Skip to main content

University of Michigan wins Transportation Technology Tournament

A team from the University of Michigan has won the Transportation Technology Tournament for designing a solution to reduce congestion on two interstate highways in the Detroit area. The team presented their solution, Corridor Management in the I-75/I-696 Influence Area, to a panel of judges during a tournament which took place during the Institute of Transportation Engineers annual meeting in Austin, Texas. It focused on mitigating heavy, peak hour traffic volume on I-75 between Detroit and Troy, as
July 25, 2019 Read time: 2 mins
A team from the 5594 University of Michigan has won the Transportation Technology Tournament for designing a solution to reduce congestion on two interstate highways in the Detroit area.


The team presented their solution, Corridor Management in the I-75/I-696 Influence Area, to a panel of judges during a tournament which took place during the 5667 Institute of Transportation Engineers annual meeting in Austin, Texas.

It focused on mitigating heavy, peak hour traffic volume on I-75 between Detroit and Troy, as well as on the east and westbound I-696 in the Detroit suburbs. The proposal included a supply focused solution for managing the flow of vehicles and a demand focused solution for reducing car trips by using shuttles and car-pooling to the area’s major employers, such as 948 General Motors and 1958 Chrysler.  

The annual Transportation Technology Tournament stems from a partnership between the National Operations Center of Excellence (NOCoE) and the US Department of Transportation.

Patrick Son, NOCoE’s managing director said the students developed practical solutions to a problem that has “stalled Southeast Michigan for decades”.

“There is virtually no room to add capacity, yet the team came up with a suite of ideas that involved TSMO and Intelligent Transportation strategies to create a low cost, workable solution,” he added.

Aside from the University of Michigan, the other finalists were the Florida International University, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and two teams from the University of South Florida.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Michigan forms air mobility corridor 
    January 11, 2022
    Partners will explore whether drones can be used in delivery and medical transport 
  • ISS deploys smart parking technology for US truck drivers
    March 19, 2019
    Intelligent Imaging Systems (ISS) is providing US state departments of transportation with smart parking solutions for trucks at rest stops. The technology was installed in Ohio as part of the Mid America Association of State Transportation Officials initiative, which unites eight Midwestern states via a Regional Truck Parking Information Management System (TPIMS). ISS says in-ground sensors were fitted at 18 rest stops along Interstates 70, 75 and US Route 33 to provide information on how many parking sp
  • Indra’s Davaq demos accurate high-occupancy ID in US trial
    February 11, 2019
    Indra says its Davaq free-flow identification system has scored the highest overall accuracy rate – 88% - in a US trial to detect high-occupancy vehicles. The real-world test was set up by the by the San Francisco Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission to look at automatic detection of such vehicles on the I-880 – a vital precursor to implementing lane restrictions or new dynamic pricing strategies such as smart tolling. Davaq picks up the vehicle type and its front and rear occupants in r
  • Truck platooning trials take to the highways
    July 24, 2017
    There is rising enthusiasm in America and beyond for the concept of truck platooning with trials being planned in several US states, as David Crawford reports. Growing numbers of US states are considering or implementing plans for trials of electronically-linked truck platooning on public road networks. This is in response to the interest being shown by the US$70bn a year road freight industry, where fuel represents 41% of the operating costs making the prospect of improving fuel economy by trucks travellin