Nathaniel hordam is an automated vehicle specialist at the centr for transportation and environment in Atlanta. He says there's more work going on in automatec transit than there is in you know, avs for for totally untransit related purposes. Hordam won a project with the connecticut department of transportation through the integrated mobility innovation grant's programme The federal transit administration has given him two million dollars to help fund his research.
Transit advocates have made autonomous vehicles something of a boogeyman lately, framing the emerging technology as a way to perpetuate the car's mobility monopoly and starve public transit of funding. In reality, transit is one of the most compelling applications and automation is a huge opportunity to dramatically improve public transit. To help explain this opportunity, Nathaniel Horadam of the Center for Transportation and the Environment joins the show to discuss a light-rail style automated bus rapid transit project he's been working on, and the automated transit opportunity more broadly.