Caltrans and Federal Highway Administration leaders recently signed a charter establishing the California State Transportation Innovation Council (STIC), which will serve as a forum for advocating and overseeing the rapid deployment of innovations in the transportation sector.

The goal of the STIC is to identify new strategies to respond to the challenges impacting California’s transportation infrastructure and to promote innovations that will 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,” said 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 bring together representatives from all levels of the highway transportation community to effectively evaluate which innovations are most appropriate for California. This cross-section of various stakeholders, Caltrans, FHWA, state agencies, local governments and industry partners will work together, build off of each’s insights to learn about new technologies, determine what is applicable to their respective areas and develop plans to implement and adopt these new ideas and processes into current and future transportation projects as standard practice.

“Innovative project delivery drives economic growth and accelerates the development of a safer and more efficient transportation system,” said Federal Highway Administrator Gregory Nadeau. “The charter we signed 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.”

In 2010, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) launched Every Day Counts (EDC) to shorten project delivery and expedite the deployment of proven technologies. To expand the EDC initiative, FHWA introduced the State Transportation Innovation Council concept to state departments of transportation and industry partners to foster ownership and pride in establishing a process in which ideas, innovative techniques and processes can be evaluated and implemented quickly and proficiently.

The STICs are composed of a multi-stakeholder leadership team who works together to evaluate well-researched and proven technologies that are ready to be implemented in the field. Technologies, tactics and techniques that are selected will be employed and promoted to become standard practice within the transportation community at the local, regional or statewide level.

For more information on the STIC, visit https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/innovation/stic/.