Welcome to a New Age Orbit City, The State of Nevada

First hitting TV screens in the 1960s, The Jetsons captured the attention of American children for decades with its animated look at the future complete with robots, holograms and flying cars – and until recently, these technologies seemed about as far-fetched as one of the program’s 30-minute episodes.

While envisioning zooming through your commute in a self-driving vehicle might still feel like something straight out of Orbit City, one in three Americans believe that a driverless city – with cars and public transportation operating autonomously – will be reality within the next 10 years, according to a study from Intel.

And it certainly seems that playmakers from all major industries want to help drive the future of this thrilling transport technology. Automakers from Ford to Mercedes-Benz are advancing their own driverless vehicles and Google spinoff Waymo’s fleet of self-driving minivans is set to grow 100 times bigger. In Colorado, Anheuser-Busch and tech company Otto conducted the world’s first commercial shipment by an autonomous vehicle (a 2016 shipment of Budweiser beer across more than 132-miles that holds the Guinness World Record for “longest continuous journey by a driverless and autonomous lorry.”

At Jacobs, we’re helping cities around the globe pave the way for integration of autonomous and connected vehicles, to unlock a host of benefits such as reduced accident rates; improved access to healthcare, job opportunities and social interaction; increased mobility and maximized efficiency of traffic flow.

In Nevada, our award-winning work with the Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) is developing a concise vision and a collaborative policy framework for continuing autonomous vehicle (AV) and connected vehicle (CV) initiatives in the state.

The initiative is defining cohesive policy, standards, legislation and innovations that, when coupled with the state’s technologically progressive political environment, will further establish Nevada as the pioneer for making this innovation a reality.

Activities encompassed within the policy framework include:

• Leveraging state infrastructure and real estate to further promote AV/CV testing and ultimate ubiquity.
• Promoting collaborative policies, standards and programs to showcase AV/CV innovations that expand economic growth and create jobs.
• Locating, vetting and forming private sector partnerships where capabilities and offerings can be used to enhance AV/CV initiatives.
• Identifying an “innovation incubator” between public and private sector partners that explores and nurtures new ideas and companies focused on AV/CV.
• Expanding transportation innovation and connecting residents through advanced mobility options.
• Modernizing and improving freight mobility.
• Connecting Nevada through smart infrastructure and using transportation as the launchpoint for Smart Cities, Smart Regions and Smart States.

The policy framework is helping advance Nevada’s position as an innovation leader, leveraging emerging technologies to drive economic development alongside the AV/CV benefits of helping to save lives, increasing travel reliability, reducing the need for new infrastructure and improving energy efficiency.

Interested in learning more about how Jacobs drives mobility efficiencies using leading-edge solutions? Visit www.jacobs.com.