AASHTO Journal - Tennessee DOT Boosts Participation in Smart Corridor Project

The Tennessee Department of Transportation is boosting its collaboration with Nashville-based Vanderbilt University and the Arizona-based Southwest Research Institute to help improve Integrated Corridor Management or ICM systems being deployed as part of the multiphase I-24 Smart Corridor project – largely via more monetary investment.

[Above photo of I-124 via YouTube.]

That group received a $2.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation in June to use artificial intelligence (AI) to help increase travel time reliability – diminishing traffic and rush hour delay – while reducing collisions and foster more integrated state agency coordination.

To help accelerate work on this “smart corridor” effort, the Tennessee DOT is matching the USDOT’s grant award – bringing the project’s total funding to $5.2 million.

[The Federal Highway Administration recently detailed the strategic thinking underpinning ICM system development in a recent video, seen below.]

“Using AI allows us to continuously improve how traffic is managed using the all of the traffic data available on the corridor,” said Dan Work, a Vanderbilt associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and electrical engineering and computer science.

“The AI DSS can harmonize large quantities of traffic information from radar, CCTV, and Bluetooth readers on I-24 so that the goals of the ICM can be better measured and met,” he said.

That award is part of a larger pool of $43.3 million in Advanced Transportation and Congestion Management Technologies Deployment or ATCMTD grants provided to 10 states in June to fund “forward-looking technology” projects.

Work noted in a blog post that using AI “allows us to continuously improve how traffic is managed using the all of the traffic data available on the corridor … harmonizing large quantities of traffic information from radar, CCTV [closed-circuit television], and Bluetooth readers on I-24 so that the goals of the ICM can be better measured and met.”