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Smart Cities Collaborative hits the ground running in year two

Returning in a bigger fashion than the first year with 23 cities instead of 16, our Smart Cities Collaborative picked up where we left off with the launch of year two last week in Denver, CO.

It’s only been a few short months since we wrapped up the first year of the Collaborative, but we’ve still seen significant developments in how new and emerging technologies are reshaping the right-of-way and curb space. One instructive example is what’s currently happening in cities with dockless bike- and scooter-sharing systems—and how fast it’s happening.

When our first cohort of 16 cities gathered in Minneapolis on the day after the presidential election in 2016, there wasn’t a single dockless bikesharing system operating in any of these 16 cities. As pilot projects launched in Seattle, Washington, DC, and others in 2017, it became clear that dockless would have huge impacts in the year to come.

Nine months later and dockless is certainly a growing fixture in scores of cities. This might have been an obvious prediction, but even we didn’t quite see the scooters coming so fast. Less than 18 months after that first Collaborative meeting, dozens of cities are now scrambling to develop new approaches to dockless scooters (as well as the bikes) that are rapidly expanding on their streets and fighting for scarce curb and sidewalk space, but also providing popular new mobility options for getting around our congested cities.

In 2016, Uber (and Google’s Waymo) were just dipping their toes in the water on testing automated vehicles (AVs). Lured to Arizona by a friendly (i.e., mostly just non-existent) regulatory environment, they both started testing AVs in mid to late 2016 with relatively small fleets of cars, which have quickly grown to hundreds on the road in Arizona (and elsewhere). But now, cities (and states and Congress) are determining how they should proceed in the wake of the first fatal AV crash in Tempe, AZ.

This is the pace of change that cities are dealing with when it comes to urban mobility and technology: Completely new mobility models from concept to widespread rollout in less than 18 months.

Standing still or just waiting to see how things develop simply isn’t a viable strategy for cities that want to harness this change for the benefit of their cities and their residents. They have to be proactive.

That’s why over 60 participants from 43 agencies representing 23 cities came to Denver last week for the kickoff meeting of the Collaborative’s second cohort.

Though this new cohort brought scores of new faces to the Collaborative (thirteen cities from last year returned), the spirit of collaboration and cooperation carried over in full. From the moment participants arrived from the airport in to Denver’s Union Station, they quickly and easily engaged with one another about the challenges they’re facing in their cities, the projects they’re working on, and started getting to know each other.

Similar to our first kickoff meeting in Minneapolis last year, the goal of this meeting was to get participants to know one another, identify the challenges they’re trying to solve, and develop tangible action plans for the year — not just to set goals, but also to identify areas for collaboration with other cities.

We were incredibly lucky to have Denver Mayor Michael B. Hancock stop by to welcome everyone to the city, and also ground us with a reminder that the core purpose of this work is to make our cities better places to live for everyone — not just for a privileged few.

“This is much broader than just ‘what does the road look like,’” Mayor Hancock said. “It’s also an opportunity for us to lean in and lead with our values and be inclusive. And making sure that those people who are most challenged in our communities have an opportunity to raise themselves up by lifting those burdens of the cost of housing and transportation off of their shoulders,” he concluded.

Unlike last year, where some cities were still figuring out their projects during our kickoff meeting, many of the participants arrived in Denver with a much clearer idea of what they plan to work on over the course of this year.

But instead of diving straight into the details of these projects, we took a step back to get participants on the same page for talking and thinking about these projects, and to make sure their projects had a clearly identified problem and outcome in mind. That’s why we’re perpetually asking, “What problem are you trying to solve?” because we all too often rush straight to the solution or a specific piece of technology.

Throughout the first day, the experts and panel discussions and conversations focused on the bigger picture of where technology is going, what trends are real (or not real), and why collaboration is vital for having any chance to stay ahead of the curve. Participants also identified the long-term vision for their city and, reflecting Mayor Hancock’s comments above, discussed strategies for improving equity through their projects, and hard-coding that goal into all of their processes.

Having set the tone in day one, teams from each of the cities spent the bulk of the second day developing their action plans for the coming year. But in keeping with the modus operandi of the Collaborative, they started hashing out their action plans in a cooperative format with 10-12 people from other cities who are working on a similar specific issue, such as a dynamic curb management pilot project.

This helps connect them directly with their peers who are working on similar issues and see where opportunities for greater collaboration exist. And it’s hard to overstate how valuable these structured (and unstructured) opportunities are for connecting with peers facing similar challenges in other cities.

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. If one particular city has made progress in rolling out a new strategy to better manage curb space, or a new pilot program for flexible delivery zones, for example, other cities can and should replicate their successes and learn how to avoid the pitfalls others encountered along the way.

They only had a few hours to develop them, but the cities’ action plan presentations were sharp, focused, and calibrated to tackle their real problems with real outcomes in mind over the next year. Presentations covered a wide range of topics: permitting processes for dockless bikeshare and scooters, loading zone pilots for ridesourcing and delivery vehicles, first-mile/last-mile microtransit pilots, new performance metrics to assess “transportation happiness,” and much more.

Like last year, this year’s cohort has an enthusiasm and excitement to collaborate with one another and collectively shape the future of transportation. It was a busy two days, but participants stuck around at the end of the meeting to weigh in on their projects with one another, ask questions, and exchange information for future conversations.

Representing metro areas that are collectively home to almost a full third of the US population (and a huge chunk of Canada via the inclusion of Toronto), the decisions these leaders are making will affect how we think and talk about transportation for years down the road. After this first two-day stretch with this new group of 60+ leaders, we’re confident that they are headed in the right direction when it comes to navigating the rapid changes coming to urban transportation.

We’re looking forward to being part of this conversation and to our next in-person meeting of the Collaborative this July in Seattle.

This post was written by Transportation for America’s Rob Benner and Steve Davis.

Applications are open for the second year of our Smart Cities Collaborative

Last year, Transportation for America launched the Smart Cities Collaborative to build a forum for collaboration and provide direct technical assistance to cities advancing smart mobility policies and projects. Today we’re announcing the launch of a second year of the Collaborative and calling interested cities to apply.

The Collaborative was launched in an effort to capture the momentum created by the US Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge and help cities test concepts, understand market potential, assess regulatory and political hurdles, address environmental and equity issues and refine their approach to implementing smart mobility concepts.

This past year was a tremendous success and the Collaborative evolved into a close-knit network of 32 agencies from 16 cities that enabled participants to learn from their peers, develop policies, help launch pilot projects and form partnerships across cities and agencies.

To build on the lessons we’ve learned and expand to include other leading-edge cities, we’re excited to launch the second year of the Smart Cities Collaborative and open the application process today.

Learn more & apply

 

Over the past year, the Collaborative focused on the core topics of automated vehicles, shared mobility and data analytics. During this work an overall theme emerged: how emerging technologies and new mobility are Reshaping the Right-of-Way. This will be the theme and focus of the Collaborative for the coming year.

Our content and curriculum will be separated into four sub-topics; design, measure, manage and price. We’ll cover how the right-of-way and curb space are evolving; measuring and analyzing project, modal and system performance; managing public and private mobility providers in tandem; and pricing road and curb space in service of long-term outcomes. Over the coming weeks, we’ll publish more in-depth posts on each of these topics and how we’ll approach them over the coming year.

If you and your city are interested in participating in the second year of the Smart City Collaborative, please read and fill out the online application.

Learn more & apply

Helping 16 cities navigate the tech-driven transportation revolution

In 2016, T4America launched the Smart Cities Collaborative, a learning and support network to help leaders from 16 cities proactively use technology to make their cities safer, more accessible, equitable and prosperous for all.

Seventy-seven cities applied to the US Department of Transportation’s Smart Cities Challenge, but 76 of them walked away empty-handed when Columbus, OH nabbed the winner-take-all $40 million prize. It became clear to us: cities across the country want help dealing with the explosion of new tech-driven transportation services like microtransit, ride-hailing and automated vehicles; and help harnessing all of them to create better places to live. Over the last year, our Smart Cities Collaborative has done just that.

Will you help us continue working with more cities in 2018? Donate to T4America

Listen to what five of the participants from our initial cohort of 16 cities had to say about their experience. Watch the short video.

“This is going to change everything about how we live and work. And no one quite knows what that impact will be. It’s a pretty big revolution and having this brain trust of cities get together with experts really adds a tremendous amount of value as we embark on this. And frankly, we’re all going to be stronger together and benefit from the thinking if we work together — rather than all trying the same things and not sharing.”

– Shireen Santosham, City of San Jose

These new technologies could make it easier to get around, make jobs more accessible, and ensure that low-income residents benefit from increasingly prosperous cities. But cities have to be intentional and proactive to make sure the technologies work for the people and not the other way around.

Our Smart Cities Collaborative made a tangible difference — help us do more in 2018 by donating today.

 

DONATE TO T4AMERICA

Take action on Senate automated vehicles bill that would would leave cities, states, and the public in the dark

Congress is on the cusp of passing the very first federal law to regulate automated vehicles (AVs). Unfortunately, a Senate committee has produced a law that would leave cities, states, and the public in the dark while handing the keys to the industry.

Flickr photo by Ed and Eddie. Source

The AV START bill could put hundreds of thousands of AVs on the roads, preempt states and cities from having any oversight on how those vehicles operate, and keep the public from accessing any of the valuable data about where and how they are operating.

The Senate Commerce Committee will be considering this bill on Wednesday, October 4. Write your Senators today and urge them to reconsider and improve their approach.

Thus far, Congress has hastily legislated on a complicated issue with impacts that will be felt for decades primarily by people and groups who were never invited into the room.

Any state and local laws for AVs could be at risk if they are found to be an “unreasonable restriction” — vague language that will almost certainly lead to costly legal battles.

For example, if a city wants to prevent empty AVs from endlessly circling their streets or keep them from operating on certain streets, they could be left with no recourse for setting local policies to do so.

When it comes to safety, cities (and others) also need access to data on these vehicles’ performance on their own streets. Is there a particular intersection that’s more dangerous than others for automated vehicles? They’ll have no way to find out on their own.

While the bill does require manufacturers testing AVs to report all crashes to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and produce a publicly available annual safety report, there are no requirements for sharing more robust real-time or near-real-time data with cities or states. This ensures that no one other than the private companies doing the testing will be able to learn anything from the massive amounts of data produced by the tests.

In order to create more hospitable conditions for all modes of travel — especially AVs — cities and states need these data to inform and optimize their planning, policymaking and operations to prepare for the coming wave of automation.

Take action and tell the Senate that they need to do better — this issue has the potential to dramatically reshape our cities in profound ways.

Our Smart Cities Collaborative rolls on as cities get down to the nuts and bolts

During the third meeting of our Smart Cities Collaborative in Miami-Dade County, FL, earlier in June, our 16 member cities continued working to develop projects that harness innovation and technology to solve their transportation challenges.

We’re just past the halfway mark of the yearlong Smart Cities Collaborative we launched last fall in partnership with Sidewalk Labs. And, thanks to support from the Knight Foundation, The Miami Foundation, and Miami-Dade County, teams from all 16 cities gathered in person for the third time to discuss their pilot projects, meet with new mobility vendors, and continue collaborating with each other as they seek to leverage new technologies to improve mobility and quality of life in their communities.

In Miami, we turned the focus back on the cities and devoted a full day to each city sharing a ten-minute presentation on their particular pilot project and action plan.

With seven months of work under their belts at this point, cities have a wealth of information to share and were eager to interact and learn from each other. Whether designing an automated vehicle pilot, experimenting with mobility hubs or improving first- and last-mile connectivity to transit, every city shared their progress and their upcoming plans. Other cities then asked questions, shared similar experiences and provided constructive criticism to sharpen those pilot projects.

In a world chock-full of conferences focused on passively listening to others discuss emerging trends, the Collaborative creates a venue for cities to actively cooperate and learn from one other in a focused way. And this full day of presentations was a golden opportunity for cities to do so.

Their presentations showed us not just the outcomes they’re driving towards, but also some of the challenges they’re facing as they design and implement their projects.

One of those challenges is an ongoing struggle to develop productive partnerships with the private sector. When it comes to private companies, up to this point in the Collaborative, we’ve tried to create an environment that’s largely been free of vendors and products so cities can talk openly and determine their goals first.

But over the past few months, cities have expressed their desire to better understand the benefits and consequences of specific technologies and transportation models, how vendors operate and what their real operational capacity is and how they can craft agreements that serve their outcomes. We’ve also heard from the private sector that cities often don’t know what they want; and that they [vendors] struggle to understand government structures and processes and are frustrated by often slow and difficult procurement processes.

In an effort to bridge this gap and serve both sides’ needs, we organized an “industry day” with representatives from leading mobility and data companies like Sidewalk Labs, Uber, Cubic, Urban Insights, Ford, Via and more. More than a dozen companies joined us to discuss how they could work together to achieve shared outcomes and collaboratively shape the future of transportation.

Instead of listening to another pitch deck or panel discussion, we were determined to cultivate intimate and productive conversations. To foster strong relationships between participants and vendors, we organized rotating, small groups comprised of a single company meeting with just 3-4 participants, providing a setting for them to speak openly and honestly about their respective struggles and identify where common solutions can be developed.

One city participant shared that they had a “fascinating discussion with a [private] firm about the challenges of innovating within a bureaucracy.” And another participant valued the ability to have a discussion with the vendor at the same time as other cities, describing it as a “great opportunity to engage with a bunch of companies at once and learn about each other’s desires and challenges.“

The vendors also relished the opportunity to “meet in the middle” with these cities. Sidewalk Labs, our partners in the Collaborative, participated in the industry day as well. “We benefit from understanding the real-world challenges and use cases that cities wrestle with on a daily basis, and public agencies can benefit from the technology and development capacity of their private-sector partners,” Rohit Aggarwala, the co-head of labs for Sidewalk Labs, told us after the meeting. “The best outcomes are going to occur when cities and technologists meet in the middle to address tough problems.”

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Last summer as we launched, calling this yearlong project a “Collaborative” was an aspirational term. Almost seven months after a roomful of strangers gathered in a Minneapolis hotel and worked to break the ice in our first meeting, those same city leaders walked into a meeting room at Florida International University, greeting each other by first names with warm handshakes, catching up on the progress being made across the country and making extracurricular plans to talk further.

While it’s worthwhile to see these former strangers getting along, what really matters is how they’ve begun to treat their peers from other cities as extensions of their own teams, almost like extra staff for their own city — certainly an added benefit in a time of strained local resources. They’ve leveraged others’ knowledge, weighed in on each others’ projects, and learned from the progress (and mistakes!) made by other cities.

With everything moving and changing so fast, the decisions these cities are making will go a long way toward shaping the smart city movement overall, making their individual efforts more valuable as part of a whole to make all of our cities more affordable, connected, enjoyable, and livable places for everyone.

A highly cooperative spirit is taking root within the 16 cities in the Smart Cities Collaborative

Just a few blocks from the Capitol dome in Washington, DC, the 16 members of our Smart City Collaborative gathered together again two weeks ago to learn, share wisdom and find ways to collaborate on thoughtfully solving their transportation challenges with new and emerging technologies.

During the last in-person meeting in Minneapolis on the day after the election, we spent a good chunk of the time trying to help the cities back out a bit from the minutia of day-to-day, specific problems like, “which payment vendor should I use for X?” and “What technology do you use for Y?” and think more about the big picture problems they’re trying to solve. Existential questions like, “what kind of city do we want to be in ten years? How can technology help us get there?”

With the answers to those big picture questions firmly in mind and a spirit of collaboration already bearing fruit, we focused on three things during our second two-day meeting: Going in-depth on key issues with notable experts, discussing the action plans for the cities’ specific pilot projects, and a working session on specifically how to measure and quantify success.

One of the highlights of the first day was a terrific discussion about equity and accessibility in our changing digital world. The superb panel, led by Shin-pei Tsay from the Gehl Institute, discussed how technology is rapidly changing equity, accessibility and access to economic opportunity in cities — with an eye toward how Collaborative members can ensure that their projects help solve these challenges, rather than contributing further to the problem.

The first day’s panel discussion on how technology is transforming access to opportunities, with a focus on equity.  From left, Shin-pei Tsay, Executive Director of the Gehl Institute, Anita Cozart, Senior Director at PolicyLink, Tatiana Peralta-Quirós, Transport Economist at the World Bank and Rani Narula-Woods, California Program Manager for the Shared-Use Mobility Center.

Members got to hear directly from those involved with other interesting pilot projects elsewhere, like Pittsburgh’s self-driving Uber pilot, driverless shuttles in Contra Costa County, and on-demand transit projects in Oakland, CA and Salem, OR.

We brought in over a dozen outside experts with deep knowledge on issues like performance measurement, data-sharing between cities and transportation network companies (TNCs like Uber and Lyft), modular contracting and flexible procurement, to name a few. City reps participated in intimate, small group discussions where they could ask questions and try to fill gaps in their knowledge.

Gabe Klein with CityFi, formerly the director of Chicago and DC’s transportation departments, walked a group through his experiences in procurement.

Within the three working groups that we created based on what the applying cities were most interested in —automated vehicles, shared mobility and data analytics — a key goal of the year-long collaborative is for each city to launch a pilot project. But how should cities measure and quantify the success or failure of these projects that they’re hoping to get off the ground? For example, for a city that’s trying to run a small, automated vehicle pilot project, what should they be measuring? And what data points can actually be measured?

Doing real-time voting on some proposed metrics for measuring the performance of the cities’ pilot projects.

These are tough nuts to crack, but we all made progress at finding answers — all while trying to keep our eyes on how these pilot projects can help cities get ever closer to their answer to the “what kind of city do we want to be in ten years?” question.

One of the most illuminating comments we heard from a participant was that the Collaborative is creating the opportunity to get out of the day-to-day — where they may have scores of other unrelated responsibilities — to come together with like-minded peers to think long and hard about this one topic or their pilot project in a focused way.

With so much uncertainty right now with regards to federal transportation policy under a new administration and a new Secretary of Transportation, cities will be best served by working together to solve these challenges and avoid producing a new generation of transportation haves and have-nots.

It’s been an incredibly productive few months so far, and we’re eager to see what continues to come out of these cities as they work to ensure that this monumental, epochal shift in transportation is harnessed to shape their cities into places that are more sustainable, equitable and accessible.

The Smart Cities Collaborative is supported by Sidewalk Labs.

Our Smart Cities collaborative kicked off with an inspiring two-day gathering

On the morning after the presidential election, thanks in part to the support of the McKnight Foundation, representatives from 17 cities gathered in Minneapolis for two days to kickstart our yearlong collaborative focused on proactively shaping cities through transportation and technology.

Smart cities collaborative meeting wide group shot

Members of the collaborative give a thumbs-up following the close of the two-day meeting in Minneapolis.

In the wake of an election that focused a lot on what divides us, it was inspiring to be with such an amazing collection of leaders from 17 cities, large and small, and watch them begin to develop connections and sow the seeds of collaboration during the inaugural meeting of T4America’s Smart Cities Collaborative, which has been supported by Sidewalk Labs.

We had three main goals for the meeting: help participants build relationships with others from their peer cities and get to know one another, establish the core problem or problems that they’re trying to solve, and then start developing an action plan for a specific pilot project.

For two days, we heard lively discussions as the participants described their inspiring views on what kind of cities they want be in the future, exactly what they want to accomplish during the Collaborative, and how technology can help them achieve their goals.

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Most encouragingly, a palatable “me-too” vibe saturated both days as people started talking and realizing that other cities — whether much smaller, larger or far away — are dealing with many of the same issues.

“It really helps to talk to peers with similar issues who understand the concept of shared mobility,” one of the participants told us afterward.

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And instead of getting down into the weeds with questions like, “Which payment vendor should I use, or how do I build this smartphone app?” we tried to back up to a bigger picture view, starting with questions such as, “What transportation challenges are your city struggling with? What outcomes would you like to see in 10 years? How can we ensure that new transportation models and digital tools are inclusive of everyone?”

That’s not about technology, that’s about vision.

After all, a smart city isn’t the one with the most technology. A truly smart city is one that understands how they can utilize technology to help them get where they want to go.

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But the collaborative isn’t only about goal-setting or big-picture concepts — it’s also about real-world projects. Over the course of two days, each city was responsible for the initial development of an action plan for a specific pilot project. The participants worked together in small groups organized around topics like shared mobility, automated vehicles and others to identify what political and policy considerations, financial hurdles, project metrics, and community engagement strategies they’ll need to consider along with what technical assistance needs they have.

“I feel like we walked away with an actionable 12-month plan,” another participant told us.

These cities are eager to ensure that this monumental shift in transportation doesn’t shape their cities without their input and produce a new generation of transportation haves and have-nots. And with so many new questions looming over federal transportation policy, working together to solve these challenges will be crucial.

We had a tremendous two days with these cities and are eager to see what comes next.

Want to know more about smart cities and why all of this matters? Read this post for more background:

Smart cities: why now?

16 cities join T4America’s Smart Cities Collaborative to tackle urban mobility challenges together

In a new collaborative supported by Sidewalk Labs, cities will work together to create policies, pilot emerging technology & share insights to improve transportation in cities small and large.

Washington, DC; New York, NY – Transportation for America (T4A) and Sidewalk Labs announced today the sixteen members of a new T4A Smart Cities Collaborative to explore how technology can improve urban mobility, creating a tangible new opportunity for the scores of ambitious cities that did not win or weren’t eligible for USDOT’s Smart City Challenge. Over the coming year, the collaborative will bring together these cities to tackle the challenges related to implementing smart city policies and projects — sharing best practices and technical assistance, and piloting new programs.

Nearly 60 cities applied to be a part of the collaborative, which will hold its first meeting in Minneapolis on Nov. 9-10, 2016.

“We’re in the midst of the most transformational shift in urban transportation since the start of the interstate era more than 50 years ago. And just like that era, cities have enormous potential to help or harm their residents with the decisions they make,” said James Corless, Director of T4America. “It’s incredibly encouraging to see this long list of cities proactively shaping the future to ensure that this monumental shift in transportation doesn’t shape their cities without their input and produce a new generation of transportation haves and have-nots.”

“We have spent the past several months speaking directly with cities across the country, and what we’ve heard is mobility is a major issue across the board. Cities know that technology offers ways to improve mobility, but exactly how to realize its potential isn’t obvious,” said Sidewalk Labs Chief Policy Officer Rohit T. Aggarwala. “Cities understand that they need to work together, but the question has always been how best to band these municipalities in partnership. This collaborative will be an unprecedented step in unifying these urban areas and accelerate solutions that provide affordable, efficient ways to get around.”

Through the collaborative, the member cities will form working groups that will focus on three core areas:

  • Automated vehicles, and their potential impact on urban transit systems, congestion, transportation equity, and the environment.
  • Shared mobility, and how it could help cities provide equitable, affordable, and more sustainable transportation choices.
  • Performance measures and data analytics, and how to use data to manage complex transportation networks and achieve transit equity and environmental goals.

Initially, the cities will participate in a variety of information-sharing meetings, both with each other and with industry-leading transportation experts. From there, the groups will receive direct technical assistance, create pilot programs, and share results with the rest of the collaborative to drive best practices across the country.

The collaborative is the result of the partnership T4A and Sidewalk Labs announced in June to engage cities in developing efficient and affordable transportation options for all. The partnership builds on T4A’s experience collaborating with state and local governments to develop forward-looking transportation and land-use policy, combined with Sidewalk Labs’ expertise working with cities to develop digital technology that solves big urban problems.

The sixteen cities participating in the collaborative are:

  • Austin, TX
  • Denver, CO
  • Centennial, CO
  • Chattanooga, TN
  • Lone Tree, CO
  • Los Angeles, CA
  • Miami-Dade County, FL
  • Madison, WI
  • Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN
  • Nashville, TN
  • Portland, OR
  • Sacramento, CA
  • San Francisco, CA
  • San Jose, CA
  • Seattle, WA
  • Washington, DC

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ABOUT TRANSPORTATION FOR AMERICA:
Transportation for America is an alliance of elected, business and civic leaders from communities across the country, united to ensure that states and the federal government step up to invest in smart, homegrown, locally-driven transportation solutions — because these are the investments that hold the key to our future economic prosperity. T4America is a program of Smart Growth America.

ABOUT SIDEWALK LABS:
Sidewalk Labs is an urban innovation company that works with cities to develop technology that solves big urban problems across transportation, housing, energy, and data-driven management. It’s the result of a partnership between Alphabet and Daniel Doctoroff, the former Deputy Mayor of Economic Development and Rebuilding for the City of New York and the CEO of Bloomberg LP.

For interview requests, please contact:

Applications are open for T4America’s smart city collaborative

Today, Transportation for America opened the application process for our national, multi-city collaborative with Sidewalk Labs. This partnership, announced back on June 1st, will help cities use technology to meet their pressing transportation challenges.

sidewalk lab music

When USDOT kicked off the Smart Cities Challenge and over 70 cities from across the country scrambled to put together applications detailing their smart city ambitions, it was clear that Secretary Anthony Foxx at USDOT had tapped into something vital unfolding in cities of all sizes across the country.

As we read through all 78 of those applications this spring, one thing became very clear: It’s really hard to put a finger on precisely what a smart city is right now, and what it means to be one. There are cities that have been opening up massive sets of municipal data to citizens for years allowing them to create apps or brainstorm ways to improve government services. Some cities have found new ways to use their own data to determine where transit services should be provided, but aren’t, and adjust accordingly. Some cities are testing partnerships with shared mobility providers to experiment with adding transit coverage or providing valuable last-mile connections.

Yet there are other cities that are clearly just dipping their toes into this arena, and are swept up to some degree by the availability of the grant money or enamored with technology as an end unto itself — often not yet certain of the specific problem that they’re trying to solve.

So what’s the norm? Where should a city be in relation to their peers?

To help establish a baseline and get a more organized sense of where cities are in this evolution, we’ve also distributed a State of the Smart City benchmarking survey to gather data from cities on the technologies and strategies they currently employ along with the tools they have at their disposal. T4America will use this survey as a baseline to measure the implementation of smart city technologies at both the national level and for individual cities in the coming years.

Whether or not your city is planning to apply to join the collaborative, you can help us get a better picture of your community by completing the State of the Smart City survey.

Our new national collaborative will bring cities into several working groups, each focusing on one aspect of a smart city, such as how to create a level playing field where a tiny startup of students can compete with a massive technology firm to create a new civic mobility app, ensure that new mobility options also serve the unbanked or low-income communities, or deploy congestion pricing in a way that helps provide more transportation options to more people.

The cities in the collaborative will work to develop pilot projects, share successes and failures, and engage with one another to come up with new, creative solutions to the problems at hand. If you and your city are interested in participating in the Smart City Collaborative, please fill out a short application here.

As we build this collaborative over the next few months and hear back from cities that are on varying points of this spectrum, we’ll be starting to coalesce around an idea of what a “Smart City” truly is. We have ideas, but no one has 100 percent of the answers at this point as this idea evolves, and cities should likely be skeptical of anyone who says they do.

We think a smart city is one that uses technology to discover where people are going and where they want and need to go, learns from that information and uses it to create safer, more efficient, and affordable transportation options that accelerate access to opportunity for all of their residents.

Those are our thoughts, but we’re eager to hear your feedback as well. 

So what do you think a smart city is? What does a smart city look like? How would you define one in a sentence or two?

Sidewalk Labs and Transportation for America Announce Partnership to Help Cities Solve Local Transportation Challenges with Emerging Technology

press release

Outreach Effort to More Than 70 Cities Will Help Cities Get Smarter About Transportation and Share Best Practices on Creating “Connected Streets”  

Sidewalk Labs and Transportation for America (T4A) announced today a new partnership to engage cities in developing efficient and affordable transportation options for all. The two organizations will work with dozens of U.S. cities to define how technology can help them meet their pressing transportation challenges. This collaborative will help local leaders get more people where they want to go quickly and affordably, enhancing livability and sustainability, by harnessing powerful data and the availability of new digital tools.

The partnership will build on Sidewalk Labs’ expertise working with cities to develop digital technology that solves big urban problems, combined with Transportation for America’s experience collaborating with state and local governments to develop forward-looking transportation and land use policy. Through the partnership, T4A will launch an in-depth study on the state of current transportation policy and technology in American cities, and build a peer-learning collaborative of city leaders to define and design the “connected streets” of the future.

Connected streets will advance the concept of complete streets into the digital realm. Just as the complete streets framework gives local leaders the policy tools to improve the safety and equity of streets for all users across all modes, connected streets offers tech-enabled interventions that can support local efforts to move people more seamlessly, efficiently, and affordably. Connected streets can help create a truly balanced, multimodal approach to urban transportation that expands access to job opportunities and improves quality of life across a city.

“Too often there’s a disconnect between tech interventions and transportation outcomes. We’ve seen cities embrace a more holistic approach in our collaboration with the U.S. DOT Smart City Challenge, but it’s important to broaden that discussion to all the other cities looking for better tools to improve mobility,” said Anand Babu, COO of Sidewalk Labs. “By drawing on Transportation for America’s long experience working within local communities, we can focus the conversation on cities’ goals and break down the divide between technologists and city leaders. And as a result, we’ll build a network where best practices and ideas for solving these problems through emerging technologies can be shared among cities across the country.”

“In the course of providing technical assistance to local communities over the past few years, we continually hear from cities who want better tools to tackle the same problems of congestion, growing commutes, and access to affordable transportation options,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America, a project of Smart Growth America. “Working with Sidewalk Labs, we can help local leaders learn about the possibilities presented by emerging technologies, but also help first codify what they want to achieve in terms of transportation equity, reliability, and access, so the technology can be put to best use.”

Sidewalk Labs announced in March that it is building a new transportation coordination platform called Flow, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Transportation and seven finalist cities from the DOT’s Smart City Challenge. The Flow team has met with all the finalists to understand the challenges they face and what tools might help them meet their goals for creating efficient, sustainable, equitable, and safe transportation systems. The winner of the Smart City Challenge will be announced in June, and will receive Flow at no cost.

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ABOUT TRANSPORTATION FOR AMERICA:

Transportation for America is an alliance of elected, business and civic leaders from communities across the country, united to ensure that states and the federal government step up to invest in smart, homegrown, locally-driven transportation solutions — because these are the investments that hold the key to our future economic prosperity. T4America is a program of Smart Growth America.

ABOUT SIDEWALK LABS:

Sidewalk Labs is an urban innovation company that works with cities to develop technology that solves big urban problems across transportation, housing, energy, and data-driven management. It’s the result of a partnership between Alphabet and Daniel Doctoroff, the former Deputy Mayor of Economic Development and Rebuilding for the City of New York and the CEO of Bloomberg LP.

Though not selected as finalists, other Smart Cities Challenge applicants still hopeful to make their plans a reality

Though 77 cities will leave USDOT’s Smart Cities competition empty-handed later this summer, T4America is looking to help many of those cities advance the great ideas still deserving of help.

Seven cities were selected two weekends ago as semifinalists in the first-ever Smart City Challenge from USDOT, a competition that will eventually award $40 million to just one of those seven cities to help them rethink urban mobility, powered by innovative new technologies. Which means that 77 of the 78 will ultimately walk away empty-handed without any funding. (Save for the $100,000 that the seven semifinalists received to further develop their initial proposals.)

After reaching out over the last few months to all of the cities that applied, T4America held an invite-only conference call earlier this week to offer advice and support for advancing parts of their applications forward; applications with interesting responses to the question of how to rethink the future of transportation within cities of all sizes.

USDOT was a guest on our webinar, offering ideas, suggestions about other possibly little-known federal programs that can be used to advance certain ideas, or more information about grant programs like TIGER or the new freight grant program that can meet the need.

One of the most interesting things that USDOT shared with everyone was this graphic showing a list of 13 challenges facing cities. (There are certainly others, but this is fascinating summary of some of the most pressing.)

USDOT smart cities — challenges for cities

Win or lose the Smart Cities Challenge, these issues above are ones that cities of all size face today or will be facing in the future for years to come as the landscape radically changes due to the impact of new technologies, consumer preferences and new mobility options.

We at Transportation for America are excited to find ways to support these other cities that are eager, engaged and motivated to become smarter cities and ask big questions about the future of mobility in their communities. This week was a small step forward, and we’re hopeful for more chances to help support cities that are ready to rethink the status quo when it comes to transportation.

Are you associated with one of the cities that applied (or chose not to for whatever reason) and missed the invite-only conference call this week? Email us at smartcities@t4america.org

“How Do We Become the Department of Yes?”

A new T4America member is hoping to successfully leverage the exploding landscape of new mobility options to meet more of their goals for encouraging smart development, reduce the amount of required single-occupant car trips and create a better city for tomorrow along the way.

This is a post originally published last week on our member portal especially for T4America members. Would you like to find out more about joining as a member? 

Tell Me More

Scott Kubly, Seattle DOT

Scott Kubly, Seattle DOT

At the Intelligent Transportation Society of America Symposium at University of Washington in Seattle back in July, I had the privilege of hearing Seattle DOT Director Scott Kubly speak to the challenges local governments are facing as they attempt to adapt to new forms of mobility exploding all over the country — ride-for-hire services like Lyft and Uber, carshare services like Zipcar and Car2Go, and bikeshare. (Seattle is a new T4America member.)

I was impressed by Scott’s ability to step back and look at the whole picture in the context of the City of Seattle’s goals.

Seattle is growing quickly. There simply isn’t enough physical space for business as usual, and the city is adjusting accordingly. In the last 4 years, downtown Seattle added 40,000 employees, made possible in part because they planned for, and achieved, a drop in single occupant vehicle mode-share from 35 percent to 31 percent.

New mobility options are often sprouting so fast that it’s difficult for local governments (and regulations) to keep up, but they present a great opportunity for Seattle given the geometric constraints on physical space. “As we keep growing, we need to keep setting that mode-share target lower and lower and get people to use different types of modes, and we need to look at new options,” he said.

Scott suggests re-imagining departments of transportation less as infrastructure providers, and more as systems integrators whose actions are driven by the idea of improving the user’s experience.

As some examples of where that sort of integration to improve overall mobility for users, Scott pointed out the big return on investment for bike-share, and the potential for Uber and Lyft to provide more affordable late-night service than transit can accomplish.

The advent of Uber and Lyft certainly raises questions about drivers’ wages, equitable access, and the risks of congestion caused by oversupply of rides-for-hire that must all be addressed, but in a call to move the ball forward, Scott asks this:

“How do we become the department of yes? How do the public and private sectors work together and say ‘this is what our shared goal is’, so when there is a new service with no regulatory framework, how do we say ‘yeah that’s a cool idea and let’s figure it out.’”

Seattle seems to be figuring out a lot, and we’re excited to have them on board as a new T4A member.

It’s also worth reading this Scott Kubly interview with startup incubator 1776 from earlier this year. -Ed.

Cities are “laboratories of innovation.” Should they have more control of transportation funding?

Flickr photo by Cameron Adams http://www.flickr.com/photos/cameronadams/8091195427/sizes/l/
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Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed takes a ride on a section of the Beltline trail — one of the transportation innovations that Atlanta is most proud of. Flickr photo by Cameron Adams

That was the implied assertion made by Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed in a widely-circulated op-ed last week on Huffington Post.

I believe the future of solving much of our nation’s transportation problems lies within the vision and leadership we find in our cities. Providing the resources and decision-making authority increasingly to cities and their regions will yield enormous benefits not only to the nation’s mobility but to the returning health of our nation’s economy.

But is it accurate to paint today’s debate over this point as the same “age-old tug of war between state transportation officials and their city-level counterparts” about doling out money, as National Journal did in a question to their panel of transportation experts? Or is the problem more that we’re entering a new age of transportation needs armed with the last era’s transportation policies?

Our James Corless weighed in on the National Journal’s experts blog:

…We have a federal transportation establishment that is still geared toward last century’s primary challenge: to build an interstate highway system to facilitate long distance travel between centers of commerce. This century’s challenge is to keep people and goods moving within those ever-burgeoning centers, even as the existing system shows its age. If these places fail, our economy fails. It really is as simple as that.

Read the full question and comment over at National Journal.