Brady PieperThe U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is awarding over $130 million in grants to implement smart technologies in transportation systems nationwide. The grants, awarded to public transportation agencies, will advance states’ innovative strategies to improve public safety and transportation efficiency on the nation’s most congested roadways.
The Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 funding will come from the DOT’s Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) Grants Program, a $500 million federal initiative seeking to incentivize automated innovation in the transportation sector. Designated funds under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), the program looks to advance the design and implementation of demonstration projects that implement vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), coordinated automation, sensor-based, integration, aviation and efficient technologies.
Structured as a two-stage program, the DOT’s SMART grant announcement for FY24 will include $54 million for design-oriented stage one projects and $85 million for implementation-oriented stage two projects.
The program’s first stage offers grants up to $2 million, providing a platform for project teams to develop partnerships with other stakeholders and refine initial project concepts. Under SMART’s third year, these grants will finalize all remaining stage one awardees until the program’s termination in FY26.
One of the program’s FY24 awardees, the Chicago Department of Transportation, will utilize a stage one grant to advance the Chicago Accessible Intersection Navigation Application project. Through the initiative, the department will utilize traffic signal telemetry data to optimize transit operations through an app on visually impaired pedestrians’ smartphones.
The DOT will award a stage one grant to begin the design and refine process on the Freight Signal Priority project in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Led by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, the project will explore freight signal priority implementation strategies to address air quality concerns and freight congestion in several central counties.
In California, the state’s Department of Transportation (CalTrans) will benefit from a max stage one program grant to begin the system integration-focused Skate Deployment and Electric Bus Operations Optimization project. Utilizing the federal funding, CalTrans will use open-source bus operations software to efficiently manage electric bus operations and enhance transit service reliability across multiple transportation agencies.
As these projects have already entered the program, stage one awardees will become eligible for the program’s second stage, which provides larger grants for transportation agencies to expand innovative projects and begin implementation of novel designs into transit systems. Through this announcement, eight stage one awardees from previous FY’s will secure $85 million in stage two grants under the SMART program’s third year.
The City of Minneapolis will secure one of the largest stage two grants for the Open Data Approach to Curbside Management project. Allocated $14.8 million from the DOT, the project will create a collection of open-source APIs, rules and protocols that evaluate historical, current and future curb usage, including impacts, safety and efficiency.
Another of the largest SMART FY24 awards, $11.7 million, will be granted to the City of Fort Collins, Colorado, for the Smart Grid Electric Vehicle Charge Management Solution project. The multifaceted project will demonstrate a smart grid charge management solution for the city’s electric vehicles fleet, including a managed chagrin software pilot, fleet electrification standard framework and study on city-owned utilities.
The DOT will allocate $6.6 million in stage two grants to the Washington State Department of Transportation for the Cascade Gateway Advanced Border Information System (ABIS) Design project. The binational initiative will develop a public wait time system at the U.S.-Canadian border to improve freight efficiency and travel operations in Northern Washington.
As of this announcement, the SMART program will have delivered almost $280 million in federal funds to improve public safety and transportation efficiency. Allocated approximately $100 million in BIL funds annually through 2026, the DOT will have access to more than $220 million for demonstration projects in the program’s final two FYs.
More information on the SMART program, including a full list of this year’s awardees and an interactive map of all projects from previous FYs, can be found here.
Photo courtesy Eden, Janine and Jim from New York City, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
