Create a mechanism for transportation agencies, academic institutions, and others to collaborate on connected vehicle, automated vehicle, and vehicle electrification initiatives.
The Smart Belt Coalition (SBC) was formed in 2016 and is a strategic transportation collaborative comprised of 12 organizations, including five transportation agencies and seven research and academic institutions, located throughout Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
The purpose of the SBC is to foster collaboration involving research, testing, policy, standards development, deployments, outreach, and funding pursuits in the area of connected vehicle technology, automated vehicle technology, vehicle electrification, and other innovations in the transportation industry.
The transportation systems of the SBC agencies span 173,044 lane miles and support 236.8 billion annual vehicle trips which occur on Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania state-owned and toll roadways each year. Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania each feature prominent freight corridors that are vital routes for the distribution of raw materials and finished goods to and from the Great Lakes region and some of the nation’s largest consumer markets in the Northeast. Collectively, the tristate region trades, or moves, more than 11% of all national goods valued at more than $3.2 trillion domestically and internationally.
The SBC is working to identify and understand industry data needs and available agency data for agencies to better support truck platooning and automated driving development within Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Through this initiative, the SBC is looking to interview members of the AV industry to better understand their data needs and determine how infrastructure owners and operators can best support AV development within the SBC.
