I grew up in southern California in the 1970's and, like any kid my age at the time, the highlight day trip of the year was getting to go to Disneyland. My dad was a teacher and my mom didn't work at the time so it might have happened every other year. This was back in the day when annual passes didn't exist and there were never enough "E" tickets in that stupid little Disneyland ticket booklet. My dad, mom, little brother and I would pile into our 1969 Ford Station Wagon and make the drive from the Inland Empire down the 57 Freeway into Orange County, spewing some of the worst exhaust known to man, not realizing that the next day I would be breathing that very same dirty air as the prevailing ocean winds blew inland. However, what seemed like a drive that took forever and the Stage 3 smog alert that I'd live through the next day were the last things on my mind because we were on the way to the happiest place on earth and I was going to spend the whole day and every darn "E" ticket in Tomorrow Land, a place where the future of transportation and technology all came together.

Tomorrow Land found a temporary new home in Ventura County the morning of October 11 ^th with the Ventura County Regional Broadband Summit. VCTC was proud to co-host the event with the Economic Development Collaborative and the County of Ventura. You might wonder what broadband has to do with transportation. At the Summit we had two experts in their field explain how broadband technology will drive our future (pun intended).

First, Caltrans Deputy Director for Highway Operations, Ali Zaghari, spoke about how Caltrans is now installing either the conduit or actual fiber to enable high speed broadband anytime a road improvement project is being constructed in the Caltrans right of way. This will bring high speed internet to what are known as high speed internet deserts and more remote communities. Ultimately, a local agency will have to invest in the next step of connecting to homes and businesses in their community, but at least access to high speed wired broadband internet will be at the community's proverbial front door.

Mr. Zaghari also shared what Caltrans is doing in these very dynamic times in the evolution of the cars we drive. Already today we have vehicles that have special warning systems to alert drivers when they start to veer out of their lane. In order to make that lane departure technology more effective, Caltrans is implementing new wider lane striping that is more detectable by that technology. Look for it on a freeway near you.

My colleague from the Contra Costa Transportation Authority (CCTA), Mr. Randy Iwasaki, was the second transportation technology expert. The CCTA serves many of the same functions as VCTC does, although CCTA also administers Contra Costa County's voter-approved local half-cent transportation sales tax measure (don't get me started). There is one area where CCTA has been a true transportation innovator and that is in their role as partner in the GoMentum Station in Concord, one of the nation's largest secure testing facilities for connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technology. GoMentum Station is built on a public/private partnership model. Through this collaboration, innovators in the private sector like Lyft, Toyota, Honda, and First Transit have access to GoMentum Station's secure 5,000-acre grounds and 20 miles of paved roadway space to innovate and test on varied terrain and recreate real-life scenarios in a safe and controlled environment.

CCTA and the public sector benefit by having access to new transportation technologies as they are being developed. This promotes a greater understanding of emerging technologies and helps to facilitate informed policy, regulation and planning decisions. The innovative technology being explored and tested at GoMentum Station will redefine the next generation of transportation, bring unprecedented mobility options to people, and help advance traffic safety towards zero fatalities.

Fully autonomous vehicles are still a ways off but not as far you might think. Cars are getting cleaner and polluting less and less, and our ever improving air quality is a direct benefit. However, with that good news we also will have to take a serious look at how we pay to maintain and improve our streets, roads, bridges, and highways and fund public transportation since the way we have done that for the last 100 years is by paying our gas taxes when we fill up at the pump. When we are travelling in our self-driving cars and watching live streaming movies or sports in cars that no longer require gasoline, then what?    Oh, and by the way, many futurists think we will actually be traveling more miles than we do today partly because it will take virtually no effort on the part of the "driver." So there will be more wear and tear on our roads but, because we have yet to figure out what comes next after gas tax revenues are no longer a sustainable funding stream, how will we maintain our transportation system? Now, for me, the guy whose job it is to always be thinking about Ventura County's transportation system, that seems more like the Haunted Mansion.