Driverless car research is taking place all over the United States from Dearborn, Michigan to Kirkland, Washington as automakers work to make cars safe enough for the roads.
And as automakers continue to make strides in those efforts, other cities are trying to figure out ways they can accommodate self-driving cars. One city working to become a hub of autonomous transportation may surprise you: Columbus, Ohio.
Columbus was selected as one of seven city finalists for the Smart Cities Challenge, a competition hosted by Google-turned-Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs and the Department of Transportation.
The winner of the challenge will be announced in June and will receive $40 million from the Department of Transportation that can be spent in whatever way possible to "become the country’s first city to fully integrate innovative technologies – self-driving cars, connected vehicles, and smart sensors – into their transportation network."
The winner will also get 100 Wi-Fi kiosks with traffic information from Sidewalk Labs,wireless communication data from NXP for cars to communicate, and $10 million from Vulcan to incorporate an electric vehicle infrastructure. Mobileye will also install driver assistance technology in every bus of the winning city.
When considering what cities are most likely to get autonomous transportation off the ground, several other finalists on that list stand out, like Austin, Texas, a testing site for Google's driverless cars, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, home to Uber's driverless car efforts.
But it seems too soon to count Columbus out, considering they have an ambitious plan to invest heavily in driverless transportation whether they win the Smart Cities Challenge or not (the winner will be picked in June.)
"We want to be epicenter," Rory McGuiness, deputy director the department of development for Columbus, told Tech Insider. "We want to be synonymous for intelligent transportation systems in same way that Silicon Valley is for tech."
Columbus is home to Ohio's Traffic Management Center, which monitors traffic conditions all throughout the state using sensors and cameras. The city is also spending $76 million on a smart traffic system that when completed will link all 1,250 signalized Columbus intersections and 12 regional communities.
That's actually a great infrastructure to support the implementation of driverless cars.
For driverless cars to operate as safely as possible, it's necessary to make modest changes to city roads. Having cameras and sensors on roads that can collect data on traffic patterns and congestion can help driverless cars navigate faster and safer. And the ability to communicate with traffic lights at busy intersections also has its benefits.
Because Columbus is a finalist in the Smart Cities Challenge, it will also get $100,000 to implement Sidewalk Lab's Flow — a program that will pull data from billions of miles of trips, Waze, Google Maps, and sensors on the roads to help cars maneuver.
The City of Columbus wants to roll out driverless transportation by first testing autonomous vehicles in the neighborhood of Easton. The driverless cars would shuttle workers from the Easton Transit Center to local employers in the area.
McGuiness said the city is currently working with partners to see what vehicles they want to use for the trial, like Honda and Ford.
If Columbus wins, it will dedicate another $8 million of its own money to build out an infrastructure supporting driverless cars.
"For us, regardless if we win or not, we are very much committed to becoming a center of intelligent transportation," he said. "However, getting an infusion of $40 million and other resources will allow conversion to happen much more swiftly."
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