In 2015, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) selected Wyoming as one of three sites in the country to design, build, and test phases for a regional Connected Vehicle (CV) Pilot Deployment Program. The CV Pilot Program, sponsored by the USDOT Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office, aimed to use cutting-edge technologies and applications to improve safety and reduce environmental impacts of personal driving.
The Trihydro team was selected as the technical and application lead, initially tasked with expanding the scope of mobile data collection from equipped vehicles (i.e., WYDOT snowplows and other equipped fleets that operate in the highway corridor) and developing new applications that provide in-vehicle advisories on adverse weather conditions, speed limits, and even parking availability. The program’s overall goal was to reduce traffic incidents in the corridor, enhance safety, and improve WYDOT’s emergency response and recovery times.
The project included:
- Deploying and testing Lear and Sirius XM Onboard Units (OBU)s on fleet vehicles, including a combination of snowplows, maintenance fleet vehicles, emergency vehicles, and private trucks. These vehicles then broadcast a basic safety message and remotely send vehicle and road condition data to WYDOT Transportation Management Centers (TMCs).
- Overseeing the development of several applications to support wide-area travel advisories, variable speed limit postings, forecast road condition information, detours, and parking notifications.
- Developing and demonstrating vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) applications for weather responsive variable speed limits, work zone advisories, and incident alerts.
- Conducting formal user acceptance testing (UAT) and installing CV infrastructure.
- Setting up a WYDOT CV test environment and gates for safe production deployment of tested code.
- Capturing, managing, and evaluating vehicle data.
- Participant training and stakeholder education.
During the test period of November 2017 – May 2019, 75 roadside units and 400 vehicles received and reported messages using the Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC) radios. The transportation data was also available to the public through the Wyoming 511 app, compatible with Android and iOS devices, and the WYDOT commercial vehicle operator portal. The CVP concluded in 2021, with WYDOT leveraging the foundation created by the pilot to expand CV infrastructure in Wyoming.