The goals outlined in WSDOT’s Strategic Plan include modal integration, environmental stewardship, strategic investments, and adoption of smart technologies. This project will help address aspects of all those goals. It is serving as a pilot study for the application of Connected Vehicles technologies that would be needed for establishing smart cities. Connected vehicles technologies support safe, interoperable, networked wireless communication among vehicles, roads and other infrastructure, and passengers’ personal communications devices. The study is deploying and evaluating several new technologies, primarily a Connected Vehicles device, an associated mobile app, and variety of sensors for traffic detection and data collection across all modes of travel—including pedestrians, bicyclists, and unconnected vehicles—at minor arterial test bed sites. The test beds will offer field data from infrastructure, users, and communications devices. Besides aiding smart cities studies, the newly available data may also help WSDOT to significantly improve infrastructure design and operations methods.
Principal Investigator: Yinhai Wang, Civil and Environmental Engineering, UW
Sponsor: WSDOT
WSDOT Technical Monitor: Bill Legg
WSDOT Project Manager: Doug Brodin
Scheduled completion: December 2018