Utah receives $20 million to expand technology that could drastically change mobility and traffic safety
SALT LAKE CITY — Shailen Bhatt and Carlos Braceras hopped into a golf cart Thursday and headed toward a red light on Foothill Drive when the light changed to green just before they entered the crosswalk.
What all the drivers around them don’t know is that Bhatt, the US federal highway administrator, and Braceras, executive director of the Utah Department of Transportation, had a device packed in a briefcase behind them, sending a signal to the box that controlled traffic. light operations. The device, using vehicle-to-everything technology, told the traffic light to change signal in their favor as they approached the intersection.
The Utah Department of Transportation has already implemented this technology on many state snowplows and Utah Transit Authority vehicles to improve road clearance times and keep buses on schedule. However, it is about to expand its capabilities, along with two neighboring states, through a $20 million federal grant awarded to Utah.
The Federal Highway Administration announced the grant Thursday, which represents a third of the $60 million it is sending to some states to expand vehicle-to-everything technology — also known as V2X. A portion of the money received by UDOT will go toward helping Colorado and Wyoming implement a similar system as part of their goal of “connecting the West.”
“This is a big deal,” Braceras said. “We’re at this point where technology is merging with transportation like never before and I think we’re seeing this huge shift right now.”
How V2X is used today
Utah is one of the leaders in V2X technology. UDOT began experimenting after partnering with Panasonic’s North American arm. It exists in about 20% of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, as well as other parts of the state.
Currently, vehicles equipped with V2X use it to improve route efficiency. For example, a UDOT snowplow can automatically get the green light to clear roads faster. Some UTA buses have this behind the driver’s seat to keep the green light running longer or to shorten the red light when it detects the bus is late enough, thus helping the driver – without knowing there is a device doing this – recover above.
“(We are) one of the first transit authorities in the country to use this technology,” says UTA Director Jay Fox.
The new funding will help grow the Salt Lake metro area to at least 25% reaching the current federal goal for major metro areas. The Federal Highway Administration is trying to implement V2X in at least 25% of all intersections in the country’s 75 largest metropolitan areas.
This is just the beginning. Fox said V2X is installed in 87 UTA vehicles, but his goal is to have it across the agency’s entire fleet by the end of the decade. UDOT officials add that because nearly all of Utah’s signals are connected to fiber optic cables, their program could be expanded to nearly the entire state.
The grant will also help UDOT create a “seamless and reliable” network between itself, Colorado and Wyoming. Braceras explained that neighboring states will oversee how their system is built, but UDOT will oversee how all the money is spent between the three states and offer consultation.
The remainder of the federal funding announced Thursday will go toward V2X implementations in Arizona and Texas. All resources come from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act passed in 2021.
The future of V2X
Its expansion could help improve traffic and snowplow efficiency today, but federal and state experts predict a future where this type of technology improves highway safety.
Bhatt says it can be used to help alert drivers when there is danger nearby – such as accidents, wrong-way drivers, pedestrians or cyclists approaching intersections, or vehicles stopped on blind curves. Some similar technologies already exist in personal vehicles, but they are not a standard feature.
“This is the future we want to achieve; we’re just not there yet,” said Bhatt.
This could help reduce the number of road deaths in the US, a number that reached nearly 41,000 last year.
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall, who announced a citywide initiative to reduce traffic deaths in Utah’s capital last year, said V2X could be a game changer toward the city’s goals.
“It’s a way of thinking about technology that we hadn’t even contemplated, I think, just a few years ago,” she said. “It’s a huge advantage for the state of Utah.”
Braceras agreed.
He pointed to the number of deaths that fell sharply after seat belts were standardized and brakes were improved. He believes technologies like V2X can have the same kind of “significant impact.”
“We are going to save lives and make them much better,” he said.
