Team from North Allegheny wins PennDOT's regional Innovation Challenge

A pair of North Allegheny Senior High School sophomores – Brendan White and Benjamin Quint – are this year’s PennDOT’s District 11 Innovation Challenge winners.

Students across the state who are participating in this year’s competition were asked to come up with an innovative and implementable solution that helps address the state’s transportation revenue shortfall.

Students were challenged to identify potential new funding streams that don’t require additional fuel taxes, tolls or mileage-based user fees.

The first round of the competition was between students in each of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s 11 regional districts. Region 11 covers Allegheny, Beaver and Lawrence counties.

Regional winners will move on to compete virtually in Harrisburg for the state Innovation Challenge championship. The first, second and third-place winners of the statewide competition will split a $5,500 cash prize.

“With vehicles becoming more fuel-efficient and electric vehicles becoming more affordable, gasoline-based revenues can no longer generate the funds needed,” said PennDOT secretary Yassmin Gramian. “To meet the needs of our aging infrastructure, Pennsylvania needs to establish a funding stream that will inject an additional $5 billion per year into our transportation system.”

The team from NA came up with an idea titled “Restructuring Registration Fee with Rebates,” which involves restructuring the way PennDOT registers vehicles.

Their solution proposed increasing revenue while also incorporating a rebate structure for vehicle owners based on the amount spent in gas taxes during the previous year.

By incorporating sustainability into the solution, the students took into account the anticipated shift from electric to gas vehicles.

“I’ve been impressed by the initiative the students have taken with this project,” said Janellen Lombardi, who served as the team’s mentor. “They put time and effort into their research to learn more about the topic. They created a plan that effectively addressed the problem while being feasible and practical in the approach.

“The Innovations Challenge was a great learning opportunity for them, which required them to apply critical thinking and problem-solving skills to a real-world issue,” she said.

Quint said he was “surprised and excited” when he learned that he and White were named regional champions.

“There was a point where I considered if participating was worth the effort, and to make it this far has been an honor,” he said. “I think we’re ready for the next round, and the feedback we’ve received from the judges in the first round has helped us find which aspects of our plan need refinement.”

White said being selected to go onto the state championship “is an honor.”

“For me, one of the best parts of the competition is that this solution has a real-life application and it is something that we could actually start using in Pennsylvania,” he said. “Our solution shifts the way registration fees take place and helps to prevent a future revenue leak from electric vehicles.”

In 2019, North Allegheny students Isha Das and Leela Pinnamaraju won PennDOT’s statewide Innovation Challenge by developing an app that gets drivers to slow down in work zones.

Their app, called “Safe Drive,” allows users to observe their work-zone violations in real-time and rewards drivers with points for good behavior and penalizes those who commit traffic violations.