SMART Grant project to target pedestrian safety in Chattanooga
The mobile data unit that will be retrieving vehicle and pedestrian data at key intersections in Chattanooga.
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF)- Pedestrian safety has a continuing topic of conversation in Chattanooga.
This especially after a fatal incident on Frazier Avenue that killed a mother and her baby.
The city since has been awarded the SMART Grant, which is two million dollars from the U-S Department of Transportation made available by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
That money will be put into a mobile research unit in which they gather important data to keep our roads safe.
Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly remarked, “Across the country and here in Chattanooga as we know, we have not done a good enough job on pedestrian safety. It is one of the metrics that we track that is going in the wrong direction.”
Thursday marked the beginning of the implementation of the project funded by the SMART Grant.
Led by the UTC Research Institute, their goal is to analyze the relationship between drivers and pedestrians, and identify danger spots.
They also would use the mobile units to alert drivers to a potential collision.
Dr. Mina Sartipi, director of UTC’s Center for Urban Informatics and Progress, said, “Understanding what is causing it using this technology and also the connectivity that we talked about, would be alerting the vehicles and also the pedestrians at the same time.”
“We throw out all of the raw data, so no camera, no lidar, no thermal camera is collected, what we get out of that is something saying hey, a car drove down this lane at this speed at this time,” said Austin Harris, Director of Operations and Chief Engineer for UTC’s Research Institute. “Same thing with pedestrians, and when you can put that into a big picture over time you can start to understand how pedestrians and vehicles in the roadway.”
CARTA will also be using this data to try to keep their buses on schedule.
“The vehicles are now able to communicate with things around them like intersections and the timing of traffic signals, and so the buses will have the opportunity to have priority access allowing them to move more quickly. At the same time, we see we have passengers getting on or off the bus, the traffic lights can adjust for that as well,” said CARTA CEO Charles Frazier.
Leaders hope this technology will be implemented in more spots around the city.
