SALT LAKE CITY — Shailene Butt and Carlos Braceras hopped in a golf cart Thursday and sped toward a red light on Foothill Drive, only for the light to turn green just before they entered the crosswalk.
What the surrounding drivers didn’t know was that Butt, the federal highway administrator, and Breselas, the Utah Department of Transportation’s director, had a device in a briefcase in their back that was sending signals to the boxes that controlled the traffic lights. Using vehicle-to-everything communications technology, the device told the traffic lights to change in their favor as they approached an intersection.
The Utah Department of Transportation has already deployed the technology in many state snowplows and Utah Department of Transportation vehicles to reduce roadway snow removal times and maintain bus schedules, but through a $20 million federal grant awarded to Utah, the department is working with two neighboring states to expand its capabilities.
The Federal Highway Administration announced the grant Thursday, which represents one-third of $60 million it will send to several states to expand vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology. Some of the money the agency will receive will be used to help Colorado and Wyoming install similar systems as part of its “Connecting the West” goal.
“This is a pretty big deal,” Braceras said. “We’re at a point right now where technology and transportation are converging like never before, and I think we’re really seeing this big shift right now.”
Current Uses of V2X
Utah is one of the leaders in V2X technology: UDOT partnered with Panasonic’s North American division to begin experimenting with the technology, which has been deployed in about 20 percent of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area and other parts of the state.
Vehicles equipped with V2X are now using it to improve route efficiency. For example, UDOT snowplows automatically get green lights so they can clear roads faster. Some UTA buses are equipped with it behind the driver’s seat to hold green lights longer or hold red lights shorter if they detect that the bus is significantly behind schedule, allowing the driver to make up for lost time without even realizing that such a device is there.
“We are one of the first transit agencies in the nation to deploy this technology,” UTA Commissioner Jay Fox said.
Federal Highway Administrator Shailene Butt spoke at a press conference Thursday near Foothill Drive in Salt Lake City about UDOT’s “Connect the West” initiative, which was made possible thanks to a major federal grant. (Photo by Megan Nielsen for the Deseret News)
The new funding will help increase V2X penetration in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area to at least 25 percent, helping meet current federal goals for major metropolitan areas, including the Federal Highway Administration’s goal of installing V2X at at least 25 percent of intersections in the nation’s 75 largest metropolitan areas.
This is just the beginning. Fox said V2X is installed in 87 UTA vehicles, with the goal of having it on all of the agency’s vehicles in 10 years. UDOT officials added that because nearly every stoplight in Utah is connected to fiber optic cable, the program could expand to nearly every region of the state.
The grant will also help UDOT create a “seamless and reliable” network between Colorado and Wyoming, Breselas explained, explaining that while the neighboring states will oversee how the system is built, UDOT will oversee and negotiate how the funds are spent between the three states.
The remainder of the federal funding announced Thursday will go toward V2X deployments in Arizona and Texas, all of which will come from bipartisan infrastructure legislation passed in 2021.
The Future of V2X
That expansion could help current transit and snowplows become more efficient, but federal and state experts envision a future in which this kind of technology could improve road safety.
Bhatt said the technology could be used to warn drivers of nearby hazards, such as collisions, wrong-way drivers, pedestrians or cyclists approaching an intersection or a vehicle stopped on a blind corner. Similar technology is already installed in personal vehicles, but it is not a standard feature.
“That’s the future we’re aiming for, we’re just not there yet,” Butt said.
This could help reduce the number of deaths on roads across the U.S., which reached nearly 41,000 last year.
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall spoke at a press conference Thursday near Foothill Drive in Salt Lake City about UDOT’s “Connect the West” initiative, which was made possible thanks to a major federal grant. (Photo by Megan Nielsen, Deseret News)
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall, who last year announced a citywide initiative to reduce traffic fatalities in her city’s capital, said V2X could be a breakthrough technology to help the city reach that goal.
“This is a way of thinking about technology that we just didn’t think about just a few years ago,” she said. “It’s a huge benefit to the state of Utah.”
Breselas agreed.
He noted that fatalities fell dramatically after seat belts became standard and braking was improved, and believes technologies like V2X could have a similar “huge impact.”
“We’re going to save lives and make lives better,” he said.
