Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) program Overview
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) established a number of programs intended to drive innovation in and greater adoption of transportation technology to improve reliability, efficiency, and safety.
The Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) discretionary grant program is one such program, consisting of two stages, with $100 million appropriated annually for FY 2022-2026 to support demonstration projects focused on advanced smart community technologies and systems to improve transportation efficiency and safety.
Per the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), the FY 2024 tranche of SMART recipients, for the Stage 1 competition which closed on July 12, 2024, would be the last cycle for Stage 1 awards. Recipients of Stage 1 grants are eligible to apply for Stage 2 grants that can be used to expand on their Stage 1 projects. Stage 2 funding applications opened on July 15, and closed on August 14, 2024. There will be future Stage 2 competitions in 2025 and 2026.
Communities with SMART-eligible and other road safety projects should consider applying for other applicable BIL discretionary programs; these projects may be eligible for Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) and the Advanced Transportation Technology and Innovation (ATTAIN) programs. These two programs, like SMART, focus on road safety and advancing transportation technology while offering flexibility for local communities to explore innovative solutions to meet local challenges.
FY 2024 SS4A Planning and Demonstration Grants are open until August 29, 2024; read about Tampa, Florida’s successful SS4A project and grant process here.
The most recent competition for ATTAIN was open from November 2023 to February 2024 with FY 2023 and 2024 funding available. The BIL’s authorization for the program includes $60 million per year for FY 2025 and 2026.
Considerations for municipal leaders
- What are the most pressing transportation safety concerns in your community, and how can technology and innovations be used to improve safety?
- How can you effectively collaborate with academic partners to produce research, collect data, and evaluate impacts in transportation projects?
- Who are the essential project partners from both the public and private sectors for the proposed solution, and how will they contribute support for the project?
- What funding sources can be used for pilot and implementation work relating to the project?
- How will you engage and integrate the community, particularly underserved and vulnerable populations, in the planning and implementation of your project?
- What measures and data will be used to evaluate progress and impacts?
SMART Solutions in Chattanooga
Project Leadership:
- Mayor Tim Kelly
- Jerele Need, Chief Information Officer at City of Chattanooga
- Dr. Mina Sartipi, Director of the Center for Urban Informatics and Progress at University of Tennessee-Chattanooga
Location: City of Chattanooga
Focus: Racial Equity
Overview
This case story focuses on Chattanooga’s pilot of Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) solutions along two major corridors in Downtown Chattanooga (East 3rd St. and Central Ave.) which is funded by a Stage 1 SMART grant.
Chattanooga received a $2 million FY 2023 Stage 1 SMART Grant to support the integrated deployment of Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) technology in specified corridors in the City. While the City has already deployed the technology at several intersections in Chattanooga, the additional funding will enable the first fully integrated deployment along the selected corridors. The work is being done through a comprehensive collaboration with several private and public sector partners including the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), Audi, Leidos, Qualcomm, Harman, and Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America).
What is Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything?
Cellular vehicle-to-everything, or C-V2X, is a connectivity platform designed to offer vehicles vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-roadside infrastructure, and vehicle-to-pedestrian communication. C-V2X is one of the main ways in which the “Internet of Things,” or IoT, is being used in transportation, and utilizes cellular technology to enable vehicles to “understand and react to their environment in real time.” Existing use cases for C-V2X include automated toll collection, automated parking payments, emergency vehicle prioritization, and cooperative adaptive cruise control. In Chattanooga, C-V2X solutions have been used to improve safety for vulnerable road users (e.g., cyclists and pedestrians), and the City will leverage SMART funding to take this to the next step by demonstrating its potential in a fully integrated corridor.
![What Can Cellular Vehicle-To-Everything Technology Do?](https://localinfrastructure.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/What-Can-Cellular-Vehicle-To-Everything-Technology-Do.png)
Addressing Pedestrian Safety Challenges
Between 2010 and 2021, fatal pedestrian-involved incidents rose 77% nationally; in 2022, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration reported that 7,522 pedestrians were killed and over 67,000 were injured nationwide in traffic related incidents (source). The USDOT’s National Roadway Safety Strategy makes clear the goal for transportation safety: zero fatalities. USDOT estimates that a majority of pedestrian-involved incidents are addressable via intelligent transportation system technologies, including C-V2X. These interventions have been and can be supported through programs like SMART, SS4A, and ATTAIN which invest in technology innovation and demonstration projects. Together, they are a key component of the USDOT’s strategy to eliminate road fatalities.
“Our vision is simple: that every trip of every kind on our nation’s streets, roads, and highways should end with a safe arrival. Whether you are a passenger or driver, whether in a vehicle, on foot, on a bicycle or in a wheelchair, everyone using the roadways of our country and its communities should get to where they’re headed, safely.” – Secretary Pete Buttigieg, 2024 Progress Report on the National Roadway Safety Strategy
In Chattanooga, a recent rise in vulnerable road users involved in fatal accidents has continued to illuminate the challenges relating to transportation safety. Vulnerable road users (VRUs) are described by the National Safety Council as “those unprotected by an outside shield, as they sustain a greater risk of injury in any collision with a vehicle and are therefore highly in need of protection against such collisions,” which can include pedestrians, road workers, bicycle users, and those in wheelchairs or using other mobility aids. In 2023, 130 Chattanooga pedestrians and cyclists were struck by vehicles. Of those, 17 pedestrians died from the collisions, the most in the past decade. As of June 30, 2024, 76 pedestrians and cyclists have been struck by vehicles this year in Chattanooga – a 25 percent increase from the same point in 2023. The City is on pace for an 18% increase in pedestrians and cyclists struck in 2024 compared to the prior year.
Gig City: A Leader in Innovation
Since becoming the first city to offer 1 gigabit-per-second fiber internet service to all residents and businesses through their publicly-owned telecom and electric utility, EPB, Chattanooga has been a leader in innovation, leveraging the fiber infrastructure to develop and deploy smart city technologies. These technologies are providing for improvements in transportation, safety, energy usage, power reliability, and telemedicine services. The infrastructure, and ongoing investments in a quantum network, have positioned Chattanooga as a new tech hub in the Southeast, colloquially known as Gig City.
Dr. Mina Sartipi, founding director of the Center for Urban Informatics and Progress (CUIP) at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), noted that having the fiber throughout the City has enabled a range of innovations to take place from multiple entities across sectors, including the formation of the CUIP whose research is driven by the broadband infrastructure.
Center for Urban Informatics and Progress The Center for Urban Informatics and Progress (CUIP) is a smart city and urbanization research center at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Using the power of big data, artificial intelligence, statistical modeling, machine learning, and more, CUIP is studying how cities can adapt to our generation’s challenges to ensure that our future is safer, smarter, and healthier for all. Their applied research efforts pioneer ways to improve traffic flows, reduce vehicle and pedestrian accidents, reduce carbon emissions, and more. |
To leverage the innovations occurring across sectors, The Enterprise Center, a Chattanooga based convening body focused on economic development and the digital divide, formed the Chattanooga Smart Community Collaborative (CSCC) in 2019.
CSCC was born to foster discussions about challenges and opportunities across entities, including the City of Chattanooga, Hamilton County, UTC, and the many groups that would become project partners on the City’s SMART grant application, representing education, research, medical, government, and nonprofit organizations. At regular meetings, representatives from participating organizations discuss ongoing and possible research projects, grant opportunities, and how those can be used to solve local problems, with a focus on three areas: health, energy, and mobility.
An early project borne out of the Collaborative was the development of the MLK Smart Corridor, which is CUIP’s testbed. This project began in 2019 with the deployment of cameras at intersections along a 1.25 mile stretch of MLK Boulevard to identify and document the number of cars, trucks, bicycles, and pedestrians passing through the corridor’s intersections. Dr. Sartipi, Director of CUIP, defined this as their “sandbox for smart city projects.”
Expanding the MLK Smart Corridor Testbed In spring 2019, CUIP at UTC began work in the MLK corridor, using cameras and lidar, radar and other sensors, along with various networking capabilities, to test pedestrian safety conditions, traffic flow and air quality elements with in-kind support from EPB (municipal utility provider), city government and CSCC. Using specialized cameras and sensors installed at 8 intersections along the 1.25 mile corridor, researchers can see the location, speed, and direction of pedestrians, bicyclists, and cars within the roadway. Since then, the testbed has been expanded several times and now includes nearly 100 smart intersections with funding from various NSF and USDOT programs, including the Advanced Transportation and Congestion Management Technologies Deployment (ATCMTD) Program, later renamed the Advanced Transportation Technology and Innovation (ATTAIN) program in BIL. These added intersections provide additional coverage in the core of Chattanooga’s downtown business district, UTC’s campus, and underserved communities in downtown Chattanooga. “By observing and analyzing this 24/7, we would have actual numbers that show that this is what is happening, and then we can look into it to see that, ‘OK, what are the things we can do to mitigate this situation?’” (Dr. Mina Sartipi, source).
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In April 2021, Mayor Tim Kelly was elected as the 66th Mayor of Chattanooga, and he has continued to grow the City’s reputation as a destination for technology and innovation. The Mayor credits Chattanooga’s rise as a hub for technology and innovation to the City’s entrepreneurial culture and their commitment to collaboration through coalitions like the CSCC. Mayor Kelly praised his predecessors for their leadership in investing in broadband infrastructure and deployment, and discussed how he is building on this through collaborative efforts like the SMART grant and quantum network investments.
In May 2022, the City of Chattanooga completed the first iteration of their One Chattanooga Plan, which “describes the strategic direction, key priorities, values, and initiatives that define a vision of a community where all Chattanoogans can thrive and prosper and the practical steps we need to take to achieve it.” Critically, as Mayor Kelly noted, the plan acknowledges that the story of Chattanooga has “historically been a tale of two cities” – one zip code has the best health outcomes in the state, while bordering another with the second worst. In addition to economic mobility objectives, the plan focuses on advancing community safety, in part, through improvement in local infrastructure and public transit.
The One Chattanooga Plan refers to itself as “a starting place for our partners and our residents to review, refine, and expand upon,” highlighting the importance of community collaboration and adaptive strategies in achieving sustainable development and inclusive growth, as well as the crucial role of planning and local government in setting the stage for innovation. The investments and innovations in transportation safety advanced by the SMART-funded work are a critical step toward realizing the shared One Chattanooga vision.
Furthering Innovation
Currently, C-V2X is mostly deployed in individualized, not integrated, proof-of-concept and small-scale scenarios, such as automated toll collection, automated parking payments, etc., making it hard to prove the transferability of efforts and interoperability of technologies. Chattanooga offers the opportunity to pilot integrated deployment in the hopes of providing a proof of concept of national replication.
Furthermore, a fatal accident in September 2023 illuminated both the opportunities and limitations of the MLK Smart Corridor project. While the technology exists and has proven to be effective at intersections, the corridor continues to see safety issues around non-signalized crosswalk and mid-block hazards, such as a high speed corridor lacking street signalization, that create additional risks for pedestrians and other vulnerable road users. Chattanooga applied for the SMART grant because of the opportunity to continue investing in pedestrian safety while advancing the C-V2X field through an integrated project.
The SMART funds will enable the deployment of the technology at a selection of mid-blocks identified as high-risk crossings along two major corridors in downtown Chattanooga: East 3rd St. and Central Ave. These corridors connect underserved communities with transit services, schools, and medical facilities and provide critical transportation connections among Erlanger, Parkridge, and Memorial Hospitals.
The funding will allow the City of Chattanooga to retrofit and procure vehicles to execute use cases related to vulnerable road user (VRU) safety by using on-board units and roadside units. While prior grants and projects have furthered the technology infrastructure at intersections, the SMART grant provides critical support to purchase and install the on-board units, enabling vehicles to ‘communicate’ with the infrastructure. For example, an emergency response vehicle with an on-board unit could communicate its location to the intersection, and its signal timing could be preempted to clear the way for the first responder. This will allow for the development and deployment of use cases for transit, emergency services, and school bus zones. The pilot calls for twenty municipal vehicles to be fitted with onboard units.
Adjacent to the practical applications, project partners will also be collecting and analyzing data to track impact and document use cases and best practices for broader dissemination. Through this work, Chattanooga is able to serve local residents and protect VRUs, while also developing replicable use cases and best practices for other cities.
While Chattanooga’s leadership in the smart city movement is due in part to what they can do with their citywide fiber network, comparable broadband access and quality is not a prerequisite for C-V2X solutions, which means the project can be replicated in other communities.
SMART Grant: Implementation and Funding
Like all infrastructure projects, this work required a comprehensive network of partners – to provide technical, operational, and research support that enables and supports technology deployment, data collection and analysis, and documentation of best practices. While the City of Chattanooga is managing the grant and project at large, as well as liaising with end users – including the school system, transit agency (CARTA), local hospitals, neighborhood associations, and others – the partner entities will provide the operational and digital infrastructure support needed for the deployment.
UTC, through CUIP, is providing the data infrastructure for the project, leveraging their experience with the MLK Smart Corridor and the ATCMTD grant-funded work. Audi will provide technical support to retrofit public vehicles’ and prototype C-V2X-equipped Audi models to validate use cases. Harman, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, is providing technical support for C-V2X equipped Audi models with their in-vehicle solutions, Roadside Unit (RSU) product, and for the retrofitting of public vehicles. Qualcomm and Leidos are providing technical support for the adoption and integration of their respective advanced commercial technologies. Leidos will also work with partners to deploy, test, and demonstrate how interoperable connectivity with infrastructure can improve use cases. The Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America) will document best practices and outcomes to show the benefits of C-V2X technologies and create resources to help other communities. ITS America will also be developing a SMART Stage 2 project plan for technology deployment and use case implementation across additional corridors in Chattanooga.
Project stakeholders explained that they are using various products from different firms to test and demonstrate interoperability of technologies that are, or will be, commercially available at varying price points.
The BIL SMART grant critically enables this innovation, providing funding with no cost share or match requirements, alleviating the risks with such innovative leaps while also leveraging USDOT’s ability to disseminate best practices and new technologies. The SMART program provides support to those cities in the vanguard of innovation, allowing for the identification of technologies and solutions that can be scaled to improve transportation efficiency and safety.
Project phasing/implementation
With their Stage 1 SMART grant , the city will develop an implementation plan and proof-of-concept demonstration of C-V2X technology for vulnerable road users at intersections, midblocks, school zones, and emergency vehicles to improve safety, reliability of public transportation, and emergency response time. During this time, the project team will collect and analyze data to quantify benefits and then develop and share materials, tools, and software to accelerate industry adoption.
If awarded funding through SMART Stage 2 or other sources, the city plans to expand technology and deployment across multiple areas in the Greater Chattanooga area to create a citywide connected vehicle infrastructure providing greater safety and services that could be copied and scaled in other communities across the country.
Community Impact
“We can’t have One Chattanooga when our neighborhoods are literally disconnected and inaccessible to each other, or when people don’t feel safe crossing the street. I want to thank the U.S. Department of Transportation for awarding us these grants. They will help us make meaningful progress connecting and protecting our people as we strive to make Chattanooga the best city in America.” – Mayor Tim Kelly (March 14, 2024)
The project area covers over 100 intersections in downtown Chattanooga, with a population of approximately 12,700 across almost 6,000 households. The corridors included in the project area are home to three of Chattanooga’s hospitals (3rd St. Health Corridor), and the Central Ave corridor is a critical corridor used by emergency vehicles to connect the city’s southside to the 3rd St. Health Corridor. The project area also includes nine public schools and 15 transit routes.
Dr. Sartipi, as well as city officials, noted that, in response to possible privacy concerns, no camera data is recorded but rather software conducts a real-time analysis of video frames to detect what is present.
Conclusion
With the support of their citywide, municipally owned fiber network, Chattanooga has created a robust platform for smart city innovations. In transportation, the broadband infrastructure has allowed the City to collect and use data in corridors and at intersections throughout the City to increase safety and efficiency. Using SMART funding, the City and a network of partners from various sectors are piloting C-V2X solutions that build on work funded by previous grant awards and, if proven to be successful, can be deployed in cities with or without fiber networks. Furthermore, their pilot in the designated corridors will provide one of the first use cases for a wholly integrated suite of C-V2X solutions and allow development of interoperability across products. With this project, the City is enhancing safety for vulnerable road users in Chattanooga and creating a roadmap for other cities to follow.
When asked about how Chattanooga positions itself for success, Mayor Kelly referred to their “competitive advantage in network building,” particularly noting the City’s ability and success in convening partners from various sectors and facilitating dialogue about what is possible.
Mayor Kelly noted that the project is demonstrative of how broad cooperation and collaboration across sectors allows Chattanooga to advance work around intelligent transportation systems and other smart city innovations “from the purely theoretical to real, concrete uses.” By leveraging new programs authorized by BIL, communities of all sizes can follow in Chattanooga’s footsteps to address local traffic safety issues.
Accelerator for America would like to thank Drexel University Nowak Metro Finance Lab for their partnership in production of this case story for the Local Infrastructure Hub.
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