Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio, will be the first stops on U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx’s seven-city tour next week as he visits with officials of the finalist cities in the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) Smart City Challenge.
Photo by Ludovic Hirlimann licensed under CC BY 2.0
The Smart City Challenge is a competition that seeks innovative proposals for using new technologies to solve transportation challenges and provide solutions for the future. The proposals must show how they will affect city demographics so that all who live in the city will be able to benefit from the proposals.
Seventy-eight cities submitted high-level overviews of their proposals and in March, Foxx announced the seven finalists. They each earned a stipend of $100,000 to further flesh out their proposals. The winner of the competition will receive up to $40 million from USDOT to put in place its proposal that includes data, technology and creativity to affect the movement of people and goods in the city in the future. Cities have until March 24 to submit their final proposals and the winner will be named in June.
Foxx will visit Pittsburgh and Columbus on Monday, May 16. On Tuesday, he will be in Austin, Texas, and Denver. The Secretary will visit San Francisco and Portland on Wednesday and close out the week on Friday in Kansas City, Mo.
In addition to the award of up to $40 million, the winning city could also qualify for additional funding from existing Smart Cities Challenge transportation partners, such as Vulcan Inc. Vulcan has offered up to $10 million to the winning city for infrastructure to support electric vehicles.