Riding the bus is one of the best ways
to get around, especially if you live in beautiful Salt Lake
City, Utah.
Now this might seem like an ordinary bus,
but it actually has a hidden talent.
It's able to talk to the city streets
to make sure it reaches its next stop on time.
The hidden talent is actually a technology called Vehicle
to Everything, or V2X.
It can enable something like a bus, an ambulance,
or even your family's car to communicate with one another.
It can also share information with the city's infrastructure,
everything from road conditions to traffic information
and beyond.
The idea is that V2X could do everything,
from getting where you need to be on time to potentially
helping save someone's life.
This is the nerve center of Salt Lake City's transportation
department.
This impressive V2X system is run by Blaine Leonard.
The way this corridor works is as the bus travels down
the corridor, it knows whether it's on schedule or not.
If it's behind schedule by five minutes or more,
it then can request priority of the signal.
It sends a message and says to the traffic signal,
I'm behind schedule.
Can you adjust your signal timing
to give me green to get me through?
What we've discovered is that we're improving the schedule
reliability of the buses that are equipped during the morning
and afternoon peaks.
Blaine says this technology can do a lot more than keeping
the buses on time.
This past winter we equipped 47% of our snowplows
that plow those sections of our roadways.
When the plow slows down or stops,
it's obviously not throwing snow effectively,
so keeping it moving is a more effective way of removing
snow and ice from the road.
There is some research out there that tells us
if you can remove the snow and ice from the road
a little sooner, you can prevent snow- and ice-related crashes.
And so that's our goal here.
The applications that we've seen in city buses
are helping people get to their destinations
faster and keep those buses on schedule much more often.
But V2X is capable of so much more.
Kelly Funkhauser evaluates new technologies
at Consumer Reports.
She says the value of V2X is only
going to grow as it's included on more vehicles.
It also helps with communication between vehicles.
So if you have two cars with the same technology,
they can warn each other of events that are coming up
in front of them along the roadway,
or even communicate with the infrastructure
to get the important safety messages immediately
to their car.
V2X will also play an important role
in the development of autonomous cars.
Self-driving cars are really exciting,
and we all can't wait till they're here.
But they're a little further away than you might think.
V2X is going to be one of those missing pieces that
helps us get there faster.
And if there's an emergency, the V2X network
might even be able to make sure help is on the way quicker
than you can dial 911.
So imagine you're in a traffic accident.
Your car could alert the infrastructure,
who then could tell first responders exactly
where that crash is located.
Then all of the lights on the way to that accident
could be turned green.
Police, fire trucks, ambulances could get to the scene
much, much faster.
The infrastructure could even reroute all of the traffic
away from the area to avoid congestion.
It's not just Salt Lake City that's using this technology.
All across the country, cities like Columbus, Ohio,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and many more
are implementing the technology and seeing benefits.
This technology is here now.
We've seen it on infrastructure benefiting
cities and municipalities, but it's also
continuing to be put into regular vehicles
so we can all benefit from the lifesaving technology
of the V2X communication.
So for everything from avoiding an accident
to staying on schedule to getting snow off the roads,
V2X might be the most useful passenger on your next drive.