The City of Colorado Springs earned a SMART Grants Program award for $1.7 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The grant will fund the City’s Engineering Division’s plans to strategize, prototype, and test next-generation traffic management tools at approximately 50 City intersections with traffic signals. The traffic management tools include radar and light-detecting and ranging technologies (LiDAR) to perceive vehicle position, size, and speed of vehicles entering and exiting intersections and to capture the position of non-motorized users at intersections.
Other tools include continuous traffic counters to monitor traffic volumes and to calibrate traffic modeling efforts and communication system between the signal system and connected vehicles including public fleets such as transit and emergency vehicles.
The potential application of these tools includes signal timing optimization based on vehicle size and conditions; incident detection and reporting within intersections; queue clearing to accommodate emergency vehicles; transit optimization; extended crossing time for pedestrians, and bicycle detection.
Colorado Springs was one of only 59 grant award recipients across the country.
“We, along with our governmental, academia, and private-agency partners, will develop a plan to improve vehicle and non-motorized detection at signalized intersections across the City by leveraging a variety of new and emerging sensor technologies,” said City Traffic Engineer Todd Frisbie. “This grant allows the City of Colorado Springs to continue to be on the leading edge in developing advanced signal operations, with the ultimate goal of dramatically improving operations and safety for all users of our roadways.”
The SMART Grants Program funds projects aimed at using technological interventions to solve real-world challenges faced by local communities.