On Friday, August 9, 2024, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) announced the $19.2 million grant to the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) to lead the “Texas TRUST Project: Transforming Roads, Unleashing Smart Technologies” to advance vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technologies and serve as a national model to innovate and accelerate connected and interoperable transportation infrastructure. The Texas grant was awarded as part of a $60 million grant package awarded to Arizona, Texas and Utah, under the Saving Lives with Connectivity: Accelerating V2X Deployment program.
The project principal investigator is Bob Brydia, System Reliability Division Head at Texas A&M, with support from team leads, Srinivasa Sunkari P.E., PMP, Program Manager and Senior Research Engineer at TTI; Dr. Nick Duffield, Director of TAMIDS and Royce E. Wisenbaker Professor I in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering; Dr. Reza Langari, Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering; Walt Magnussen, Head for Research Development at the Internet 2 Technology Evaluation Center. Dr. Paul Carlson, CEO of Automated Roads, will chair the advisory board.
According to Brydia: “We are grateful to the Federal Highway Administration for providing the Texas team with the opportunity to invest in the region with new technologies aimed at saving lives and increasing mobility. The Texas TRUST project will deploy and evaluate more than a dozen use case using advanced connectivity to provide detailed information to system users, when and where they need it most.”
Duffield adds that “data aggregation and fusion across the V2X ecosystem will be a complex task. This project will draw on TAMIDS experience in end-to-end data analytics and the collaboration with our current and future V2X industry and community partners.”
The project will deploy V2X technology in the Greater Houston area, including the City of College Station, Texas A&M University campus, and the corridors connecting these two metropolitan cities. Using technology like Signal Phase and Timing (SPaT) Enabled-Intersections, Flood Warning, Right Turn on Red Warning, Wrong Way Driving Detection, Emergency Vehicle Response Time and Safety, and more, the project will holistically enhance road safety, efficiency, and overall mobility.
More information on the V2X grant announcement is available from TTI’s article.