[Federal Register Volume 76, Number 92 (Thursday, May 12, 2011)]
[Notices]
[Pages 27745-27747]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2011-11653]
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DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
Research and Innovative Technology Administration
Wireless Innovation for Transportation; Request for Information
AGENCY: Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), U.S.
Department of Transportation (USDOT).
ACTION: Notice.
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SUMMARY: This notice is a Request for Information (RFI) and comments
that will be used to help identify research and development (R&D)
opportunities for wireless technology in surface transportation. The
President's Wireless Infrastructure and Innovation Initiative includes
a proposed $100M R&D investment to spur innovative wireless
applications in surface transportation that advance the
Administration's safety, mobility, and environmental sustainability
agenda. Feedback and comments on any aspect of the RFI are welcomed
from all interested public, private, and academic entities, and
individuals. While all feedback is welcomed, the USDOT is particularly
interested in feedback on the questions provided in the last section of
this RFI.
RFI Guidelines: Responses to this RFI must be submitted by June 13,
2011. Responses to this RFI should be delivered electronically as an e-
mail or as an attachment to an e-mail sent to [email protected].
Responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by
the Government to form a binding contract, to issue a grant or
cooperative agreement, or to make any other funding or partnership
commitment. Information obtained as a result of this RFI may be used by
the government for program planning. If you wish to submit any
information under a claim of confidentiality, you should submit via
email to the address given below under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT,
your complete submission, including the information you claim to be
confidential commercial information. When you submit information
containing information identified as confidential commercial
information, you should include a cover letter setting forth the
reasons you believe the information qualifies as ``confidential
commercial information.'' (49 CFR 7.13(c)(4) and 7.17) If we receive a
request to examine or copy this information, we will treat it as any
other request under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552), but
we will process the request in accordance with the procedures found in
49 CFR 7.17.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For questions about the program
discussed herein, please contact Mr. John Augustine, Intelligent
Transportation Systems Joint Program Office (ITS JPO), 202-366-9536,
[email protected]. For legal questions or issues, please contact
Robert Monniere, RITA, 202-366-5498, [email protected], 1200 New
Jersey Avenue, SE., Washington, DC 20590. Office hours for RITA are
generally from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Eastern Standard Time, Monday
through Friday, except Federal holidays. Additional information about
the USDOT's planned work under the Wireless Innovation and
Infrastructure Initiative is at http://www.dot.gov/budget/2012/budgetestimates/rita.pdf and http://www.rita.dot.gov/publications/budget_estimates/fy2012/html/detailed_justification_for_its_wireless.html.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: In February, 2011, President Obama announced
the Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure Initiative. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/Wi3-fs.pdf).
As part of this initiative, a total of $3 billion raised from
voluntary spectrum incentive auctions would be used to create a
Wireless Innovation (WIN) Fund. This fund would aim to catalyze
innovation by funding research and development of emerging broadband
wireless technologies and applications. The WIN fund is intended to
advance economic growth and competitiveness by supporting the
nationwide rollout of the next generation broadband cellular (e.g. 4G)
technologies, supporting development of new applications that leverage
that rollout, and paving the way for other new technologies that result
in accelerated benefits to the American people. Overall, the fund will
support basic research, experimentation and testbeds, as well as
applied development areas such as public safety, education, energy,
health, economic development, and transportation. The transportation
portion of the WIN Fund, which will focus on initiatives above and
beyond the existing core Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)
programs at USDOT, will provide an additional $100 million in funding
over a five year period to create an ITS Wireless Innovation for
Transportation program. This RFI seeks to obtain public input regarding
the optimal use of the WIN funding to expedite the investment,
development, deployment and use of broadband wireless applications to
address our nation's transportation needs.
Broadband wireless systems consist of several different classes of
technology. The most commonly thought of is a wide area, potentially
ubiquitous coverage systems such as cellular, including for example,
4th generation cellular or ``4G.'' However, fixed or mobile local-area
coverage such as Wi-Fi, as well as fixed point-to-point, and point-to-
multipoint wireless systems may all be used either individually or
together to achieve the goal of providing broadband access to all
Americans and a platform for innovation. Several complementary
technologies may be used for each class of system. This RFI focuses on
mobile wireless broadband technologies and applications for surface
transportation, including both wide area and local area systems.
Wireless Innovation for Transportation--Program Description
The Wireless Innovation for Transportation Program (WIN for
Transportation) will provide the USDOT's ITS Program and its
stakeholders the ability to seek new and innovative opportunities to
pursue ground-breaking research and development toward deployment of
wireless technology applications. It will develop and demonstrate
innovative wireless transportation applications that deliver safety,
mobility, emergency response, energy, and/or environmental benefits to
both passenger, fleet and freight transportation systems. The WIN for
Transportation program compliments and builds upon the USDOT's ongoing
ITS research program (http://www.its.dot.gov), but will be funded
separately from the existing ITS Program. It is proposed that the WIN
for Transportation program will:
Use ``living laboratories'' in a competitively-selected
region or corridor where innovative broadband wireless communications
methods and applications can be safely evaluated in an operating
environment. These living laboratories will leverage other public and
private investments.
Create broadband wireless ``fast lanes'' for multi-modal
transportation applications such as real-time safety inspections,
reporting, and access nationwide, including in underserved rural areas
and at border crossings.
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Work with state inspection and public safety partners,
along with other Federal agencies, to deploy rural wireless access
points in areas of critical need for enhanced emergency communications.
Require that all applications discourage distracted
driving/operations and uncover advances that can work to reduce driver
workload.
The USDOT has issued this RFI to help determine the most promising
technologies and applications to pursue. Responders are reminded that
feedback or comments on any aspect of this notice are welcomed from all
interested public, private, and academic entities and individuals.
While all feedback is encouraged, the USDOT is particularly interested
in feedback on the following questions. Respondents may respond, to
some, all, or none of these specific questions. Each question should be
considered in the context of whether or not investment of all or part
of the five year, $100 million Wireless Innovation for Transportation
funding would provide incentives for innovation toward realization of
substantial new service and public benefits and/or substantially
accelerate the accrual of such benefits.
1. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s National Broadband
Plan and the President's Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure
Initiative jointly aim to provide broadband access to 98% of all
Americans within five years. Providing coverage for citizens and
businesses accessing the Internet may be very different than providing
coverage for surface transportation applications. For example, there
may be rural highway rail intersections, border crossings in lightly
populated areas, or roads over mountain passes that experience severe
weather that would benefit from ITS applications.
a. What types of rural and sparsely populated locations and what
applications would benefit from this type of broadband deployment?
b. What research is needed for techniques such as Machine-to-
Machine (M2M) communications that would be needed to implement these
applications?
c. What research is needed on alternative broadband approaches
other than cellular that may be either more suitable or more cost-
effective to deploy broadband mobile wireless in these areas?
2. The overall Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure Initiative
has provisions for accelerating the implementation of a nationwide
interoperable broadband public safety network. This network would be
based on LTE (Long Term Evolution) cellular technology, be built to
public safety reliability specifications (public safety grade) and
would be capable of transmitting voice, video, images, and multimedia
communications. Both public transit (including transit police) and
highway maintenance and incident response personnel are eligible to use
public safety networks.
a. What ITS applications could be enabled on these networks that
cannot be implemented on the existing public safety narrowband radio
systems transportation agencies and organizations currently use?
b. If a nationwide public safety broadband network were implemented
allowing state departments of transportation (DOTs), public transit
properties, and first responders to use broadband interoperable
communications equipment, what new ITS applications, operations, and
procedures could be implemented for emergency response, coordination
with first responders, and disaster response?
c. How might such a network be used to coordinate emergency
operations such as evacuations with local, State, and Federal law
enforcement and emergency response personnel?
3. The growing use of alternative fuel vehicles brings new
challenges. What innovative broadband wireless applications would
support the use of alternative fuel vehicles? For example, traveler
information is traditionally based on shortest route or fastest route.
For alternative fuel vehicles, it may be more important to consider
additional parameters such as real time routing based on High-Occupancy
Vehicle (HOV) lanes open to alternative fuel vehicles, exemption of
alternative fuel vehicles from tolls, authorizing access of alternative
fuel vehicles into restricted-access, environmentally-sensitive areas
(e.g., ``nonattainment areas'' as defined by U.S Environmental
Protection agency, National Parks, National Monuments, etc.), special
corridors (such as the ``Hydrogen Highway'' in California), the range
of the vehicle, vertical terrain, and the location of potential
stations supporting the alternative fuel source. What unique challenges
are faced by alternative fuel vehicles, and what mobile broadband-based
applications might best address them?
4. In addition to addressing the unique challenges facing
alternative fuel vehicles, how can the WIN for Transportation program
help address issues related to reducing the use of non-renewable fuels
and to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation vehicles?
What specific research and development areas might be undertaken with
these reductions in mind? For example, how could innovative wireless
broadband technology be used to monitor unnecessary idling of
commercial vehicles, such as idling that does not occur at an
intersection, stop sign, or at a bus stop and does not occur for power-
take-off?
5. How would the provision of open, real-time, anonymous traffic
and travel condition data via wireless broadband significantly increase
opportunities for entrepreneurs to develop innovative transportation
applications, as the provision of public, standardized transit schedule
data has done in cities across the U.S.?
6. Next generation broadband systems are expected to have efficient
means of implementing Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications. One
example is using embedded modules (small self-contained units with
integrated sensor and communications functions) in vehicles to provide
information on road, weather, or environmental conditions to traffic
management centers or other centralized entities, in a manner
transparent to the driver. In this regard, applications using M2M would
meet the USDOT objectives concerning distracted driving.
a. What emerging ITS applications would benefit from M2M?
b. What applications could be prototyped or tested in a ``living
laboratory''?
7. What new commercial vehicle, fleet, rail, or transit safety
applications or new methods for operations, based on the availability
of broadband wireless that could substantially reduce the cost and
improve the quality of regulated commercial vehicle applications? How
might such applications be implemented? Which ones might be possible
candidates for integration and testing in the near term? Considerations
might include:
a. Wireless ``fast lanes'' supporting real-time safety inspections,
reporting, and information access, including at border crossings and in
rural areas. Real-time multi-agency access to information at rural and
mobile inspection points nationwide could dramatically transform the
way freight and motorcoach safety is implemented. The types of
information could include carrier and or operator inspection and
enforcement data as well as critical safety and lading information
(documents issued by a carrier to a shipper, acknowledging that
specified goods have been received).
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b. Development and implementation of a standardized, secure
freight/hazardous materials electronic manifest system.
c. Continuous automated safety monitoring with periodic reporting
via broadband wireless, without the use of roadside inspection
stations.
d. Cross-agency access to standardized vehicle and operator data
for enhanced data sharing and improved mission effectiveness.
8. How might a future commercial broadband service address
connected vehicle applications: (http://www.its.dot.gov/connected_vehicle/connected_vehicle_apps.htm), and what action could the USDOT
take to ensure that industry addresses these requirements? For example:
a. What is required from a commercial broadband service in terms of
reliability and resilience to ensure it would be available during
emergencies and disasters to support transportation services?
b. What technologies such as mesh or ad-hoc networking or
innovative use of relays, femtocells (which are small base stations
attached to a fixed broadband connection), or Wi-Fi access points could
be used to demonstrate an increase in network resilience for
transportation applications?
c. What such applications, technologies and techniques might be
prototyped and tested in a ``living laboratory'' over the next five
years?
9. Security standards may need to incorporate techniques to provide
anonymity and defeat tracking attempts against individual drivers when
using connected vehicle applications or global positioning systems
(GPS). Commercial broadband networks are designed to provide location
information for emergency response (E911 and NG911) and are
increasingly implementing applications using location-based services
that specifically track user and/or vehicle locations. These features
might limit the suitability of commercial broadband networks for some
applications, especially those that may be potentially mandatory and/or
government-sponsored
a. What types of ITS applications, especially those that may be
potentially mandatory or government-sponsored, might make use of
commercial broadband networks?
b. What policy initiatives and possible technical features will
need to be implemented to assure users that their privacy is protected
regardless of which communications network (or networks) is used?
10. What actions should the USDOT take, either from a technical or
policy perspective, to encourage development of integrated, multi-
platform wireless devices (e.g. Dedicated Short Range Communications
(DSRC)/4G) for vehicles, mobile devices, and roadside equipment?
11. What other broadband technologies or applications would provide
substantial public benefits and testing or deployment of which would be
accelerated by WIN funding?
12. Security standards for vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-
infrastructure communications may require techniques for authenticating
messages, including verifying the authority to send various classes of
messages and the source of the messages. They may also include
techniques to encrypt messages if needed.
a. What transportation applications might require such security
features when implemented on commercial networks, and what attributes
might the applications require (for example, authentication, data
integrity, non-repudiation, etc.)?
b. Could widespread broadband wireless capability be leveraged to
address the security requirements transportation and/or other non-
transportation applications?
Issued in Washington, DC, on the 5th day of May 2011.
John Augustine,
Managing Director, ITS Joint Program Office.
[FR Doc. 2011-11653 Filed 5-11-11; 8:45 am]
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