The City of Las Vegas and the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada in the Las Vegas Medical District were awarded $5.3 million by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) Transportation Grants program for an autonomous vehicle project.
The project, GoMed, is set to begin late next year, and will provide autonomous and connected vehicle service around a four-mile route between the Las Vegas Medical District and the Bonneville Transit Center in the downtown area. GoMed will consist of four self-driving shuttles, pedestrian safety devices and 23 smart transit shelters equipped with Wi-Fi to convey information on arrival times, occupancy and wayfinding kiosks.
GoMed will serve an area that features 684 acres of medical facilities that serve some 200,000 patients each year. The project is also expected to employ about 6,000 people by 2020. This area has four hospitals, including UNLV School of Medicine campus.
This is the second autonomous shuttle program in Las Vegas. In its first program, the city of Las Vegas and the Regional Transportation Commission (along with Kelois North America and AAA), an autonomous shuttle operating on a one-mile loop downtown, transported more than 32,000 individuals on nearly 5,000 trips between November 2017 and November 2018.