Driverless Cars Could Be Coming to Boston Streets, Thanks to New Partnership

BOSTON, MA — The mayor's office on Wednesday announced a partnership with the World Economic Forum to launch a new program exploring self-driving vehicles on Boston streets.

Per the mayor's office, "The collaboration will include a year-long engagement focused on creating policy recommendations and supporting on-street testing of autonomous vehicles, also known as self-driving vehicles, to advance the safety, access and sustainability goals identified by the public during the Go Boston 2030 transportation planning process."

Boston will be the lead partner in the World Economic Forum's City Challenge, an initiative to support cities in their efforts to prepare for the future of urban mobility.

The city did not disclose the names of potential partner companies in its release Wednesday.

We're curious, Patch readers. What do you think of the idea? As the city develops policy, what should it focus on? Please let us know in the comments section, via Facebook, or by emailing alison.bauter@patch.com.

Before you weigh in, here's some helpful context, via Bostinno:

"The announcement was made the day Uber began testing its self-driving cars in Pittsburgh, where the company hired away many autonomous vehicle researchers from Carnegie Mellon. It also comes shortly after nuTonomy, a Cambridge-based autonomous vehicle startup, became the first company to launch a fleet of self-driving taxis (pictured), in Singapore, which its CEO said has much friendlier policies surrounding the testing and development of autonomous vehicles."

And a little more detail from the city:

"While industry experts agree self-driving cars will be a significant presence on U.S. roads by 2030, complete regulations have not been put into place to prepare for them. Boston and World Economic Forum's partnership directly complements and draws upon the efforts of Go Boston 2030 and will include an autonomous vehicle pilot, which will be instrumental in guiding Boston and other cities through the process of integrating, and maximizing benefit from, new mobility technologies."

Photo credit Joseph Thornton, via Flickr/Creative Commons, identified as autonomous car circa 2013