Transportation is at the heart of the planning function, and town planners, city managers, economic development officers, and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) are the logical extension of the transportation systems management and operations (TSMO) community at the local level. They should be integrally involved with strategic transportation planning and validation of their municipality’s transition to the AV economy. This is particularly true as we approach 2020 - when many planners are beginning to organize their Comprehensive Plans and need to understand what they need to do to prepare for smart mobility and the advent of connected, autonomous vehicles over the next decade.

• Municipalities need to rethink many aspects of their traditional built infrastructure (curb pick-up and drop-off, parking, electrical recharging facilities, pedestrian and bicycle access, dedicated AV lanes, etc.);

• They also need to establish new policies on ownership, pricing, public safety, disabled access, and data collection analysis and use, and consider changes to zoning and right-of-way policies for poles, wires, sensors and towers;

• Many municipalities will want to coordinate multi-modal services with their public transit system, and also provide an integrated trip planning, booking and payment platform;

• And to be effective, these municipalities need to coordinate and integrate these various technologies in a way that produces an efficient, shared, community-wide (or regional) data collection and sharing infrastructure.

Practical, inexpensive, and created just for planners, economic development officers, town managers, mayors and city council members, DNA’s one-day "Connected and Autonomous Vehicles 101" education and planning seminars explore the key elements of connected and autonomous vehicles - the evolution of transportation, the technologies involved, policy and infrastructure considerations - and provide municipal and community leaders with an opportunity to understand their options and to reach an early consensus on policy and infrastructure planning goals.