timing, and better matching of supply to demand. Connected vehicles are coming independent of automated vehicles. Whether the infrastructure providers add intelligence to their road and signal systems (for instance, telling vehicles when the light is about to change) is an open question.

The potential transition away from gasoline is another important change confronting the transportation sector (Energy -Chapter 6). The timeline for electrification is similar but slower than that for automation. Though automated vehicles need not be electric, and electric vehicles need not be automated, we expect these systems to track and both see increasing deployment. If current trends hold, electric vehicles (EVs) may make up 68% of new car sales by 2050. This number is highly dependent on gasoline prices and environmental regulations. Minnesota will likely lag the US as the cold weather is less conducive to EVs than the US as a whole.

Electricity generation costs are dropping, as are battery storage costs. There are new opportunities for in-roadway electric charging (dynamic wireless power transfer), probably beginning with buses at bus stops, that should be explored by transportation agencies. The advantage of such charging systems are a reduction in on-board battery storage weight required, which greatly improves vehicle efficiency (since energy is not consumed moving around stored energy). Gasoline remains the fuel to beat, and if gasoline costs remain low, electric vehicle deployment will be slower. Other fuels like methanol have an opportunity to become more significant, especially for truck fleets, for which electrification is much less efficient. Urban fleets with a lot of stop-start activity may see hybrid electric vehicles.

We anticipate a reduction in energy consumption overall per distance traveled with reductions in vehicle weight for passenger cars and more efficient use of trucks (which are likely to get heavier, as they carry larger loads).

Biofuel use for surface transportation is likely to plateau near existing use levels; however, it may increasingly be used in the electricity sector (and thus indirectly for an increasingly electrified transportation sector).

Importantly, a reduction in gasoline consumption has large implications for transport financing. The lack of user fees for electric vehicles is a growing inequity that creates opportunities to move toward road pricing, as discussed below

Pricing (Chapter 7) transportation proportionate to use has been a holy grail for transportation economists for decades. Pricing can be used to reduce or eliminate congestion by managing demand so that it does not exceed available supply. However, to date, it has been technologically and politically difficult to implement such a system. The advent of electronic toll collection (ETC) in the 1990s has resulted in a small resurgence in the number of toll roads, but there is no evidence that individual toll roads will expand to be a significant share of all roads anytime soon.

Cities like Singapore, London, and Stockholm have established congestion charging zones. However, urban congestion charges have yet to be deployed in any large US city, and are unlikely to come to Minnesota before playing on the more congested New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago stages.