SMART CITY
having 700 electric vehicles in public and private fleets by 2020.
• Ford's connected shuttle service, Chariot, has started service at JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s massive McCoy Center at Polaris as part of an effort to reduce traffic in the city. The service picks up Chase employees at six places around the city and takes them to the building.
"At a high level, it’s a different set of conversations about planning the city and the future of our economy and what it will look like," said Alex Fischer, the partnership's president and CEO.
Although some of the work might seem daunting or unrealistic, Fischer compared it to the early days of Columbus 2020, the city's economic-development group that set seemingly bold goals of creating 150,000 jobs between 2010 and 2020, boosting personal income by 30 percent and generating capital investment of $8 billion. Already, two of those three goals have been reached, and Columbus 2020 is on track to meet the personal-income goal.
"The lesson I learned from Columbus 2020 was to have big aspirations and vision. People couldn't always understand and process it, but over time, they could believe in it," Fischer said. "You still need to show results."
The federal grant supports nine projects that demonstrate how an intelligent transportation system and equitable access to transportation can have a positive effect on the everyday challenges of cities and their residents.
The use of data will be key. Smart Columbus recently rolled out the Smart Columbus Operating System that will aggregate data from sources across the city so it can be available to the public and used by software developers in the public and private sectors. That operating system is being developed as open-source code so that it can be shared with other cities.
The data is expected to provide an assortment of benefits: For example, an app could be developed that tells a truck driver the locations of all of the low bridges in Franklin County, or improved transportation options could be created that better serve senior citizens and those with disabilities.
"At the end of the grant period, we will have better aligned efforts around improving mobility and access and opportunity," said Michael Stevens, the city's chief information officer.
For Staley and Stevens, the effort marks an era when autonomous vehicles and systems revolutionize transportation and city operations.
They envision traffic lights that communicate with electric vehicles, and vehicles that communicate with each other, easing congestion and reducing accidents in a city that is expected to add 1 million people by 2050.
Self-driving snow trucks could be equipped with sensors and devices that alert them when it starts to snow so that they could Fischer self-deploy to treat city streets. Autonomous firetrucks could dispatch robots to put out fires, and autonomous sanitation trucks could pick up the trash.
The vision also includes transit systems that give passengers far more options to get around than they have today. Imagine a passenger being able to take a ride-share service to a public-transportation hub for a trip Downtown, and then hopping on a bicycle to ride the last mile to work.
Think all this is farfetched? Local bus drivers don't think so — and it worries them. Union drivers with the Central Ohio Transit Authority already are campaigning against driverless buses that they say wouldn't be safe for passengers and would result in fewer jobs.
"The technology of automation is fantastic and horrific at the same time," Staley said, noting the benefits that consumers could enjoy while also acknowledging the threat it poses to workers whose jobs could be at risk.
Staley said the definition of a smart city is not just based on devices, apps and operating systems. Cities that have been considered smart cities throughout history are noted as creative and innovative, and they are successful at bringing together groups that normally wouldn't collaborate, he said.
Stevens said that one reason the city won the grant is its history of publicprivate partnerships, and, in the past two years, those relationships have gotten even better.
"It has strengthened that," he said. "As a community, we've seen our public and private and academic sectors working together. I think it continues to build on that — more engagement by COTA, more engagement by (Ohio State University), more engagement by the city and municipalities within the region, working together to deal with the issues we're going to have with a million more people."