technology Archives - Transportation For America

Eliminating driver error doesn’t work. What does? Part I

That's the temperature not the speed limit sign

Billions of dollars in new federal highway funding are flowing into road safety programs, so we wanted to review the research on which interventions can save lives on America’s roads—and which are failing to do so. All the available data tell us one thing clearly: strategies that fail to accept human error and reduce speeds also fail to reduce road casualties.

Much of the research in this post comes from a capstone project on transportation safety and enforcement by Mae Hanzlik, SGA Senior Program Manager of Thriving Communities, completed during her time at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Around 40,000 people died on America’s roadways in 2020. Many state and local departments of transportation, encouraged by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), choose to address this crisis by educating drivers, increasing the enforcement of traffic laws, and promoting automated driving technology. But as Smart Growth America’s Dangerous by Design report notes, year after year, traffic fatalities continue to rise. Each of these approaches has its place, but they all have something in common: they focus on addressing human error, and they fail to acknowledge that mistakes are an inherent element of driving.

This fundamental misunderstanding is fatal, leading to higher speeds and more roadway fatalities, increasingly in recent years. We’ve pulled together all the available data to set the record straight. Strategies that fail to accept human error and reduce speeds also fail to reduce road casualties.

This post is the first installment of a series on road safety programs. For design solutions that can make mistakes less fatal, watch for part II and III.

Education

One of NHTSA and state DOTs’ favorite traffic safety interventions is public awareness and education campaigns like the ones below. These types of slogans can be found plastered across billboards along most state highways and interstates, begging drivers to stop speeding. Advertisements like these are often accompanied by direct outreach through new driver education programs in high schools across the country.

Drive fast finish last ad — *Image from NHTSA*

Slow the fast down ad — *Image from Go Safely California*

Some public awareness campaigns, like those that encourage parents to secure their young children in child safety seats while driving, can be effective. But broader, more vague efforts to get drivers to slow down, make bicyclists wear helmets, or have pedestrians wear high-visibility vests have failed to reduce roadway injuries and fatalities.

State and federal regulators seem to believe that drawing a public connection between behavior and safety will encourage safer driver behavior. But a sweeping 2008 report from the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) found that “information-only programs are unlikely to work, especially when most of the audience already knows what to do.” Drivers know what unsafe behavior looks like, but on roadways that are designed to allow for speeding, doing so is often the most convenient choice.

New driver education programs, despite being much better targeted at the needs of their audiences than general public awareness campaigns, are not much more effective. In a University of North Carolina evaluation of North Carolina’s Kindergarten-9th grade child traffic education program, researchers found that despite a “significant increase in students’ traffic safety knowledge…behavioral observations failed to reflect this increased knowledge.”

Researchers have found the same phenomenon to be true for older teenagers in licensure programs, whose lessons learned in driver education programs have limited impact when they encounter roadway designs that incentivize unsafe driving. This stark difference between what young drivers are taught about driving the speed limit and the reality of roads built for speed creates a dangerous contradiction, which NHTSA itself readily admitted in a review of local programs. Of course, driver education programs are necessary to introduce new drivers to the rules of the road. But leaning on them as catch-all solutions to skyrocketing road fatalities is likely to be ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst.

Public safety awareness and education campaigns, often defended as benign public services, require a lot of cash. They cost federal and state agencies millions of dollars a year, money that could be better spent on evidence-based approaches to road safety.

Enforcement

Law enforcement plays a major role in today’s traffic safety paradigm. Police reports are the basis of most traffic violation data. And though cities like Washington, D.C. are trying to take traffic enforcement out of the hands of police officers by giving it to other agencies or automating it, most areas around the country require all moving violations to be enforced by uniformed, armed police officers.

This approach often harms the communities it seeks to protect. Any limited ability that law enforcement has to make our roads safer is diminished by the harm that it causes in the process. Law enforcement officers killed over 400 non-violent drivers and passengers during routine traffic stops between 2016 and 2021. These impacts fall disproportionately on Black people.

Police reports are not accurate reflections of the causes of vehicle crashes. By nature, police reports focus on individual behavior, aiming to attribute blame to people involved. They fail to acknowledge the role of road design and vehicle size in crashes. For example, if a pedestrian is struck by a vehicle while crossing the street mid-block because the next crossing is a mile away, the police will often blame the pedestrian for not obeying the law. These faulty data lead policymakers to design solutions that try to correct for individual behavior rather than trying to better understand behavior as a symptom of a larger problem.

Organizations like the American Public Health Association and the Center for Policing Equity have called for and suggested more equitable forms of traffic enforcement. New ideas like these are worth considering.

Read a Dangerous by Design supplement on this topic, from The Fines and Fees Justice Center.

Technology

diagram of safety features in GM vehicles — *Image from a 2019 General Motors/University of Michigan safety study*

Since the invention of the automobile, improved vehicle safety features have saved countless lives. But most of these advancements, like seatbelts, airbags, and frontal and side impact testing have focused on the safety of those inside the vehicle in the event of a crash, doing little to prevent crashes themselves.

With skyrocketing fatalities among vulnerable road users (like pedestrians, cyclists, and wheelchair users), though, NHTSA and other authorities have championed some new driving systems, namely Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Automated Driving Systems (ADS), as solutions. ADAS and ADS are technologies that can help drivers detect road obstacles and avoid them before the driver can react themselves. Companies like General Motors have even touted their features as a step toward a “vision of zero crashes.”

But the reality of these systems is a lot more complicated. Most vehicles equipped with ADAS or ADS allow drivers to disable those systems. A study by J.D. Power indicates that many drivers are opting to disable their ADAS or ADS out of annoyance. But even when ADAS or ADS are active, their safety benefits are dubious. These systems routinely fail to detect the presence of children, as well as people of color and those with disabilities. Children, people of color, and people with disabilities are far more likely to be killed as pedestrians, so these advanced driving systems have the potential to deepen the inequities on America’s roads.

Tesla’s ADAS/ADS systems, some of the most popular on the road today, have resulted in hundreds of road fatalities each year. California’s Department of Transportation had to confront Tesla after that company’s ADAS systems, often advertised as fully autonomous vehicles, resulted in several manslaughter charges being filed against drivers that abdicated their driving responsibilities to their “autonomous” systems.

So without significantly more regulations on ADAS/ADS, their benefits will be minimal and they might actually be counterproductive, since human error is nearly impossible to eliminate from the act of driving, at least with current technology. Policymakers should consider this fact before entrusting the safety of American roadways to new technologies.

So what?

The widely-accepted paradigm of changing driver behavior through education, enforcement, and technology is not making road users safer. So wherever these strategies are currently being implemented, policymakers and regulators should seriously consider whether they are accomplishing desired safety outcomes. Advocates should persistently ask their state and local governments: “Where’s the evidence that you’ve been able to reduce driver error?” Most of the time, the answer will be: “There is none.”

But calls to reduce these ineffective measures are likely to be ignored without alternatives that actually reduce roadway crashes. By accepting the fact that humans will make mistakes, we can plan for those mistakes and make all road users safer by preventing them. Stay tuned for part two and three of this blog series to see how design interventions can get at those solutions, and further advice for advocates who want to push for change.

11/2/22 edit: A previous version of this post erroneously cited a University of North Carolina study as an evaluation from the Transportation Research Board. This post has been updated.

SMART grants could make transportation smarter, or not

The Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) competitive grant program offers communities funds to apply new technologies to solve their transportation challenges. How smart this program ends up being depends on whether it treats the application of new technology as a tactic, or as a goal in and of itself.

In the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), Congress authorized $1 billion over five years for the Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) grant program. This program seeks to fund pilot projects where smart technologies and systems are innovatively used to solve transportation problems by guiding applicants through a two-stage process. In the grant’s first stage, selected applicants will receive funds to do planning and build the partnerships necessary to create a “scaled-up demonstration of the concept” with funds from the grant’s second stage.

The SMART grant is another chapter in an age-old story: looking to technology to solve our transportation challenges. However, in the materials introducing the grant, we can see that there are two perspectives to tell this story from: one from the driver’s seat of a personal vehicle, the other from the sidewalk, bike lane, bus stop, and train station. The first perspective can be found in the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), and the second in the illustrative use cases listed on the grant’s website.

From the first point of view, the SMART grant will improve transportation by advancing unproven technologies that ignore the root causes of our safety, state of repair, and emissions difficulties. From the second, this grant can use well-tested solutions that complement efforts to redesign streets and invest in modes of transportation besides cars to improve how we all get around.

Eligible projects vs. illustrative use cases

The eligible projects listed in the NOFO center around technological advancements for automobiles. Based on section titles like “Coordinated Automation,” “Connected Vehicles,” and “Smart Technology Traffic Signals,” you might be forgiven for thinking that the only projects DOT would entertain are those that intend to pave the way for fleets of self-driving vehicles. Thankfully, you would be mistaken.

The illustrative use cases harness technology to improve the experience of pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users. They are broken up by benefits, such as improving safety and reliability, lowering emissions and improving resiliency, and integrating data and sensors into signaling and decision making systems.

*On-demand right-of-way conversions could give pedestrians and cyclists more opportunities to safely cross the street. Flickr photo by James Schwartz.*

For a safer, more reliable transportation system, USDOT suggests giving transit and emergency vehicles priority signals at traffic lights, automating street sweeping vehicles for sidewalks, and implementing active detection technology for railroad crossings. Technology can reduce emissions and enhance resiliency by making room for modes of travel beyond personal vehicles, through actions like improving last-mile delivery and sidewalk accessibility. USDOT also proposes ways technology can help make streets safer and more accessible for all road users. On-demand right-of-way conversions could give pedestrians and cyclists more opportunities to cross the street, and sensors can monitor the quality of signage and crosswalks to help transportation planners make needed changes.

When combined with possible projects to improve equity and access—such as more efficiently delivering reduced-fare transit to those who qualify and adding automated wheelchair securement systems to transit vehicles—these illustrative cases would increase the reliability, frequency, and accessibility of transit trips. Efforts like these could also improve the safety of everybody walking and rolling, by changing both the physical infrastructure of our streets and sidewalks, as well as the signals that guide how we walk, roll, and drive through them.

What could be

These are also by no means a constrictive list of potential applications. By applying the spirit of the illustrative use cases, the categories of eligible projects have a bounty of opportunities for bettering the everyday experiences of pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders.

*Retractable bollards in Cambridge, England. Photo by Clarence Eckerson.*

People walking and rolling to their destinations could especially benefit from what the USDOT calls “Intelligent, Sensor-Based Infrastructure.” By looking at examples from across the country and the world, we can see how this technology can be used to improve the safety of vulnerable users instead of reasserting the dominance of cars. This type of eligible project could include retractable bollards that support shared streets (check out this Streetsblog article for examples of retractable and moveable bollards in New Orleans, LA and Cambridge, England).

That same category of eligible project might also cover speed governors, a technology that has been available for over a century to limit the speed of cars and will soon be mandatory in some way, shape, or form in all vehicles on the road in the European Union. Furthermore, the requirement that vehicles retrofitted as part of the SMART grant be publicly owned or controlled sets up perfectly those who control public fleets to install such technology in their vehicles. New York City is soon to implement this strategy on thousands of non-emergency vehicles under its control. Combined, these applications of the grant would make walking and biking safer through design of both streets themselves and the vehicles on them.

Transit and rail could also see significant benefits from SMART technologies. “Coordinated Automation” could cover the type of fully automated subway systems—both built from scratch and renovated lines over a century old—that are in operation and under construction around the globe. In addition, this automation requires upgrading signals and sensor systems to ensure that individual trains are more closely connected to one another, a potential application of the “Connected Vehicles” and “Intelligent, Sensor-Based Infrastructure” sections. The “Smart Grid” category could apply to the electrification of rail lines, and given that freight trains carry a significant portion of goods in the United States, their electrification would reduce emissions and the length of the supply chain.

The bottom line: It’s not the tech, it’s how we use it

All of these potential applications are no less innovative technologies than the auto-oriented ones described as eligible activities in the NOFO. In fact, their effective implementation in a wide variety of settings might point to them being more groundbreaking. As reflected in the NOFO’s selection criteria, “revolutionizing transportation” is about not just novelty. It is about proof of concept, scalability, and being appropriately aimed at the particular problem. By these measures, adequately-funded incremental solutions like the signal improvements being installed to more than double speeds on parts of New York City’s subway are exactly the kind of projects applicants should be submitting and USDOT should be encouraging. (For the system’s millions of users per day, speeds are more than doubling in some cases, all at a fraction of the cost it would take to do so for any segment of road.)

And yet, the NOFO’s listed eligible activities reflect the last century’s status quo of transportation policy in the United States. Instead of centering communities’ transportation goals and asking what technologies and other policies could help achieve them, these “technological areas” presuppose that hypothetical fleets of connected, autonomous, battery-electric cars will solve all potential problems.

The effectiveness of the SMART grant will depend on whether or not DOT continues to view cars as the unimpeachable mobility solution without actually asking what problem it is trying to solve. Per the eligible activities listed in the grant’s NOFO, DOT is still not asking this question. But based on the illustrative use cases, DOT knows that achieving tangible benefits from the SMART program won’t come from trying to move more personal vehicles, but using technology to improve the mobility of all road users, especially people outside of a car.

Because this is the first year that the grant is being administered, and USDOT will require Stage 2 applicants to be recipients of Stage 1 grants, only Stage 1 grants will be accepted this year. Applications for these planning, prototyping, and partnership-building grants are due by 5 p.m. on November 18, 2022. Their tentative maximum size is $2,000,000, depending on the number and quality of applications submitted, with up to $100,000,000 and no less than $98,000,000 available to distribute.

Transportation for America members have access to exclusive resources that provide further detail on this topic. To view memos and other members-only resources, visit the Member Hub located at t4america.org/members. (Search “Member Hub” in your inbox for the password, or new members can reach out to chris.rall@t4america.org for login details.) Learn more about membership at t4america.org/membership.

If we want equitable smart cities, we need support from philanthropy

A close-up of the handlebars of a Lime electric scooter. The scooter has a small computer screen that reads "Scan to Ride". To the right of the screen is a QR code.

Everyone agrees that smart cities—places that deploy technology to deliver government services and improve quality of life—are the future. City leaders and staff are inundated with these new mobility products but have limited capacity to ensure that they are deployed in ways that lead to equitable and sustainable outcomes. Our director Beth Osborne explains why cities, states, and non-profit actors need philanthropic support to pursue policy research and projects that make equitable, sustainable smart cities a reality.

Close-up of the handlebars of a Lime e-scooter, with “Scan to Ride” written on the scooter’s small computer screen.

Technology holds great promise to help cities monitor and allocate limited public space in ways that ensure safe, equitable, affordable, and sustainable access to jobs and services for everybody, no matter their financial means or physical ability. That’s where we should be heading as a country.

We hear about the endless possibilities of new mobility technology—like flexible curb management tools and smartphone access to shared scooters, bikes, and cars—in the news and at transportation conferences. However, we know that technology can be deployed in ways that allocate these benefits only to those who can pay, or to the wealthiest neighborhoods, or in ways that benefit the technology provider more than the public. Historically, this has been the case. (Think: automobiles, broadband, and more.)

To date, the power has been in the hands of those who develop and sell technology. Most of these companies are trying to produce good results for cities and people. But to survive, they have to pay attention to their bottom line. Plus, businesses can only really support cities that have the capacity to explain what kind of technology they need, and are then able to effectively manage that product once deployed and ensure that it supports broad societal benefits, like equity and sustainability.

That capacity requires funding. Philanthropies are traditionally a powerful force for this support, ensuring that modernization and innovation are used to ways that connect to broad social goals. Philanthropy is already doing this in so many areas, from electric vehicle deployment, transit advocacy, housing affordability, criminal justice reform and more. However, they have been largely absent as cities and non-profits pursue policy research and innovations to make smart cities a reality.

We learned this the hard way. For the past four years, Transportation for America has hosted the Smart Cities Collaborative, a year-long learning cohort where city transportation officials learn from each others’ efforts to use new mobility technologies in order to improve their transportation networks. The Collaborative has been a success: we’ve brought together cities from across the country to discuss approaches to new mobility, curbside management, and city innovation, and have launched several useful resources like the Shared Micromobility Playbook.

However, funding the Collaborative has been difficult. We rely on a combination of fees paid by cash-strapped cities, sponsorship agreements from new mobility and technology companies, and our advocacy peers. While we are so appreciative of the support we received from city participants and our private sector partners, there was a limit to what we could provide Collaborative members with this funding.

It’s simple: there will never exist a world in which a 1:1 swap between philanthropic dollars and private sector dollars works. Private sector companies have their own priorities that rarely, if ever, line up with city government’s priorities. This is of no fault of the private sector companies. But it’s exactly why philanthropies need to provide funding for smart cities projects and research: philanthropic funding that doesn’t need to boost a company’s profit margins.

Our Smart Cities Collaborative, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s short-lived Smart City Challenge (the seed that inspired our Collaborative), and similar non-business projects are where cities, states, the federal government, advocates, and philanthropists need to focus their efforts. Philanthropy will be essential for cities to have the capacity to deploy these technologies in ways that promote equity and sustainability. Without them, the future will inevitably be shaped by shorter term private sector interests and as yet unknown long term outcomes of these interests.

Seven things to know about our last Smart Cities Collaborative meeting of 2018

Last week in Atlanta, Georgia we wrapped up our second cohort of the Smart Cities Collaborative with the fourth meeting of 2018. Once again, staff representing cities, counties, transit agencies and other public sector agencies from 23 cities gathered together to share their experiences and learn how others are using technology and new mobility to become better places to live. Here are seven things we learned or heard last week.

1. Atlanta has a tremendous amount of momentum and potential

As someone said during the week at one point, it’s much harder to affect significant change if you’re not growing, and Atlanta (both the city and the region) have been booming. In fact, after losing population for nearly thirty years, the rate of population growth in the city proper has been near the top of the list within the (massive) region over the last few years. Which also means that the city and region alike are struggling to keep those people moving and well-connected to jobs and opportunity. Atlanta City Councilman Amir Farohki and Planning Director Tim Keane shared a little of the Atlanta story and how they’re working hard to keep people and residents at the center of their city’s efforts to improve mobility and access.

Atlanta Councilman Amir Farokhi, left, and Planning Director Tim Keane speaking to the Collaborative in Atlanta.

One of the best illustrations of that effort is the Atlanta BeltLine, an unprecedented and multi-decade project to add trails, parks and transit to old railroad corridors that form a ring around the core of the city. We were fortunate enough to get out of our meeting space in downtown (provided by the Atlanta Regional Commission) long enough to get a terrific tour of a small portion of the BeltLine, and it’s truly a transformative, people-centered project that will have immense long-term benefits for the city.

Touring the Atlanta BeltLine with staff from Atlanta Beltline near the Ponce City Market on the city’s east side, and on bottom right, touring a just-opened portion of the west side trail with the portion set aside and prepped for transit on the left side of that photo.

2. This was the last meeting of the second cohort of the Collaborative

This meeting wrapped up our second yearlong cohort of the Collaborative, putting a bow on a year that kicked off with 23 cities in Denver way back in the spring, traveled to Seattle over the summer, and then met in Pittsburgh near the beginning of the fall. We’re planning to reflect a little more later on in another post about a year spent learning with these cities, but suffice it to say we covered an immense amount of ground over a net total of only about a full week of time together, and we will miss working together with them every few months.

3. Arcadis sponsored the meeting and made an interesting offer to the cities

Data. Daaaaaaaaata. We all hear about it nonstop.

And it’s true: new technologies and mobility options are providing a wealth of detailed, real-time transportation data to planners and managers across the country. This is creating new opportunities to analyze historical data and better measure operations, understand network conditions and trends, and ultimately help cities make better decisions about how to manage their transportation networks.

But, despite all this wonderful new data, most cities haven’t been able to fully realize its benefits, update their models or turn it into meaningful action. It’s certainly possible to use this data to better understand what’s actually happening on the ground with present and future travel demand, but it’s a tough job for any city—especially the small and mid-sized cities—to do this on their own.

Arcadis, a large global planning and design firm that sponsored this meeting, came with an interesting proposal: They offered a three-month data analytics pilot project of nearly any kind to Collaborative cities for free. But they don’t want to just roll ahead with an idea of their own—they wanted to collaborate and work together with cities to figure out what would be most helpful. So their team, and others from Sam Schwartz Engineering, HR&A and Cityfi, met with the cities in small groups for a half-day to better understand their specific challenges and identify key areas to include in potential data analytics pilots, craft the scope for coordinated pilots across multiple cities, and highlight a few options for differing outcomes in each community.

4. We heard a lot about tangible projects happening on the ground right now

The Collaborative has always intended to be about action and real, tangible efforts to improve mobility and experiment with new technologies and tools. While a lot of our time was taken up with some big picture issues, we also heard short presentations from other cities that are forging ahead about how specific pilot projects are faring, with the hopes of sharing lessons and experience with the other cities that might want follow—or chart their own path.

Dan Hoffman from Gainesville, Florida shared about the automated vehicle shuttle pilot that they’re hoping to get rolling in early 2019. He explained the goals of the pilot, where and how it will operate and all of the hurdles they’ve cleared along the way to try to put a real AV shuttle on the ground connecting downtown and the University of Florida, providing a useful test case for other cities hoping to obtain a NHTSA waiver for AV testing or how to partner effectively with the state.

Robin Aksu from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation also joined us to speak on mobility hubs and how their project is progressing. Robin shared what they’re hoping to accomplish by creating mobility hubs, the focus on primary and satellite hubs and how the design will reflect those differences, and how they’re approaching implementation along with communications, marketing, and their community outreach program.

Mark de la Vergne from Detroit, Michigan joined us to share more about Night Shift and some of their other transit programs. Night Shift is specifically designed for late night and service workers to help connect them to transit and improve access to jobs. Mark shared about the process his team has gone through to conduct engagement and outreach in their local community to not only design the service, but ensure it meets the community’s ongoing needs. Detroit’s pilot is an excellent example of how cities can think about improving access from the ground up with the user’s perspective in mind and without a predetermined solution.

5. Mobility as a Service will definitely be one of 2019’s hottest topics — but it won’t end there

We’ve talked a lot here about Mobility as a Service and that this is where most of the companies like Uber or Lyft or Lime are ultimately headed: not a provider of one specific mode, but a mobility provider allowing multiple options for however you choose to get around. It’s likely part of the reason why Lyft bought Motivate and Uber bought Jump (both are bikesharing companies), and why we’ll continue to see more moves like that in the future.

So what will it mean to roll all these services into a single platform offering multiple modes of travel. Who would control the data? What would the role of the city be in helping to plan for travel demand? How would cities ensure that it improves access for everyone?

We had two representatives from the public side (Warren Logan from San Francisco and Alex Pazuchanics from Pittsburgh) discuss the topic with two reps from the private side (Lilly Shoup from Lyft and Matt Cole from Cubic.) And the back-and-forth that ensued (moderated by Cityfi’s Gabe Klein) was a terrific, open, and honest discussion that pulled no punches.

5. LADOT’s Mobility Data Specification is already shifting the conversation

There have been a lot of conversations over the past year about LA DOT’s Mobility Data Specification (MDS) and how cities can better use data to actively manage their operations. Starting with shared active transportation services operating in Los Angeles, Marcel Porras from LADOT shared more about their short- and long-term goals along with the topic of how cities manage the right-of-way today physically and how they will need to manage it in a digital future.

Apparent from the beginning of the conversation was significant interest from the participants to use MDS in their communities to accomplish similar goals. And, there was also a stated desire to work with Los Angeles to further co-create and build out MDS to help manage the other challenges they’re facing such as managing curb space, carsharing, ridesourcing and eventually automated vehicles.

One of the most poignant parts of the conversation was a deep dive into how MDS is being administered and governed today, how cities might work together to evolve MDS into a national standard, and how a governance structure might take shape that could foster its development long into the future. It was one of the best conversations we’ve had in the Collaborative this year and highlighted the growing need for cities to evolve their structures, capacities and capabilities as data management becomes paramount for mobility management.

6. We turned the tables and tossed the private companies into the Shark Tank

Cities get pitched all day long from private companies and providers. But it’s rarely in a forum where these maxed-out city staff can really engage in a thoughtful way and certainly not one where they can benefit from the expertise of their colleagues from other cities. So we tried to turn the tables a little bit and take a page from TV by creating the Smart Cities Shark Tank where private companies were given ten minutes to pitch a panel of reps from a range of cities about Mobility as a Service and curb space management solutions, and then take some tough questions from the panel as they tried to assess whether it would be a good fit for their cities. And then the panels huddled to evaluate the presentations and pick a “winner” with the best pitch for the cities.

Photos from the Smart Cities Shark Tank, including a picture of the location at Monday Night Garage on the BeltLine in West End.

The night was a lot of fun but it was also a useful exercise that forced the private companies to meet the cities on their terms and also allowed the cities to tap into the expertise of their colleagues from across the country—something they don’t typically get to do when one of these companies shows up in their office with a pitch.

Thanks to the International Parking & Mobility Institute for helping host the Shark Tank.

7. Year two is done, and we’re already looking ahead to year three

It’s hard to believe we’re already wrapping up the second yearlong cohort of the Collaborative, but we’re already looking ahead to another cohort of cities for year three in 2019.

We would never have been able to make the Collaborative happen without the hard work and leadership of Russ Brooks, who has been T4America’s Director of Smart Cities for the past three years (and has been part of T4America in some fashion for seven years in total.) He helped conceive of the program and pull together the initial group of cities that met on a fairly surreal day in Minneapolis after the 2016 presidential election, and he’s contributed his blood, sweat, and tears to build the relationships required to bring almost 150 participants from 27 different cities together throughout the first two years—and the private industry—to the table for such a productive and useful forum.

We’re especially grateful for the representatives from the 23 cities who came to one or more of these meetings this year and contributed their time and their wisdom and made the Collaborative, well, truly collaborative!

We’re actively looking for the next Director of Smart Cities to guide year three, and we’re hoping for someone with some experience on the ground within a city or agency to run the show. Read the job description here.

The second cohort of the Smart Cities Collaborative at our first 2018 meeting in Denver, Colorado.

Kicking off the first year of the Collaborative in Minneapolis on November 7, 2016.

Fundamentally flawed bill to govern automated vehicles springs back to life

A Senate bill that would leave cities, states, and the public in the dark while handing the keys to the self-driving auto industry has returned in the 11th hour, with the Senate considering a move to expedite its passage by attaching it to a huge must-pass aviation bill. (Updated: 9/18/2018)

NTSB investigators in Arizona examining the automated Volvo operated by Uber that killed a pedestrian. Photo by the NTSB.

Update (9/18/2018): Bloomberg reported today that the AV Start Act would NOT be attached to the FAA authorization bill, after a decision made by committee chairman Sen. John Thune. While the bill is still not dead, that likely ends the chance of passage anytime soon. Thanks to all of you who called or wrote your Senators.

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After being shelved earlier this year in response to widespread concerns about its hands-off approach to regulating automated vehicles, the AV START Act appears to have only been “mostly dead,” and as we all know, mostly dead is also partly alive.

In response to rumblings that the Senate is considering attaching the AV START Act to the Federal Aviation Administration’s multi-year reauthorization that must pass before the end of September, T4America today resent a letter from May to Senators reminding them that the AV START Act is still “a fundamentally flawed bill that will put hundreds of thousands of automated vehicles (AVs) on the roads, keep local governments and the public from knowing much about where and how they are operating, while preempting cities and states from overseeing how and where these vehicles operate in their communities.”

We originally sent this letter to the leadership of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation back in May, after which time the bill appeared to be put on the backburner due to the concerns of T4America and numerous other groups — as well as the lack of a clear champion on the Hill. One of our biggest concerns with Congress’ approach at the time was that the final product was not the result of methodical policymaking, gathering robust feedback from everyone with a stake, and forging a true bipartisan consensus.

The process was instead largely influenced by the tech and auto industry and the final bill was the product of an unfortunate lack of interest from Congress on a critical issue that could reshape our towns and cities.

The most concerning issue is that the bill would essentially codify into federal law the same statewide approach that allowed self-driving vehicles to operate in Arizona with few regulations, almost no oversight, and no ability for local communities to even learn basic details about where and how these vehicles are operating.

As we all remember, that approach resulted in tragedy. From our letter:

Americans were deeply troubled after an AV operated by Uber struck and killed a woman in Tempe, AZ. Videos of the incident show the vehicle made no attempt to slow down before the crash and the safety driver failed to take control of the vehicle. It is clear that both the technology and the human safety driver failed, resulting in a tragic fatality. Reports after the fatality suggest that Uber had data indicating its vehicles were underperforming. Unfortunately, Arizona and many other states do not require AV operators to disclose any data regarding their performance. This leaves everyone in the dark about whether it is safe to move about our communities and creates a climate of secrecy around AV testing and deployment.

If you create a system that 1) allows mistakes to happen, and 2) intentionally keeps the public in the dark, there’s no way to be sure that anyone is going to learn a thing, much less feel confident that the public will be protected first and foremost.

As currently written, there is nothing in the AV START Act that would help cities, states, law enforcement, or even the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) learn from these incidents or develop policies and safety regulations to prevent similar crashes in the future.

The Senate might be making a decision about whether or not to include this bill in the FAA authorization as soon as this afternoon, but the FAA authorization is unlikely to pass before its September 30 deadline, so get your calls in whenever you can.

Call your Senator’s office today and share this simple message with them:

Hi, my name is ___ and I’m calling from ___
I’m calling to let Senator ___ know that the Senate should NOT expedite the passage of the AV START Act by including it in the aviation bill.
The AV START Act will put hundreds of thousands of automated vehicles (AVs) on the roads, keep local governments and the public from knowing much about where and how these vehicles are operating, and preempt cities and states from any oversight.
This bill was produced too quickly, with too little input from local leaders or the people who will be most affected by this hands-off approach to letting the industry operate with almost no oversight. It
Please return it to committee and urge them to produce something thoughtful by working closely with the local and state transportation leaders who stand ready to address these problems.

Helping cities use data to measure progress and outcomes

The second year of our Smart Cities Collaborative will tackle how new technologies and new mobility are reshaping the right-of-way and curb space via four key topics. Our second post in a series on these topics examines the concept of using data to measure progress and outcomes.

Reminder: Applications for year two of the Collaborative are open until Friday, February 16. Find out more information about eligibility and apply to participate here.

As we continue building a forum for collaboration and providing direct technical assistance to a new cohort of cities, the second year of the Collaborative will explore how new technologies and new mobility are reshaping the right-of-way and curb space. The content and curriculum will be separated into four sub-topics; design, measure, manage and price. (Read the first post on design here.) This second topic will examine the importance of utilizing data to measure project and system performance to ensure that new technologies and mobility options are implemented in ways that help cities make progress on their long-term outcomes.

Measure

A heat map of biking trips logged in Seattle using the Strava app. Via https://labs.strava.com/heatmap/

Automated vehicles, shared mobility options, and innovations in transit have tremendous power to transform both the way we move around our cities and how our cities are designed. Yet, as these technologies become increasingly available, the possibilities for both positive and negative impacts for our communities grow in parallel.

And, although the tools are new and perpetually changing, cities must remain steadfast in pursuing their community’s vision.

These advances in technology are providing a wealth of detailed, real-time data that cities can and should use to measure their daily operations and inform their decision-making. Many cities recognize the value of this data and the impact it can have, but have struggled to find the right way to gather and utilize it effectively. As a result, even though they have access to more raw data than ever before, they are struggling to quantify how particular projects or initiatives are helping—or hurting—as they develop and test new solutions to their major challenges.

By using a robust set of performance metrics, cities can evaluate the impacts of pilot projects and better calibrate them to drive the outcomes they’re seeking. This data-driven approach ensures that cities implement new technologies in ways that tackle regional priorities, are anchored to long-term community goals and mitigate potential negative impacts of new technologies.

This focus on data tied to outcomes helps cities stay rooted and grounded in a climate where technologies are changing every single day.

This year, the Collaborative will continue to refine existing metrics that best indicate success across numerous priorities, such as equity, access to employment, safety, user experience and system performance, while working to develop new metrics and indicators for things such as curb utilization or street redesigns.

We’ll also endeavor to develop shared standards, allowing cities to compare the success of projects across jurisdictions, discover the best applications of innovative technologies and better determine how to affect positive change in their own community.

With these metrics firmly in mind, the Collaborative will introduce participants to the fundamentals of data science and cover best practices in data collection and analysis. We’ll focus on how internal governance can change to reflect a data-driven approach and ensure that resulting analyses are fed back into planning and real-time dynamic operations. We’ll also explore efforts across the country to create third-party repositories of mobility data—like Seattle’s, for example—that include both public and private transportation providers, and how cities are aggregating, anonymizing and utilizing these data.

Stay tuned for our next post on our third Collaborative topic this coming year—manage—and how cities can develop public-private partnerships and use curb management strategies as tools to drive long-term outcomes.

Reflecting on all we learned during the first year of our Smart Cities Collaborative

After wrapping up the first year of our inaugural Smart Cities Collaborative at the end of 2017, we look back on all the progress cities made and reflect upon how they’re all collectively shaping the future of transportation by working together.

The day after the presidential election in November 2016, a roomful of strangers who collectively guide transportation decisions in cities small and large gathered in Minneapolis to begin unpacking one fundamental question together: “How can we proactively shape our cities through transportation and technology?”

We started that meeting in Minneapolis with a simple goal: help participants build relationships with others from their peer cities, 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 this yearlong Collaborative, and how technology can help them achieve their goals.

With the answers to those big picture questions firmly in mind and a spirit of collaboration already bearing fruit, we gathered in Washington, DC in early 2017 and spent two days going deep with notable experts on key issues like using technology to improve equity, accessibility and access to economic opportunity; performance measurement; data-sharing between cities and transportation network companies (TNCs like Uber and Lyft); modular contracting and flexible procurement, to name a few.

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

During the summer meeting in Miami, we turned the focus back on the cities and devoted a full day to each city sharing presentations on their particular pilot project, the specific outcomes they’re driving towards, and the challenges they’re facing as they design and implement their projects. These challenges included the ongoing struggle to develop productive partnerships with the private sector. 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, Urban Insights, Ford, Via and more to discuss how they could work together to achieve shared outcomes and collaboratively shape the future of transportation.

For our final meeting in Los Angeles a year after gathering in Minneapolis, we kicked things off with a discussion of the core principles of a smart city. What makes as city “smart?” How does one define it? We started with the basic premise that “smart” cities are those that guide themselves by a set of core values that inform the foundation of their work and how they approach challenges and opportunities as they come along. We’re putting the final touches on a final set of these values to be shared publicly, so stay tuned here on the blog.

In many cases, cities are also going to need help from their states to make some of their experiments or pilot projects possible, so in preparation for legislative sessions ramping up in the beginning of 2018, we also discussed a specific set of policy proposals that could or should be developed at the state level to enable these cities to harness new and emerging technologies in service of their residents.

Reflecting on the first year

We capped off the last day in L.A. with a small panel discussion where members spent some time reflecting back on all they’d learned since that November day in Minneapolis. And the biggest takeaway across the board, from nearly every participant, was realizing the collective power they have to shape the future — if they work together.

“The biggest a-ha moment was discovering that cities want to collaborate,” said Karla Taylor with the City of Austin. “The USDOT Smart City Challenge felt like warfare and zero sum. But here, we’ve been able to share our knowledge and it has really opened up a whole new realm for our cities.”

“We are all facing the same challenges and we are all in the same boat,” said Adiam Emery, an engineer with the City of Seattle. “The fact that we’re all trying the same thing and leveraging the others expertise is really a good thing.”

When cities cooperate and collaborate with one another, they’re able to learn and fail and iterate faster than they could ever do on their own.

“This is going to change everything about how we live and work. And no one quite knows what that impact will be,” said San Jose’s Shireen Santosham during the D.C. meeting. “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.”

Hear more from our initial cohort in this short wrap-up video.

“They want so much more from our streets”

Over the last year, we’ve been struck by watching how these local leaders have begun to crystalize a vision of the kind of city they want to be, determine how best technology can get them there and begin to implement their vision. And we’ve seen projects unfold in some of the cities, like the projects in Centennial and Lone Tree, Colorado that we’ve profiled here, and LA’s microtransit pilot that’s coming soon, for example.

As technology changes rapidly and affects how so many people get around in our cities, it’s truly a decisive moment.

As Seleta Reynolds, the LADOT director, told all of us at the close of the LA meeting, “we have to get people excited and inspired about a new vision. They want so much more from our streets than just moving cars back and forth. This moment allows us to be creative and reach other people who don’t normally care about transportation.”

The inaugural Collaborative helped make a tangible difference in the future of these 16 cities, and we’re eager to help others do the same in 2018.

The inaugural Smart Cities Collaborative was funded by Sidewalk Labs.

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

Wrapping up an amazing year with the 16 cities in our Smart Cities Collaborative

A few weeks ago, leaders from 16 cities met in Los Angeles for the last of four meetings in our inaugural yearlong Smart Cities Collaborative.

Automated vehicles are testing without drivers as we speak on the streets in several cities. Five separate bikesharing companies that don’t require docks launched in Seattle and Washington, DC (and several other cities) this summer. New toll roads have started dynamically pricing their rates to ensure free flowing traffic. Transit ridership is down slightly in many major metro areas as they’re struggling to adapt their services to a world where anyone can hail a ride with their smartphone. But all of those cars are also adding up — clogging curb spaces and making traffic even worse, according to recent research from UC Davis.

We’re in the midst of the most dramatic shift in urban transportation since the advent of the interstate system. And for more than a year now, transportation leaders from 16 cities — ranging in size from small suburban communities all the way up to Los Angeles — have been gathering together to find ways to collaboratively tackle these challenges and harness all of these changing technologies to enable better, safer, more equitable cities.

At it’s core, that’s what the “Smart Cities” moniker is really about.

But that term is tricky. It’s a clever marketing term that means little, or worse, means something different to everyone. In this meeting (and our last meeting in Miami), we started discussing what makes a city “smart.” Inspired in part by how smart growth was codified and defined by the movement, but also more recently by cities like Seattle who released their groundbreaking New Mobility Playbook earlier this year.

Like Seattle, we started with the premise that “smart” cities are those that guide themselves by a set of core values. These values inform the foundation of their work and how they approach challenges and opportunities as they come along. People-Oriented. Entrepreneurial. Connected. Equitable. Those were some of the values we started with and through these long conversations we developed a much better sense of what each of these values meant to our participants, which values are the most important, and some of the actions cities can take to illustrate their commitment to them.

One of the other realities facing cities is that they don’t always control all of the policy levers required to take those actions and shape this technological transportation revolution.

With many state legislative sessions ramping up in the beginning of 2018, we talked about the specific policies that could or should be developed at the state level so these cities can harness new and emerging technologies in service of their residents. What authorities do cities need to test out new pricing or tolling projects on roads controlled by their states? How can procurement processes be changed to be more flexible and adaptive? How do motor vehicle codes need to be updated or adapted to test and deploy automated vehicles?

Much of that conversation centered on how cities can drive the discussion and lead at the state level on those policies that will have the largest impact on our cities. Keynote speaker Seleta Reynolds, the head of the LA Department of Transportation, reminded the participants that, no matter what policy levers are controlled by the state, cities still have an enormous amount of leverage — if they’re willing to work together and think outside of the box.

“We’re cities — we move markets,” Reynolds said. “If we’re all together and we’re pushing together, we can get the change we seek. But we can’t get it in the ways we’ve normally been accustomed to doing business. …It’s not enough for us to say it or to state our principles. We have to find ways to nudge the markets in the ways we have at our disposal.”

After the last day of the convening, we gathered up the whole crew and headed over the LA Arts District where the LACoMotion event was taking place later that week.

Transdev invited our participants to take a ride in their new autonomous EasyMile EZ10 shuttle. While the route was fairly simple — traveling back and forth in a straight line — it was a stirring reminder of how quickly these new technologies will be on our roads and how much there is to do to prepare.

Throughout the course of this year, it has been powerful to see the collaborative spirit that started on a cold morning in Minneapolis on the day after last November’s election continue to grow. These cities have realized that, unlike USDOT’s Smart City Challenge where they were all hiding their applications from one another in the quest for the winner-take-all prize of $50 million, working together with other cities is actually the most powerful recipe for success.

We’ll have more to share about that as we conclude the year with a few reflections before the end of 2017, so stay tuned.

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.”

—

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.

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.

2016-11-10-16-09-11

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.

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?

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

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

Looking into the crystal ball on shared-use mobility at a three-day conference

The Shared-Use Mobility Center and the North American Bike Share Association are hosting a three-day conference September 28th-30th in Chicago focusing on the crossroads of technology and the emerging use of shared mobility services like bikeshare systems, car share networks and ride-hailing apps, and we’ve got a special promotional rate for T4America supporters interested in attending.

The Move Together: Shared-Use Mobility Summit will host talks and workshops by transportation professionals who work at city and state DOTs, non-profits and mobility companies like Lyft and Ridescout, among others. On tap to be discussed is a wide range of topics on shared-use mobility with practical applications, including how to integrate these new mobility options with transit, how shared mobility can help the disadvantaged, local and federal policy issues that affect shared-use mobility and autonomous vehicles, and how these new forms of transportation will affect cities and suburbs.

Also, don’t miss T4America director James Corless speaking on the “Federal Policy and Funding for Shared Mobility” panel. There’s still time to register for the conference and receive a 10 percent discount using the SUMCT4AMERICA promo code.

As giant companies like Google ramp up research on and investment in autonomous vehicles, ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft redefine what it means to be a part-time or contracted worker, and bikeshare networks proliferate across the country in cities big and small, cities and states are scrambling to figure out how to accommodate these untraditional modes of transportation. Shared-use mobility can provide access to transportation for areas often underserved by transit, as well as enable greater mobility in and around cities.

The public is embracing these modes of transport, often quicker than cities and towns can adapt. The National Shared-Use Mobility Summit is primed to offer some insight for both public officials and industry professionals on how to work together and what’s coming next.

Register today to with promo code SUMCT4AMERICA to save 10 percent on the ticket fee and get the inside scoop on the future of transportation.