In an announcement made this week, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx granted more than $7.1 million from the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Accelerated Innovation Deployment (AID) Demonstration program to fund nine projects in Florida, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin and the National Park Service. The purpose of the grants will be to develop cutting-edge traffic safety improvements that can be replicated nationwide.
“Innovation requires creative thinking and investment,” said Secretary Foxx. “These state DOTs, along with the National Park Service, are building roads and bridges that are saving time, money, and lives. Now it’s up to Congress to pass a long-term transportation bill so that states have the resources to continue delivering better, more innovative infrastructure.”
In the “Beyond Traffic” report released earlier this year by the U.S. DOT, Foxx examined the trends and choices facing America’s transportation infrastructure over the next 30 years. The report identified a variety of factors, including a rapid population growth, increasing freight volume, demographic shifts in rural and urban areas and a transportation system that faces more frequent extreme-weather events, that will have large-scale impacts on infrastructure needs and development.
“This country’s transportation needs continue to grow, and we need to adapt our infrastructure accordingly, by accelerating the use of new technologies and approaches,” said Federal Highway Acting Administrator Gregory Nadeau.
Since its launch in February 2014, the AID Demonstration program has provided more than $27 million for 38 grant awards to help federal, state, local and tribal government agencies speed up their use of innovative traffic, safety and construction practices. The program will ultimately invest $45 million provided under the “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act” (MAP-21) and the extension of MAP-21, building on the FHWA’s ongoing “Every Day Counts” (EDC) initiative, a partnership formed by FHWA, states and localities to accelerate the use of innovations and reduce project delivery times.
The following projects, according to the FHWA website will benefit from the recently announced grant monies:
|
Agency |
Amount |
Project Description |
|
Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) |
$1,000,000 |
FDOT’s AID grant will be used to help develop and deploy a statewide commercial parking system. FDOT intends to deploy the system beginning with the I-95 and I-4 corridors and expects to provide reliable, real-time information about commercial vehicle parking availability at rest areas and weigh stations to dispatchers and drivers. |
|
Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT) |
$1,000,000 |
KDOT’s AID grant will be invested in a Construction Management System to make use of “e-Construction,” an innovation supported by FHWA under EDC. The transition from a paper-based approach to e-Construction will allow KDOT to update its business processes, capture data in the field more efficiently, improve data accuracy and provide information sooner by speeding up the transfer of field diaries from once per week to every day. |
|
Rhode Island DOT (RIDOT) |
$1,000,000 |
RIDOT will use its AID grant to use Warm-Mix Asphalt and Intelligent Compaction (two EDC innovations supported by FHWA) on S.R. 102 highway improvement project in the towns of Coventry and Foster. |
|
Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) |
$1,000,000 |
WSDOT will use AID funds to install a Light-Emitting Diode (LED) adaptive roadway lighting system on a 7-mile section of I-5 through the core of the capital, Olympia, in order to accelerate conversion to LED and adaptive LED systems statewide. The use of the technology is expected to provide significant improvement from WSDOT’s conventional practice, since LED lights have a relatively low life-cycle cost and result in an estimated 60-70% reduction in energy consumption and maintenance costs. |
|
RIDOT and the Rhode Island Airport Corporation (RIAC) |
$996,000 |
RIDOT and RIAC will use AID funds to install seven Adaptive Signal Control (ASC) devices along nearly 2 miles of Airport Road near the T.F. Green Airport in Warwick. RIDOT and RIAC expect the ASC technology, an innovation supported by FHWA under EDC, will improve traffic management and safety for all area drivers. |
|
Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) |
$816,000 |
MDT will invest its AID grant in a systems engineering analysis process on several corridors in the state’s seven largest urban areas to make the most informed and effective improvements to Montana’s signal control technology. |
|
Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) and Dodge County |
$676,000 |
WisDOT and Dodge County will use its grant to deploy the Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil - Integrated Bridge System, an innovation supported by FHWA under EDC, on two locally owned bridges. |
|
New Hampshire Department of Transportation (NHDOT) |
$355,000 |
NHDOT is investing AID funds to deploy a sensor network at the Memorial Bridge in Portsmouth, N.H. The bridge monitoring technology will be used to create a self-diagnosing, self-reporting smart infrastructure. The project will be the Granite State’s first case where structural, traffic and environmental monitoring programs will be integrated. |
|
National Park Service (NPS) |
$296,800 |
AID funds will be used by the NPS to develop safety analysis capabilities, an effort supported by FHWA under the EDC Data-Driven Safety Analysis innovation, within the Transportation Safety Information Management System. The expected improvement in roadway safety data is part of a larger plan to develop a crash analysis system within the NPS system. |
|
TOTAL |
$7,139,800 |
