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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

“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.