This month, I’ve joined representatives from State DOTS, MPOs, industry, local agencies and academics in Baltimore and Minneapolis/St. Paul for the first two of seven regional Every Day Counts (EDC) summits set to take place this Fall around the country.

The events are being organized by FHWA in order to jump-start the deployment of the following 11 innovations:

• Automated Traffic Signal Performance Measures
• Collaborative Hydraulics: Advancing to the Next Generation of Engineering
• Community Connections
• Data-Driven Safety Analysis
• e-Construction and Partnering:  A Vision for the Future
• Integrating NEPA and Permitting
• Pavement Preservation (When, Where and How)
• Road Weather Management – Weather-Savvy Roads
• Safe Transportation for Every Pedestrian
• Ultra-High Performance Concrete Connections for PBES
• Using Data to Improve Traffic Incident Management

The five other summits – Albany, New York on November 1-2; Portland, Oregon on November 29-30; Sacramento on December 1-2; Austin on December 6-7; and Orlando on December 14-15 – will follow the format developed for last week’s event in Baltimore.

Each meeting is designed to facilitate dialogue, encourage creative thinking, and move forward on new opportunities to innovate when it comes to developing and delivering highway projects.

Each event is also by invitation only, in order to provide transportation professionals with a venue to exchange experiential knowledge candidly with their agency and industry counterparts in neighboring States, and provide feedback to FHWA on the support and resources needed to adopt the innovations in their own States.

Perhaps most importantly, each Summit serves as a starting point for States, local public agencies and Federal Lands Highway Divisions to focus on the innovations that make the most sense for their unique program needs, establish performance goals for using these innovations and committing to finding opportunities to get the innovations they choose into practice over the next two years.

For those of you interested in learning more about these innovations, webinars on each innovation can be viewed here.

In 2009, former FHWA Administrator and current DOT Deputy Secretary Victor Mendez ushered in EDC as a state-based model to identify and rapidly deploy proven, but underutilized innovations that can save time, save money and save lives.

The 11 innovations in round four of EDC will help ensure taxpayers get the greatest return on every dollar they invest in transportation.

For EDC-4, with each summit our goal is the same: putting effective, proven, market-ready technologies into widespread use now.