The five finalists for the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) Smart Cities Challenge will be named at the upcoming South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival and Conference in Austin, Texas, on March 11-15. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx will attend the event and announce those finalists at the Connected Mobility Showcase event on Saturday, March 12.
More than 75 medium-sized cities this year are participating in the Smart Cities Challenge. They are hoping the innovative projects they are proposing will be among the five finalists that will earn $100,000 each to further develop and plan their projects. From those five finalists, a winner will be selected in June and earn an award of $40 million toward its project. The winner also will be eligible for up to $10 million in additional funds from Vulcan Inc. to support electric vehicle deployment and other carbon emission reduction strategies as part of its solution.
The proposed projects seeking funding include innovative ideas such as automated vehicles and other technology that create a “network” to connect citizens to the city’s intelligent transportation system, increasing mobility options. These types of projects that revolve around emerging technologies are shared each year at SXSW.
In addition to Foxx being on hand to name Smart Cities Challenge finalists, Mark Dowd, USDOT senior advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary, will join Foxx and the five Smart Cities Challenge finalists in participating in a panel to discuss how the Smart City Challenge began, its successes and its future. The discussion, Beyond Traffic: The Emergence of a Connected City, will focus on the potential the competition has to bring new technologies and ideas into play to ensure safer, easier and more reliable transportation to America’s cities.
These transportation-related events at the SXSW Festival will showcase innovations that will be of interest to public-sector officials because they could become a blueprint for other similar transportation programs in other cities throughout the country. They will also be of interest to private-sector vendors for contracting opportunities and possible public-private partnerships.