Discussing safety transportation technology will form only a part of a successful SS4A application, but selecting the right technology partners can put you in the best position to:

1. Hit and exceed expectations for the Implementation selection criterion.

2. Make sure you’re fully able to implement every subcomponent of your Safety Analysis, Strategy and Project Selections, and Progress and Transparency components.

3. Make sure you are fully complying with and exceeding expectations for SS4A’s data requirement.

4. Successfully perform supplemental action plan items, which USDOT recommends including in your plan.

SS4A grants are divided into action plan grants and implementation plan grants. Agencies can’t apply for an implementation grant if they don’t have an action plan that meets all of the components. For more information on action plan grants, click here.

Contact us at sales@flowlabs.ai to schedule a 30 minute consultation on your SS4A application.

Implementation Grants Overview

Implementation Grants fund projects from your Action Plan, and therefore projects covered by one of the Action Plan 8 components, each of which are further divided into subcomponents.

• USDOT will fund up to 80% of the grant.
  
• Expected minimum of $5,000,000 and a maximum award of $30,000,000 for a political subdivisions of a State.
  
• Expected minimum of $3,000,000 and maximum of $30,000,000 for federally recognized Tribal governments or applicants in rural areas.
  
• Expected maximum of $50,000,000 for MPO or a joint application comprised of a multi jurisdictional group.
  
• The maximum length for this grant is 5 years.

How Can Flow Labs Help With Implementation Grants?

Selection Criterion

• Safety Impact: Flow Labs can be deployed at a regional level: the platform is hardware-free, and therefore is rapidly scalable and affordable. It has been proven to lower safety risk by 51% while reducing travel times by 24% and emissions by 21%.
  
• Equity, Engagement, and Collaboration: Our platform can be deployed quickly and cost-effectively, enabling agencies to prioritize and improve outcomes in traditionally underserved areas in weeks and months instead of years.
  
• ‍Effective Practices and Strategies: The Flow Labs platform covers 3 out of the 5 safety elements of the NSS’s Safe System Approach. Flow Labs’ technology is also aligned with the methodology of Complete Streets.
  
• Climate Change and Economic Competitiveness: Flow Labs has industry-leading environmental analytics and an industry-leading approach for optimizing traffic for both safety and mobility / environmental impact. Our intuitive platform is designed to be used by both new and experienced engineers, and has been praised by agency partners as an accessible and easy to use tool.
  

Hitting Subcomponents‍

• Safety Analysis: While many agencies have a system-wide methodology for measuring crashes, these subcomponents also call for agencies to analyze the “existing conditions” and “contributing factors” that cause crashes across “all roadways within the jurisdiction.” We measure leading indicators of unsafe driving, including red light running, dilemma zone entry, speeding, aggressive acceleration, and aggressive deceleration, on an regional/system, network/corridor, intersection/signal, and phase/movement level.
  
• Strategy and Project Selections: According to the subcomponents, all selected projects must use “the best available evidence and noteworthy practices.” Flow Labs’ platform utilizes proprietary algorithms (also known as cost functions) to optimize traffic flow for both safety and mobility, enabling agencies to minimize travel times and transportation’s environmental impact without jeopardizing the safety of vulnerable road users. In contrast, historically, adaptive traffic control solutions have optimized traffic flow for mobility only, endangering pedestrians and cyclists.
  
• Progress and Transparency: All of the subcomponents are covered by our project performance measurement platform, which enables agencies to measure the ROI and safety impact of any project in under a minute. As a result, agencies will be able to consistently and accurately evaluate every project in their safety plan, and therefore track their Action Plan progress and “ensure ongoing transparency.”
  

Data Collection Requirement

‍USDOT states that agencies must “consider, budget for and implement” data collection methods to evaluate the effectiveness of their safety initiatives. This section is similar to the “Progress and Transparency” component of your Action Plan, and is critical to project evaluators. The stronger your data collection method, the stronger your argument will be for this section of your application. Flow Labs’ data is:

• Industry-leading: Flow Labs’ platform is the first platform to integrate data from signal, sensor, and connected vehicle data. Flow Labs’ platform architecture is designed to integrate all datasets that an agency has access to, including crash histories.
  
• Comprehensive: Flow Labs captures metrics at a phase/movement, intersection/signal, corridor/network, and systemwide level. Unlike detectors, which can only gather data from near to where they’re placed, our integrated data approach enables us to collect reliable data from any point on a roadway.
  
• Accurate: Our data has been proven to be 94.4% accurate in the field.
  
• Affordable: Our hardware-free data collection method generates 10 times more data than a modern detection system for 1/300th of the cost.
  

Supplementary Action Plan Activities

‍These are activities that are not required to include in an action plan, but are considered beneficial to an agency’s SS4A’s safety strategy. They can be a part of the Action Plan application. Below are the Supplemental Action Plan items that Flow Labs can support:‍

• a second round of analysis
  
• expanded data collection and evaluation using integrated data
  
• testing action plan concepts before project and strategy implementation
  
• targeted equity assessments
  
• complementary planning efforts such as speed management plans