
solutions for addressing the broadest set of needs for society,
we risk excluding those with the greatest transportation needs
from the vast benefits of smarter transportation technologies
and potentially reinforcing patterns of decline and
underemployment for struggling cities across the United States.
The recent project, the NSF project, is titled ``Data-
Informed Scenario Planning for Mobility Decision-Making in
Resource-Constrained Communities.'' This is a 4-year research
effort, and the project is being undertaken by a partnership of
faculty researchers and students and stakeholders across the
University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, Wayne State University,
and Howard University.
This project is motivated by the need to understand how
smart mobility solutions can be leveraged to empower community-
based decisionmaking around solutions for these communities.
The emphasis here is on low-income, resource-constrained
communities in particular because of the promise of smart
mobility that can lead to significant gains in quality of
service delivery, even under resource constraints. The project
is designed to impart the community with the capacity to define
and deploy mobility solutions that support greater
accessibility to employment opportunities, education, and
health care.
There are four clear objectives of this project. First is
to define a cost-effective data-collection strategy that
assesses the performance of the transit system in Benton
Harbor, which is where this research is based; track mobility
patterns of residents; and acquire resident perceptions of
their mobility. Second is to use that data to collect and
calibrate analytical models and predict resident demand for
mobility services. Third is to implement a community-based
decisionmaking framework based on scenario planning methods and
smart mobility technologies, data visualization, predictive
analytics used in the process of predicting these outcomes. And
finally, to implement a consensus mobility solution and assess
the impact.
My primary role in this effort is to design and estimate
components of what is called a travel demand model, and the key
here is that individual data collected in order to estimate
these models represent the travel behaviors of various
demographics and segments in the community, and therefore, the
ability to accurately predict travel choices and outcomes for
all population segments is tied to how well these segments are
represented in the travel data set and for model estimation.
So a major contribution of this effort is to define the
extent to which new data collection methods and novel community
engagement approaches can improve representation of these
target groups in our travel demand models. And this is
essentially a pressing issue with regard to under-resourced
communities like Benton Harbor.
So far to date we are 1 year into our project, and our
survey data collection approach, which is a distinguishing
factor of our study and travel model development, employs a
mixture of traditional and electronic survey modes in order to
achieve a higher representation of transport-disadvantaged
communities. Prior work that we've done validates the soundness
of this approach.
And the focal point of this data collection approach is a
series of 2-hour survey workshops that provide a personal point
of contact for survey respondents. In these workshops research
staff, trained facilitators, are made available to assist the
participants in completing the activity survey, as well as
registering for activity survey data collection using GPS.
To date, we've accomplished a total of four of these data-
collection workshops, and this resulted in a total of 140
survey respondents. And the most important takeaway here is
that there are at least 40 percent of our respondents would not
have been able to participate in these surveys had we not
offered and emphasized a mixture of data collection efforts.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Bills follows:]
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Chairwoman Stevens. Great, thank you.
Mr. Averitt, we'll recognize you for 5 minutes of
testimony.
TESTIMONY OF MR. SCOTT AVERITT,
TECHNICAL EXPERT AND MANAGER OF PUBLIC/PRIVATE
PARTNERSHIPS, ROBERT BOSCH LLC
Mr. Averitt. Good morning, Chairwoman Stevens and
Congressman Cloud and Congressman Foster. Thank you for the
opportunity to testify before you today.
As Chairwoman Stevens introduced me, my name is Scott
Averitt. I work for Bosch here in Farmington Hills as a
technical expert and manager of public-private partnerships.
Bosch is a global company with roughly 410,000 employees spread
across more than 60 countries around the world. We first
established a presence in the U.S. in 1906 and currently employ
nearly 35,000 associates in more than 100 locations in North
America. We have technologies across all four different
business sectors that are applicable toward smart mobility and
smart communities.
Our vision for a smart city is to create an interconnected
ecosystem that works to optimize performance, increase
efficiency, and enhance quality of life for all. In order for
smart community solutions to be successful, they must be borne
out of people's experiences and needs. Bosch draws upon a user
experience-driven process to develop our products and services.
One of the fundamental truths that defines a thriving
community is the accessibility to safe and efficient mobility.
For example, our recent grant submission to the U.S. Department
of Transportation, in partnership with the Michigan Department
of Transportation, aims to achieve this.
Through the deployment of Bosch's video-as-a-sensor
solution, our cameras will increase pedestrian and vehicle
safety through detection, prioritization, and alerts of
pedestrians and cyclists. Additional technologies from our
partners will help to reduce traffic incidents and congestions
through the use of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-
infrastructure communications. The benefits include reduced
emergency vehicle response times and public transportation on-
time performance.
Additionally, Bosch cameras will be used to identify wrong-
way drivers. The system will use communications and digital
signage to send out alerts to the driver and to nearby
travelers to mitigate risk and save lives. The intelligent
video analytics embedded in our cameras can also help cities
with tasks such as curbside management, delivery zone
violations and availability, parking analytics, and double
parking detection.
Bosch has partnered with the Ohio Department of
Transportation regarding deployment and testing of technologies
along the U.S. 33 Smart Mobility Corridor. Video analytics are
being used to generate warnings for cross-traffic, curve speed,
exit ramp queue, red light violation, work zones, along with
detection and notifications for pedestrians and wrong-way
drivers. These technologies are applicable and scalable from
big cities to small cities to rural communities.
As part of a recent USDOT grant awarded through the Ohio
Department of Transportation, Bosch is the technology provider
on a project that will test and deploy driver assistance
systems in the form of truck platooning. The technologies to be
deployed are expected to help cities, suburban areas, and rural
communities through improved road safety, decreased fuel
consumption, and improved freight logistics efficiency. Freight
shipping is essential to the success of many industries.
Therefore, it is critical that we continue to innovate and
transform this industry in a sustainable way.
Personal mobility solutions should be scalable and
accessible to all. Bosch's eBike system aims to extend cycling
accessibility to a wider range of commuters. Bosch's pedal
assist motor drive engages only when pedaling. This enables
precise assisted speeds of up to 28 miles per hour with hands-
free, no-throttle operation. eBikes essentially flatten hills,
shorten distances, and provide a viable option to ride for
those who otherwise could not.
The Bosch 'n Blue Program has been successfully implemented
across the country. This program provides specially outfitted
eBikes to police departments as a trial period to augment their
mobility fleets. Police departments have praised advantages of
increased range, higher speeds, and incredible flexibility.
eBikes are a great way for officers to engage with the
community while still quickly and safely getting to where they
are needed.
Vehicle parking continues to be a challenge for drivers and
communities alike. Bosch's smart parking solution detects
parking availability for garages, lots, and on street. The
camera solution performs dual functionality by providing
security video and parking spot detection. Parking management
software and dashboards make it easy to share parking
availability via signage and customer-specific apps to the
community. More efficient parking systems help to reduce
vehicle traffic from circling the block looking for a spot. It
improves driver experience leading to greater return customers
and improved parking spot utilization rates.
Our cameras use onboard intelligent video analytics to
generate a separate data stream that provides information about
object identification, classification, and path of motion. This
method preserves privacy by not sending real live video and
also reducing the backend communication bandwidth requirements.
Thank you for your time today, and I----
Chairwoman Stevens. Thank you.
Mr. Averitt [continuing]. Am looking forward to answering
questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Averitt follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Stevens. Excellent. Well, at this point we're
going to begin our first round of questions from the Members of
Congress here today. And the Chair is going to recognize
herself for 5 minutes.
And thank you for this round of testimony. This is nuanced
and technical, and we often say that the devil's in the
details. Well, my takeaway is the devil's in the data and how
we're recognizing working with the data and capturing it. And
we certainly have infinite opportunity to capture data this day
and age, the rate at which we are collecting, and certainly
appreciate the nod to the role that this Committee plays in
catalyzing and transforming technology opportunities, mobility
solutions, the ``if not but for'' principle of where the
Federal Government comes in as an effective partner.
We learned from the FAST Act, the most recent surface
transportation law that Congress authorized funding for a
number of programs focuses on improving mobility, but yet
there's still some aching for R&D dollars. And I'm grateful to
each one of you if you don't mind to just chime in on your view
of the Federal role in supporting research and development in
the deployment of smart mobility technologies across this
country, particularly including small cities and communities.
And then also let's take it down just one more notch and
look at how the Federal Government balances long-term research
needs with short-term deployment and testing activities.
And, Mr. Coulter, if you don't mind, I'd love to start with
you.
Mr. Coulter. Yes. So thank you. So, as I mentioned, in our
pilot program, the traditional funding options are not
sufficient to allow us to pursue it, and so, as I mentioned,
either through grants and R&D at the Federal level or stricter
vehicle safety mandates or whatever it takes to help to make
the technology more cost-effective because the technology is
there, but the cost is still a barrier. And so if we can use
R&D for that or those mandates, that would be very helpful.
Chairwoman Stevens. Unlocking barriers indeed.
Mr. Coulter. Indeed.
Chairwoman Stevens. Mr. Dowd, I know you have some
firsthand experience with----
Mr. Dowd. I do have----
Chairwoman Stevens [continuing]. Federal R&D dollars----
Mr. Dowd. I have strong views in this space. The current
rate in which communities and universities are being funded
right now on mobility is not good. There was a $60 million ADS
(automated driving system) grant that was put out by USDOT. It
was way short in terms of the amount of money. In Texas there
were two excellent applications that were submitted, no funding
for Texas at all. Virginia, you got two--it's unfortunate with
automation as being the forefront of where we're going that we
don't have enough money in the system.
Chairwoman Stevens. Yes. Yes.
Mr. Dowd. The National Science Foundation on the other hand
has been great in terms of--they have the smart and connected
communities. They have a $43 million grant program with us
that's out right now to help communities and universities work
together to try to solve mobility solutions.
Chairwoman Stevens. Yes. And we here in Michigan recognize
how much we are doing with so little, and we're doing it almost
at the expense of not having----
Mr. Dowd. I'd like to point out, though, Detroit did win an
ADS grant this year.
Chairwoman Stevens. Yes. We'll take all the grants we can
get. Go ahead, Dr. Rajkumar.
Dr. Rajkumar. Sure. Just part of that, the smart mobility
market, if you will, is supposed to become a multitrillion
dollar market in the future per year.
Chairwoman Stevens. Yes.
Dr. Rajkumar With a ``T'', right?
Chairwoman Stevens. Yes.
Dr. Rajkumar. And part of that is actually global
competition with China in particular emerging as a very
competitive rival. So I think in the U.S. we should continue to
be investing substantial dollars above the budgets that we
currently have to enable our leadership, which will also not
just have a technological implication but an economic
implication down the road.
Chairwoman Stevens. Yes.
Dr. Bills. One thing I'll say is that transportation is one
of those types of services that really requires the Federal
Government to lead. A lot of large-scale implementations just
won't happen without the leadership and funding and support
from the Federal Government.
And so I think that one important thing is to really set
priorities for incorporating more smart mobility and making
sure that we're doing that in such a way that the most
disadvantaged communities are not left behind. So the extent
that the Federal Government can serve as a catalyst for
bringing together efforts from research, from industry, and
from the public sector and mandating that there is clear
consideration for the broadest set of transportation needs, I
think that that's something that's very important for the
Federal Government to lead in.
Chairwoman Stevens. The deployment, yes. And our private
sector partner, please tell us.
Mr. Averitt. So, yes, I mean, it's actually very critical
in that respect from a funding perspective. It provides an
opportunity that otherwise wouldn't exist with industry. For
example, we recently partnered for an ATCMTD (Advanced
Transportation and Congestion Management Technologies
Deployment) grant, which is the short name of what you
pronounced earlier, for going along the Woodward corridor to
put in pedestrian detection and those types of systems.
And those technologies exist, right, but getting them
deployed out into the community and seeing how well they really
work and how do they really impact the community around them,
you know, it allowed us for that--we partnered with Wayne State
to be able to--after the point go and take a look and see how
well did it really work, to reach out to the community and see
was it effective, how was it perceived, right? So beyond just
deploying it, that's one thing. You actually got to make sure
that it's doing what it's supposed to do, and that's where the
grants really come into play in that respect.
Chairwoman Stevens. Well, and with the remainder of my
time, the elephant in the room also appears to be productivity.
You know, productivity is either going to decline or increase,
and inequality might rise. These technologies not only have the
ability to save lives and grow our regional economy, they have
the ability to create jobs. And I was just wondering if you can
touch base a little bit on the economic development opportunity
of smart mobility strategies.
Dr. Rajkumar, go ahead.
Dr. Rajkumar. The average American commutes for about 51
minutes per day to and from work, right? And most vehicles have
a single passenger in them who's driving. If the vehicle can
drive itself, a significant portion of those 51 minutes can be
turned into productive work, so it can have a qualitative
impact on productivity.
But in regard to transportation jobs, I think there's a lot
of fear about driving jobs going away. Luckily, full automation
is many years away, but it will happen at some point in time.
If we worry about loss of jobs and not using the technology,
countries like China will take on the leadership and the jobs
will go away anyway, and we will have lost the technology
leadership as well, right? What we need--you mentioned the
technology, sustained and extended leadership and actually
putting programs in place to basically retrain workers to help
them garner even higher-paying jobs fixing these higher tech
systems and maintaining those systems.
Chairwoman Stevens. Mr. Dowd, did you want to chime in?
Mr. Dowd. Sure. Again, getting back to the ability for the
Federal Government to provide that seed money to create jobs is
a critical part, particularly in transportation. We have such
an impressive transportation sector, but we aren't always on
the forefront of developing what those new technologies are. If
we had more grant money along that way, I think that we could
create jobs around these spaces.
Chairwoman Stevens. Yes. Well, it's certainly something we
here in Michigan know very well. And one of the joys of my job
is boasting about my region and the rate at which we are
proliferating technologies and innovations that scale and the
jobs that depend on it, but they need to be deployed. And it
can't just be, to Dr. Bills' point, for one community over
another. It needs to be equitable, so with that, I'm going to
yield back the remainder of my time and recognize my colleague
from Texas, Mr. Cloud, for 5 minutes of questioning.
Mr. Cloud. Well, thank you Chairwoman Stevens. Again, it's
really great to be here. I am from the Gulf Coast of Texas. My
district includes Corpus Christi. I live in the town of
Victoria that's a little smaller than this, and then the rest
of it's agriculture. And so it's a pretty interesting and
diverse district.
I have to say driving in here it was nice to see colored
leaves on the trees, so I appreciate the Midwest in the fall.
It's a nice treat. We don't get that very often in south Texas,
we have about 2 weeks of winter.
Mr. Foster. Will the gentleman yield? Do you have trees at
all in southeast----
Mr. Cloud. We do have trees. They go from green to no
leaves in 2 weeks and then start over. But yes, it's really
good to be here. I appreciate it.
Dr. Rajkumar, I want to start with you. I understand that a
team from Metro21 worked with the Department of Energy to
examine how communities in southwestern Pennsylvania can
utilize these modern innovations in transportation to improve
rural mobility. That's extremely important where I come from.
Could you talk a little bit about your work and how the lessons
learned from that research could be used in developing modern
rural mobility plans across the country?
Dr. Rajkumar. Very early in that particular process,
several factoids. Greene County that we are working with is
probably the poorest county in Pennsylvania, part of the tri-
State region. Luckily, they actually have a home university
called Waynesburg University, which is located there, as being
a huge educational force if you will for the local population
so I guess, unfortunately, it's very rural, economically not
doing well, but we actually have this brain fuel right at the
center. So we are working very closely with the President of
Waynesburg University to brainstorm and discuss educational
programs, number one; number two, try to define innovation
projects if you will that they can start engaging the community
in.
So we're looking at multiple aspects if you will, looking
at how we can bring to bear public transit aspects, subsidize
ridesharing, micro-transit, looking at AV shuttles if you will,
looking at whether we can bring in electrification of vehicles
into the picture and so on. So all of this is ongoing.
So forming relationships between faculty of both
universities, engage with communities in both locations and see
what technologies can be applied. We think incentives would
make a big difference and policies would make a difference.
Mr. Cloud. OK. Anyone else have examples of projects that
are being implemented in rural communities specifically or some
successes maybe that we're making, where we are in advancing
projects in----
Dr. Rajkumar. It is a challenge in the following sense. I
like to draw the analogy with going back to the 1930s when
electrification of rural communities was happening. The private
energy companies were not interested in basically deploying
electrification because the population was sparse and the
expenses were heavy.
Mr. Cloud. Right.
Dr. Rajkumar. So basically we had to revisit some of the
experiences of the past and try to repeat it for technology and
mobility as well.
Mr. Cloud. OK. Our district, too, is an export district, so
we have energy assets, and then we have farming communities.
Everyone's trying to get their products, so freight becomes a
big deal. Could you speak to any developments that are
happening along the lines of freight transportation, what can
we do to help promote the development of these technologies as
it regards to trade in----
Dr. Rajkumar. So automation of freight vehicles of course
would be a big application that can drive this forward. Driving
on highways actually turns out to be a very monotonous job if
you will, and then the truck drivers basically have to travel
very far from their homes for long distances, and they are
limited to driving 11 hours a day.
In terms of the vehicle that can drive itself, it can drive
23 hours a day, right, and be safer as well. And that in turn
can actually be coupled with humans actually driving in urban
contexts and dense contexts and so on, so I think that
technology frontier I think needs further investments.
Mr. Cloud. Anyone else want----
Mr. Dowd. So I would----
Mr. Cloud. Yes.
Mr. Dowd [continuing]. Just like to echo the fact that
automation--often we talk about moving people, but because of
the way that it's not developing as quick as everybody thought
it would be, but in terms of moving goods, it is actually much
more capable because there's less opportunity for people to get
hurt. So that's a space where additional investment would be
very helpful.
Mr. Averitt. There's also the possibility with automation
to shift driving of freight to off-hours so that you're not,
you know, in the middle of traffic jams and things of that
nature, so you can actually better manage your infrastructure
and you're not jamming it up with a bunch of freight in the
middle of the day. Those are----
Mr. Cloud. That's a good point. Any other thoughts?
Mr. Averitt. The other thing--we have this project that
we've got with Ohio Department of Transportation, which I
mentioned in my testimony that's looking at truck platooning.
And it's mostly looking at like driver-assistance features,
right? Again, how do you make it easier for those 11 hours a
day so that the truck driver is not, you know, having issues
with that or they've got a little bit of an easier job. That's
one of the things.
The other thing is like I mentioned about doing 24 hours
and stuff of that nature where you can actually still have a
driver in the truck, but they're following behind other ones so
that when they get off the freeway, they can manage from that
location. So there's lots of different things you can do in
automation with trucking to really get you to those points.
Dr. Rajkumar. Technology could also help in pooling to get
the demand from multiple smaller producers if you will, that if
they're able to get together to a virtual market if you will,
they can pool their demand and basically one freight vehicle
can actually supplement all those demands, so it's basically
about pooling of your shipping requirements.
Mr. Cloud. Right. Right.
Mr. Dowd. I also would like to point out that in rural
communities there is a spatial mismatch oftentimes between
where people live and where things are, right? And so drone
delivery is currently not--you can't realize it the way it
should be realized right now because of FAA (Federal Aviation
Administration) regulations, but the ability to get medication
to people in rural places could--be able to get them even
doctor's care through the doctor--basically bringing the camera
to the people and having them have--so there are many
opportunities to be able to explore some of those opportunities
that hasn't been fully realized yet.
Mr. Cloud. Yes, thank you. I have a lot more, but my----
Chairwoman Stevens. Yes, excellent.
Mr. Cloud [continuing]. Time's up, so----
Chairwoman Stevens. Excellent. But the Chair will now
recognize Mr. Foster for 5 minutes of questions.
Mr. Foster. Thank you, Chairwoman. And I want to thank you
for having this hearing.
You know, I'm Congressman Bill Foster. I represent the 11th
District of Illinois in the suburbs of Chicago. I sometimes
introduce myself as saying I represent 100 percent of the
strategic reserve of physicists in the U.S. Congress. I'm the
only Ph.D. physicist in the place.
I'm also a manufacturer. When I was 19 years old, my little
brother and I started a company in our basement that now
manufactures about 70 percent of the theater lighting equipment
in the United States. And so we do hardware, software, you
know, sheet metal painting, and we've kept all those
manufacturing jobs in the Midwest, which is something I'm
really proud of.
And so I'd like to, you know, congratulate Chairwoman
Stevens again for having this hearing really in the heart of
auto component manufacturing because when the revolutions that
we're seeing and we're going to be seeing in automotive are
going to have a big impact on the parts that go into cars, and
so it's really appropriate and good that the technology is
talked about and developed so close to the manufacturing
centers here.
Now, my question really has to do with the timescales.
There's sort of three simultaneous revolutions we're talking
about. There's electric cars and trucks, there is self-driving
cars and trucks, and then there's smart roadways and
infrastructure. And so if the panel could just sort of comment
on when they see, say, the 50 percent adoption point for each
of those, for both cars and trucks and it's those three
technologies: Electric, self-driving, and then smart roadways.
Dr. Rajkumar. Sure. I guess if you look at the numbers,
Congressman Foster, we have 350 million registered cars in the
U.S. today, and we sell about 80 million cars, right, in a very
good year, right? So basically then the average age of a
vehicle registered is about 11 years. If you do the math, if
all the vehicles are being sold every year become automated,
connected, electric, it would still take about 15 years, right?
Of course, it's going to be a long time before all the vehicles
being sold in a given year has those capabilities, so we are
talking about at least a few decades for us to reach a 50
percent threshold if you will.
Mr. Foster. So there's a difference--there's 50 percent of
new cars being manufactured, which will happen much before----
Dr. Rajkumar. Right.
Mr. Foster [continuing]. The 50 percent of the cars on the
road, and so I was more interested in where we hit the 50
percent of cars being manufactured----
Dr. Rajkumar. Oh, sure.
Mr. Foster [continuing]. Say, electric----
Dr. Rajkumar. Yes.
Mr. Foster [continuing]. Self-driving----
Dr. Rajkumar. Yes.
Mr. Foster [continuing]. Or so on.
Dr. Rajkumar. So studies indicate that if--even about 8
percent of the vehicles on the road basically have these safety
features, the connectivity features, that's actually a very big
positive impact if you will. So basically really if you do the
numbers in terms of that, the next 10 years or so we will
likely reach that 8 percent, 50 percent threshold within the
next decade.
Mr. Foster. All right. Other comments or estimates on that
on--Mr. Averitt?
Mr. Averitt. In terms of time, I couldn't say. I can tell
you one of the things that in order to get there is we need to
get to cost neutrality with existing vehicles, right? It's one
thing to, you know, have the technologies available and on the
market. It's another thing for it to be affordable, and those
are things that we're striving for with the OEMs (original
equipment manufacturers), be able to get those prices down
where it's, again, cost-competitive with existing technologies
on the road.
So that's something that it's a few years out at least
before you get to that point. There's a lot of work going in
R&D to get to those points, especially in battery research and
electrification. There's a lot of other research going on in
the areas of automated vehicles. But it's still early yet for
those things. There's a lot of extra hardware and sensors and
so forth that need to be added to a vehicle to make that
happen, so it's a few years off before we get to neutrality.
Mr. Dowd. I would also like to--on automation I think maybe
you were thinking about things linearly, right? You know, when
is that 50 percent going to hit when automation may actually
come to us in a different way. The idea that we'll have car
lots with automated cars I think is less likely than us
changing our mobility choices to include automated
transportation. So it's not that you're going to go buy an
automated car, but you can actually use an automated car. So I
don't think--the 50 percent piece may not really actually be
applicable in that space. I think we'll actually be changing a
little bit of how we consume cars.
Mr. Foster. Well, I was just struck by--I believe that
Tesla is claiming they're going to deliver full autonomy next
year, OK, there's a pretty wide spread in opinions on when this
might actually happen. And it must matter tremendously to
industry trying to plan for the transition----
Mr. Dowd. What's fascinating, though, is that the other
automated car companies aren't even close to that, so is it
that Tesla is so far advanced and so far beyond Waymo and
Cruise and like--is that the case, or is it that they define
automation differently? So if Google Waymo is out there still
testing their cars in Arizona because it's flat and it's dry,
they haven't quite gotten to Michigan yet or--you know, how is
that possible that Tesla is able to magically come up with an
automated car?
Mr. Foster. Well, I guess time will--yes.
Dr. Bills. So I unfortunately don't have an exact answer to
the 50 percent market penetration question, but one thing I
think it's tied to is, you know, the network of places where
people might refuel. And so we have this, you know, rich
network of fuel stations for gasoline. We don't see many
fueling stations for electrical vehicles. And so, you know, the
extent to which that becomes more of a publicly aware or
incentivized thing on the business side, I think that we'll see
a lot more people seeing the benefits of electrical vehicles
and seeing it as a real option for them and purchasing. So
that's what I want to add.
Mr. Foster. Yes, and I have to say that from my time living
in Ypsilanti, I had this nightmare of what happens at a
University of Michigan football game when 100,000 people drive
in, discharge their batteries, then the game's over and they
all have to find a charging station.
Mr. Averitt. To that point, just some quick math, 1
percent--if you take a million electric vehicles and you put
them on the grid to charge, it's about 2 percent of our grid's
capacity. Now you do that at 10 million vehicles, now you're at
20 percent. You get to the 450 million, and, yes, they're not
all charging the same time, but you've quickly exceeded the
grid's capacity very easily. So there's a lot that has to be
done on both sides of it. It can't just be the vehicle side of
it. You actually have to do a lot on the grid side as well.
Mr. Foster. Yes. Would you anticipate they'll be around
when you have self-driving internal combustion cars and trucks
as a significant component just because of the difficulties in
getting the electric infrastructure?
Mr. Averitt. I think there's going to be a mix. I think one
of the things we've seen is that a lot of things is they're
rolling out new technologies. They tend to roll out the newest
stuff on the latest vehicles, right? So a lot of the fully
automated stuff will wind up on the higher-end electric
vehicles at the very beginning as they deploy technologies.
Again, as it matures and as the costs come down, you'll start
to see it more on mainstream vehicles.
But there is the point that Bill brought up about there is
the possibility there's a massive shift in the way we have
vehicle ownership, right, in terms of, you know, where we have
that 450 million or if you have a lot of automated vehicles, is
it a matter of, you know, you click a button on your smartphone
and it just comes pick you up and you go where you need to be
and you don't actually own the car anymore. And that might
change the ownership model dramatically, as well as the need
for how many would charge and so forth. So there's a lot of
things that are being looked at by industry as well.
Dr. Rajkumar. Electrical vehicles do have fewer moving
parts, and the cost of batteries is dropping significantly. At
some point it would not make economic sense to basically buy an
internal combustion engine car. So the transformation could be
abrupt.
Mr. Foster. Yes. Now, I've seen--someone says--some others
2 or--2 to 3 years with a crossover--with a total cost of
ownership will be lower for an electric car----
Mr. Averitt. That----
Mr. Foster [continuing]. Because batteries are just
dropping like----
Mr. Averitt. Yes.
Mr. Foster [continuing]. A rock.
Mr. Averitt. That's very much the case, yes.
Mr. Foster. All right. I yield back.
Chairwoman Stevens. Thank you. We are going to do one more
round of questions, so the Chair is going to recognize herself
for another round of questions. And actually just picking back
up on that, you know, we just talked about the need to invest
in the R&D and how we define deployment and the role that the
government plays in helping us hit some of these goals. You
know, the question is, is this all incumbent on industry to hit
the electric vehicle considerations. We're working on the
electric vehicle tax credit up from 200,000 vehicles per year
to 600,000, recognizing that that also helps us hit
sustainability goals as far as where industry is moving.
And, Mr. Coulter, I'd like to ask you because you tend to
have some really great examples of public-private partnerships
and models that are working at the county level in one of
Michigan's largest counties, so I'd love for you to kind of
chime in on ways in which government, be it, you know, at the
county level maybe reaching for Federal or State Government in
partnership with industry.
Mr. Coulter. Yes, it's true. We're very active in that
space. The one piece that strikes me because I believe it was
Raj who mentioned the talent pipeline, and that's something
that we're really concerned about in Oakland County, making
sure that we have, you know, the workforce that's going to be
able to deploy this technology and do this. And we've been
partnering with Lawrence Technological University and Oakland
University, but I think that's a bigger issue than a local
government can manage, and so making sure that we have the
talent to be able to bring this to market is going to be really
critical for us.
Chairwoman Stevens. I'm looking at Dr. Bills because it's
becoming a chicken-and-egg question----
Dr. Bills. It is.
Chairwoman Stevens [continuing]. Around equity and, you
know, accessing jobs and then being able to do the job. And if
it's transportation, accessibility, and throughout that
spectrum.
Dr. Bills. Absolutely. I mean, you know, mobility is a huge
issue for a lot of people, so there are many residents in the
area who really struggle to access the opportunities that are
available. And we have public transportation, but they are
still not quite providing the level of coverage and the level
of reliability that is required to maintain employment and
maintain visits to healthcare facilities, which obviously has
implications in terms of healthcare outcomes and the ability to
contribute to the economy.
And as you mentioned, there's a real chicken-and-egg sort
of dynamic going on here where we're trying to provide people
with the services so that they can reach opportunities, and
we're trying to do that in a way that leverages the
technologies that are coming online. And yes, so that's one of
the----
Chairwoman Stevens. Well, and it's going to be intentional
development of the strategies, and that's I think, again, in
part to a nod to our audience and the extensive outreach that
we did for today's hearing, right? This is about establishing
legislation, enhancing legislation for the best outcomes for
our country and obviously for our community. And you've got to
have all stakeholders to the table while you're doing it. You
can't just add them in down the road.
This is, again, Mr. Dowd, things that you worked on when
you were serving in the Obama Administration and bringing, you
know, partnerships together. It didn't all just come at the end
when the money was awarded as, you know, on the smart cities
projects. It's got to be a part of applications. It's got to be
a part of the approaches.
And with my remaining time, Mr. Averitt, you mentioned in
your testimony--you talked about this, how Bosch is deploying
video and sensor, you know, solutions to increase pedestrian
and vehicle safety. Could you just elaborate on Bosch's privacy
and cybersecurity plan for deployment of this technology? Also
kind of hanging above this conversation on smart mobility, the
big question that everyone likes to ask is, what are the
cybersecurity implications of this, and can we hack cars and
hack into consumer activity?
Mr. Averitt. Yes, certainly, and that's one of the very key
points about those technologies is that, again, you know, with
these things, we've got connected vehicles as well, right? It's
great if it's connected, you can do all this stuff, but if
somebody else can track it in a nefarious way, that's not a
good thing, right? So there's a lot of things you've got to do
from a cybersecurity and a privacy perspective.
So when it comes to the video as a sensor, one of the
things that we do is we decouple the video feed from what we
would consider the data stream or the object identification, so
there's a separate data stream that comes out, that that's what
you use in the intelligent transportation system, so it says
there's an object here, there's a car, there's a pedestrian,
there's a cyclist. There's no identification of the person,
there's no facial recognition, there's no image of the face
whatsoever. It's just there's a person and that they're there
or how many of them are there or they're in the cross-section,
you know, there's this many vehicles at an intersection. So
it's very much decoupled from, you know, what you would think
of video cameras doing, right?
And then everything else from that side in terms of the
actual video stream, those are accessible for, you know, police
and fire to be able to do post-accident investigation or, you
know, something of that nature, but those are all, you know,
kept behind firewalls. They're all part of the networks that
have put in place, and there's very high levels of
cybersecurity and other information that tries to keep that
protected.
Obviously, that's an ever-changing thing, so you always
have to make it updatable and fixable so that you continue to
morph with the threats that are out there, so that's something
that we do continuously.
Chairwoman Stevens. Yes. Dr. Rajkumar?
Dr. Rajkumar. Two points. The car makers are very sensitive
to this need for cybersecurity, so they anticipate needing to
spend extra time and effort on basically making sure that these
vehicles are secure. They did not have to do that before. They
did not worry about it before, but now they are.
Second, this is really a pre-competitive issue if you will,
so they're absolutely working with each other to make sure that
they understand the best technologies out there so that all
these technologies are secure.
Chairwoman Stevens. Yes. And I think it's also about
defining it for the public, and that's part of the Committee's
responsibility as we talk about definitions, you know, how do
we define autonomous vehicles, how do we define cybersecurity
standards. We have oversight of the National Science
Foundation, as well as the National Institute of Standards and
Technologies, and these standards become imperative for us as
we move forward and, you know, and again the plight for data
but data at what cost and for what outcome, you know, certainly
one of the means to the end but the empirical experience also
moves us forward.
I'm out of time, so I'm going to yield back and now
recognize my colleague from Texas again for another round of
questions.
Mr. Cloud. Thank you. This is a great conversation, and I
have enough questions we could probably go on for a few more
hours.
But I'm trying to put this into context of what we're going
to have to deal with. We're in a competitive environment. You
mentioned the global competitive environment. Could you all
speak to the context of where we are in relation to other
countries in developing these? I know there's some very
specific challenges in the sense of we care about data security
and especially privacy in a way that some of our competing
countries, they can mass collect and force collect data on
every individual, and when it comes to developing these
technologies, machine learning, AI, and how that all integrates
into this picture.
And then speak to how the phases you see us walking
through, I guess, from a technological engineering standpoint.
Mr. Dowd, you commented on how the FAA regulations are more
what's holding up as much as Congress can sometimes move slow.
I don't know if you all have heard that before.
Mr. Foster. Just the Senate, just the Senate.
Mr. Cloud. Just the Senate. Unanimous----
Mr. Foster. Or at least two out of three----
Chairwoman Stevens. Yes, we don't like----
Mr. Cloud. So, you know, one of the things I think we're
trying to keep in mind as policy is to make sure that the
legislative path keeps up with the engineering science track
that's happening in the sense of, OK, what's the outlook for
the next phases of development, but then, legislatively, what's
the next legislative phase of development that needs to happen,
maybe regulations that are in the way that need to be looked
at, the next steps of laws, you know, just what's the track
forward for that in your mind?
Dr. Rajkumar. If I may, Congressman Cloud, it's a huge
market, multitrillion dollars per year in the smart mobility
space. The technology for our automated vehicles, and
connectivity if you will was literally born in the U.S., and so
we started out as leaders. It's not going to be an easy task
maintaining that leadership or extending that leadership would
require substantial investments, I believe, if we're going back
to the areas that we discussed earlier. A lot more money needs
to be invested in. To build us a huge market, we need to
continue to maintain that leadership.
It has become a global race. It's not just the U.S. in the
race. It's Europe, or Germany in particular, and then in Asia
it's actually China, Japan, and Korea if you will. So it's a
global competition. We need to be investing resources now to
keep things moving forward in our country.
The regulatory aspect I think is a very sensitive topic if
you will. Regulations may be needed, but if we overregulate
compared to other countries where the regulation is less, they
may actually end up taking leadership where they're able to
test things on their own very quickly and then get that
technology to mature.
That being said, I think our local companies need to
basically have responsibility, so while it needs to be
regulated, I do believe that it needs to be regulated lightly
to ensure that the companies are acting responsibly.
I guess in the United States I think they're doing pretty
well in terms of the technologies inside the vehicle, but
what's happening, infrastructure--I'm actually afraid that we
may be lagging a bit. There's a lot of, I guess, controversy if
you will in terms of infrastructure investments and the
frequency spectrum allocation and such if you will. And I'm
afraid that at this point in time China has basically picked a
horse to bet on, and they're actually going forward very
strongly, so we need to be very sensitive to that particular
dimension of connectivity. So I'm just worried on that front.
Mr. Averitt. As a global supplier for these technologies,
we are implementing them across the world, right, in all the
countries around the world. I wouldn't say that anyone of them
has more deployments than another at this point. I think one
point that I could mention is that being a global company we
can put our centers of competency anywhere, right, but we have
a very large presence here in metro Detroit area. We also have
a very large presence now near Carnegie Mellon for our Bosch
artificial intelligence, and that's primarily because that's
where the talent is coming from, right? It's coming out of the
universities, and that's a big factor in developing and
deploying these technologies is we need engineers. We need
software engineers. The last numbers I heard is there's
something like a couple hundred thousand open software
positions in this country, and we just simply can't find enough
to fill those voids. It's a major hurdle toward, you know,
getting to the next level of these technologies.
Mr. Dowd. I would like to just build on--the university
system is by far one of our best assets in this----
Mr. Cloud. Yes.
Mr. Dowd [continuing]. In this race. And the ability for
universities to work with companies and universities working
with communities is where I would push. So there is--the
partnership between universities and--like Metro21, the
university and the city allows both the city to increase its
capacity and allows the university to have a living lab to be
able to test out different technologies. And being able to see
that type of--with, you know, National Science Foundation, DOT,
DOE, DHS all have those types of programs, and being able to
get them to try to work better together would be one suggestion
I would have is that they all work independently.
I personally am trying to get them to work together, all
three, DOE, DHS (Department of Homeland Security), and DOT, but
it's hard. And it's hard because they just don't do that well.
So from a congressional perspective, that would be one
suggestion. Like FAA should be working very closely with DHS on
drones. And, you can give multiple examples of how this can be
done better.
The second thing is I think that from a regulatory
perspective on automated vehicles, we're in a weird space. It's
a weird space. You look at Texas versus California in terms of
how those two States regulate automated vehicles. You look at
the way that the Department of Transportation is putting out
their guidance, and it gets to be a confusing space. And I
think if there was some clarity in that space, that would be
very helpful.
Last, on the ADS piece--I'm just going to hit that again--
$60 million was a drop in the bucket to what the DOT should be
doing in terms of trying to drive that because, again, that's
universities and communities working together to try to get
that grant money.
Dr. Bills. I want to bring up the topic of micro-transit.
This is a type of smart mobility technology that is a mixture
between traditional bus transit and your Ubers and your Lyfts.
It's more of an on-demand service, and it helps for providing
greater accessibility to areas that don't have very dense
transit networks. This is a type of mobility service that we
see more prevalent abroad than we do in the United States.
We have had efforts here by industry, so we've had Ford's
Chariot, we've had BRIDGE. A lot of these have gone away, but
they still exist in other countries, in the U.K., in China. And
I think that one of the major issues with it being successful
here in the United States is that we haven't gotten the right
cost structure together. A lot of the efforts that we do see
that are collaborations between the public sector and pilots
and things like that, they have largely just been funded, and
the costs are paid for and this is piloted out to the
community, but we haven't looked at how we come up with a cost
structure to make this more sustainable. How do we come up with
the right mix of city and county and government incentives and
farebox contributions to make this type of transit work? We
know that it will provide for greater accessibility in areas
that don't have heavy public transportation investment. And so
this is one of the things that I would highlight is that we
need to focus on how we can make these more sustainable from a
cost perspective.
Chairwoman Stevens. Great. All right. Dr. Foster?
Yes. Dr. Foster.
Mr. Foster. Well, thank you. Dr. Bills, I'd like to pick up
on that point. You know, there are a variety of ways in which
we try to provide assistance to under-resourced communities,
you know, housing assistance, food assistance, and
transportation assistance seems like a real possibility here,
you know? The dream that there will be transportation as a
service, where you just have essentially automated Ubers. And
when you think about the $27 that it cost Mr. Dowd to come
here, probably more than half of that was labor that will
disappear. The capital costs of an automated Uber will be
amortized much more quickly because it's used a much higher
fraction of the time than a normal car. You know, the expense
of computers will be used most hours of the day.
And so I was wondering in terms of the research that you're
doing there's a lot of information that might be gleaned when
you see Lyft and Uber competing with each other raising and
lowering costs. And you can see that the market responds pretty
quickly to the uptake when they change their prices. So you
might be able to get a lot of information on how under-
resourced communities start using ridesharing services as a
function of price, and then understand a significant subsidy to
those prices so that if you had access to automated Ubers, say,
with a 50 percent or a 75 percent discount if you were a member
of an under-resourced community, that could be a very effective
way of delivering assistance in the community that would offer
real economic help, as well as access to jobs, which is the key
long-term thing.
People use the big data sets from--that Uber and Lyft must
have internally to look at how different communities use these
services as a function of the price they charge?
Dr. Bills. So there is a lot of promise there with regard
to leveraging big data to understand travel behavior and
therefore target communities in order to provide services that
fit their needs. The challenge is--and this is based on the
research that we're doing in Benton Harbor. Benton Harbor is a
small city on the western coast of Michigan. And there are a
lot of people who really struggle to access job opportunities
in the area. They're transit-dependent. There are large
percentages of the community that don't have automobiles
accessible in the household, and so they are really dependent
on transit. And the extent to which that we can improve transit
to provide more coverage by leveraging smart mobility
technologies will provide real returns to these communities.
One of the barriers, however--and this is something that--I
think that we know but we tend to forget is that, there are
many people for who the digital divide is still present. They
might have a smartphone, but it's not up to date. They are not
positioned well to download an application and use it to call a
Lyft or an Uber to take them, and so, you know, we've done a
lot of outreach and interfacing with these community members.
And it takes a lot of orchestration to get them to participate
in generating this type of data. So there is a question of how
well we're representing these communities because they are not
contributing to the big data at the same rates that others
might be.
And so that's one thing to remember is that, you know, we
do need to think about how well we can capture their needs
given the existing ways that we're collecting data. It is true
that we are in a position to provide real benefits to the
community members, but we have to figure out smarter ways to
make sure that we're capturing their needs.
Mr. Foster. Yes, because I think everyone is worried that
technology is going to drive even more inequality in wealth.
You know, the potential loss of jobs and----
Dr. Bills. Yes, that they will be left behind.
Mr. Foster [continuing]. Most skilled--right.
Dr. Bills. Yes.
Mr. Foster. But on the other hand, there's this incredible
observation that if you're a billionaire, you cannot get a
better smartphone, which is probably the most important device
in our lives. And just that simple fact means that there's a
lot of equality that's being driven by technology, and
transportation as a service delivered at very low cost to
everyone would be a tremendous equalizer----
Dr. Bills. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Mr. Foster [continuing]. In our economic life. So I think
this is a real source of encouragement for me and I want to----
Mr. Dowd. Can I----
Mr. Foster. Yes.
Mr. Dowd [continuing]. Just try to give you a little bit
more encouragement? So the community of practice that we talked
about with the Texas Innovation Alliance and Smart Cities Lab,
are 20 cities, we found something fascinating, which is that
access to nonemergent medical care, right, trying to get people
to the doctor was a significant problem because of cost, that
they couldn't get there. Either that, or they had to take two
buses, et cetera.
And what we found in almost every one of the communities
that we worked with, the public health folks were stepping in.
They were stepping in and getting their own programs with Lyft
and subsidizing the Lyft and not necessarily Uber. They found
Uber difficult to work with. But----
Mr. Foster. Geez, I wonder why. OK.
Mr. Dowd. But with Lyft in a lot of the communities with
the public health folks that's exactly what was happening. They
have this little nascent incubating opportunity to get people
to nonemergent medical care using Lyft on a subsidized basis.
Mr. Foster. Right. And you can imagine even from the point
of view of getting people to jobs, you know, if you had
effectively access to free or very low-cost transportation on
demand, it could be transformative to the economic opportunity
of people.
And so last question. What is the guess for how much
cheaper the Uber ride will get when you go to full autonomy? Is
that going to be a factor of two?
Dr. Rajkumar. I guess the basic math is that roughly 75
cents of every dollar that you pay Uber and Lyft goes back to
the human driver, right? And then I guess in principle the
vehicle can drive itself, that 75 cents stays with the company,
right? So if--I guess----
Mr. Foster. Well, then they'll compete and they'll lower--
and they'll stay with the consumer?
Dr. Rajkumar. So the lower part would basically be 25
percent.
Mr. Foster. So there could be a factor of four reduction
in----
Dr. Rajkumar. A factor of four, but you have to worry about
the initial investment basically is much higher, it needs to be
maintained, needs to be delivered, needs to be picked up, and
so on, so I think a factor of four is something that we can
look at, but some people likely debate whether it'll be that
high or not.
Mr. Foster. Yes. But that's really promising because that
means a relatively small subsidy can get someone to a job where
then the job that they--you know, they'll end up paying more
taxes than the subsidy--the value of the subsidy.
Dr. Rajkumar. And we could even start with a very focused
initial program where if somebody cannot have access to
transportation to get to a job interview, they aren't going to
get the job, right?
Mr. Foster. Yes.
Dr. Rajkumar. So even if we can just subsidize that first
interview step, after that they start making money if you will.
So it could be very targeted. We actually have a program at
Carnegie Mellon that we basically had a foundation fund, a pot
of money with which we generate coupons that we actually hand
out to people in rural or suburban communities if you will that
they can use to pay Uber.
Mr. Foster. Yes. And you don't have to wait for the
technology----
Dr. Rajkumar. Correct.
Mr. Foster [continuing]. To do that experiment----
Dr. Rajkumar. Correct.
Mr. Foster [continuing]. Because a human Uber is just as
effective----
Dr. Rajkumar. Correct.
Mr. Foster [continuing]. As a--well, I just--now I have to
personally jump on an airplane, but I just want to thank the--
--
Chairwoman Stevens. Not an Uber.
Mr. Foster [continuing]. Chairwoman again for having this
hearing. It's--you know, it's--it really highlights the--you
know, everything we're talking about is downstream of decades
of Federal investment.
And, you know, the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency) challenge that proved you could make self-
driving cars--you know, I represent Argonne National
Laboratories where all of the lithium ion batteries in cars use
cathode components developed, you know, more than a decade ago
at Argonne National Lab. And it just goes on and on and on.
And I just think one of the great things about this
hearing, it should highlight the crucial role in Federal
investment in the technology that shows up in, you know, the
thousands and tens of thousands of jobs made right here.
Dr. Rajkumar. Yes.
Mr. Foster. So----
Chairwoman Stevens. Thank you.
Mr. Foster [continuing]. Thank you again.
Chairwoman Stevens. Thank you, Dr. Foster.
Well, before we bring the hearing to a close, I certainly
want to thank our witnesses and our audience for participating
and coming to today's hearing. It's certainly going to be a
marker for us going forward. And it was significant to have
those in Livonia, Michigan, and in southeastern Michigan, and
we thank all of you for joining.
The record will remain open for 2 weeks for additional
statements from Members or for additional questions that the
Committee may ask of the witnesses.
And at this time our witnesses are excused, and the hearing
is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:34 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Appendix
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Additional Material for the Record
Letters submitted by Representative Haley Stevens
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Presentation submitted by Mr. Scott Averitt
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