The US Department of Transportation (USDOT) announced over $130 million in grant awards for 42 technology demonstration projects through the Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) Grants Program.

The SMART Grants Program provides $500 million over five years for State, local, and Tribal governments to leverage technology to create safer, more efficient, and more innovative transportation systems. With these latest two rounds of funding, the SMART Grants Program has awarded nearly $280 million across 45 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington DC.

SMART is a two-stage program: Stage One Planning and Prototyping Grants, and Stage Two Implementation Grants. This is the third year of SMART Grants Stage One awards, for which the Department received 308 eligible grant applications for this most recent round of funding. This round of projects includes the first Stage Two deployment awards in eight states and 34 new Stage One prototyping projects in 21 states. USDOT received 28 applications for Stage Two from eligible Stage One recipients.

STAGE 1 AWARDS

Here are just a few of the Stage 2 awards:

■ Baltimore DOT: This project will use smart traffic signal systems to address mobility, safety, and logistics issues caused by the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse.

■ Galveston TX: The project will deploy AI-adaptive smart traffic signal technology and intelligent, sensor-based transportation infrastructure to improve emergency evacuation operations and optimize surge traffic flow.

■ Hawaii DOT: The objective of this project is to develop smart infrastructure and AI-driven video analytics sensing systems around intersections to detect and predict vehicle, pedestrian, bicyclist position, speed, and trajectory for vehicle-pedestrian-bicycle collision avoidances based on real-time V2X communication, accurate positioning functions, and large amount of data transmissions.

■ Metropolitan Transportation Commission: This project will develop a cutting-edge map-based mobility
data platform using Open Street Maps (OSM) to integrate critical systems throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and address operational inefficiencies relating to transportation improvement implementation.

■ The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey: This project will use C-V2X technology to address a stretch of problematic roadway with daily vehicular collisions that leads to hours of traffic congestion and concentrated vehicular emissions.

STAGE 2 AWARDS

Here are just a few of the Stage 2 awards:

■ Minneapolis MN: This project leverages the Open Mobility Foundation's Curb Data Specification (CDS), vehicle-to-curb (V2C) camera, sensor, and other technologies in busy mixed-use corridors to enable efficient curb access and data-driven curb management while establishing a roadmap for other cities to build digital literacy.

■ Nashville TN: This project will use LiDAR technologies to address gaps in traditional safety evaluation methods
through collecting and evaluating "near-miss" data.

■ New York State Thruway Authority: This project will use
unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and other technological advances to improve the safety, integrity, resiliency,
environmental impact, and cost of maintaining the critical infrastructure that millions of travelers rely on.

■ Utah DOT: This project will use testing tools on connected vehicle technologies to validate connected intersections for the use of V2I safety applications on OEM production vehicles.