The US Department of Transportation opened a new opportunity for US small businesses to leverage advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve transportation. The Complete Streets AI Initiative (CSAI) is a $15-million, multi-phase effort being offered through the Department’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program.

CSAI seeks to develop new decision-support tools for state, local, and tribal transportation agencies that assist in the siting, design, and deployment of Complete Streets—streets and networks that prioritize safety, comfort, and connectivity to destinations for all people who use them.

Complete Streets are easier to plan and build with more complete data, DOT says. In some cases, basic roadway data such as traffic volume or the presence of sidewalks is unavailable or incomplete. In other cases, data can be skewed demographically. To close these gaps, DOT is encouraging creative methods to develop national datasets using novel and scalable approaches to data science such as utilizing big data, internet-of-things (IoT), artificial intelligence, computer vision and machine learning to a range of data sources and types that may include satellite, aerial, or street-level video and still photography; satellite, aerial, or street-level lidar data; sensor-based and crowdsourced data; vehicle probe data and telemetry, including shared micromobility and transit modes; multimodal volume/count data; and other sources and types.

Initially, up to 10 Phase I contracts will be awarded to small businesses to develop data and analytics capabilities that drive insights for agencies developing complete streets.