Senator Tim Kaine Tours Virginia Tech Transportation Institute
Sen. Tim Kaine visited the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute April 21 to pledge his support for a university-led effort to establish Southwest and Southern Virginia as a global leader in next-generation transportation by creating the most advanced real-world test environments for automated vehicles and delivery technologies.
Senator Kaine came here to learn about our US Economic Development Administration proposal, which is to create an automated connected electric, electric vehicle corridor for transportation and heavy trucks. [We want to build on that, to build this test corridor] This is a $75 million opportunity we put together with partners across the university and other educational institutions and industry and community folks really all over southwestern, Southern Virginia. [Richard, Nice to see you. Thank you.] Are going to help a growing sector come together and scale up and find the future. We're going to put cutting edge technology to testing technology that will allow the accelerated deployment of automated connected and electrical vehicles in the transportation equipment space. We're going to test and develop solutions for beyond visual line of sight drone delivery. Which is important both for the production of these trucks that are made in great quantity around our region. Thousands of people there, it's just a ton to show off. VTTI is a great anchor and it's certainly a focal point for gathering this coalition together.