Our RoadX team led a multi-disciplinary effort to develop the nation's first state-wide Smart Mobility Plan – a comprehensive framework to guide innovation and technology planning across Colorado including connected vehicles, automated vehicles and other technologies.

We also pioneered an electrified smart powered lanes pilot – moving electrification for vehicles from batteries not optimal for long journeys, to the roadway itself. Coils embedded in roadways are activated when a receiver in an electric car passes over them, delivering power to the drivetrain which charges the battery. Our study provided a benchmark of this technology and identified locations and potential partners for the deployment of a one-mile-long pilot project in Colorado. In addition, we carried out the Rocky Mountain Hyperloop Feasibility Study, which won the Hyperloop One Global Challenge – a global call for comprehensive plans from locations vying to be the first to host the high-speed Hyperloop networks.

Under the umbrella of the Smart Mobility Plan, Colorado is currently converting U.S. Route 24 to a smart mobility corridor, laying fiber optic cables to be the foundation of dynamic message signs, closed-circuit television cameras to monitor live traffic conditions, electronic sensors, road weather information systems; and traffic signal control systems programmed to adapt their timing in response to congestion. This study evaluated the potential application of emerging rapid speed transportation technologies and proactively outlined policy and pathways to implementation as well as a summary of opportunities for the state by using new approaches to project governance and public-private business models.

All combined, the team helped to change the trajectory of transportation in Colorado and across the nation.