Waco Taking Steps Toward Futuristic Mobility Corridor

Tribune News Service —  Waco will soon begin planning and testing processes to bring futuristic mobility technologies into a 9-mile corridor running the breadth of the city along Taylor Street, Franklin Avenue and Highway 84, as well as into downtown intersections.

The Waco City Council adopted two resolutions earlier this month for contracts that will take next steps in mobility planning for the city, suburbs and eventually all of McLennan County. One contract will begin in a few weeks, with the University of Texas at Austin and its Center for Transportation Research, to plan for deploying new technologies along a nine-mile corridor from Taylor Street in East Waco down Franklin Avenue and through the “Y” along a portion of Highway 84 to Ritchie Road, council documents say. The other contract with TNL USA will employ sensors and algorithms to make intersections near downtown and Baylor University more efficient.

The contract with the Center for Transportation Research is funded by $3.5 million from a Federal Highway Administration grant, with a local in-kind match of $150,000. It is part of an overall $4.8 million grant under a program now called Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development. When the grant was initially awarded in 2023, the program was known as Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity.

The Center for Transportation Research ultimately will produce the design and engineering documents to turn the 9-mile Franklin corridor into a “Smart Corridor” with the ability to adapt to changing conditions in real time and accommodate emerging technologies. Some emerging technologies include connected and automated vehicles, vehicle-to-everything wireless technology, roadway sensor deployment, network modeling, decision support systems and resiliency planning, said Mukesh Kumar, who heads the Waco Metropolitan Planning Organization.

Over the next few years, the center will assess the current state of infrastructure, potentially including traffic counts and the use of sensors or cellular data to study traffic patterns; conduct a legal and regulatory assessment; evaluate equity considerations; define future state typologies; define preliminary multimodal, transit and freight plans; define partnership models; and develop the smart corridor network planning framework.

Expectations over eight to 15 years involve preparing the region for rapidly evolving transportation technology that is not yet fully mature, Kumar said. As the technologies pass regulatory assessments, they will be introduced into the corridor.

The contract with TNL USA will implement a $1.4 million U.S. Department of Transportation grant the city won in December as part of the Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation program. This Stage 1 funding was awarded to conduct demonstration projects for artificial intelligence “edge” sensors and the MobiMaestro algorithm to improve throughput efficiency at intersections for cars, bikes and pedestrians. It should improve foot traffic access to businesses in downtown Waco.

TNL USA has a strong record of success in similar projects in the U.S., Kumar said previously. Its parent company likewise has had success in Europe.

The project area covers most of downtown and includes demonstration projects that will test and optimize traffic signals while measuring impacts on safety and efficiency, Kumar said. AI edge sensors used in the project consist of cameras to observe traffic with attached computers to run an algorithm for pattern recognition and decision-making for traffic lights controlled by the given sensor.

A key success metric will be maximizing green phases for all four directions. For example, if the sensors detect one driver sitting at a stoplight, while the other direction has green with no drivers going through, the algorithm would briefly switch the greens to allow the one driver through, Kumar said previously.

“The project will also assess impacts on specific use cases, such as improving the pedestrian experience downtown, testing transit prioritization, and improving connectivity between Baylor campus and downtown,” Kumar said. “If successful over the 18-month period, we plan to pursue Stage 2 of the SMART grant and extend the project area to all of McLennan County.”

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