Supporting start-ups, safety and new initiatives Talking Transport from Detroit

The second podcast from the ITS America Annual Meeting 2018 in Detroit, sponsored by 3M Connected Roads, concentrates on initiatives to help new ideas get support in order to make a difference to the way we travel.  You can listen to it here.

SMART Highways editor Paul Hutton talks to new ITS America Hall of Famer Kirk Steudle, the Director of Michigan DOT who tells him that the key to his state’s success in implementing transport technology is the governor Rick Snyder’s belief that it is OK to try something and it not work, and that if you’re not failing once in a while, “you’re not working hard enough”.

Paul talks about a new Michigan grant programme to support mobility start-ups in the state, with more than a million dollars of funding. The Planet M testing and start-up grants involve a number of stakeholders including the Univerity of Michigan’s test site Mcity in Ann Arbor and Lab director Greg McGuire tells us more about it.

We also hear about another major test bed near Detroit as Paul talks to one of the VPs of the American Center of Mobility at Willow Run (pictured).  Mark Chaput tells him about the vast facility and what it means to autonomous vehicle development.

We take a tour of the 3M roadshow truck and hear about some of the initiatives it showcases and take a test drive with GEWI and iCone who have together worked on a safety solution for work zones.

Finally there’s another launch at the event as ITS America and the Las Vegas-based company Terbine announced a data exchange initiative.  The entrepreneurial founder of Terbine David Knight tells us all about it and why it makes such a difference to the task of turning data into information.