🔒Here’s how a mostly vacant UConn property could help advance self-driving vehicle technology and make roads safer

Imagine a world without speeding tickets, preventable crashes and insurance claims for damaged vehicles — and without emergencies and deaths on roadways.

That’s the future Steve Cortese, managing partner of Promesa Capital LLC, wants to help become a reality through a deal with the University of Connecticut.

In late September, UConn’s board of trustees approved an option agreement with Promesa that gives the Guilford-based investment company up to a year to acquire 15 acres on the university’s Depot Campus in Mansfield for a self-driving vehicle testing facility.

Cortese owns Promesa and is its only employee.

The project involves building a simulated “smart city” and research lab for testing connected autonomous vehicles — self-driving vehicles that communicate with traffic lights and cameras, in addition to each other. The vehicles can drive without the need for a human driver to brake, accelerate and steer.

Promesa will use the existing infrastructure and roadways on the property, including six buildings that were part of the former Mansfield Training School. The brick buildings, which are in poor condition, are protected by the State Historic Preservation Office.

The facility would include crash-test sites and driving environments with intersections, roundabouts, parking lots and ramps, but Promesa has not yet completed design plans.

Under the proposal, Promesa can purchase the land from UConn for $1.5 million. About $1 million of the proceeds would be placed into escrow at closing and used for environmental remediation, if necessary.

The project is a scaled-down version of an earlier proposal, which included more than 100 acres. Cortese and UConn engineering professor Eric Jackson first broached the idea of creating the autonomous vehicle testing site in 2019.

The original plan included a three-quarter mile racetrack, but it has been removed since Promesa determined much of the property contained wetlands.

“Teaching a car to do 80 miles per hour on a highway and not hit the car in front or behind it is easy,” Cortese said. “I mean, there’s a straight road, there’s no turns, so that became less important for us. What we really want to focus on is more of the urban landscape, the pedestrian safety, the bicycle safety.”

Over the next year, Cortese said he will finalize design plans and submit a zoning application to the town of Mansfield. Once he receives approval, he plans to exercise his option to buy the land.

Construction could take two to three years. If the project timetable were compared to a baseball game, he said “we’re currently in the fifth or sixth inning.”

That also means the project is closer to becoming a reality than ever before, and he can see “the light at the end of the tunnel.”

“The Promised Land is a research facility where our partners/users will join us in this quest to make our roads and our intersections safer for drivers, bikers and pedestrians, where we will further the science of connected autonomous vehicles,” Cortese said. “If the cars are going to be driving, they need to do a really good job of communicating with what is around them.”

'Mutually beneficial relationship'

Though his main motivating factor is to make the roads safer, there is a financial component as well.

Promesa will acquire the land and provide funding for the project, estimated to cost about $15 million. No public funds will be required.

Cortese said securing the funding “won’t be a problem,” even if costs exceed $15 million.

Promesa has partnerships with multiple companies, but Cortese declined to name them, citing confidentiality agreements.

“We have been in talks with many different vendors who are in this vertical, who would be very pleased to participate in what we’re trying to do,” Cortese said.

The option agreement states that Promesa would own and operate the facility when construction is completed. The facility would generate revenue by charging a fee to car manufacturers, vendors and other entities that use the testing site, including UConn.

Jackson said UConn may be able to use grant money and federal funding to cover usage fees.

“A mutually beneficial relationship will develop between UConn and the developer,” Jackson said. “Nothing has really been formalized at this point.”

It would be the first testing facility of its kind in the Northeast, and the first privately developed one in the country. There are similar venues at the University of Michigan and Virginia Tech, but they are owned by the schools.

The project site is located in a federally designated Opportunity Zone, which offers substantial tax benefits. An Opportunity Zone allows investors to defer, or even eliminate, capital gains.

Jackson, who leads the Connecticut Transportation Institute, is advising Cortese on the project and hopes to use the facility for research and teaching purposes in conjunction with the school’s engineering department.

There is demand for autonomous vehicle testing in the region, Jackson said, as New York City and Boston companies working to develop the technology seek nearby testing sites.

“There are a lot of tech startups that are developing a wide variety of technologies and would love to be able to test them in this region,” Jackson said.

He believes self-driving cars could become the norm on roadways within the next few decades. That means companies are in a race to develop and refine the technology, even as questions remain about its practical applications.

Lingering questions include: Would consumers choose self-driving cars over regular cars? Under what circumstances can a human override an autonomous vehicle’s computer? Can an autonomous vehicle speed, and if it does, is the manufacturer responsible, or is the person who owns it?

But research and development is plowing ahead, with the expectation that those concerns will be ironed out.

Autonomous vehicles are currently at level two or three of the Society of Automotive Engineers’ automation scale, which means they require constant human supervision.

Level five would be the point where cars are fully autonomous and don’t require any input from a person, other than a destination.

“You never touch anything in your car, maybe not even the door handle,” Cortese said. “You walk up to your car, you get in, you tell it, ‘Hey, I’m going to Stop & Shop.’ The car drives you to Stop & Shop and parks.”

Rapidly improving technology

Self-driving cars are already being used in some cities.

Waymo LLC, owned by the California-based technology giant Alphabet Inc., has debuted self-driving taxis in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles. They operate without a driver, and people can hail one using the Waymo app.

Waymo vehicles — typically a modified Jaguar I-Pace, which is both fully electric and autonomous — are equipped with buttons for passengers to control functions such as “help,” “lock,” “pull over” and “start ride.”

The road hasn’t always been smooth. In June, Waymo recalled 672 of its self-driving vehicles after one struck a utility pole in Phoenix. No one was injured, and the vehicle was unoccupied. Waymo has since updated its software and maps.

In February, a cyclist suffered minor injuries when he was struck by a Waymo robotaxi in San Francisco. An investigation found the cyclist turned into the path of the car, and that the cyclist was obscured from its cameras by a truck, according to Reuters.

According to Waymo, its vehicles have traveled 22 million miles and have experienced 84% fewer airbag-deployment crashes than a human driving the same distance in the cities where it operates. Using that same comparison, Waymo vehicles had 73% fewer injury-causing crashes and 48% fewer police-reported crashes.

Driverless cars are currently prohibited on Connecticut roads.

Jackson said the technology is rapidly improving and that self-driving cars should eventually eliminate the primary cause of crashes: human error.

“The quickest route to getting to where we have no crashes on the roadway is by trying to develop cars that physically can’t be involved in a crash,” Jackson said.

According to the most recent data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were 42,514 people killed in motor vehicle crashes in 2022, down 1.7% from 2021.

Of the fatal crashes in 2022, 45% involved at least one of three contributing factors: speeding, alcohol impairment or lack of using a seatbelt or child restraint.

In Connecticut, fatal crashes are on the rise.

As of Oct. 2, there were 245 traffic deaths in the state this year, up from 238 in 2023, according to UConn’s Connecticut Crash Data Repository.

Cortese, who has also led an impaired driving training program for law enforcement, blames human behavior.

“You know, people do stupid stuff,” he said. “Take their hands off the wheel; leave it to the car. We’re going to be better off. It’s just going to take a while to get there.”