Autonomous transit fails to attract public in North Carolina pilot

[Charles Hunter]

I just read the Executive Summary of the NCDOT/UNC Final Report on the project. I found it interesting that NCDOT returned the one Beep vehicle to Beep, "NCDOT determined that it would not be reasonable to continue testing the vehicle in North Carolina given the limitations that were identified across the pilots"

NCDOT will issue a Request for Information (RFI) for the next phase of their AV research ("CASSI").

The RFI covers the full range of transit vehicle form factors, from pods to small shuttles and vans to full-size buses, as well as automated accessibility features, such as automated wheelchair ramps and securement systems. The RFI is focused on higher levels of automation and asks respondents to clearly describe the presence, role, and responsibility of a human attendant or operator as needed for safety or passenger assistance. NCDOT anticipates using the findings from the RFI to inform their selection of new vehicles, locations, use cases, and vendors for future projects through CASSI and beyond.

[Jax_Developer]

Good to see other states wasting money too. Still don't understand why some transit agencies feel the need to tackle a $100B+ market. We as a country are so against rail, we'd rather spend a ton of money & time on something with no track record.

Meanwhile, train technology continues to improve & we run on systems several decades old. Make it make sense.

[fsu813]

Interesting discussion about Tesla's self driving taxi at the 33:20 mark:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6d77nWqHBfB7LpHFZUmHUK?si=bbTEBwv6Sn21m51Wtjc2EQ

And the 28:45 mark:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7l4CsyWNQQGXw68DJaVebl?si=4WAUbvf1RdGLJrkvnfIRQQ

[jaxoNOLE]

Good to see other states wasting money too. Still don't understand why some transit agencies feel the need to tackle a $100B+ market. We as a country are so against rail, we'd rather spend a ton of money & time on something with no track record.

Meanwhile, train technology continues to improve & we run on systems several decades old. Make it make sense.

It's because our rail systems are several decades old that we're so resistant to that path. Correcting past under investment is going to be painfully expensive. What's so frustrating is that as the cost of the AV experiment rises to and eclipses the cost of bringing rail up to modern standards, we refuse to re-evaluate. I would have no issues looking at AVs if we could embrace a "fail fast" mindset. Armsdale should have demonstrated the tech wasn't ready, and by 2020 we should have been seeing proposals for alternative solutions.

[Jax_Developer]

Good to see other states wasting money too. Still don't understand why some transit agencies feel the need to tackle a $100B+ market. We as a country are so against rail, we'd rather spend a ton of money & time on something with no track record.

Meanwhile, train technology continues to improve & we run on systems several decades old. Make it make sense.

It's because our rail systems are several decades old that we're so resistant to that path. Correcting past under investment is going to be painfully expensive. What's so frustrating is that as the cost of the AV experiment rises to and eclipses the cost of bringing rail up to modern standards, we refuse to re-evaluate. I would have no issues looking at AVs if we could embrace a "fail fast" mindset. Armsdale should have demonstrated the tech wasn't ready, and by 2020 we should have been seeing proposals for alternative solutions.

It just doesn't make financial sense for any public entity to consider now. The cost to do rail is very well known & our biggest obstacle in the US with rail is land availability/rights to access. The almost self driving car has been with us for a decade now, and there has already been billions invested into the self driving concept. There is a very real thing called the "technology adoption life cycle." Jacksonville is more than a decade or more behind places like Silicon Valley with this topic in particular. This was big talk when I was in High School & the solutions being driven then are not that much different than today. It should have never been seriously considered by JTA or any public transit agency.

And as fsu813 shared, or what I think he shared, is Tesla literally rewriting all their FSD code to 2 lines of code 6-ish months ago. Extremely hard to argue that Tesla, the front runner, ever possessed mature enough IP for any public entity to ever remotely consider in open traffic. It would take a few phone calls to the right people to figure out that mature technology, and legislation, is a few decades away (despite what maybe Elon claimed at Tesla's shareholder conferences).

[marcuscnelson]

^It is very strange for Nat Ford to baselessly and repeatedly claim that light rail costs a billion dollars per mile in order to justify his obsession with self-driving. Only some of the most expensive rail projects in the world have approached that price tag, and almost all are bored subway tunnels under the hearts of major cities. He of all people knows that Jacksonville would not be building a bored subway under downtown. A rail transit system in Jax would not need to reinvent the wheel the way JTA is attempting to, and it's hard to believe that they don't know that.

[jcjohnpaint]

He says this stuff because city leaders believe what he says without doing their own research.

[jaxoNOLE]

No argument with any of the above. The  harsh and unfortunate truth is that Ford and JTA have refused to accept reality and missed several opportunities to back away from a generational mistake that will dwarf (and quite possibly exacerbate) the debacle of the original Skyway.

Jacksonville will become yet another in the long legacy of sunk cost fallacy case studies.

[marcuscnelson]

What really concerns me is the degree of wagon-circling area officials have decided to do around Ford & Co.

It's one thing for Nat Ford to have a bad idea and chase it. It's another for almost everyone from the JTA Board to the Mayor's office (over two administrations) to City Council to our legislative delegations to throw their hands in the air and refuse to be the stewards of public resources they were elected to be. Even if Ford eventually gets thrown under a bus one day for one reason or another, the big question of this era in Jacksonville has to be why this was allowed to spiral out of control for so long when obvious warning alarms have blared for years. We're still reeling from the failure of accountability at JEA, so what happens to a JTA that is stuck with tens of millions of dollars of sunk costs into the last CEO's pet project and no real pipeline that doesn't revolve around self-driving?

[Gators312]

What really concerns me is the degree of wagon-circling area officials have decided to do around Ford & Co.

It's one thing for Nat Ford to have a bad idea and chase it. It's another for almost everyone from the JTA Board to the Mayor's office (over two administrations) to City Council to our legislative delegations to throw their hands in the air and refuse to be the stewards of public resources they were elected to be. Even if Ford eventually gets thrown under a bus one day for one reason or another, the big question of this era in Jacksonville has to be why this was allowed to spiral out of control for so long when obvious warning alarms have blared for years. We're still reeling from the failure of accountability at JEA, so what happens to a JTA that is stuck with tens of millions of dollars of sunk costs into the last CEO's pet project and no real pipeline that doesn't revolve around self-driving?

Marcus is exactly right. It's mind numbingly painful to watch this occur when it's completely avoidable.  What angers me further about this boondoggle is the lies they spout regarding light rail. I've spent the past few weeks in KC and have used their streetcar on several occasions to go just about as far as the clown cars are going.

Just one example - Took my daughter to get her hair done in the Crossroads district, with plenty of on street parking, then walked a block and a half to catch the streetcar to drop her at the T-Mobile center for an Olivia Rodrigo concert, back on the streetcar to meet my gf to go have drinks and dinner near the River Market then back to Crossroads to walk around, eventually to get the car then go pick up the girls from the concert.  No $50 parking near the venue, navigating closed one way streets etc. So easy and useful. 

I just don't understand how JTA officials can see something like that and think, nahh we'll take the UTC clown cars instead.

[thelakelander]

^Its unfortunate. When Kansas City started with the MAX BRT line, JTA was all over that......because BRT was something they wanted to spend money on at the time. Back then, they were selling BRT as an alternative to LRT, which the public wanted with the $100 million for rapid transit from the BJP two decades ago. Haven't heard a peep about the MAX or KC's streetcar system though. Overall, the degree of wagon-circling officials have been engaged in for years revolves around local politics and alliances. The local political gamesmanship has probably been more disastrous for Jacksonville, than anything else in our history. What's happening with transit right now, is just the latest result of our poltical theater.