Vancouver, CA is preparing

Vancouver, Canada’s largest port and industrial city, will receive over $386,000 in federal funding to research the impact of self-driving cars over a three-year period. Transport Canada, the funding agency, has earmarked nearly $3 million to support Canadian cities and provinces in anticipation of the driverless era through Program to Advance Connectivity and Automation in the Transportation System.

Earlier in 2018, Vancouver teamed up with Surrey, second largest city in British Columbia, for a joint entry to Canada’s Smart City Challenge. The four-month public consultation led to an entry focused on mobility. #Smartertogether proposes Canada’s first two collision-free multi-modal transportation corridors, leveraging autonomous vehicles and smart technologies. The entry is a finalist for the $50 million single award prize to be announced in the Spring 2019. This initiative follows Vancouver’s earlier research work in 2016 The Future of Driving: The Policy Implications for Automated Vehicles and New Mobility Services in Metro Vancouver.