The first sentence of the article "It does something to you when you drive in here for the first time" probably gives you a sense of how worthwhile it'll be reading the rest. If you're looking for a human interest story go right ahead.
The reason why they want to test this is explained in the paragraphs above it. It also explains why this method was chosen and what the difficulties are.
I have no idea why you would categorize this as a human interest story.