Nashville, TN – The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) and Vanderbilt University I-24 Motion Project was selected to receive two awards at the recent ACEC Engineering Excellence Awards Gala in November 2022, including the Grand Award and Grand Conceptor Award for Engineering Excellence.
As part of the project, the Davis H. Elliot Company installed 40 high mast poles with 276 cameras throughout 2022. The poles range from 110-135 feet tall and hold 6-12 cameras each. Following its completion, the project represented the highest-density traffic instrumentation in the United States. Justin Hawn served as Elliot’s General Foreman for the project, and the company worked closely with the Tennessee Department of Transportation and Vanderbilt University to complete the project, which was designed by Gresham Smith.
The project will help track vehicle trajectory data to observe traffic patterns and vehicle behavior throughout a portion of I-24 in the Nashville, TN area. According to the website for the I-24 MOTION project, “The purpose of I-24 MOTION is to provide an environment for testing advanced traffic management and automated vehicle technologies in real freeway traffic.” The first experiment with this technology took place in November 2022, with more planned for the future.
If you would like to learn more about the project, you can visit the I-24 Motion website at www.i24motion.org or by reading the information below.
About I-24 MOTION
The I-24 Mobility Technology Interstate Observation Network (MOTION) will equip a four-mile section of I-24 in the Nashville-Davidson County Metropolitan area with over 294 ultra-high definition cameras. Those images are converted into a digital model of how every vehicle behaves with unparalleled detail. This is all done anonymously using Artificial Intelligence (AI) trajectory algorithms developed by Vanderbilt University.
Vehicle trajectory data allows us to uncover new insights into how traffic flow influences individual vehicle behavior. This groundbreaking understanding of traffic is more important than ever due to the increasing automation capability of individual vehicles, which are beginning to influence traffic flow through their interactions with conventional vehicles. By unlocking a new understanding of how these vehicles influence traffic, vehicle and infrastructure design can be optimized to reduce traffic concerns in the future to improve safety, air quality, and fuel efficiency.
The purpose of I-24 MOTION is to provide an environment for testing advanced traffic management and automated vehicle technologies in real freeway traffic. Automakers and suppliers are investing billions of dollars in adding connectivity and automation features to vehicles, forever changing safety and mobility. These technologies are often developed in the laboratory or closed-course settings. Testing in traffic captures the variability of real-world conditions and human behavior. Complementary congestion management technologies are being installed by TDOT along this same section of interstate as part of the I-24 SMART Corridor project.
Using the information gathered on this testbed, I-24 MOTION will provide insights to allow the industry to build better products and allow TDOT to better understand how to make the most out of these products for managing infrastructure assets. The first testbed user will be the U.S. Department of Energy’s sponsored research with the CIRCLES Consortium, which will study the possibility of smoothing traffic by introducing vehicles equipped with advanced driver-assist systems.
