Utah gets $20 million for transportation and traffic light technology

The Federal Highway Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation has announced a $20 million grant to Utah.

Drivers of snow plows, public transportation buses, and other government-operated vehicles are using technology that can direct traffic lights to change in order to improve safety and travel time.

Under the “Saving Lives and Connectivity: Accelerating V2X Deployment” program, Utah will receive $20 million of the $60 million that is aimed to improve vehicle technologies. The other $40 million will go to Texas and Arizona.

“Connecting vehicles and infrastructure is a great way for us to be able to take advantage of technology to help improve safety and other outcomes. And Utah’s DOT has been a leader in this space for a long time,” Shailen Bhatt, US Federal Highway Administrator said.

UDOT will use this $20 million to fund projects in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming, where each state represents different population concentrations and transportation facilities.

Bhatt says protecting personal private information can be one of the challenges when using these types of technology.

“So we will want people to understand what is being exchanged is called a basic safety message of DSM. The vehicle is going to report to the intersection that I’m approaching, and the intersection is going to report back ‘oh, the light is about to turn red or my light is red’, but it’s all anonymous data,” Bhatt said.

The technology is being used in Salt Lake City, where travel time reliability and bus performance have improved.

“It is unequivocal that when you deploy technology, we are able to reduce crashes, we’re able to reduce congestion, we’re able to reduce the amount of time people sit in traffic, and the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from our system. And we look forward to more investments being made on the basis of the data that we get from this initial deployment,” Bhatt said.