US 98 Smart Bay

Bay County is a popular destination for vacationers while it is going through new construction at the beach, and a lot of re-construction along with proposed industrial park and a retirement community. Panama City Beach has many special events around the year that attracts about 17 million visitors each year. Smart Bay CAV covers approximately 32 miles of US 98 as shown in the figure. Smart Bay is aimed at making visitor’s experience memorable and increasing economic vitality of the region by improving safety and mobility, and increasing economic development activities in the region.





The first part of the project consists of upgrading infrastructure by deploying roadside unit (RSU) along with the on-board unit (OBU) installed in cars, transits, freights, and emergency vehicles. The second part includes the deployment of autonomous shuttles.

The anticipated benefits from the project include improved roadway and incident clearance times, improved pedestrian and bicycle safety, enabled air force base fleet, transit, and freight signal priority, emergency vehicle preemption, improved traveler information, connected airport and seaport, smart work zone management, real-time traveler information, enabled road weather information system, rail crossing advance warning, bridge weather monitoring sensor, and enabled vehicle to vehicle (V2V) connection for the autonomous shuttles.

For additional information, please contact Amy DiRusso at Amy.Dirusso@dot.state.fl.us