Feds Prepare to Open New $500M Program for Transportation Tech
Source: Route Fifty By Bill Lucia, Executive Editor
States and localities are among those eligible for the grants, which are aimed at funding projects focused on innovations like autonomous vehicles and roadside sensors.
The process to award $500 million in federal grants that states and local governments can use to pay for cutting-edge transportation projects is slated to get underway later this month.
Funding for the competitive program, dubbed Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation, or SMART, was included in the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law President Biden signed last year. The law calls for $100 million annually for five years for the grant initiative. States, localities and tribes are among those eligible to apply for the money, as are a handful of other entities like transit agencies, toll authorities and metropolitan planning organizations.
The goal is to fund projects that show how technology like autonomous vehicles, roadside sensors and aerial drones can be incorporated into transportation systems to tackle problems like traffic congestion, crashes and lacking options for people to commute to jobs.
“We are incredibly focused on targeting problems that the community is clearly trying to solve, where we know that there is just going to be a ton of energy, either at the transportation department or a transit agency, or a local government. Where we’re sure that those kinds of investments also will lead to really transformative change,” said Ben Levine, a senior advisor for research and technology at the U.S. Department of Transportation.
“I think the grand vision for this kind of a program is that we can seed ideas that then are cultivated or demonstrated locally and then can become sort of new methods that are taken on across the country,” he added. Levine made his remarks during a panel discussion at Smart City Expo USA, a conference that took place in Miami Beach this week and focused on how governments can use technology to improve social equity and address other pressing issues.