CMU secures $14M grant for transportation center

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Pittsburgh region took another step in its development as a technology center Monday as Carnegie Mellon University received a $14 million federal grant to establish a National University Transportation Center on mobility.

The grant will be released over five years through the U.S. Department of Transportation to set up a program known as Mobility21. It will be a partnership between the College of Engineering and the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy to develop innovations in smart transportation and smart city research and education.

The program will be headed by Raj Rajkumar, the George Westinghouse Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Robotics.

Mr. Rajkumar already does research on self-driving vehicles as co-director of the university’s General Motors Connected and Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research Laboratory.

The center will partner with researchers at Community College of Allegheny County, the University of Pennsylvania and Ohio State University.

They will work to develop smart city technologies; connected and autonomous vehicles; improved transportation access to disadvantaged neighborhoods; multi-modal traveling; helpful technologies for people with disabilities; data modeling for monitoring traffic control systems; and regional planning to establish priorities and aid transportation deployment. The center will build on the region’s other transportation efforts, including Uber’s testing of self-driving vehicles; the university’s leadership in traffic signal technology; and another University Transportation Center at CMU centering on transportation safety.

“Pittsburgh is a test bed for deploying new technologies that can connect communities and provide access to new opportunities. With the city and Carnegie Mellon working together, residents throughout the city will have safer, faster, and more reliable commutes,” Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto said in a news release.