Nevada officials not deterred by driverless pilot site snub

It’s been a year since Gov. Brian Sandoval declared that Nevada would be a leader in promoting the electric and driverless car industry.

However, the U.S. Department of Transportation passed over the Silver State and selected 10 other areas across the country as “proving ground pilot sites” to research and develop technologies that would allow autonomous vehicles to share the road with human drivers.

Funding wasn’t included, but the designation would have bolstered Nevada’s credibility in the rapidly growing autonomous industry.

“We’re disappointed, but we’re not deterred,” said Robert Clark, director of the Nevada Center for Advanced Mobility, a branch of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development that was created last year to attract autonomous technology developers.

“There is now a buddy system between those 10 states to compare notes and share information,” Clark said. “But I’m planning to reach out to get some of that information for Nevada.”

The Nevada Department of Transportation and the city of Las Vegas submitted separate applications to compete with roughly 60 other state agencies, municipalities and universities seeking the federal pilot site designation.

Winners included a driverless car test track in Michigan known as the American Center for Mobility, another test center operated by the Army in Maryland, the University of Wisconsin, Madison and sites in the San Diego and Contra Costa areas of California.

‘A GOOD CASE’

“There was a healthy mix of environmental, weather and terrain conditions among the winners because you want to make sure this technology works in the heat, the cold, in the mountains and in flat areas,” Clark said.

In its application, NDOT pointed to the state’s wide-open roads with varied conditions for testing.

At the state level, Sandoval rode in a driverless big-rig developed by Daimler in 2015 and last year granted the first semi-autonomous driver’s license to former IndyCar driver Sam Schmidt, of Henderson. Additionally, several laws were recently refined to allow for autonomous vehicle testing.

“I thought we made a good case that Nevada offers opportunities to test in real-world situations with approved requirements to ensure safety,” said Sandra Rosenberg, an assistant planning director for NDOT.

“Maybe the (federal Department of Transportation) will see that they made a mistake,” Rosenberg said. “We offered them the entire state, and I thought that would make us competitive.”

U.S. Department of Transportation officials referred calls to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which did not respond for comment.

RENEWED VISION

Separately, Las Vegas city officials boasted the downtown area’s innovation district, which was created last year as a way to lure high-tech companies to test autonomous vehicles and other programs that promote safety and efficiency.

Efforts are underway to build a designated route that would allow autonomous vehicles to share the street with other vehicles between the downtown neighborhood and the Las Vegas Convention Center, said Joanna Wadsworth, a program manager for the city’s public works, transportation and engineering division.

“We won’t be part of the primary group that was selected, but it doesn’t change our vision,” Wadsworth said. “I think this will help the industry, and I hope to learn from the areas that were selected.”

The designation, announced Jan. 19, was one of the last official acts by then-U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx, who served under former President Barack Obama.

Clark said he’s waiting to learn whether President Donald Trump and his newly appointed transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, plan to support autonomous vehicle development.

Trump has already proposed a $1 trillion infrastructure investment plan that contains few details, but Clark is hoping that the budget includes infrastructure that would help put driverless cars on the road.

“If autonomous vehicle infrastructure is part of Trump’s allocation, then we’ll all want a piece of that,” Clark said. “I think it will take some time to see what happens next.”

Contact Art Marroquin at amarroquin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0336. Find @AMarroquin_LV on Twitter.