Roll call, please.

Ward one, Councilmember Bowie.

Ward two, Council President Acre.

Ward three, Councilmember Jost.

Four.

Council Member Coleman.

Here.

Five.

Councilmember Kim.

Here.

Ward six.

Councilmember Yang.

Ward seven.

Councilmember Johnson.

Here.

Seeing five absent.

Or seeing five present, two absent.

Um, Council President Acre is excused.

Thank you.

Uh we are gonna have a robust conversation about connected and automated vehicles.

I'm really excited to have Tara Olds and Thomas Johnson Kaiser with us.

So uh welcome.

Uh we have several members of the council here.

We're excited for your presentation.

We know you've been working with our council president's office, who is the chair, and I'm the vice chair of the policy committee.

So welcome, and in her absence, I'll be chairing the meeting and moving us through and trying to keep us to the time time time frame that you've been given.

So welcome.

Thank you very much, and thank you, Council members.

My name is Tara Olds.

I'm the director of connected automated vehicles at the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

Um my colleague is uh Thomas Johnson Kaiser, and I'll let him introduce himself as well, real quick.

Good afternoon, Council members.

Uh Thomas Johnson Kaiser, I'm the policy and playing manager in our connected and automated vehicle office at MINDAP.

So thank you for inviting us to have a conversation today.

Uh we're going to give a little overview about automated vehicles, make sure that we're all on the same page of what we're talking about, what they are.

Talk a little bit about what some of the conversations have been about policy both at the state and federal level, uh, and then answer any questions that you all have.

So I will note if you guys have questions that while we are speaking.

I welcome them unless you guys would like to wait till the end, so feel free to tell us how you want to do that as we go.

Um I also want to just note that nothing we present today is intended to be formal recommendations for city or state regarding policy.

So please note that all right.

So before we dive into what are automated vehicles, I like to start with why are we even talking about automated vehicles?

So um, we do believe that automated vehicles are a future of transportation system.

We know that there's aspects of transportation that already incorporate technology like this, and we're seeing them more and more around the country as well as uh in the United States and even in the Midwest.

Um with that being said, a lot of the areas that we often focus on about automated vehicles are safety, increased accessibility, economic growth, and then really just looking at how we can be a part of the conversation with innovation.

And those potential benefits we talk about are not guarantees.

Really think that's important to emphasize.

We believe that these are great opportunities that if we uh see the technology actually get implemented into our system effectively and appropriately, that we might actually see these.

And these are all things I think we all can strive for.

But with that, I want to also acknowledge that I think government has a role to play in ensuring that these goals are realized.

If left to industry alone, this isn't always what's gonna make their bottom line, so we have to make sure that we get the right policies and programs and projects in place to help see that.

So increased safety.

We know that there's over 400 fatalities typically on Minnesota roadways annually.

I think we all would argue that one on our roadway is far too many, and we should all be striving to see zero.

So anything we can do to increase safety is great.

Human factors play over 90% of factors of crashes.

So if you can start to decrease that, you might actually see other benefits in that safety realm come into play as well.

We also know our transportation system does not serve everybody, does not serve everybody in the way that they want to be served equitably, um, and where they want to get, how they can get to different types of markets, education, um, economic opportunities, right?

That all differs depending on where you live and what types of services are offered in your communities.

So we think that providing additional types of technologies that might increase different systems might also provide new opportunities for people and increase that quality of life.

And then economic growth.