City to be recognized in April gala
A chronic complaint of the city’s commuters was the impetus of Lima receiving national recognition this week.
Mayor Sharetta Smith announced Wednesday the city had been named a recipient of the 2022 Smart 50 Awards for its Smart Train Avoidance project.
“The city has intentionally focused on developing and implementing smart city solutions to provide efficient, high-quality services to residents and stakeholders through technology,” Smith stated. “This kind of innovation leadership coming out of our Public Works Department will transform the future of Lima as a smart city and lead to better traffic policies.”
Lima has leveraged the regional importance of the train industry against traffic delays for years, seeking a remedy that suits everyone.
Still, residents do not know when the trains are coming, how long the wait will be or if they should find an alternate route.
The topic has frustrated businesses with tight schedules critical to their operations. But, perhaps the city’s biggest motivation to fixing the train traffic has been safety. The impact of losing just a minute to a first responder can be a life or death situation.
Spectrum Enterprise partnered with U.S. Ignite to award a grant to Lima under the U.S. Ignite Smart Gigabit Communities program. Spectrum Enterprise also provided all networking, connectivity, sensors, devices and software required to deploy this proof of concept.
“Spectrum is developing the technology to track trains and predict their movement. We have all experienced the trains stopping, moving forward and then moving backward in this community,” City Engineer Kirk Niemeyer explained. “In the end, you will receive updates on your iPhone, Android and onboard navigation systems alerting you if there’s a train coming through Lima. If so, it will direct you to a crossing that will be open to keep goods and services moving.”
This April, city representatives will attend the Smart 50 Awards Gala in Columbus during the 2022 Smart Cities Connect Conference and Expo.
The global competition aims to “recognize the 50 best examples of smart cities at work this year by highlighting specific projects with real municipal-scale results.” In addition to nationwide winners, the City of Miramar falls among winners from the international community, including Japan, Canada, Hong Kong, Chile, Israel, Bulgaria, Spain and Sweden.
Smart 50 Awards in partnership with Smart Cities Connect, Smart Cities Connect Foundation and the U.S. Ignite annually recognize global smart cities projects, honoring the most innovative, transformative and influential work.
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Quelle/Source: Lima Ohio, 23.o02.2022
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