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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.

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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?

National media applauds T4America and Sidewalk Labs partnership

We recently announced that we’re teaming with Sidewalk Labs to help cities strategically use data and technology to develop better transportation options for all. With USDOT’s Smart Cities challenge wrapping up in the next month with the selection of just one winner, our collaborative will engage the 77 other hopeful cities and provide guidance on ways to proceed thoughtfully and intentionally with their ambitious plans. The announcement of our new partnership was met with approbation and excitement—take a look at some of the excerpts below:

“But what about the dozens of cities who submitted ideas [to USDOT’s Smart Cities contest] but didn’t win? Whose proposals are now collecting dust? Sidewalk’s collaboration with T4A is tailored to that problem…To understand why Sidewalk wants to work with T4A, it helps to know a bit about its history. T4A is actually part of Smart Growth America, a nonprofit that helped popularize a planning idea called “complete streets,” a set of design and policy recommendations that, in a quietly revolutionary way, suggest that streets should be designed not just for cars, but for buses, cyclists, walkers, and more. Sidewalk Labs sees [T4A] as the perfect partner to develop the next generation of recommendations, which are digital: “connected streets.” – Fastco Design

“The collaboration will tap into the superpowers of each entity. Sidewalk Labs has digital technology expertise, while the Transportation of America has experience working with state and local governments to develop transportation and land use policy. Transportation for America, or T4A, is an alliance of elected, business, and civic leaders from across the United States.” – Fortune.com

“Sidewalk Labs will bring the tech, as the group’s already developing platforms for connected cities, like Flow, which lets cities aggregate and analyze data from multiple sources such as sensors, cameras and apps. T4A’s bringing the muscle, as it already has experience working with cities and their governments, experience tech companies don’t necessarily have. T4A will develop a study on the current state of transportation and tech, to help guide cities to answers for transportation issues.” – CNET

“Helping cities tackle transportation problems with emerging technology is the thrust behind a partnership announced Wednesday between Sidewalk Labs and Transportation for America.” ­ – Route Fifty

“Transportation For America has a vision that aligns with the goals of Sidewalk Labs: Both aim to transform urban areas big and small to better serve the needs of its citizens with an emphasis on infrastructure within communities, rather than the highways that connect them.” – Inverse

Check out additional coverage in Next City and Curbed.

Empowering cities to shape their urban mobility future, a Q&A with T4America’s James Corless and Russell Brooks

In an era of constantly emerging technology and mobility solutions, cities face a critical choice—they can either play a role in shaping the technology to accomplish their goals, or passively be transformed by it. Our new partnership with Sidewalk Labs will work with dozens of U.S. cities to thoughtfully and intentionally use emerging technologies to meet their most pressing transportation challenges. By harnessing powerful data and new digital tools, cities have the potential to develop efficient and affordable transportation options for all.

In addition to yesterday’s big announcement, we sat down with Eric Jaffe of Sidewalk Labs for a Q&A about the role cities can play in building connected streets, and T4America’s plan to make it happen. Read an excerpt below featuring James Corless, Director of Transportation for America, and Russell Brooks, Director of T4A’s Smart Cities initiative. The full Q&A is available on Sidewalk Talk.

Let’s start with the basics. What do you mean by “connected streets”?

CORLESS: Connected streets is similar to complete streets in as much as it’s not a checklist. It’s an approach. In complete streets, it’s an approach to actually designing a street and a network of streets that works for everyone. If this is the next generation, in connected streets, it’s really about using data and technology to make sure that transportation systems work for everybody and works for cities — to move people regardless of the mode of transportation seamlessly, quickly, efficiently, and affordably.

What are the benefits of connected streets for city residents and communities?

CORLESS: If cities aren’t shaping and driving this conversation, we could make problems worse. But if we do drive the conversation, and cities actually shape this proliferation of technology and services, then I do think we’ll going to be able to reduce the divide between what I’d call the transportation haves and have-nots. If you’re on a fixed income or work a late shift, you’re going to be able to actually get home faster, more affordably. You’re going to be able to connect to more opportunity, be able to get your kids to child care much more easily than you could before. I do think we need to remember from a consumer perspective that if we can get this right and we can empower cities with the tools, the authority, and the funding, we’re going to make transportation networks work for everybody, regardless of income, age, and ability. That’s a promise of connected streets.

T4A spends a lot of time on the ground with local governments. How do you counsel them in terms of getting ready to partner with the private sector in ways that might be unfamiliar to them, but that need to be productive for everyone to gain the advantages of these technologies?

BROOKS: I think part of it is educating the cities around the possibilities. As I’ve been talking with cities around the Smart City Challenge, I think some of them don’t understand that they have that lever of power, or the extent of what’s possible. I think that’s a really big part of it. I think it’s helping them generate the partnerships from the local community to actually drive that change. Which is something we’ve been doing for a long time. When it comes to the work we’re doing building consensus and coalition in local communities. And helping them identify those outcomes and needs, so they understand that technology isn’t the goal but it is the tool.

T4America is partnering with Sidewalk Labs to help cities thoughtfully use technology to solve their transportation challenges

With 77 hopeful cities leaving USDOT’s Smart Cities challenge empty-handed after the winner is announced later this month, we’re excited to announce a new partnership with Sidewalk Labs to help those cities and others develop efficient and affordable transportation options for all by thoughtfully and intentionally using emerging technologies. 

t4america sidewalk labs partnership

If you’re not familiar with Sidewalk Labs, they’re a relatively new city-focused company developing technology to solve big urban problems like transportation, housing, energy, and data-driven management. It was formed by an affiliation between Alphabet (Google’s new umbrella company) and Daniel Doctoroff, who has firsthand experience with these challenges as a local official himself, serving in the Bloomberg administration as the former Deputy Mayor of Economic Development and Rebuilding for the City of New York.

At T4America, we’ve been spending the last few years shifting away from a sole focus on federal policy and have expanded into equipping local leaders at all levels to find ways to get more people where they want to go quickly and affordably. And now, over the course of the next year, our two organizations will work with dozens of U.S. cities to better define how technology can help them meet their pressing transportation challenges by harnessing powerful data and the availability of new digital tools.

Here’s what Anand Babu, COO of Sidewalk Labs, had to say about our new partnership in our joint press release:

“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. 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.”

Cities can’t be passive right now as technology and new mobility solutions are combining to change the landscape of cities almost overnight. Cities can either help shape the technology transforming their cities and accomplish their goals, or have themselves be shaped by it. There’s no real third option. It’s crucial for cities to know what kind of city they want to be and set some tangible goals before pursuing technology solutions.

Any dog can be a guide dog if you don’t know where you’re going, right? And if you don’t know where you’re going, any technology will get you there.

“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,” said T4America Director James Corless in today’s release.

With the Smart Cities Challenge from USDOT wrapping up in the next month with the selection of a winner, 77 other cities that miss out on the $40 million will be left with only the proposal they crafted and their ambitions. Money or no, many of those cities will be serious about finding ways to move their plans forward. In addition, many cities may be navigating a range of third-party private providers and other companies at their doorstep selling products or offering solutions as a result of the competition.

This partnership will not only allow us to provide guidance to cities to proceed thoughtfully, but even more importantly, help them to learn from each other as they set goals and start to figure out how to intentionally move forward with their ambitious plans.

We’re excited to team up with Sidewalk Labs to find yet another way to support smart, local, homegrown transportation plans that will help move more people more quickly and affordably.

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.