Driverless Shuttle Plan Stuck in Traffic

A plan to pilot self-driving shuttles that would circle between Yale New Haven Hospital buildings has stalled, hitting a roadblock of skeptical alders.

New Haven’s Department of Transportation, Traffic, and Parking prepared an application to qualify for a state program to launch pilot testing of autonomous vehicles.

Director Doug Hausladen and Jonathan Garrett, a transportation consultant at Stantec who has been working with the city on autonomous vehicles, pitched the program to the Board of Alders’ Public Safety Committee at a hearing this past week, hoping to receive a green light on the application process.

Instead, alders raised doubts over whether the vehicles would be safe, whether the benefits of the program would be equitable, and whether the department should focus on other priorities. They ultimately voted to table the matter.

Hausladen and Garrett presented a draft application for implementing a self-driving shuttle route that would link Yale New Haven Hospital’s downtown campus to its St. Raphael Campus in the Dwight neighborhood. Yale New Haven Health has agreed to help fund the initiative, Hausladen said.

“Not nearly enough outreach has been done before we can go live with the project,” Hausladen said. He suggested that many of the specifics would be determined by community input.

For the sake of the application, though, he and Garrett proposed four possible routes to the committee (see below).

The city has not selected a specific autonomous vehicle company to work with. The application sets out to contract two small, wheelchair accessible buses that can seat eight to 12 people and would travel at around seven miles per hour.

“They kind of look like a toaster oven,” Garrett described.

Per state requirements, an onboard operator and a remote supervisor would supervise the shuttle whenever it is in use.

The shuttle would have 360-degree sensors, redundant braking systems, an emergency stop system for passengers to invoke, and a cybersecurity system run by the vendor of the shuttle, according to Hausladen and Garrett.

(Read more about the technology that Hausladen and Garrett hope to employ here.)

Since Yale New Haven Hospital currently runs an ordinary shuttle between its downtown and St. Raphael campuses, the city would be able to compare the success of the autonomous shuttle with its non-autonomous counterpart. The new vehicles would likely be stored at the Howe/Dwight Garage at 18 Howe St.

Participating in the state’s pilot program would help ​“position New Haven as forward thinking and tech advanced,” Garrett said.

Critics — including City Plan Commissioner Ernest Pagan at a presentation last February — have raised concerns about the potential for automated vehicles to replace drivers’ jobs.

The presenters emphasized that, at least for the next five to ten years, autonomous vehicles will still require human hands in order to safely function — including an onboard operator, maintenance workers, and a remote supervisor.

Garrett said that in the near future, driving jobs may transition to ​“new economy” jobs involving operating autonomous vehicles. He cited economist Erica Groshen’s prediction of a .06 to .15 percent drop in employment starting, at the earliest, in 2045.

“We always want to make sure that services like this are supporting, not replacing, existing modes” of working in transportation, Garrett said. ​“This gives the opportunity to invest in a lot of job displacement mitigation strategies.”

Alders question safety, traffic

West Hills/West Rock Alder Honda Smith asked about safety controls, citing accidents in which pedestrians have jaywalked and gotten hit by vehicles. How many deaths have resulted from the kind of autonomous vehicles involved in the pilot program?

“Autonomous vehicles is a blanket term, but there are really many different types of automated vehicles,” Garrett answered. Most of the infamous self-driving car accidents occurred with ​“level 3” autonomous vehicles, which required human operators to manually intervene in order to prevent accidents.

The shuttles in the pilot would be ​“level 4” autonomous vehicles, which have built-in measures to prevent accidents without human intervention, he said. According to Garrett, there have been zero deaths resulting from level 4 vehicles.

“We’re not talking about Teslas on the highway, we’re talking about very tiny shuttle buses that will be going at 7 miles per hour,” Hausladen said. He cited his own experience riding a test autonomous vehicle in Ann Arbor, Michigan. ​“They convinced me of their safety,” he said.

Downtown/East Rock Alder Abby Roth said she is worried about the location of the pilot. The shuttle ​“touches my ward, and I walk to work in that area every day,” she said. ​“I’m very aware that there are ambulances there every day.” She noted that Crawford Manor houses elderly and disabled residents, some of whom are blind.

Garrett reiterated that the shuttles would be travelling slowly and would have the capacity to stop for pedestrians. He conceded that the routes might not be perfectly designed for the location.

“That’s where the community input would come in,” he said.

Quinnipiac Meadows Alder Gerald Antunes noted that the slow speed of the vehicles might not be ideal for the area. ​“If it’s going seven to 10 miles per hour, is it going to create a traffic problem?” he asked.

“It has the potential to cause congestion if it were to operate along high-volume roads,” Hausladen said, but the city tried to avoid those high-volume roads when proposing potential routes.

“Maybe I’m wrong, but if we’re talking about Howard Avenue, MLK Boulevard…. Those are high volume roads,” Antunes replied.

“There are trade offs, balances,” Hausladen said. ​“One shuttle is going to be able to make a loop in 30 minutes. The likelihood that, if you are a driver on MLK, you’ll be behind a shuttle is low,” Hausladen said. He noted that the shuttle would mimic the speed of a bicyclist.

Antunes seemed skeptical. ​“It’s a lot of left-hand turns,” he said.

Serving ​”familiar” routes or bringing New Haven’s voice to the table?

Beaver Hills Alder Brian Wingate expressed concern about which communities in the city would and wouldn’t benefit from the pilot program, given its focus on the Yale New Haven Hospital area.

Yale University already has a private shuttle system, including a shuttle exclusively for Yale New Haven Hospital employees, which primarily serves the downtown and East Rock areas. 

“The routes sound familiar to me,” Wingate said.

Hausladen said that there was a need in the Dwight and West River neighborhoods to reduce single-occupancy vehicles. He added that Yale New Haven Hospital would be a much-needed funder for the project.

Hausladen argued that a central goal of the project was to promote transportation equity by providing New Haven an opportunity to weigh in on statewide transportation policy.

He noted that other areas selected for the pilot program include UConn, a university campus; Windsor Locks, a ​“fairly deserted roadway”; and a ​“private parcel in Stamford.”

“None of them are going to be in an urban center, none of them are going to be facing the kind of problems we have,” he said. ​“We need our voices on the table.”

“If you’re not in the room, you can’t weigh in on the pilot,” he said.

Alders not convinced

As they deliberated on whether to advance the application, the Public Safety Committee raised doubts that the project was worthwhile.

“I guess autonomous vehicles are the thing of the future,” Roth said. ​“I think that part of downtown is not the place to be testing it.”

Roth also questioned whether the Department of Transportation, Traffic, and Parking should be focused on other priorities.

Meanwhile, Smith reiterated concerns about having ​“a robot that’s going to be on the road.”

“We’re the guinea pigs,” Antunes agreed.

Smith, Antunes, and Wingate all expressed reservations on liability and insurance coverage for the project.

The committee voted unanimously to table the matter.