When will driverless cars roll into Toronto? 

TorontoSun.com
Sept. 17, 2016
Antonella Artuso

Look, no hands!

Pittsburgh appears to be enjoying its status as a pilot project for driverless Uber cars.

“The city of Pittsburgh has been fully supportive of Uber’s efforts to expand its program and advance innovation,” Katie O’Malley, a spokesman for Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, told the Toronto Sun in an e-mail. “Mayor Peduto, a regular user of Uber, welcomes these advancements and looks forward to further collaboration with the company.”

But here in Toronto, the capital of the province that hopes to lead the way on “next generation” autonomous vehicles, there’s not as much to see.

The Public Works and Infrastructure Committee has asked staff to report back by the end of 2016 with recommendations on how Toronto “might prepare for the introduction of automated and autonomous vehicles” over the next two years.

“The mayor continues to monitor the situation closely and looks forward to reviewing their recommendations,” a spokesman for Mayor John Tory said.

Staff are to look at mitigating any adverse impacts and gauge public acceptance.

“Autonomous, or self-driving, vehicles will soon be a reality on Toronto’s streets. Various predications indicate that driverless cars could be available in North America in significant numbers as early as 2020. By 2030, up to 15% of new cars could be fully autonomous,” a staff report released earlier this year says.

A spokesman for Councillor Jaye Robinson, who pushed for the report, said she believes that it’s important for Toronto to anticipate and get ahead of changes in vehicular technology, rather than simply respond once driverless vehicles arrive on city streets.

“As a mode of transportation, the car isn’t going anywhere in our society, at least for some time,” Stacy Hushion said. “But how we use the car is undergoing fundamental transformation, as you can see in the growth of the car-sharing economy, one in which autonomous vehicles are expected to play an important role.”

At the front of the pack of the driverless experiment is Uber, which has hooked up with Volvo to test the technology in Pittsburgh.

Toronto spokesman Bruce Hawkins notes that the matter of autonomous vehicles is being reviewed at all levels of government.

”The City of Toronto does not as yet have an official policy or position on autonomous vehicles,” he said.

And Uber has shown no great rush to try out driverless vehicles in Toronto.

“We have nothing to share in terms of Canada right now,” a spokesman told the Toronto Sun when asked about the possibility of driverless Uber vehicles in Toronto.

Rita Smith, with Toronto Taxi Alliance, said the city has proven “completely incapable” of enforcing existing laws with Uber.

“The idea that Toronto could figure out how to legislate driverless cars in less than a decade or two, and then actually enforce that law, is laughable,” Smith said. “The Toronto Taxi Alliance is far more concerned about the fact that Toronto does not enforce existing laws than it is about the dim, distant day when driverless cars are legislated.”

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Ontario’s driverless vehicle pilot project is hardly off to a racing start.

Eight months after its launch, no company has signed on to what’s being billed as the first testing of automated vehicles on Canadian roads.

“To date, we have received a lot of stakeholder interest in our pilot, but we have not yet received any formal applications,” Andrea Ernesaks, a spokesman for Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca, said in an email last week.

An Uber-Volvo partnership, such as the driverless Uber cabs pilot being launched in Pittsburgh, would be legal in Ontario if it met the requirements of the province’s pilot project, she said.

The Ontario pilot program for driverless vehicles requires that the applicant be either the original manufacturer of the vehicle, a technology company, an academic or research institution, or a manufacturer of parts, systems equipment or components for automated driving systems.

“Currently, no legislative amendments are required to permit on-road testing of AV technology. To participate in the pilot, an application must be completed and approved by MTO prior to testing,” Ernesaks said.

At the announcement of the pilot project in Ontario last fall, cabinet ministers said the government was showing leadership and making a “claim in the global marketplace.”

The goal was to ensure that Ontario has a role in developing and building the next generation of vehicles while ensuring roads stayed safe, they said.