The Smart Belt Coalition (SBC) was formed in 2016 and is a strategic transportation collaborative comprised of 18 organizations, including seven transportation agencies and eight research and academic institutions, located throughout Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
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 215,000 lane miles and support 35.3 billion annual vehicle trips on Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey state-owned and toll roadways. SBC member agencies 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 multi-state region trades, or moves, more than 17% of all national goods valued at more than $3.1 trillion domestically and internationally.
Create a mechanism for transportation agencies, academic institutions, and others to collaborate on connected vehicle, automated vehicle, and vehicle electrification initiatives.
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.
