Do you remember the “smart cities”? A few years ago, a group of companies (Microsoft, Google, Samsung, and others) got a lot of people excited about the concept of transforming our cities, with their analog traffic signals and antiquated sewage systems, into gleaming technopolises full of self-control. driving cars, public Wi-Fi, and embedded sensors that collect data on average citizens.
The idea never came to fruition: a lot of people were understandably nervous about privacy and data collection. But the US Department of Transportation (USDOT) still sees promise in the concept, not exactly data collection, but the idea of using technology to improve city services.
This week, the agency launched $94 million in new funding authorized by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act with the goal of helping dozens of small-scale smart city projects get off the ground, in some cases literally. Drone delivery, smart traffic signals and connected vehicles are just some of the projects that will be the recipients of this first wave of funding.
In an interview with the edge, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said smart cities still have a lot of merit, especially if they can be harnessed to improve people’s lives.
“It’s about technology, but it’s not about technology itself.”
“The idea is to make sure that technology develops in a way that makes us all better off,” Buttigieg said. “It’s about technology, but it’s not about technology itself.”
Authorized under the bipartisan Infrastructure Act of 2021, the Strengthening Mobility and Transportation Revolution (SMART) program was established as a source of money that cities, states, transit agencies, tribal governments and other entities They could take the opportunity to test new technologies. The $1 trillion infrastructure bill included $500 million for these “smart” mobility projects over five years, with the first awardees announced this week.
Winning projects include $2 million for Detroit to use sensors and artificial intelligence software to “predict and prevent” traffic accidents in the city; $1.7 million to Arizona to “digitize” highways for all-vehicle technology; and $2 million to Los Angeles for a “sidewalk coding” project that would use sensors to “create a digital inventory of physical sidewalk assets” to improve traffic flow.
Public transportation would also be a big beneficiary of the SMART grant program, with several transit agencies receiving funds to improve things like ticketing, routing, and trip planning. The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority in Silicon Valley, for example, is receiving $1.7 million for something called “traffic signal priority,” which would improve traffic signals to give priority to city buses.
“Little things like that can make all the difference in terms of whether someone decides that taking the bus is the right answer for them,” Buttigieg said.
Drones are another technology getting a big financial boost from the department. Seven projects involve the use of “unmanned aircraft systems” to test the feasibility of services like drone delivery of medical supplies, for example. Several companies, including Google spin-off Wing and others, are currently experimenting with drone delivery in a handful of communities, raising concerns about airspace management and malfunctioning aerial devices encountered. overhead power lines.
Public transportation would also be a great beneficiary of the SMART grant program
Buttigieg said drones are a “classic example” of a technology that could do a lot of good, especially when it comes to surveying infrastructure projects or delivering needed supplies to remote regions where it’s normally too expensive to reach. But drones can also be “very problematic,” he acknowledged, “figuring out how to manage these drones flying over our homes and cluttering up airspace that is already difficult enough to handle when it comes to conventional air travel.”
USDOT will be vigilant in addressing issues arising from these projects. “To start driving solutions to those problems, we have to see how these technologies work in the real world,” Buttigieg said.
Tellingly, the top prize for any project is only $2 million. That’s enough money to fund a few drones for a test project or add a handful of sensors or redesign some curbs for better traffic management. The goal of the grant program is to provide sufficient funds for cities to experiment and test new technologies.
USDOT wanted to create a funding source, and if any of the awardees can demonstrate that their projects are generating positive results, they are likely to raise more money to help capitalize on those successes. But if they end up creating more problems than they solve, USDOT will pull the plug.
The hesitance to invest big money in smart cities is understandable. Previous efforts to transform cities with data, sensors and autonomous vehicles have not yielded results. Google spin-off Sidewalk Labs has withdrawn from Toronto after residents objected to the company’s high-tech, sensor-laden vision for the city’s waterfront. Columbus, Ohio, won $50 million through the federal government’s “Smart City Challenge” in 2016, but many of the changes the originally proposed city remains unfulfilled.
“We have to see how these technologies work in the real world”
Buttigieg said skepticism of smart cities is justified, but that technology can help improve people’s lives if it’s implemented, pardon the pun, intelligently. “I think smart city technologies are more important than ever,” she said, “but I think there has been a lesson in the last decade about trying to fit everything into one big unified system.”
He recalled his time as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, when an unnamed “very large technology company” proposed installing a digital dashboard “that integrated everything and promised to create almost a Sim City digital twin of our entire municipal operation.”
At the end of his term as mayor, Buttigieg said the board fell short of its big promise, but South Bend got an improved way to manage its wastewater system, as well as a 311 system for non-emergency municipal services. The lesson was learned.
“We are not funding a city or a state to digitize or technologize their entire world,” he said. “And there’s some humility in that.”
Not all projects funded under the SMART grant program “are going to turn out and be the main win,” he added. “But that’s okay. That’s part of the process.”
