State Planners

Notes

State and city governments are already involved in planning for CAVs (see here and here). The CAV-Systems concept is to provide safe, efficient, secure, accessible, cost-effective, mass-transit by taking advantage of the advent of CAVs. To realize this objective, state-government planning to develop CAV Systems and to regulate CAVs will be essential. Equally important will be cooperation between states (the public sector) and CAV developers (the private sector) to assure achievable, affordable standards.
CAVWAY development will involve reuse of existing right-of-way and instrumentation of travel corridors. States will exploit system engineering to develop standards, including common protocols which enable CAVs to coordinate in order to travel safely and efficiently in platoons. The states will enforce those standards such that only certified CAVs may use CAVWAYs.
This represents an extension of current state responsibilities to develop and maintain freeways and highways, to register vehicles, and to license drivers.
State (and city) governments will be most effective in these pursuits when they work with the private sector as discussed here.

Critical to planning by state agencies is an understanding of the CAV-Systems Concept of separation of CAVWAY and CAV requirements, elaborated under the discussion of Roadway Conditions. This separation will enable common CAV standards to support CAV travel across jurisdictions.
At the same time, local CAVWAY standards will empower state agencies to control for abnormal roadway conditions specific to their geographic areas.
Why not the feds?
As CAV Systems become common both nationally and internationally, there will be clear advantages to commonality across state and national borders. Davius understands that, within the USA, it is unlikely that the federal government, which neither licenses drivers nor registers motor vehicles, has the resources to develop CAV-System standards. Rather, he suggests that states with large departments of transportation, such as California and Texas (no offense to other states intended), take the lead in standards development and share results and improvements regularly. Standards departments at the federal level could probably assist in those processes.