Transportation departments and local governments in 10 States will use more than $8 million in Accelerated Innovation Deployment (AID) Demonstration program grants as an incentive to accelerate the use of innovation in highway transportation projects.

“These funds will help support our State and local partners across the country in their efforts to deliver more resilient roads, bridges, and highways for the traveling public,” said Federal Highway Administrator Nicole R. Nason. “The grants will help advance innovative transportation solutions to improve safety and mobility on America’s roadways.”

Since the 2014 launch of the AID Demonstration program, the Federal Highway Administration has awarded more than $74 million for 102 grants to help Federal, State, local, and tribal government agencies accelerate the use of innovative practices and improve safety. The program provides grants of up to $1 million to support the cost of deploying an innovation on any phase of a highway project between project planning and delivery.

The Alabama Department of Transportation and Baldwin County Highway Department will use AID Demonstration funds to deploy accelerated bridge construction (ABC) and Northeast Extreme Tee beams with ultra-high performance concrete connections on bridge retrofit projects. Combining the innovations will shorten construction time from 14 to 6 weeks.

The Arkansas Department of Transportation (ArDOT) will increase the number of continuously operating reference stations on its global navigation satellite system (GNSS) network to support three-dimensional engineered modeling and e-Construction goals. This will enable ArDOT to expand the use of real-time GNSS information in the survey, environmental, and construction phases of projects to locate topographic features and perform construction staking, verification, and inspection.

The Colorado Department of Transportation will implement snowplow signal priority technology to improve traffic flow during and after snow removal operations. The snowplow signal priority system enables plows to request extended green or early green phases at traffic signals along snowplow routes via dedicated short-range communications.

The Florida Department of Transportation and city of Orlando will use AID Demonstration funds for a pilot project that is part of a larger project to intelligently manage transportation flows around the city’s downtown. The pilot will advance the design and implementation of real-time performance measures and connected vehicle technologies.

The Illinois Department of Transportation and city of Jerseyville will use compacted concrete to improve road surface conditions on Hollow Avenue, a major route for school buses and business traffic. Using compacted concrete—which allows pavements to be reopened to traffic faster than traditional concrete—will enable Jerseyville to limit the road closure to the summer months while producing a paved surface that is durable under heavy loads.

Photo Credit: FHWA

The Iowa Department of Transportation and city of Dubuque are collaborating on the Smart Traffic Routing With Efficient and Effective Traffic Signals (STREETS) project to develop a next-generation traffic management and control system. The agencies will use AID Demonstration funds on a project to link operations components on 11 corridors, allowing them to act as one integrated system.

The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) will use ABC and prefabricated bridge elements and systems to accelerate construction and reduce traffic delays during the Second Avenue Network Arch Superstructure project, part of the Interstate 94 modernization project in Detroit. MDOT estimates that erecting a network arch instead of a conventional structure will save $2 million in user delays.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation and city of Winona will construct a road diet to improve safety, mobility, and access for drivers and bicyclists along Broadway Avenue. The road diet will reconfigure the four-lane road to three lanes with a two-way center turn lane and bike lanes on both sides.

The New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) will advance implementation of its Integrated Incident Management System (IIMS), an application that enables real-time, geotagged incident data collection and distribution. NYSDOT will deploy and evaluate IIMS in Broome and Tioga counties to support multiagency traffic incident management operations and develop a blueprint for statewide IIMS deployment.

The North Dakota Department of Transportation will install autonomous technology on an attenuator truck to increase safety for workers performing maintenance activities. The technology eliminates the need for a driver on the truck outfitted with an impact attenuator—or crash cushion—that travels behind mobile work crews to deflect vehicles that could hit people or equipment.