Pub. 2 2019-2020 Issue 2

39 of the spectrumcan be used. Many parts of the spectrumhavemultiple uses. The FCC is currently deciding whether to change the rules for the radio spectrums, which were set in 1999. As a result, everything about two-way communication is currently in flux. The FCC has licensed the 5.9 GHz spectrum andhas allowed its use for somemilitary air- craft radar systems. The devices we use are also on the 5.9 GHz spectrum. UDOT has to file a permit request before UDOT can put equipment up that uses the 5.9 GHz spec- trum. We search to make sure we are not in range of military radar so that we cannot interfere with it and we are not aware of any specific radar units being anywhere near UDOT equipment. UDOT recently sent a response to the FCC in March 2020, but it is continuing to deploy radio equipment on the roadside. We will continue in any way the FCC wants, but we are like lots of other cities and states; we are heavily invested in communication and we are moving forward. What about buried technologies? We have a lot of experience with buried technologies, and we use them when we need to, but we avoid them as much as possible. Although we used inductive loops buried in pavement for decades to detect when cars are at signals, we are not currently burying many of them anymore. They’re hard to maintain unless you put a lid on them, but we minimize the number of lids because those can cause cracking, deteri- oration and water infiltration. Inductive loops have some significant shortcomings: • There are problems with batteries and water, especially when the water freezes. • You have to dig them up when want to work on them. • Pavement maintenance involves milling off the top half-inch of pavement and adding two new inches of pavement. Milling destroys inductive loops. With more and more electric and hybrid vehicles on the road, what can you tell us about roads that can charge them? Utah State University a leader in developing that technology, which is promisingbut isn’t ready yet. There’s a test track in Logan, and Utah State University and Purdue University have a conference every year about it. You can charge a vehicle battery two ways. The first is through static charging, which Utah State helped to develop. At least two companies are involved, too. Static charging isworkable and available, but it isn’t at scale. There’s a bus at the University of Utah that uses this technology. When the bus stops on tops over a charger that has been buried in the pavement, the charge goes through the air and charges the bus. Howpractical is it? It extends the battery’s life, but it doesn’t allow the bus to run perpetually. Charging a batterywhile a vehicle ismoving is harder. Right now, itwould involveputting big charging coils in pavements. The whole idea raises several good questions: Howdo the charging coils affect pavement integ- rity? Is this something that is economi- cally viable?Where, specifically, would the coils go?What about policies? Nobody has answered these questions yet. Now that UDOT has all this wireless communication between cars and infrastructure, what prevents people from hacking into the system? Everybody wants this information to be secure, and everyone is working on the problem. Can information be hacked anyway? People can hack almost any- thing, but we have gone to great lengths to secure this data. If you buy something online, you trust that the vendor keeps the information secure before you enter your credit card information. To do that, the vendor uses a Public Key Information (PKI) system. It attaches a private digital certificate to your financial information and encrypts the message. Someone at the other end has to have access to the system to decrypt the message. We will use the same system. It is more complicated to apply the system to cars than it is to apply it to money, but we are building in what we need. 3 Blaine D. Leonard, P.E., F.ASCE