Transportation

On December 6 during the CSG 2018 National Conference in Northern Kentucky-Greater Cincinnati, CSG convened a policy academy on The Intersection of Innovation and Infrastructure. This page includes meeting resources including the policy academy agenda, speaker bios, information about program sponsors and PowerPoint presentations from several of the day's speakers.

Innovations in technology are changing the way we travel, but are also presenting state leaders with an ever-expanding list of policy challenges. Autonomous vehicle and truck platoon testing, increasing sales of electric and alternative fuel vehicles, and the exponential growth of ride-hailing companies have significant policy implications in areas such as workforce development, data management, privacy, insurance, traffic safety, urban planning, transportation funding and environmental protection. State officials are also working with partners to build fiber and broadband networks to enable innovations like connected automation, all-electronic tolling, and smart city and intelligent transportation system technologies. This day-long policy academy highlighted many of these transportation and infrastructure innovations and what they mean for policymakers.

While the public benefits of electric vehicles are becoming increasingly clear, they continue to represent only a small percentage—a little over 1 percent—of new vehicle annual sales in the United States. State legislatures have numerous strategies at their disposal they can deploy to help improve the marketplace for electric vehicles, from helping to expand electric vehicle charging access to encouraging the electrification of public fleets. California and New Hampshire are two states at different stages in their efforts to advance the electric vehicle marketplace. CSG spoke recently with two legislators who have been responsible for enacting related measures in those states.

Kentucky is a leading state for logistics—the transport of goods from point of origin to point of consumption. With the growth of e-commerce as well as the expansion of Kentucky’s auto industry and other economic sectors, the state has been able to parlay its infrastructure assets and prime location into billions of dollars in investments from some of the biggest players in logistics.