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TREND. Self Driving Car Tech Alliance

What companies are directly involved?

Which motor vehcle companies are included via Mobile eye?

What’s the goal of the Alliance?

  • develop the necessary solutions and innovative systems
  • for highly and fully automated driving

Wallstreet Journal | BMW, Intel, Mobileye Link Up in Self-Driving Tech Alliance

Trend. Ride Share Data Transparency. Legislative Action in the East.

Which easter state legislature is confronting transparency in ride share data? Massachusettes

Included in recently passed statewide ride share laws is sharing which information with regulators?

  •  financial documents
  •  reports of crashes and other incidents

Is the information that ride share companies provide public? No.

Salem News | Our view: Legislature needs to make ride share information public

Legal Trend: Parking Ticket Funding Reduced by Lawyer Technology

How much reduction in parking ticket funding? $2.5 million reduction in parking ticket funds

How is technology interceding to reduce parking ticket payments? A robot lawyer.

How often has the lawyer robot been utilized? 250,000 times

How often does the robot lawyer win & parking tickets are reduced?  64% of cases won

The Register | Chatbot lawyer shreds $2.5m in parking tickets

3 Experts Conservatives Say Point to Subsidies for High Speed Rail. Be Informed.

A conservative writer points to 3 “experts” to support the argument that subsidies will be involved in Texas High Speed Rail:

The Expert: Stanford University economics professor Alain Enthoven

The Subsidy angle: Eminent Domain is a subsidy

The Expert: assistant director of transportation policy for the Reason Foundation, Baruch Feigenbaum

The Subsidy angle: federal Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) loans are subsidies

The Exert: Gerard Llobet, associate…

Economic Impact of Transportation Funding in Texas. By the Numbers.

  • $60 Billion  TXDoT’s  5-10 year estimate to improve urban connectivity
  • $20 Billion  TXDOT’s estimate to improve statewide connections &  border-trade projects
  • $516 annual cost per car per year for poorly maintained road damage, but in Texas it is more:
    • $838 in San Antonio
    • $815 in El Paso
    • $772 in Houston
    • $716 in McAllen
    • $549 in Corpus Christi
  • $70.6 billion economic impact of tourism in Texas for 2014
  • 630,000 direct Texas jobs in tourism in 2014
  • $6 billion in state and…

2 Ways Texas Laws Can Block High Speed Rail

The questions will be first answered by Attorney General Opinion request, RQ-0113-KP, and in all likelihood later answered by the courts.

  • Is Texas Central Rail a railroad under Texas law, if it hasn’t built a railroad?
  • Does Texas law grant Texas Central Rail eminent domain authority, if it isn’t a railroad? or, if it is a railroad?

Slate | Will Texas Law Trip Up a $10 Billion High-Speed Rail Project?

Lege TREND. Statewide Pay as you Drive in the Northwest.

Which state will move legislation to make its pay as you drive pilot permanent? Oregon

Which cars will be hit by the proposed pay as your drive tax structure? 

  • Could hit certain car types- “bonjour, electric cars,” the taxman says .
  • Could hit all cars, a subset of cars, purchased after a certain future date.

The Oregonian | Oregon lawmakers could look at pay-by-the-mile transportation tax in 2017

 

INTERIM. Trend. Sharing Economy. New Ride Share Rules in Chicago. 3 Key Pieces of Intel.

The new ride share regulations passed this week in Chicago will:

  • NO required fingerprint background checks for drivers
    • fingerprinting rules will be studied for 6 months
    • the requirement was dropped to avoid major comapnies pulling out of Chicago ride share
  • Requires drivers to take a 1-day online course to get a chauffeur’s license
  • No drug testing for drivers

AP | Chicago Aldermen OK Less Restrictive Ride-Hailing Rules

Chicago Tribune | Aldermen OK weaker Uber rules after Emanuel…