The Smart City Challenge is over, but Smart Columbus lives on. The city and Columbus Partnership will continue to co-lead the initiative as a nonprofit organization and increase its emphasis on deploying technology to promote environmental sustainability and social equity.
The initiative has delivered its final 500-page report to the U.S. Department of Transportation, which named Columbus the winner of its 2016 challenge. Overall, the $54.6 million project came in under the $59 million budget because of projects that were canceled or that shrank in scope.
"It definitely showed us we can leverage technology to serve our residents better," said Mandy Bishop, the initiative's program manager from the city, where she's a deputy director in the Department of Public Service.
Jordan Davis, who had been the Columbus Partnership lead on the project, now is executive director of the nonprofit, with a staff of seven. Budgetary figures were not immediately available.
City government has taken over ongoing operations for five of the eight demonstration projects funded mainly by the $40 million grant awarded five years ago. The cost for most is minimal, Bishop said in an interview, such as occasional paint jobs to maintain "smart mobility hubs" at key transit centers. The city's savings on its portion of cost-sharing during the grant are enough to cover the costs.
The other city projects are the Pivot trip-planning and Park Columbus parking reservation and payment apps, the demonstration of connected vehicles with on-board equipment in government fleet and private vehicles, and the huge data hub called the Operating System that powered all the projects.
Federal Cares Act funding is continuing the delivery of meal boxes in Linden from St. Stephen's Community House through at least September. More than 130,000 meals were delivered via self-driving shuttles throughout the coronavirus pandemic. The shuttles lasted only two weeks as passenger vehicles before a safety shutdown and then the pandemic. Manufacturer EasyMile has redeployed its vehicles to other customers and deliveries are continuing via passenger vans, driven by the same two shuttle operators.
"So much of what we learned from Smart Columbus is adaptable to how we 'build back better' (post-pandemic)," Davis said.
CareSource and other Medicaid managed care organizations are taking over a project that made it easier for pregnant women to hail Medicaid-covered transportation to prenatal medical appointments, groceries and other trips.
"We worked really hard not to make this a demonstration of flashy shiny stuff," Bishop said. "We worked to make this a solution for people."
As a "collaborative innovation lab," Smart Columbus will continue to explore how digital and energy technologies can be used to address complex socioeconomic issues. One project that started in response to the shift to online school during the pandemic, for example, is increasing access to broadband internet for low-income residents, by leveraging the city-owned fiber-optic cable network.
"Through the Smart City Challenge, we’ve led the country in deploying new mobility technologies, but we’ve never been interested in tech for tech’s sake," Mayor Andrew Ginther said in a release. "When we deploy technology in partnership with the community, we can address some of our most pressing challenges."
A separate $10 million grant from the Paul Allen Family Foundation wrapped up a year ago, after helping fund the installation of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, grants toward fleet vehicles and overall promotion of EVs. Columbus now has the fastest adoption of EVs in the Midwest.
Going forward, Smart Columbus is coordinating a renewable energy purchasing collaborative for several of Central Ohio's largest corporations.
One of the biggest expenses of the project was the "systems engineering" approach with extensive documentation and frequent reporting on every step taken. Both the technical document and a more reader-friendly "playbook" were required by U.S. Department of Transportation so that other cities can implement their own mobility initiatives and avoid pitfalls that Columbus encountered.
"They can start to see what we did, and see if that's where they want to go," Bishop said. "Use technology to solve challenges in your community in a way that makes sense for you."
No longer needing that huge amount of documentation and reporting will be a considerable cost savings for the new Smart Columbus, Davis said.
"We're on the community's terms now," she said. "We have the opportunity to be more agile and more efficient, leveraging partnerships and aligning investments, than we were able to under the federal terms."
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Carrie Ghose
Quelle/Source: The Business Journals, 15.06.2021
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