California council created to foster transportation innovations

Updated Apr 5, 2016

Los Angeles trafficThe California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) have signed a charter to create a council aimed at “advocating and overseeing the rapid development of innovations in the transportation sector.”

The California State Transportation Innovation Council (STIC) was set up to identify strategies, respond to transportation infrastructure challenges and promote innovations that “deliver a safer, more efficient and sustainable transportation system.

“California’s infrastructure is aging and our resources are increasingly becoming limited, so the need for innovation is essential,” says Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty. “Through the STIC, we hope to identify proven technologies and practices to pilot and implement in California, and ultimately move these proven innovations into use on our roadways faster.”

The STIC will be made up of representatives from various highway transportation community entities, including Caltrans, FHWA, state agencies, local governments and industry partners.

“Innovative project delivery drives economic growth and accelerates the development of a safer and more efficient transportation system,” says FHWA Administrator Gregory Nadeau. “The charter we sign today with Caltrans demonstrates the strength of our partnership and is an important step toward our collective efforts to develop a national innovation network with local and state transportation agencies and our private sector partners.”

Coming out of the Every Day Counts program in 2010, FHWA created the State Transportation Innovation Council to “foster ownership and pride in establishing a process in which ideas, innovative techniques and processes can be evaluated and implemented quickly and proficiently.”

More details on FHWA’s STIC initiatives are available at https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/innovation/stic/.