Automated and Connected Vehicles

The problem

Automated vehicles are entering service on roads that were designed, marked, and signalled for the human eye. The deployment is measured, not projected: by the autumn of 2026 the largest operator, Waymo, was running a fleet of more than 4,000 vehicles providing more than 500,000 paid rides a week, with 271.3 million rider-only (driverless) miles accumulated through June 2026; in July 2026 federal regulators granted Zoox the first exemption for a purpose-built robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals. The infrastructure they must read is still specified for human perception — and no standard, at any level of government, defines what a machine-readable road is.

The mismatch is built into the ordinary machinery of road maintenance. Pavement markings vary in width, contrast, and condition; traffic control devices speak visually, to a driver looking at them; and both are renewed on state and local cycles measured in decades, each renewal re-laying a human-only specification. Every such renewal is a future retrofit purchased at full price. Meanwhile states are settling the vehicle side of the law without the road side — Texas’s SB 2807 (2025) authorizes commercial automated-vehicle operations statewide and preempts cities from regulating them — while the condition of the roads those vehicles operate on remains nobody’s standard.

Connected infrastructure shows the same gap in institutional form. The Department of Transportation’s 2024 plan, Saving Lives with Connectivity, sets the nation’s nominal trajectory — vehicle-to-everything communication on 20 percent of the National Highway System by 2028, 50 percent by 2031, and full deployment by 2036 — but it is a non-binding roadmap: no dedicated funding stream, no eligibility hooks into federal grants, no statutory strategy behind it. What deployment exists is a scatter of local pilots, each tuning its own equipment and parameters, with no common standard to converge on: a sequencing failure — a national fleet arriving on a local, human-only road system, against a federal plan with targets but neither mandate nor money.

More than 4,000Vehicles in the largest operator’s fleet

More than 500,000Paid rides a week

271.3 millionRider-only miles through June 2026

Source: Waymo LLC, as reported by CNBC (September 1, 2026); rider-only miles through June 2026.

The proposed solution

The proposal prepares the road, not the car. It does two things, and it does them by incentive rather than by command.

First, a standard. Within two years, the federal transportation department — working with state road agencies, the automotive industry, automated-driving developers, and national safety organizations — would publish a voluntary national standard for “AV-ready” infrastructure: pavement markings that machines can read uniformly, traffic control devices that are digitally readable, and a digital twin — a complete, shared digital model — of the national highway network. No state would be required to adopt any of it. Instead, work that brings a road up to the standard would qualify for funding under the bill’s principal state block grant for repair and resilience, so states and cities could fold machine-readability into the resurfacing, restriping, and signal replacement they already perform, at the marginal cost of doing the planned work differently rather than the full cost of a separate retrofit programme.

Second, a strategy. Within one year, the department would write a national strategy for vehicle-to-everything communication — vehicles exchanging safety messages with signals, roadside equipment, and each other — to guide public and private investment in the technology. Work that follows the strategy would qualify under two of the bill’s other block grants, expressly including the installation of roadside communication units and the integration of the resulting data into traffic management centers. The strategy the department has already sketched as guidance would become a strategy the funding system can actually execute against.

The limits of the proposal are part of its design. It regulates no vehicle, no operator, and no driver; it sets no mandate on any state; and it spends no new money — funding moves only by making the right work eligible under grants the bill creates elsewhere. Vehicle regulation stays where it is actively being written, in state law. What the proposal adds is the missing half of the system: a definition of the road the vehicles are coming to, and a funded path to build it.

The proposal prepares the road, not the car.

The legislative proposal

The standard is given force through money rather than mandate: an activity to bring a facility into compliance with the AV-Ready standards is an eligible activity under the State of Good Repair & Resiliency Block Grant (Section 607(c)) — Title II, Subtitle A.

Section 608 — The National V2X Deployment Strategy

Not later than one year after enactment, the Secretary shall develop a National Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) Deployment Strategy “to guide the public and private investment in V2X communications technology” (Section 608(a)). An activity consistent with the Strategy is an eligible use of funds under two Title II block grants — the National Commerce & Freight Block Grant and the Community Access & Mobility Block Grant — including, expressly, (1) the installation of roadside units and (2) the integration of V2X data into traffic management centers (Section 608(b)).

What changes, and what does not

What changes against current law is the existence of the framework itself. Federal law today contains no AV-Ready infrastructure standard and no statutory V2X deployment strategy; the Department of Transportation’s 2024 V2X plan is voluntary guidance, addressed in Part IV. The subtitle regulates no vehicle, no operator, and no state: the standards are voluntary minimums, and on financing the bill is explicit by construction — the subtitle contains no appropriation; funding moves only through eligibility within grants the Act creates elsewhere.

Section 606Purpose.

Section 607"AV-Ready" infrastructure standards.

Section 608Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) deployment strategy.

Source: FRAME Act, Official Draft, December 15, 2025, Sections 606 to 608.

The data case

A plan with targets but no mandate

USDOT’s Saving Lives with Connectivity plan (August 2024) sets the deployment trajectory the nation has nominally adopted — V2X on 20 percent of the National Highway System by 2028, 50 percent by 2031, and full deployment by 2036 — but it is an explicitly non-binding roadmap with no dedicated funding stream and no eligibility hooks into federal grant programs. Section 608 supplies exactly the two missing elements: a statutory strategy, the Secretary’s own product under law rather than a departmental initiative, and eligibility for roadside units and traffic-management integration under two standing block grants. The strategy the Department has already written becomes, under the Act, a strategy the funding system can actually execute.

The same logic governs Section 607. Markings and signals are renewed on state and local cycles measured in decades; every renewal to a human-only specification is a future retrofit purchased at full price. A voluntary national standard, published within two years and attached to the Act’s largest block grant, lets the ordinary renewal cycle do the work — each restriping, each signal replacement, each resurfacing moving the network toward machine-readability at marginal rather than standalone cost, and a digital twin of the National Highway System giving operators and agencies one shared model of the asset they are jointly preparing.

20 percentBy 2028

50 percentBy 2031

Full deploymentBy 2036

Source: Department of Transportation, Saving Lives with Connectivity: A Plan to Accelerate V2X Deployment (August 2024).