Transportation systems around the world are showing signs of strain, and safety, congestion, and energy usage are significant societal problems. In the past, transportation professionals have attempted to solve these problems through largely "siloed" approaches focused on vehicle crashworthiness, infrastructure design, or energy efficiency. These separate approaches have had success, however transportation problems continue to grow.

The University of Michigan has formed the Mobility Transformation Center (MTC) to create a consortium of industrial, government, and academic partners who comprise an ecosystem for enabling a future transportation system that leverages connected and automated technologies. This group has convened to define a potential ecosystem, identify and prioritize key research needs for enabling a holistic approach, identify key technology and policy hurdles with paths forward, identify business drivers and opportunities, as well as identify gaps in standards, testing, facilities, and risk management schemes. A key goal is to lay a foundation for, and demonstrate, a commercially viable connected and automated transportation system in Ann Arbor by 2021.

To achieve these goals, MTC is designing, building, and deploying significant test beds, facilities, and deployments so that real-world results can be incorporated into this process in a rapid fashion.

This paper presents a summary of current status and early results of this effort, to the extent that they are ready for dissemination. This includes a description of the role various industrial sectors may play in a future transportation system, as well as identified first-level research gaps.

Included is a high-level description of strengths and weaknesses of various technologies (vehicle sensors and communication, infrastructure sensors and communication, infrastructure operating systems, data systems, etc.) and their ability to address key transportation problems and opportunities.

Lastly, a summary of the current status of the physical test beds and deployments will be included.

The authors seek to further the discussion of the potential roles various transportation system components and industrial sectors, as well as the roles for government and academia. Additionally, the authors hope to generate meaningful discussion on the importance of a systems approach to solving key transportation problems, including proper technology planning, evaluation and deployment to ensure that results address the widest range of societal needs as possible.