I'm John Torek. And I'm Danny Sullivan. Technology is changing everything about the way we move. From ride hailing apps to new airport screening technologies to vehicles that communicate with street lights, science fiction is struggling to keep up with everyday life. Today, we'll spend time with Ben Pierce, a nationally recognized expert on transportation technology.
He describes how he fell into a fascinating career, some groundbreaking projects he's working on, and the potential benefits he sees for the future of transportation. My career started by a series of bizarre twists of fate. That's Ben Pierce, transportation technology program lead at HDR. I started out wanting to be a chemist until I spilled a bunch of chemicals on me in a late Friday afternoon lab, and I learned that I
don't wanna be a chemist. And then I was gonna be a computer scientist, but I couldn't I couldn't stomach assembler. And in in the end, I ended up getting a degree in mathematics and Eventually, Eventually, I said, well, you know, instead of just being the statistician on these ITS projects evaluations, I'm gonna try to run a few. And then I thought, well, hey. That's pretty cool. And then I said, well, let me try to design some of this technology. And then next thing you know, I'm knee deep
in transportation technology. The nerd in me took over, and and, that's really how I made my way into it. Some of the early technologies Ben found himself evaluating seem charmingly simple today. Way back in the day, we used to look at things like stop signs that blinked with the little LED lights around them. I mean, we see those all over the place now, but there were some question of whether that would work or
distract the drivers. You know, dynamic chevrons around the sharp corner in a rural environment, whether that made a difference or not. Things of that nature, traveler information systems, all kinds of different ITS. Many ITS technologies revolve around automated communication with drivers. For example, electronic signage can provide real time updates to inform drivers of heavy traffic,
weather related hazards, or road closures. And automated tolling technologies have helped to streamline toll collection in a safer, faster manner. The rapid growth of urban communities embracing new technologies has led to a popular term you've probably heard, smart cities. You know, if you ask 10 people, you'll get 11 different definitions of what
a smart city is. But in my mind, a smart city is really defined by a city that has come together and is collecting a vast round of information and coalescing that information to do something.
And, generally, when we talk about collecting information, we're talking about collecting it through the use of technology, whether that's smart street lights, whether that's tag readers, whether that's smart parking systems, whether that's connected vehicles or other roadside sensors, collecting that kind of information. However, a smart city is about more than showcasing technology for the sake of technology.
But what I think makes a city smart is when you start to take that information and you combine it with other information like health data and travel patterns and socioeconomic status. And when you collect data across a spectrum of things and you fuse that data together, you can start to see patterns, and then you can apply technology to solve those patterns. And that that to me is what
makes the smart city smart. The advances in transportation technology also relate to automobiles, which are beginning to offer the ability to communicate with infrastructure. Connected vehicle technology refers to the ability of vehicles to communicate with each other about where they are, where they're heading, or the ability of a vehicle to communicate with an infrastructure
aspect. And something like as a car approaches a stoplight, for example, in a smart city, the stoplight and the car would be talking to each other, and the car would say, listen. I'm coming up on on your stoplight. And the stoplight would say, yeah. I see you, but you're the only car around. Let me turn green for you because you're the only car here. Things like that as opposed to in a less smart city, the car would simply sit at the signal phase and wait for it to change phase whether or
not there's cars around or not. Before moving to Cleveland, Ben lived for twenty years in Columbus, Ohio. There, he was one of the key architects of the city's winning application for the Smart Cities Challenge in 2016. The city received $40,000,000 from the US Department of Transportation and $10,000,000 in private funding to implement technologies that would improve quality of life, drive economic growth and job opportunities, demonstrate world class logistics, and foster sustainability.
What a smart street light is basically is a normal street light, but one that has the ability to to add additional sensors or to do different things. In Columbus, the plan was to have smart street lights that would do the the lighting activity. So they would light up when there was a person walking on the sidewalk near it and for a car traveling near it, and then they'd go dark when there was no traffic and no pedestrians, right? So that's an obvious energy
savings. But in addition, the smart street lights were serving as a platform for sort of a network of Wi Fi to provide that Internet connectivity in some neighborhoods where getting to the Internet was problematic. Ben said he's seen other cities add weather sensors or pedestrian counters to smart street lights. Combining a number of those technologies on a single corridor can help to drastically improve the travel time and driving experience
for motorists. We're working on a project now to do a smart corridor in Tennessee, and we're using connected vehicle technology to help inform travelers of when there's a traffic queue that's building or congestion that's building or there's an incident in their head or that signal phase and timing. You know, the light's gonna turn red. You're not gonna make it slow down.
Be prepared to stop. Or more importantly, in my opinion, is to try to create that green wave so that people can travel down the length of the quarter and get green signals or that we minimize idling and waiting at the light, which helps to avoid undue emissions. It helps with fuel economy. It helps with mobility. It helps with travel time reliability and all of those good things. ITS technologies have been used in New York to solve a different type of problem.
Many of the state's parkways were designed decades ago with only automobiles in mind, with bridge clearances too low for larger commercial trucks to pass underneath. As New York went to open road tolling, the challenge was that the toll gate was usually the last place where the toll gate operator could look at a truck and say, hey, you're not gonna you're not gonna make it under this bridge or in this tunnel. You're gonna you're gonna strike it. You're too tall and turn them
around. But if you take that gate operator out, those trucks blow right through. I mean, you sort of lose that last chance to give them a warning until they get right up to the bridge or the tunnel, and they and they can realize and sometimes they don't realize that they're too high. And then they either strike the bridge or strike the tunnel, and it and it becomes
an extremely significant problem. In fact, back in 02/2013, nearly 200 trucks were striking low clearance bridges per year when the state began deploying new technologies to address the problem. The accidents themselves can cause injuries, damage infrastructure, and significantly delay travel. But even truck drivers who realize the problem as they approach a bridge or tunnel can pose massive traffic backups. It's a pretty big deal if you miss the lagged exit. And the closer you get to the
bridge or tunnel, the worse it gets. Right? I mean, you can just imagine the truck approaching a tunnel leading into Manhattan, and they get all the way to the tunnel and they stop. Well, now you've completely blocked the lane. You've got to send officers out, so you're putting them in harm's way. They gotta take that truck and stop traffic so that they can get it over to the side. And, eventually, they're gonna have to turn that
truck around. Now they probably won't do that during the busy part of the day, but just that whole process of getting that truck cleared is gonna create a significant amount of congestion. Some of Ben's colleagues in New York worked on a pilot for a truck intrusion warning system that uses infrared lasers to detect over height trucks. The system then displays warnings to drivers on dynamic digital signs and immediately
alerts authorities. Certain areas have deployed that technology, and others have tried low tech solutions such as overhead PVC pipes and permanent signage. As connected vehicle technologies have emerged, Ben recently became involved with a new pilot project to bring the warnings inside the cab. What we were brought in to do is take a look and and see if we can get a little more active and use a connected vehicle type system to broadcast into
the cab of the truck. Hey, you're overhyped, you're not going to make it exit here. So that's a little bit more of an active type of warning system than a passive warning system. And if you can get into the cab and you can make that announcement or give that warning, the idea is that you can increase the chance that the truck operator will pay attention and successfully, migrate off the path, and it doesn't become
a traffic issue. On a recent episode of this podcast, Ben talked about how transportation agencies partnered with the private sector in Denver to develop a new mobility blueprint for the region. Ben helped evaluate the disruptions being caused by new transportation technologies, but also how the community can leverage those technologies to improve people's lives. Well, we paid a
lot of attention to automated vehicles. I mean, I think that's obviously has the potential to be a significant disruptor, much like we have seen transportation network companies disrupt the public transit. The ability for a car to pick you up and drop you off at the door and then go have the cargo on its way has all kinds of serious repercussions, not just to the cities, but to the traveling public and how we plan and build
buildings. I mean, we don't build buildings to drop everyone off at the door at 08:00 in the morning. You know? So that's a that's a major consideration. In addition to their impact on mobility, new technologies like autonomous vehicles will impact design of infrastructure and cities as well. Right now, we have a parking lot system where some people get dropped off at the door, some people get dropped off at a parking lot and walk, Other people,
take a bus. Well, if we have automated vehicles and everyone wants to get dropped off with a door to door service, we may have to redesign the buildings to accommodate that and their curb space. Ride hailing services and autonomous shuttles will also continue to change how airports are designed. Technology also holds the potential to improve the customer experience inside the airport. We're talking about how can we move people through the airport better using
technology. How can we streamline that experience so you don't get to an airport and you have to wait in line to wait in line? How can we use technology? How can we adapt what the amusement parks do to an aviation experience to make it a little more pleasant? In addition to expanded self-service technologies, more airports are piloting biometric projects that expedite check-in and boarding as well as smart gates
that can reduce waits in line. And if you go to major airports now, you'll see tests of of all kinds of technologies, things from, you know, an automatic baggage cart that follows you as you walk through the terminal and carries your luggage for you. I mean, how crazy is that? If you find it tough to keep up with new technology,
well, you're not alone. I've talked a lot about how technology is is really started to increase in pace of adoption, and I've heard people say that we're now living in the age of technology, and if that's gonna be the the phrase for this period in history where, you know, we had the industrial revolution. Now I think we're in the technology revolution. And so I think we're gonna continue to see technology big and small through everything we
do. Ben said it's often easier to step back and take a longer view of technology. The things we take for commonplace today are are things that even twenty, thirty, forty years ago, people didn't didn't have. Even cars. I mean, cars haven't been around in the grand scheme of things for very long. And now we're talking about cars that could potentially drive themselves, and who knows what's coming in the future.
Whether it's transportation technology or personal devices, Ben chooses to view the potential it has to improve our lives. Yeah. I mean, I could talk your off all day. This this stuff for me is is just super exciting. I mean, I'm pretty pumped up about it, obviously. I I know I'm biased,
because I'm a nerd at heart. But, you know, I I think if you look around and you you don't get jazzed up by all the new toys and the new things we can do and how much easier our life is now compared to even I mean, I look at my son who's in college and I'm like, damn, you have it easy. You don't have to go to the library. You can you can Google things and find out answers to questions and you can, I mean, you have to go try to find
a pay phone? Are you kidding me? So it'll be fun to see where that happens in the next twenty years. For more information on this podcast, visit hdrinc.com/speakingofdesign. You'll find links to pictures, articles, and more information about this project. If you like what you heard, be sure to rate us or leave feedback on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Should have ended with live long and prosper, but I forgot.
So if you wanna splice that in, you know, they get my Star Trek quote in there.