| Notes |
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS:
The Smart City Challenge
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
City of Austin, Texas Table of Coontents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY........................................................................................1
VOLUME 1 – VISION AND BACKGROUND.............................................................5
The Smart Austin Vision......................................................................................5
Austin’s Policy Landscape: An Open Market for TNC.............................................8
Our Vision for Austin: The Opportunity City...........................................................9
Removing the I-35 Barrier ................................................................................11
Connected and Automated Vehicles...................................................................12
Reducing our Carbon Footprint: A Vision for Electric Fleets.................................14
Promoting Scaling, Replicability, Commercialization & Incubation.........................14
Packaged Mobility and Connected Traveler Access and Equity.............................15
VOLUME 1A - TECHNICAL APPROACH...............................................................17
User-Focused Mobility......................................................................................17
Connected Travelers and the Mobility Marketplace .............................................20
Urban Delivery.................................................................................................23
Smart Stations and Connected Corridors...........................................................23
The Mobility Innovation Center..........................................................................30
Urban Analytics and Policy Research (UAPR)......................................................35
Vehicle Fleet Electrification ...............................................................................37
Scaling Solutions and Transferring Knowledge ...................................................40
VOLUME 1B: DATA MANAGEMENT...................................................................44
Information and Cyber Security.........................................................................44
Data Management Planning with the Data Rodeo...............................................44
Existing Potential Opportunities for Data Collection.............................................45
VOLUME 1C: PROGRAM MANAGEMENT............................................................49
Program Management Plan ..............................................................................49
Kick-off Meeting with USDOT............................................................................50
Stakeholder and Community Engagement..........................................................50
Reporting ........................................................................................................52
System Requirements ......................................................................................52
Safety .............................................................................................................52
Metrics & Evaluation ........................................................................................53
VOLUME 1D: STAFFING PLAN.........................................................................57
Consortium......................................................................................................57
Team Organization ...........................................................................................58
Staffing Plan....................................................................................................59
VOLUME 1E: CAPACITY AND CAPABILITY...........................................................60
Active Transportation........................................................................................60
Smart Land Use ...............................................................................................60
Envision Tomorrow ...........................................................................................62
Austin Economic Development Initiatives...........................................................62
Mobility Marketplace, Smart Stations, Ladders of Opportunity.............................62
Automated and Connected Vehicles and Connected Corridors.............................63
ROMC, Sensor Data and Infrastructure ..............................................................64
Data Rodeo and Urban Analytics.......................................................................65
Capacity Building: Creating Social & Economic Value..........................................65
Electric Fleets..................................................................................................67
CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................67
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
City of Austin, Texas Page 1
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Austin is America’s fastest-growing major city. Since
2010, the population has grown by more than 100 people per day. Our city has twice as many people as it did
30 years ago, and the urbanized area now spreads into
five counties.
That growth is sustained by one of America’s most vital
metropolitan economies. Austin is one of only a few cities
that actually gained jobs during the recession beginning
in 2008. Much of that economic energy is driven by innovation in technology and by the creative industries who’ve
made Austin an international destination for art, music,
film, food, media and culture.
But obviously that prosperity and vitality is not being
shared equally by everyone. The Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto identified Austin as the
most economically segregated major metro area in
America. Traditionally marginalized communities of color
in working-class neighborhoods are being displaced by
gentrifying pressures and high housing costs, as those
neighborhoods become boutique and trendy hotspots.
Meanwhile, outlying suburbs are developing their own
concentrations of poverty, in areas where there are few
services to meet the needs of the underserved.
Working families at all income levels are feeling some of
these pressures. Middle-income tradespeople, mid-level
professionals, and employees in public service — such
as the thousands of Austinites who work for the State of
Texas and University of Texas — are finding themselves
living further and further away from their jobs Downtown,
on campus and at the Capitol Complex in the urban core.
Even the highly educated workforce for which Austin is
famous finds itself impacted by the scarcity of reasonably priced family housing near its increasingly urbanized
workplaces.
All these factors conspire to plague Austin with some
of the worst mobility challenges in America. But they
also create the urgency that we feel will energize and
empower our Smart City effort. Our vision is to make
Austin a Smart City that builds on our history of innovative and successful public and private collaborations,
the open and flexible regulatory environment, our ongoing investments in comprehensive planning for complete,
compact and connected communities, and most of all the
diversity and creativity of our people.
By bringing 21st-century mobility to life in Central Texas,
we aim to accomplish goals in 10 years what many cities have had 100 years to accomplish. We can and will
deliver on Austin’s own community values of equity, economic opportunity, and environmental stewardship (the
“three Es”), inform and provide testable hypotheses and
proven pilots for the other Smart City finalists, and build
a foundation for Texas-wide partnerships for better urban
mobility.
Our Smart City vision includes a variety of pilots and programs that continue on Austin’s current track record of
adopting innovative technology, including:
Pilots, Places and Services for People
• Transit access hubs, known as Smart Stations, that
bring together a wide variety of mobility services, along
with opportunities for other services useful to travelers, and can serve as centers for the deployment of
autonomous and connected vehicles, urban freight
logistics, and electric fleets. Pilot locations include
Austin’s airport, Downtown Austin, the low-income and
transit-dependent community around Rundberg Lane,
and Austin’s suburban city of Pflugerville.
• Connected Corridors that link the Smart Stations, with
new transit services (including a deployment of electric
bus rapid transit), dedicated transit lanes and signal
priority, better facilities for active transportation, and a
sensor-rich environment that allows for rapid deployment of V2V and V2I connected-vehicle technology. Our
Riverside Drive Smart Corridor pilot is a major arterial
with high transit use and a significant lower-income
population that links Downtown and the Austin airport.
• A Mobility Marketplace that connects travelers to
their best packaged mobility options and provides
an ecosystem for the development of new mobility
services, with integrated payment options (including
options for the unbanked) real-time travel information via app or kiosk, and a mobility analytics platform
being developed in partnership with USDOT’s federal
partners at Sidewalk Labs. To ensure that a technology-based marketplace is accessible across the digital
divide, this pilot also includes a human-driven outreach
component — Smart Ambassadors who will work on
the neighborhood level to educate and help people take
advantage of the marketplace.
• All three of the above pilots are integrated into a set
of Ladders of Opportunity Initiatives that use Smart
Stations, Connected Corridors and the Mobility Marketplace to improve access to jobs, education, healthcare,
healthy food, and other areas of need. These include
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
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partnerships with Central Health’s network of CommUnityCare safety-net clinics, with Austin Community College (both as a major destination and as the
region’s largest workforce developer), with the Restore
Rundberg community-development and crime-prevention initiative, and with Google Fiber and the Housing
Authority of the City of Austin, which are collaborators
on a nationally recognized digital inclusion effort with
the City and with nonprofit partners.
Deploying Tomorrow’s Vehicles
• A connected and automated vehicle program that
builds on work being done already in Austin, with Google X self-driving cars already on the streets and manufacturers such as General Motors, NXP, Siemens and
Cirrus Logic innovating in the connected-vehicle space.
The Smart City initiative will include both a closedloop test environment at Austin’s airport and options
for open testing on the Riverside Connected Corridor,
and a prototype autonomous shuttle from the airport to
the nearby Smart Station, exposing thousands of early-adopting Austin travelers and technology pros to the
CV/AV environment.
• A large-scale fleet electrification program under the
aegis of Austin Energy, which has already achieved
milestones in electric vehicle adoption and powers its
entire charging network with 100% renewable energy.
Targets for quick uptake of vehicles include the city’s
taxi and ride-hailing fleet, delivery vehicles, the city’s
own fleet, and electric transit vehicles.
Infrastructure, Data and Analytics: The Mobility
Innovation Center
Our core “back of the house” programs that will support
the Smart City pilots include:
• Our “One System” regional operations and management concept, integrating and enhancing travel management operations between the City of Austin, Capital
Metro, Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority (a toll
road operator), the Texas Department of Transportation,
and other communities, including the deployment of
Integrated Corridor Management along Interstate 35
(already planned by TxDOT).
• A network of rich intelligent sensors that will feed
more and better data to transportation agencies and
help tackle a variety of persistent challenges facing
local operations managers, public safety agencies, and
planners.
• A two-way open data portal, known as the Data
Rodeo, which will integrate and curate data from public, private and non-profit sources, including data providers beyond the transportation sector, and make data
available to enable research and education as well as
support application and tool developers.
• An Urban Analytics and Policy Research platform
that plays an integrated role in performance management, metrics and evaluation for the entire Smart City
effort.
All of these efforts will be supported by ongoing stakeholder engagement with both partners and users and
rapid assessment and documentation of both successes
and failures, guided by a governance structure that brings
together local agencies and non-profit partners in a consortium model, with executive-level authority residing
within the City organization.
Achieving USDOT’s Expected Smart City Outcomes
“Austin is a beacon of sustainability, social equity, and
economic opportunity; where diversity and creativity are
celebrated; where community needs and values are recognized; where leadership comes from its citizens, and
where the necessities of life are affordable and accessible to all. Austin’ greatest asset is its people: Passionate
about our city, committed to its improvement, and determined to see this vision become a reality.” – Imagine
Austin Comprehensive Plan, 2012
At a policy and organizational level, Austin’s own community goals — for example, as expressed in our Imagine
Austin Comprehensive Plan — mirror USDOT’s Smart
City outcomes and as such have influenced the development of Austin’s Smart City vision:
• Improving Safety – Austin is a Vision Zero community
that, after a record year for auto fatalities in 2015, is
committed to improving travel safety. Connected-vehicle (V2V/V2I) technology, pedestrian/bicycle detection,
intelligent sensor deployment to support more effective
incident management, Smart Station services that provide travelers with a variety of safe choices, and other
components of Austin’s Smart City vision all will create
a safer travel environment.
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• Enhance Mobility – Austin is already at the forefront
of innovation of new mobility services and information
tools, including (as just announced May 23), a new nonprofit model for TNC service, that are built on by the
Smart City vision. Smart Stations, Connected Corridors
and the Mobility Marketplace promise better options
for both personal and freight mobility. By incorporating
human-centered outreach with the Smart Ambassador
program and by siting these pilots in areas of need,
Austin’s Smart City vision will provide a broad spectrum
of diverse residents with new and better ways to meet
their travel needs.
• Enhance Ladders of Opportunity – Austin’s Ladders
of Opportunity Initiatives build on already successful
efforts by public, private and community partners to
accomplish such goals as improving access to healthcare, developing a next-generation workforce, revitalizing areas of concentrated poverty into complete and
safe communities, and overcoming the digital divide.
By adding a transportation component to these efforts,
we feel we are directly fulfilling the USDOT vision. In
addition, the development and deployment of Smart
City technologies will create economic opportunities
and jobs for a wider spectrum of Austin workers and
companies.
• Address Climate Change: Austin’s own Climate Protection Plan establishes goals for greenhouse-gas
reductions that have informed Austin Energy’s work on
the fleet electrification program in the Smart City vision.
Because the municipal utility has a large and growing
renewables portfolio, electric fleets in Austin can be
powered without simply shifting the city’s carbon footprint from the transportation network to the power grid.
The Smart Station, Connected Corridor and Mobility
Marketplace pilots also focus on providing people with
more climate-friendly alternatives to driving alone —
whether transit, active transportation, shared rides or
future autonomous vehicles.
Creating A Smart Ecosystem
Austin’s Smart City vision grew organically and brings
together dozens of participating agencies, community
groups, private-sector firms, and academic institutions.
This ecosystem of partners reflects the people and culture of Austin; each brings unique offerings and creates
unique value. But all are focused on ensuring that initial
investments made with the Smart City Challenge grant
are documented with sound metrics and research, replicable and scalable and sustainable, can generate value
over the long term, and most of all make a useful difference in people’s lives.
The potential for improved quality of life that’s enabled by
a Smart City must promote equal economic potential: with
all genders; across all racial and ethnic backgrounds;
among all socio-economic classes; and across all public institutions and commercial sectors of the economy.
Achieving these outcomes requires engaging our community. We will bring together stakeholders of every kind
to enable the community as a whole to serve the underserved and enfranchise the disenfranchised.
In the end, these innovative transportation services will
be part of the lives of every single person living, working
or visiting Austin. With success, they’ll also more quickly
become part of the lives of residents of dozens of other
US cities because of the work done in Austin with the
Smart City investment — delivering the best possible
return on that investment to USDOT.
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ANNOTATED SITE MAP
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
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VOLUME 1: VISION A SMART AUSTIN
Austin is home to hundreds of thousands of smart people,
thousands of innovative businesses, more startups and
patents than any other city in Texas, top-flight research
institutions, pathfinding new technologies … and some
of the worst mobility and equity challenges in America.
Austin’s hyper-growth over the past decade has brought
economic vitality coupled with a number of challenges,
including long commutes, unaffordable close-in housing,
and the suburbanization of poverty. We bear the unwelcome distinction of being the most economically segregated urban area in the nation. We really have no other
choice but to become a Smart City to tackle these challenges head-on with the best tools possible.
Our vision is to make Austin a Smart City that builds on
our history of innovative public and private collaborations
to bring 21st-century mobility to life in Central Texas.
This will meet the urgent need for safe and affordable
travel throughout our fast-growing urban area, deliver on
Austin’s own community values of equity, prosperity, and
environmental stewardship, inform and provide a model
for other cities facing the same challenges, and build a
foundation for a Texas-wide partnership for better urban
mobility.
Our Smart City approach builds and activates an ecosystem of accessibility that translates “mobility”
directly into opportunities:
• Access to services via a mobility marketplace that
works hand-in-hand with Connected Travelers to create safe, complete, door-to-door connections to jobs,
housing, educational opportunities, healthy communities, and more, and to help all travelers make better,
more informed choices.
• Access to places that not only bring together mobility services and modes but also intelligent land uses,
future employment centers, and complete and connected neighborhoods.
• Access to technologies that deliver the real value in
a Smart City — safe, clean and efficient travel made
possible with tools from intelligent sensors, to automated and connected vehicles, to fully electrified and
de-carbonized fleets.
• Access to information through coordinated and optimized two-way data management, a solid policy framework informed through data analytics, workforce development to support a new economy, and a Connected
Traveler initiative that helps service providers better
understand traveler needs.
This ecosystem is already emerging; as we’ve refined
our Smart City Challenge vision, we’ve identified a
broad set of public and private collaborators, answered
key strategic and tactical questions and, most importantly, taken a “user-first” approach to ensuring our
solutions are designed to meet the needs of all people and communities. Building on Austin’s existing
accomplishments in entrepreneurship, early adoption
of technology and creative real-world problem solving,
we want our Smart City to be the best place to realize
the greatest return on public and private investments
in 21st century mobility, including the DOT’s Smart
City Challenge grant.
Using the US DOT’s Beyond Traffic Vision Elements as a touchstone, Austin has refined and integrated its Smart City
component initiatives to help spur the growth of our accessibility ecosystem while also seeking the best ways to
achieve the essential outcomes of greater safety, improved mobility, cleaner transportation to combat climate change,
and the creation of meaningful ladders of opportunity.
SMART CITY ELEMENTS (Priority)
TECHNOLOGY ELEMENTS (Highest Priority)
Vision Element #3
Intelligent SensorBased Infrastructure
Vision Element #2
Connected Vehicles
Vision Element #1
Urban Automation
INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO URBAN TRANSPORTATION ELEMENTS (High Priority)
Vision Element #4
User-Focused Mobility
Services and Choices
Vision Element #5
Urban Analytics
Vision Element #6
Urban Delivery
and Logistics
Vision Element #7
Strategic Business
Models & Partnering
Vision Element #8
Smart Grid, Roadway
Electrification, & EVs
Vision Element #9
Connected,
Involved Citizens
Vision Element #12
Smart Land Use
Vision Element #10
Architecture and
Standards
Vision Element #11
Low-Cost, Efficient
Secure & Resilient ICT
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• Mobility Innovation Center (MIC) – Governance
model that develops, deploys, and evaluates the pilots
and programs associated with Austin’s Smart City effort
• Smart Stations – Strategically selected locations that
create places of social, economic, and technological
activity
• Connected Corridors – Links between the Smart
Stations that are instrumented with sensors and other
communications technology to enable V2V, V2I, and
V2X applications
• Next Generation Vehicles – Emerging technologies
that employ connected, automated, and alternative
energy features
• Data Rodeo – A data management system that
enables travelers, public agencies, and Smart City partners to archive, analyze, and access meaningful data
and decision-making tools
• Regional Operations Management Center (ROMC)
– A transportation center that unifies multiple stakeholders, including ATD, TxDOT, CTRMA, CapMetro, and
others to monitor and manage multimodal transportation operations
• Partner Engagement – Partnership development programs that engage employers, industry leaders, and
entrepreneurs for the benefit of the traveling public
• Community Engagement – Outreach, education, and
training programs that empower people to use mobility
to access opportunities
• Sustainability – Scalability and commercialization
efforts that disseminate lessons learned and replication
methods
This suite of pilots, programs and plans is tailored to
meet real-world challenges facing Austin, America’s fastest-growing major city:
• Mobility – In order to meet the diverse needs of Austin’s growing population, it is critical to provide a range
of transportation services to all communities. In particular, 15% of Austin’s population live in a transit desert,
neighborhoods that have no or limited access to public
transit. As a result, transit dependent groups – such
as the elderly, young, low-income, disabled, no vehicle households, and other underserved communities
– have limited opportunities to access healthcare, education, or healthy food.
• Affordability – It is important to consider the interrelationship between land use, utilities, and transportation
and their joint impacts on a household budget. Between
1998 and 2008, the percentage of all single-family
homes in Austin considered affordable declined from
42% to 28%. During that time, historic neighborhoods
fell into disrepair, residents relocated to Austin’s suburbs, and historically working-class communities
underwent gentrification. With new investment, it is
critical to balance revitalization with the preservation of
a community’s heritage and culture.
• Historic Barriers – Like many cities, Austin exhibits
racial divides that have been perpetuated by planning,
infrastructure, and socioeconomic policies. In 1928,
the Koch and Fowler city plan proposed the creation
of a “Negro District” – making it the only part of the
city where African-Americans could access schools
and other public services. In 1935, the federal government launched a New Deal program; however it
excluded most minority communities through redlining – the practice of denying or charging more for
goods and services in certain neighborhoods. Consequently, minority residents could not access government-backed mortgages, restricting their ability to build
home equity and reinforcing segregationist boundaries.
In the early 1960s, the I-35 highway was built through
the low-income neighborhoods, dividing the city into
West and East Austin. The region’s racial divides have
become increasingly acute for its minority populations,
which struggle with higher poverty rates, more isolated
neighborhoods, lower educational attainment, and
lower employment levels. If this pattern remains unaddressed, it represents a lost economic opportunity and
allows poverty to continue its generational spread.
• Safety – Hundred of people are in accidents each
year on Austin roadways. Austin is now committed to
becoming a leading Vision Zero City.
• Sustainability – In order to address the environmental concerns, Austin is dedicated to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. A skilled workforce is also essential to remaining competitive in today’s global economy.
Economic growth and prosperity cannot be sustained
by population growth alone; it is imperative to develop
the talent and potential of everyone. In 2010, 13.5%
of all families with children residing in the Capital Area
lived below the federal poverty level. As the region’s
MIC
Regional
Operations
Mangement
Concept (ROMC)
Intelligent
Sensors
(+Communications
Network)
Data
Rodeo
Urban Analytics
& Policy Research
(UAPR)
Smart
Stations
Packaged
Mobility
Services
Electric
Fleets
Automated
Vehicles
Connected
Vehicles
MOBILITY MARKETPLACE
Connected
Traveler
Initiative
R I V E R S I D E C O R R I D O R
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population continues to grow and further diversify,
disparity in educational attainment, if not addressed,
poses a threat to the social and economic fabric of the
region. In an economy that embraces higher levels of
skills, a growing number of individuals will be unable
to compete in the labor force for high-skill, high-wage
jobs
Our approach to developing our Smart City pilots and
programs has been guided by governing principles
including the following:
• A commitment to open data that is available to everyone
• Avoiding proprietary systems with a goal of making all
components of the system open-source, expandable
and interoperable
• An adherence to standards to allow replicability in
data-gathering, data-reporting, software and hardware
development
• A commitment to new innovative and creative government regulation, developed with private businesses in
new economies with emerging economic models and
platforms, that provides for structures that are as innovative and creative as the businesses to be regulated
and does so in ways that do not impede private innovation without requiring governments to abdicate their
required role in public interests such as safety. Austin is
facilitating Google’s current testing of autonomous cars
on our streets, was the locale of Daimler’s North American launch of Car2Go, and is developing a third-party
cross-platform validator badge, known as Thumbs Up,
to drive volunteer fingerprinting of TNC drivers
• High expectations of private partners who need to have
some skin in the game
• Policy leadership to accelerate adoption of new technologies, while protecting residents from unnecessary
risk or dangers
Among significant changes from the components presented in the NOFO1 submittal:
1. We have aligned our Smart Stations, along with packaged mobility services and the Connected Traveler
initiative, directly with areas of high need, in collaboration with community partners including Central
Health (operator of CommUnityCare safety-net clinics),
the Housing Authority of the City of Austin, and Austin
Community College, among others.
2. The development of a Connected Corridor along Riverside Drive, linking Downtown Austin and the airport.
This busy corridor, which also traverses high-need
neighborhoods and provides for ladders of opportunity,
will be the test bed for deploying a number of Smart
City pilot opportunities, including electric bus rapid
transit and safety features such as connected vehicle
applications and bicycle and pedestrian detection..
3. The emergence of the Mobility Marketplace concept to
allow for open innovation of services to support packaged mobility and the Connected Traveler and to make
the best use of the data resources available through the
Data Rodeo (our two-way open-data portal), the Mobility Innovation Center, and our private sector partners.
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AUSTIN’S POLICY LANDSCAPE: AN OPEN MARKET FOR
TRANSPORTATION NETWORK COMPANIES (TNC)
Almost uniquely so among major cities in the world,
Austin now offers an open market for Transportation
Network Company (TNC) solutions – the only such city
meaningfully and competitively available for innovation
and evolution of TNC systems. Recently, the duopoly of
Lyft and Uber left town after losing a ballot referendum
[about the fingerprinting of drivers]. The newly created
open market already has sparked an exciting mix of new
participants and business models.
As part of the Smart Cities Challenge, Austin offers to
be the test ground for next generation of TNC innovators. New TNCs are coming to town: operations have
been announced by GetMe, Fasten, Fare, zTrip, Hailacab,
Wingz, RideAustin, and others are making inquiries. New
TNC models and concepts are being introduced. Among
the new market entrants are ones that have announced
an intention or a willingness to consider providing:
• Open Data. Making publicly available not only the
operational and economic data but also the travel and
demand data that the established TNC industry has not
been willing to provide cities based on claims of proprietorship.
• TNC Platform integration with the community’s mass
transit options – first and last mile for transit and light
rail.
• TNC Platform integration with single user mobility
option platforms (transit, bike, pedestrian, and other
ground transportation modes and services.
• Non-Profit Status. Exploring whether non-profit or city
infrastructure and public utilities of the future might not
only consist of roads and pipes built in rights of way but
platforms existing in the cloud.
• Living Wages for drivers.
• Digital divide solutions. Ability for passengers to pay
without credit cards. And there is discussion of providing public kiosks from which to hail a ride without
needing a personal computer or a cellular device.
• No surge pricing. Or surge price optional for different
service levels.
• Local charity profit participation in revenue.
• Locally Desired Safety Provisions or Choices. Support
for and participation in a community’s decision to have
fingerprint background checked TNC drivers.
• Willingness to engage with government to develop the
appropriate intersection of new economic models with
the government’s duty and responsibility in areas such
as public safety.
The new entrants into the TNC market are entering with
capital commitments (note: of varying degrees). At least
one, Ride Austin, has already invested over $4 million
in new product development specifically for the Austin
launch and has raised at least $10 million to commence
and sustain operations and achieve required market
liquidity. The City of Austin welcomes all TNCs into the
market and sees this capital commitment as being similar to those of other of our partners in the Smart City
Challenge
It should be noted that the current Austin TNC ordinance
does not provide any regulatory penalty or sanction for
any TNC operating in the City with non-fingerprint background checked drivers. Rather, the ordinance sets forth
the community goal and expectation that, over time,
almost all of the percentage of TNC driver miles or hours
will be with fingerprint background-checked drivers. The
ordinance is silent as to the mechanism and responsibility for achieving these benchmarks. Unfortunately, Uber
and Lyft declined to participate in a community conversation on these issues to help develop new forward looking
government structures, choosing instead to initiate an
election (which they lost) and then to leave town. The
invitation for Uber and Lyft to operate in Austin and to
join in the community conversation remains open, even
while the City is welcoming new innovation and models,
as described above
At scale, TNCs are critical to the success of Austin’s
mobility future as we actively seek to create a user-focused mobility-as-a-service model in Austin. Austin will
continue to lead on policy development and balance with
regards to new mobility technologies. Our goal is to minimize the negative impact to our residents when new disrupted technologies are introduced. Austin proposes to
work with our local and national partners to find viable
solutions to the sharing economy regulation dilemma.
With our partners at Capital Factory, we are exploring new
application-based technology that could make biometric
data collection seamless and convenient — technology
that could result in a transferrable and scalable solution
to this issue worldwide.
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How will the Austin Smart City initiatives help real people
move up the ladder? To craft our Ladders of Opportunity
approach, we have been working with a diverse group
of community advisors and public, private, philanthropic
partners to develop innovative projects To ensure we can
launch rapidly, and produce real data-driven results in
three years, Austin will leverage powerful equity initiatives
in our community that already have proven momentum
helping real people get a leg up on the ladder of opportunity – through education, jobs, housing, healthcare and
lifestyles, and more. Now we’ll be adding a powerful new
transportation layer as well.
Our Smart City initiative will use Smart Stations, Connected Travelers, the Mobility Marketplace and other
initiatives to pilot effective ways to measurably help
disadvantaged people and communities travel – safely,
affordably, and conveniently. We will test and measure
new initiatives that help targeted groups of people in
need, to access good jobs, schools, homes, medical care,
shopping areas, and other critical destinations, and keep
the costs of transportation affordable.
Community Advancement Network (CAN) – a coalition
of public-sector, community and faith-based organizations who collaborate to improve health-human services,
workforce, housing, and other supportive services needed
as ladders of opportunity in Central Texas – will be our
lead partner to convene, connect, and inform community
partners for this effort. Through CAN, we will reinvent the
model for involving diverse, low-income people of ages
in transportation investment decisions, in a way that is
meaningful to them and truly improves their lives. We
will engage the many Austin and Central Texas professional and groups already reinventing outreach and civic
engagement, an area of great interest and innovation in
Austin. Many local community partners have provided letOUR VISION FOR AUSTIN: THE OPPORTUNITY CITY
ters of commitment detailing their roles and goals; these
are included in Volume II of this submittal.
Ladders of Opportunity Mobility Strategies
• Beta-test innovative strategies for improving travel
options and tools for specific test groups of disadvantaged people; measure results and implement the
strategies that prove successful.
• Test new first-and-last mile services – including on-demand shuttles – to help people conveniently reach
existing major transit route stops/stations, when they
live/work beyond walking distance.
• Provide more efficient, affordable and accessible
mobility options that harness the latest advances in
on-demand, shared use mobility.
• Improve on existing paratransit options. Include access
for the disabled.
• Smartphone interface and hailing will accommodate people who lack traditional banking and
credit card systems. Phone-in and info kiosk
options will be tested as alternate to smartphones.
Outreach and Education Strategies
• Ambassador Program: Recruiting peer “connectors”
from our ethnically and culturally diverse pilot areas to
provide person-to-person assistance and training on
accessing new tools and options
• Smart Trips Program: Individualized support to help
people/families take trips other than by car
• Multilingual: Programs, information, and public communications in both Spanish and English. Where feasible, include other languages and/or graphic tools that
are minimally language-based
• Community Partners: Each of our community partners will conduct outreach with the populations
they serve, to help inform people in need of these
new mobility options and get them to try them.
Ladders of Opportunity Initiatives — Phase 1
1. Restore Rundberg revitalization area
Rundberg is very diverse, very low-income area, where
over 50% of children eat with the help of food stamps
and 64% of residents speak Spanish or another non-English language (e.g. Arabic, Burmese, Vietnamese, Chinese). We will use the multifaceted “Restore Rundberg”
outreach networks that have already been established for
anti-crime, safety, health, and other linked place-based
initiatives in the Rundberg Lane area in the past four
years, begun with a USDOJ grant.
A Smart Station and new travel options and tools will help
residents connect to transit to access jobs, workforce
training, healthcare and healthy lives. Rundberg residents
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will help pilot initiatives for health clinic patients, public
housing residents, and Austin Community College students.
The Rundberg area has major transit stops that connect
to employment centers. However, many people live in
‘transit deserts’ more than a half mile away from the transit stops. Our Connected Traveler solution will pilot new
first-last mile services to get people to these transit stops,
including safer biking and walking routes. This will build
upon the personalized Smart Trips travel planning support
already piloted in the area by the city’s Active Transportation team.
A Rundberg community health assessment identified a
‘lack of bus services to access grocery stores, healthcare providers, and workplaces,” and challenges “getting
to and from health care facilities for many members of
the community.” It also identified specific transportation
imporvements such as an on-demand circulator, better
connections to transit, and more frequent transit.
2. Access to CommUnityCare Clinics
In 2014, nearly 100,000 uninsured/low-income patients
needed to travel to more than 350,000 appointments at
over 20 CommUnityCare locations (the Federally Qualified Health Centers system serving Travis County). We will
pilot new Connected Traveler/Packaged Mobility options
and tools that help patients travel more conveniently to
the clinic locations – without needing to drive alone.
Austin is making a tremendous investment in new healthcare facilities. Austinites voted to raise their property
tax rate in 2014, increasing funding for Central Health
and the new Dell Medical School. In early 2016, Austin
opened three new state-of-the-art public healthcare clinics. These projects were achieved with extensive community support, including participation and funding from
nonprofits, agencies, and local philanthropic foundations.
Six clinics are proposed for the pilot program. All have a
large patient base, poor existing transit connections, and/
or have other identified travel barriers. All Austin locations are within the “Eastern Crescent” of underserved
communities. The six clinics serve individuals and families who are low-income, and face educational, workforce
readiness, health and safety barriers to opportunity. The
pilot will focus on the first-last mile and shuttle connections to these clinics. The Mobility Marketplace will
provide data for prioritizing rollout of shuttle connections
based on metrics, help engage users through the Smart
Ambassador program to ensure they are aware of and
able to access the program, and complementing this
approach with targeted subsidies.
3. Austin Community College Workforce Training and
Mobility Options
We will develop new education programs to prepare Central Texans for good jobs that will emerge in conjunction
with the new transportation technologies being piloted,
including electric and automated/connected vehicles.
With specific groups of Austin Community College (ACC)
students, we will pilot new online transportation options,
tools, and personal training that make more convenient
and affordable to get to class and stay in school.
ACC is the primary provider of workforce training in Central Texas. To prepare Central Texans who are interested
in a vocational career or to begin their college studies,
the College works closely with area employers to identify
workforce gaps and pathways.
The college is redeveloping the defunct Highland Mall
on Airport Boulevard — a corridor that has already been
studied for transportation improvements — into an innovative learning campus that will likewise feature a mix of
uses and services. The campus is surrounded by largely
working-class neighborhoods, on the edge of traditionally underserved northeast Austin. Rackspace, a large IT
company, recently agreed co-locate at Highland Campus.
As part of this agreement, ACC students will have internships with the company. The Smart City career track can
be integrated into ACC/City of Austin participation in the
White House TechHire Initiative. As a TechHire community,
the College and City will build on its proven track record of
creating pathways to tech-industry jobs.
ACC will also offer a new Smart City, Smart Student travel
information and training program for its students. This
will encourage them to use apps and other tools to utilize
transportation options other than driving alone to campus. As part of this project, ACC Highland and the City
also are discussing innovative parking solutions to help
serve the larger area. This includes potentially becoming
the pilot site for Austin’s first automated parking facility.
4. Public Housing Residents
We will provide residents of public housting, who are in
the process of receiving free Google Fiber service, with
training on how to use online transportation options and
tools; in order to help them travel to work, school, job
training, healthcare visits, etc. Communities near a Smart
Station will also receive training and support to use those
packaged mobility services. We will provide personalized
Smart Trips planning to adults, on how to take regular
daily trips by transit, walking, and by bicycle.
The Housing Authority of the City of Austin (HACA) has
been nationally recognized by the U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Obama
administration for its exemplary digital inclusion program,
Unlocking the Connection. This HACA program in 2014
launched a first-in-the-nation program to help low-income public housing residents access basic broadband,
digital literacy training, devices, and other essential programs and services through the internet.
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Currently, HACA estimates that about 40% of its residents
have a working computer or smart phone. When Google
Fiber selected Austin as their second U.S. city for highspeed home service, they became a key partner and have
committed to providing free basic Internet for every HACA
household. In addition to using this capability to improve
youth educational outcomes and access to online learning and job training for adults, HACA is also working to
help residents make more cost-effective, higher quality transportation decisions through a “Transportation
Self-Sufficiency” initiative.
Five HACA properties are anticipated to have Google Fiber
installed by the end of 2016, and about 80% of the residents have registered for the service. Several other HACA
properties already have existing high-speed Internet
access. Once the Rundberg Smart Station is operational,
we can extend the pilot to the three HACA properties
nearby, where Google Fiber will be installed by 2017, and
to other properties as resources allow.
Ladders of Opportunity Initiatives — Phase 2
As new Smart Stations become operational, and as the
City plans for smart land use and new multimodal investments, we will create new opportunities to diversify our
portfolio of Ladders of Opportunity Initiatives including:
1. Pflugerville Smart Station
The diverse residents of Pflugerville, especially those living on the community’s less prosperous west side are
car-dependent, as Pflugerville is not connected to the
region’s transit system, too far from Austin for biking and
walking trips into the urban core, and not well-served by
Austin car-sharing and bike-sharing companies. As the
cost of living in Austin has gone up, more residents have
moved to Pflugerville, thus exacerbating the challenge
they face to get to jobs and services without good mobility options.
The Pflugerville Smart Station is our exurban/far suburban/regional mobility hub model for USDOT, for an area
that is a “transit desert.” It can include Capital Metro or
CARTS vans for residents to form vanpools with their
neighbors, and/or a private shuttle service (e.g. Bridj)
would connect residents to the Tech Ridge Park and Ride,
where commuters can catch transit to Downtown Austin.
Pflugerville needs new solutions: In a 2012 Citizen Survey, only 31% of residents said their transportation needs
were being met, according to the city’s 2015 Master
Transportation Plan.
2. M Station and MLK Station Area Development
The M Station apartment complex, developed by nonprofit
Foundation Communities and serving residents at less
than 50% of MFI is an anchor of the MLK MetroRail station
area. This concept looks at a transitional approach to pilot
mobility solutions for M Station residents and other neighbors in this traditionally disadvantaged part of East Austin,
allowing residents to live conveniently and affordably carfree. Potential solutions include data-driven and app-based
carsharing, bikesharing, and ride-hailing services, as well
as on-demand shuttles and future connected/automated
vehicles.
As is true across east Austin, housing costs have risen as
the area attracts new investment, homebuyers and developments. The low-income African-American population,
historically the heart of the community, has dropped by
about half. To create new affordable housing in the neighborhood, the MLK model includes new affordable rental
housing by partner organizations (Foundation Communities, LifeWorks), new attainable homes (Chestnut Commons, by Momark Development), and the preservation of
homes and long-time residents through a partnership with
Habitat for Humanity.
REMOVING THE I-35 BARRIER
Transportation and land planning can provide both access
and barriers. As with many other cities, parts of Austin,
particularly the Eastern Crescent, continue to suffer from
past transportation decisions. Interstate Highway 35 was
built over 50 years ago and has been a physical, racial
and economic dividing line in Austin. I-35 is more than an
ugly piece of transportation infrastructure; it is a cultural
and economic scar, dividing West Austin from East Austin,
where past segregation efforts placed people of color. For
many years, community leaders have hoped to eradicate
this barrier to help people achieve equitable access to
healthcare, education and jobs.
Source: AutoDesk InfraWorks
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The most recent effort to study I-35 began in 2008 with
the My35 grassroots and stakeholder-driven award-winning planning effort. The My35 recommendation in 2011
incorporated non-traditional mobility solutions and recommended further study. That same year, the City of
Austin started a study in partnership with TxDOT to look at
bottlenecks and other targeted interim improvement solutions for a focused area in the urban core. When Texas
began a $300 million statewide mobility planning initiative in 2013, the findings from the city’s study became
the basis for what is the Mobility35 program today.
The traditional solution of adding multiple lanes for single-occupancy vehicles would have resulted in largescale right-of-way and community impacts, including significant business and residential relocations and further
impacts to community assets including a major university, local churches, historic cemeteries, and other valued
assets. The grass-roots solution offered by Mobility35 is
a targeted increase of capacity within the existing right
of way, with dynamically tolled express lanes offering a
reliable option for auto vehicles and a reliable route and
free use for bus transit and emergency vehicles. Both by
necessity and community desire, Mobility35 includes a
substantial bicycle and pedestrian commitment in the
form of a shared-use path on both sides of the roadway
and improved east-west connections for these modes at
every crossing.
The program is a 10-year capital upgrade to this 50-year
old corridor that includes not just pavement but also a
complete ITS overhaul and upgrade, addressing gaps in
the camera and ITS monitoring systems and completing
the backbone of and ITS network. Recognizing this potential, the Texas Transportation Commission recently allocated $10M of its statewide Congestion Relief Initiative
for operations improvements in the Austin area.
The Mobility35 program has continued the proactive
stakeholder-oriented approach. As part of this effort, former Austin mayor and current State Senator Kirk Watson
led the I-35 Downtown Stakeholder Working group, which
worked to recommend solutions regarding improvements
on I-35 as it passes through Downtown (roughly from
Lady Bird Lake to Martin Luther King Boulevard). This
effort considered alternative designs, including those
developed in the community that would lower or depress
the main lines of I-35 to reduce the physical barrier.
CONNECTED AND AUTOMATED VEHICLES
Connected and Automated vehicles will change the face
of transportation and mobility in the 21st century and
beyond. Austin’s Smart City team is committed to safely
deploying consumer-facing connected and automated
vehicle technologies to address significant safety and
mobility challenges our city is facing, to impact environmental stewardship, and to provide access to transportation options previously not available or not convenient.
The rapid evolution and introduction of connected and
automated vehicle technology will feed a hungry early-adopter community found in tech-friendly Austin. Our
citizens will embrace the opportunity to ride in self-driving vehicles from the airport, experience life-saving safety
applications in their vehicles, and be first-in-the-nation to
beta test the newest mobility applications. But it’s more
than just satisfying the Millennials and their connected
society as the norm. Austin envisions a future in which
automated vehicles also reach into underserved neighborhoods to bring citizens to Smart Stations and connect
them with the services and opportunities they desperately
need, including transit, healthcare, education, and jobs.
Our approach to deployment of CV/AV technology recognizes there are different solutions for different needs, and
we can leverage this technology to provide services that
various segments of the city need.
Austin will pilot a number of connected and automated
vehicle projects to serve a variety of end users:
• Job seekers – Citizens who need access to transit
options to bring them to interviews and places of employment during the workweek.
• Medical Access – Citizens who need convenient,
cost-effective transportation to medical appointments.
• First/Last mile commuters – Citizens who need options
to get to/from Smart Stations.
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• Air travelers – Citizens and visitors who need intermediate connections to transit options at proposed Smart
Stations.
• Business professionals – Workers who need alternatives to driving their single-occupancy vehicle to and
around downtown.
Deploying connected and automated vehicles to serve
these users will provide benefits and create opportunities:
• Improved safety – According to the NHTSA National
Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Survey, approximately
94% of all automobile accidents are caused by human
error. Autonomous vehicles do not get tired, distracted,
or otherwise impaired; they make quicker and better
decisions; and they do not break the rules of the road.
Similarly, connected vehicle technologies are estimated
to be able to address over 80 percent of crashes.
• Improved mobility – Many available transit services in
Austin do not sufficiently penetrate the neighborhoods
that need them the most. Connected and automated
vehicles can reach areas of the community that are not
well served by other modes of transportation. This will
connect people to the services and opportunities they
need. By minimizing the lags due to driver reaction and
providing data for more efficient traffic operations, connected and automated vehicles can improve mobility
through reduced congestion.
• Improved productivity – The average Austinite
wasted over 50 additional travel hours sitting in congested traffic. With the car doing the driving, travelers
will be able to recoup this time to catch up on work or
simply unwind before arriving home – thus improving
health and family time.
• Lowered operational costs – Many current modes
of transportation, including owning a personal vehicle, can be cost-prohibitive. In addition to the purchase
price, recurring costs such as fuel, maintenance, and
insurance can drive many to rely on the aforementioned
ineffective transit options, or to simply limit their sphere
of opportunity. Avoiding the purchase, and removing
or reducing the other individual costs can potentially
remove these barriers, and broaden available opportunities.
• Education – Connected and automated vehicle technology will require a specially trained workforce to
maintain and repair the vehicles that use it. With Austin
leading adoption of this technology, this will present
opportunities to base education and training operations
in the region, including vocational programs at Austin
Community College, technology related degrees at
Huston-Tillotson University, and advanced engineering
programs at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas
A&M University.
• Economy/Jobs – The presence of this skilled workforce could encourage companies to bring their business to Austin, where they can pull talent directly from
these resources. At least one AV shuttle company we
have talked to has expressed an interest in building one
of their “microfactories “ in or near Austin to manufacture their shuttles
The Austin team proposes to showcase these benefits in
a number of real-world settings that directly improve the
quality of life for those who live in Austin, those working in
Austin, and those visiting Austin:
• Automated Airport Circulator – Transporting arriving
passengers to a number of travel options near ABIA,
including the local Smart Station where other mobility options will be present to assist them in continuing
on to their ultimate destination. This will present automated vehicle technology to a large audience, including
the early adopters and innovators that are a crucial part
of the Austin culture, and help break down barriers by
increasing access to other mobility opportunities.
• Smart Corridor – a six-mile stretch of a major arterial
connector (Riverside Drive) that will serve as a laboratory for many Smart City pilot projects. A number
of safety, mobility, and environmental applications will
be considered; a number of approaches to connectivity
and automation will be utilized (V2V, V2I, V2X); and a
number of communication mediums will be employed
(DSRC, 4G/LTE, WiFi).
• Automated Transit Vehicle – we will work with our
partnering electric bus providers to develop and deploy
a full-sized automated and connected transit bus.
• Autonomous First/Last Mile Connectors – Will
radiate into surrounding neighborhoods to bring commuters to Smart Stations, connecting them with other
transit options and a variety of connected & automated
transportation services.
Austin understands that some of these connected and
automated vehicle demonstrations are technically difficult, equivalent to a moon shot, and may not be achievable within the three years envisioned as part of the grant.
However, we are committed to move the state-of-the-art
in a positive direction in terms of using existing and evolving connected and automated technologies in an open
urban street environment. We believe that Austin is the
only place where new automated and connected technologies can be deployed at scale in an effort to solve real
and existing challenges.
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REDUCING OUR CARBON FOOTPRINT:
A VISION FOR ELECTRIC FLEETS
Austin is the ideal place to demonstrate to the nation and
the world how electric vehicles can scale quickly, support
grid reliability, and bring value to owners all while being
powered by renewable energy to maximize green house
gas (GHG) savings.
Significantly reducing GHG emissions in the transportation
sector is a critical component of Austin’s Smart City transportation program, Climate Protection Plan, Austin Energy
Generation Plan, and the focus of the Smart City Challenge.
It is important that transportation electrification does not
just transfer GHG inventory to the electricity sector. As such,
an important component of our strategy is a continued
decarbonization of the electric grid and continue the nation
leading program in that Austin Energy powers all public charging infrastructure with 100% renewable energy
from Texas’ growing wind and solar resources through its
green-e certified GreenChoice program.
For the transportation sector to maximize the benefits of
Austin’s low-carbon grid and 100% renewable GreenChoice program, we must scale electric vehicles and electric vehicle miles traveled (eVMT) quickly and aggressively.
By targeting high mileage mobility service vehicles and
removing key barriers to consumer adoption, the Smart
City grant will enable Austin to electrify up to 5% of its total
VMT in 5 years, and a significant portion of that within the
three-year grant duration.
This combination of accelerated eVMT growth and fossil
fuel free energy equates to maximum GHG reductions.
The business models, strategies, and tactics used will be
scalable and repeatable for other cities such that we see
massive CO2 reduction from the transportation sector as
a whole. In addition, this program will improve air quality,
keep millions of energy dollars in the local economy, and be
a key “tipping point” project in Austin’s trajectory to achieve
its carbon Net ZERO 2050 Plan.
PROMOTING SCALING, REPLICABILITY, COMMERCIALIZATION & INCUBATION
Austin’s entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to innovation differentiates it from other communities. Austin
will leverage the Smart Cities Challenge demonstration
to support and inspire entrepreneurs who are developing the next generation of solutions to transportation and
mobility challenges.
Globally, almost 3 billion people will transition from poverty to the middle class over the next 35 years. Most of
these people will choose to live in cities. The urbanization
associated with this demographic shift will place unprecedented strain on urban infrastructure and on the environment. Technology must advance in order to ensure
that this transition happens sustainably.
Locally, the trajectory of Central Texas over the past
decade stands as a phenomenal case study in the challenges associated with rapid economic and population
growth. Austin’s hypergrowth has positioned it as an
exceptional laboratory for developing technologies and
business models that will allow cities to decrease traffic
congestion, improve affordability, and preserve quality of
life in a wide range of communities. Austin will leverage
its entrepreneurial ecosystem, vibrant tech community,
and collaborative public sector to create and support a
dense network of distinctive opportunities for innovation
in transportation and mobility. The projects proposed in
the Smart Cities Challenge proposal will serve as demonstration projects for existing technologies and will also
create a dynamic, accessible platform for future innovation to occur.
Austin’s entrepreneurship and commercialization infrastructure will be embedded in the Smart Cities Challenge
demonstration projects at every level of the value chain
for the duration of the grant cycle.
Austin will create a dynamic, accessible playground/laboratory/sandbox for innovators to develop, test, and deploy
novel solutions to transportation and mobility. Entrepreneurs and researchers—both from Austin and outside of
Austin—will have privileged access to the pilot programs
and program data generated through these initiatives. The
Smart Cities team will also actively engage the broader
entrepreneurial community to source innovative solutions to challenges or problems that are identified in the
demonstration projects. Novel procurement mechanisms,
such as challenges and prizes, will be utilized to rapidly
source up-and-coming solutions to transportation and
mobility challenges. Entrepreneurs from outside of Austin
will also be engaged through a dense network of partners
(both existing and new) to leverage the resources, data,
pilot programs, and institutional support in Austin.
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PACKAGED MOBILITY AND CONNECTED TRAVELER ACCESS & EQUITY
Imagine three Austinites who need reliable and affordable
mobility options:
• Mackenzie, a recent college graduate who just moved to
Austin for a new job opportunity, wants to access mobility options that allow her to live a car-free lifestyle.
• Monica, a disabled resident, is unable to drive and
needs a reliable way to travel so she can access job
opportunities.
• Javier, owner of a small but fast-growing business,
wants both to provide commuting services to his existing employees and expand his pool of potential new
hires by allowing qualified candidates without access to
affordable mobility to commute to work for him.
As with many members of the Austin community, Mackenzie, Monica, and Javier don’t know much about the different mobility options available to them, how those options
compare, how to access and purchase services, and
whether they qualify for any subsidies. The “Mobility Marketplace,” where our Packaged Mobility and Connected
Traveler projects meet, solves this by providing information
to Mackenzie, Monica, and Javier about available mobility
services and benefits and a platform to directly connect
with and access service from providers. Once they identify
the services they want, they can then purchase and manage them through the Mobility Marketplace.
Imagine Mackenzie selecting a “Gold Transit Package”
that includes a number of rides via TNC (with a monthly
mileage limit), B-Cycle, and public transit. Each month the
payment “card” she uses—a digital passbook that she
keeps on her smartphone—is automatically reloaded.
She’s able to track her usage and adjust the number of
rides in her package each month to better fit her behavior
and preferences. She opts into customized push notifications that keep her up to speed on all the latest mobility
services and she’s able to indicate her interest in adopting
services that don’t yet exist, allowing service providers to
understand her needs. She sleeps or catches up on email
most mornings on her way to work because she doesn’t
have to drive and her Gold Transit Package costs her a
fraction of what it would have cost to own a car and park
it in downtown Austin, where, like more than 100,000 of
her fellow Austin residents, Mackenzie commutes each
morning. That lower cost leaves her with more spending
money to support Austin’s local economy.
Imagine Monica, whose disability leaves her unable to
drive and with limited mobility options, accessing a similar package to allow her to expand her job opportunities,
but at a lower cost due to a targeted subsidy program.
Being a little less tech-savvy and a bit less interested in
keeping up with all the latest technology, Monica relies
on her community “Smart ambassador” to bring her up to
speed, via regular community gatherings, on her options
and how to access them. Her Smart ambassador also
provides instruction on accessing the Mobility Marketplace website where she can browse her options.
Imagine Javier finally being able to offer affordable and
reliable commuting benefits to his employees. For years
he has heard from qualified Austin residents who would
like to work for him but lack reliable mobility options for
doing so. For years his employees have lost valuable time
sitting in traffic on their way to work and he has reimbursed his employees’ parking costs. Imagine him visiting
a website where he can input some simple information
about his current costs and where his employees live, and
it lays out some of the economics of his current situation,
revealing that he can actually save money by providing a
version of the “Gold Transit Package” to his employees at
little or no cost to them.
Imagine mobility app and service providers, integrated
payment providers, and mobility aggregators being able
to see the types of packaged mobility services that would
most benefit Mackenzie, Monica, and Javier, and imagine that “demand insight” allowing them to join forces to
deliver those packages and create a seamless, integrated
user experience.
The Mobility Marketplace, complemented by the Smart
ambassadors program, will provide the critical connection between user demand for services and the service
providers that can provide them to make these solutions
possible.
Many Austinites lack realistic alternatives to the single
occupancy, personally owned vehicle. 15% of our citizens
live in transit deserts. In addition, most of the same areas
lack viable alternative services. This is not just a transportation problem; it’s an equity problem. Austinites who
do not own a vehicle are faced with limited access to
services that others take for granted.
As described in the following pages, the Smart Stations
will reimagine the concept of a park-and-ride. Serving as
critically important, connective nodes throughout Austin
for neighborhoods that lack adequate mobility services
and other basic needs. Each Smart Station will provide
an array of options that are meant to serve a diversity of
needs. By developing these nodes, the City of Austin also
intends to create an attractive environment for commercial investment and development.
Imagine a park-and-ride where neighbors meet to commute into work on an electrified bus rapid transit route or
form a facilitated shared vanpool, pick up their groceries
from an on-site locker on their way home, that is a Smart
Station, connected by the Mobility Marketplace.
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VOLUME 1A - TECHNICAL APPROACH
USER-FOCUSED MOBILITY
Each Smart City initiative has a key role in bringing our
accessibility ecosystem to life and achieving the vital outcomes of safety, mobility, climate protection and opportunity. User-focused mobility solutions enable citizens
to make smart transportation decisions by providing
the convenience, speed, and choice necessary to make
informed decisions. A cornerstone of Austin’s vision for
user-focused mobility-on-demand is the concept of a
mobility subscription – the idea that users will be able to
purchase a package of mobility options including public
transit, bike and car sharing, ridesharing, as well as services to enable a car-free lifestyle i.e., grocery delivery.
As automated and connected vehicles become ubiquitous, the options for mobility services will continue to
increase. Incentives could be provided for households
that make choices benefiting the transportation network,
such as telecommuting. Removing the need for a personal automobile, the mobility subscription also provides
a ladder of opportunity for low-income households that
are disproportionately burdened by transportation costs.
Physical Infrastructure
The first step is to build out Austin’s physical infrastructure. An all-ages, all-abilities bicycle network will provide safe, accessible active transportation routes, and it
has already been set into motion by the city. As a part
of the Smart City vision, this network will be elevated to
become an interactive transportation experience through
enhanced data collection, wayfinding, and placemaking along the network. Expanding Austin’s bike share
program will integrate bicycling more closely with other
transportation systems.
Digital infrastructure
Digital infrastructure will complement the physical and
provide the basis for a user-focused experience on the
transportation network. The City of Austin will partner
with local, private-sector innovators to develop a mobile
technology platform that unifies public and private mobility choices. Austin-based Moovel has already taken first
steps to integrate multi-modal planning, choice, and
payment into one mobile application, and Capital Metro’s mobile application is advancing in a similar direction.
Other existing technologies will also facilitate the use of
a mobility subscription. Austin plans to enable RFID cards
from employers and educators to access the many modes
included in the subscriptions. This will also allow the city
to expand the user base by thousands of users at a time
as new clients are added.
Smart Stations
Austin’s physical and digital transportation assets will
meet in Smart Stations. These hubs are envisioned as
great public spaces where users can connect to many
transportation options, co-working spaces, and other
travel amenities such as showers and lockers. Using
dynamic parking pricing, the limited automotive space at
these hubs will be prioritized for car sharing, vanpooling,
and rideshare or automated vehicle pick-up and dropoff. Designed to make travel sustainable and easy, these
Smart Stations would be a national model for connecting
people and places.
Our concept for user-focused mobility is informed by a
variety of potential use cases, such as:
• Low Car Households - Many families in the Eastern
Crescent (the far eastern edge of Austin, stretching
from near Pflugerville south to near the airport) are
low-car households, owning one or fewer cars, and
struggle to balance transportation needs. Austin plans
to offer Eastern Crescent Families an affordable packaged mobility service through the mobility marketplace
and training through the Smart Ambassador program
that can support the activities of the entire family.
• Professionals - Over one million passengers travel
through Austin-Bergstrom International Airport every
month; many of them are professionals traveling for
work to attend conferences or connect with Austin’s
booming tech industry. Upon arrival, a visitor could
take an automated shuttle from the terminal to the ABIA
Smart Station where she could then travel by electric
bus rapid transit (e-BRT) along Riverside Corridor into
Downtown. With seamless WiFi connectivity throughout
the route allowing her to stay up to date on email communications and newsfeeds. As an early adopter, we
would as for her feedback on her experience for a discounted return trip and would be encouraged to share
information on emerging technologies with coworkers.
• Connected Corridor – The Riverside Drive corridor
represents one of the most productive corridors in
terms of transit ridership, connecting affordable and
subsidized housing to employment opportunities in
downtown and education opportunities with the corridor. At the eastern terminus of this corridor sits the
Austin Bergstrom International Airport (ABIA) and the
location for the City’s proposed closed-loop testing
platform for connected and automated vehicles. To
improve and expand connections from affordable residential densities along the corridor to employment and
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educational opportunities located at its ends, the City in
cooperation with Capital Metro will implement an Electric Bus Rapid Transit (EBRT) in this corridor, consistent with adopted community plans. The service will
feature 10-minute transit headways and support the
investments in transit-oriented development now under
construction in this corridor. The City will implement
advanced bicycle and pedestrian detection at intersections to allow transit and cyclists to coexist safely along
the corridor. Mobileye technology will also be installed
on buses in order to provide full 360-degree detection
and monitor the roadways. DSRC communications
could transmit information to other connected vehicles
on the roadway in order to expand monitoring capabilities throughout the corridor. Should an incident occur,
the proper communications will be relayed in order to
dispatch EMS and provide emergency vehicle preemption to improve response times. Additionally, the City of
Austin will pursue a mobility bond in November 2016
to include $40 Million in physical improvements to
the Riverside Corridor, expanding bicycle facilities and
intersection technologies necessary to allow the BRT to
operate on the inside lanes of this multi-lane arterial.
The investments will establish the future cross-section
of the roadway and place critical pedestrian and cycle
infrastructure at the edge of right-of-way to protect the
corridor for future development.
• Early Adopters (Market Test Environment) – Early
adopters are critical to the diffusion of innovation. In
particular, ABIA serves as the perfect marketing ground
to engage tech-savvy professionals, risk-taking entrepreneurs, and forward-thinking trendsetters. Furthermore, the early adopter community will become a
group of Smart City ambassadors, who will champion
the technologies and influence adoption by non-technical users. Deployment of automated, connected and
electric technologies at the airport will give government
operators and private companies the confidence to
introduce these technologies in a future open-roadway testing environment. At the airport, the deployment allows us to solve an immediate over-crowding
issue on the land-side terminal platforms. A future
deployment of connected and automated vehicles in
a first- and last-mile service regime would allow us
to not only provide ladders of opportunity by securing
access for underserved populations, but it would also
directly test the theory that people will adopt these
new technologies with little or no added incentives.
• Traffic Operators - Traffic operators monitor the
roadways, vehicles, and environment in order to
provide travelers with a safe, efficient, and reliable
transportation experience. Based upon the situation, traffic operators can adjust signal timing, dispatch EMS or HERO response teams, enable freight
and transit priority, and communicate vital information to travelers. The Internet of Things (IoT) holds
tremendous potential for improving traffic flow and
strengthening communications with all travelers.
• Urban Delivery and Logistics - With the increase of
e-commerce, Austinites are ordering more and more
goods online in addition to traditional freight. Delivery
drivers struggle to navigate the city, avoid congestion,
and fulfill their orders within a specified time window.
An additional challenge is missed delivery attempts that
require drivers to make additional trips in order to complete their job. By increasing communications between
urban delivery fleets and the City of Austin, real-time
information may be shared in order to optimize routes,
find available parking, and enable shared use of vehicles, e.g., identifying available drivers and vehicles, such
as commuter shuttles, that can serve a combined urban
delivery function while providing personal mobility trips
or a dedicated delivery function during off-peak hours.
• Suburban Commuters - The average resident in
Pflugerville, who works in Downtown Austin often faces
a variety of weekly frustrations including unexpected
traffic delays, higher fuel consumption, and loss of
valuable time that could be better spent with friends or
family. Austin plans to offer commuters an affordable
Packaged Mobility Service through the mobility marketplace. A Pflugerville resident will now be able to walk
to the nearest Smart Station, form a vanpool and commute with coworkers and neighbors into Downtown.
On the way home, the commuter could order groceries
online from the supermarket or a local urban farm so
that they would be ready to pick-up at the Station upon
arrival. To assist in getting home, the commuter could
hail a ride from a TNC provider in order to complete the
last mile.
• R&D Community (Beta Test Environment) – Before
technologies may be considered ready for mainstream
commercial use, technologies must be demonstrated in
a controlled test environment and achieve acceptable
levels of safety, usability, and quality. The ABIA Station offers a controlled access corridor for pilot demonstrations of next generation vehicles on two available
courses. One course is a “tech-track” where only vehicles equipped with connected and automated capabilities may operate. The other is a “mixed-track” where
all vehicles are permitted to operate. Once vehicles are
deemed “trusted” operators may apply for testing on
other City roadways. The ABIA Station offers a range
of V2I capabilities and allows OEMs to understand how
vehicles will interact with each other.
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ANNOTATED SITE MAP
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The Mobility Marketplace will connect users (demand) to
mobility service and tool providers (supply). It will serve
two customer categories: individual users and “channels”
that serve many users, e.g., employers, retail businesses,
tourism and travel industries, health care providers, trade
organizations, schools, and community Smart Ambassadors who can help facilitate better access to new mobility
options to their fellow community members, particularly
those who are unbanked or separated from tech-enabled
mobility options by the digital divide.
The Marketplace would also target elderly and disabled
travelers by centralizing information on—and identifying
opportunities to improve or augment—services already
available in Austin such as Drive a Senior and CapMetro’s
Metro Access program. Yet additional channels may arise
as we proceed with Smart City implementation and we
will nimbly engage them.
There is tremendous leverage and scaling potential in
engaging user channels for two reasons: first, they offer
an efficient means of delivery of mobility options to many
users at once. Secondly, behavioral science has repeatedly shown that people will be inclined to change their
behavior if they observe behavior change among a peer
group. Channels embody such peer groups and offer a
means of serving them. Additionally, the Marketplace is
a scalable model that can be adopted by any city. The
Marketplace will have an online and mobile application
interface. It will be designed to allow open access to
third parties to develop additional functionalities to those
described as follows.
Function 1: Mobility Analytics: A robust suite of tools that
will quantify a user’s baseline mobility performance and
present recommendations for alternative travel behavior
that optimizes user-prioritized metrics and preferences.
The Mobility Analytics Platform will include the following:
• Metrics Selection and Prioritization: Users and channels can select and prioritize key metrics that are most
important for them in a set of mobility services. Example metrics that would be tracked through the marketplace include:
» Cost ($/mile);
» Travel time per day;
» Carbon footprint (g CO2/day);
» Jobs accessed within a set commute time.
• Performance Baselining: Users and channels will
provide simple inputs that will enable the platform
to assess performance in terms of selected metrics.
Example user inputs would be home neighborhood
and common destinations, including work. Example
channel inputs, e.g., by an employer, include number
of employees driving to work by singly occupied vehicle
and parking costs.
• Mobility Recommendations: Users and channels will
receive an initial, automated recommendation for the
optimal set of mobility services and benefits for their
travel needs, based on selected metrics.
• Scenario Analysis: Users and channels can manually
modify the initial recommendation or explore alternative
mobility options for their daily commute or travel needs,
then see the impact of those options on selected metrics.
• Monitoring and Evaluation: Users and channels will be
able to continuously monitor and evaluate their current
services and compare them to new or emerging services with respect to selected metrics.
CONNECTED TRAVELERS AND THE MOBILITY MARKETPLACE
Function 2: Mobility Transactions: A set of functions
that facilitate Marketplace transactions and service
access that will include the following:
• Transactions: Users and channels can complete transactions with mobility service providers to purchase services, including accessing subsidized benefit programs.
• Access: Users and channels can access instructional
videos and tutorials on use of transit services, as well
as scheduled transit demonstration events planned
through the SMART ambassadors program
• New Mobility Services Crowdsourcing: Users and
channels can post requests or even pre-pay for specific services that may differ from advertised services. To encourage these requests, case studies and
examples of available mobility services in other global
markets will be made available to users and channels.
Function 3: Mobility Pilots Launchpad: An initially
manual but increasingly automated means of allowing
mobility service and tool providers to roll out new services
and tools based on user demand and City-driven metrics.
• The City will be able to actively encourage and incentivize (e.g., through targeted subsidies) new pilot services
and tools based on prioritized metrics Carbon footprint
and population-weighted access to jobs.
• Providers will benefit from “demand insight” to target
travelers with greatest need in launching new pilots
• Providers will be able to understand and complement
existing subsidy programs to roll out their services
One service potentially launched through the Marketplace
is a calendar-driven mobility solution. When booking a
calendar appointment the application would prompt him
with travel options based on selected metrics. The app
could provide turn-by-turn multimodal navigation and
adjust its prompts based on user preferences and needs.
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Approach to Delivery: Mobility Marketplace
To maximize participation, the Marketplace will engage
travelers (demand) and mobility service and tool providers
(supply) through well-established marketing approaches,
including both ‘pull’ and ‘push’ strategies. ‘Pull’ refers to
voluntary engagement in the marketplace by users and
channels. ‘Push’ refers to active outreach and recruitment
targeting expanded participation in the Marketplace.
Demand (Users and Channels)
Pull: Individual travelers and channels that join the Marketplace voluntarily can directly engage with the Mobility
Analytics and Transactions functions to assess, choose
among, and purchase mobility services and tools.
Push: Recognizing that few users or channels are currently aware of the benefits or availability of mobility
services, we will field a 3-person engagement team to
actively recruit Marketplace demand. To demonstrate the
value, we will utilize the Mobility Analytics Function to
illustrate the impact on prioritized metrics of improving
existing—or introducing new—mobility services.
We will initially focus on two key user segments. Through
our Smart Ambassador Program, which will build on Capital Metro’s existing Smart Trips Austin program, we will
prioritize unbanked users and those separated from traditional channels by the digital divide. We will also prioritize
employers, allowing the Marketplace to quickly reach a
critical mass that will achieve scale and efficiency.
As a means of quickly scaling the Marketplace throughout
and ultimately beyond Austin, including to multicultural or
isolated communities, this strategy will be coupled with
information dissemination in several languages through
traditional and social media marketing outlets.
Supply (Mobility Tool and Service Providers)
Key service and tool suppliers include public and private
mobility services (e.g., public transportation authorities
and agencies, shuttle providers, transportation networking companies, car- and bike-share), traveler tools, integrated payment services, and services that currently do
not exist (e.g., driverless taxis).
Pull: For providers who voluntarily join the Marketplace
and would like to advertise their services, we will develop
a standardized provider onboarding process.
Push: Recognizing that not all mobility service and tool
providers will see the value of participating in the Marketplace, we will actively recruit providers. We will use
the Mobility Analytics Platform to illustrate the impact on
selected metrics and the business value to providers of
participating in the Marketplace.
Delivery Activities
1. Pilot Launches: Through the Mobility Pilots Launchpad
function, we will launch new mobility service pilots
based on user need and potential to maximize impact
with respect to emissions [g CO2/mi] and access
[population-weighted access to jobs]. We will then
assess the success of the pilots based on user- and
City-selected metrics and scale, refine, or retire them.
2. Platform Development: We have begun co-developing,
with Sidewalk Labs, a core set of tools and a serivice access portal comprising the Mobility Analytics
function. In the first year of the grant term, we will
continue this co-development process to complete
the Mobility Analytics function. We will then roll out
a first edition of the Mobility Transactions function.
3. Targeted Subsidies: Because the Marketplace offers an
ideal means of targeting transit subsidies to implementation of services that would benefit users with greatest
need, we have begun co-developing, with Capital Metro,
a way to optimize subsidy performance with respect to
selected metrics. For example, funding from Urbanized
Area Formula Program (5307), Advanced Transportation
and Congestion Management Technologies Deployment
Program, or other appropriate sources can be directed
to first/last mile service in underserved areas based on
metrics-based impact analysis from the Mobility Analytics platform. Capital Metro and the City of Austin will
continue to work with FTA to design a performanceand need-based subsidy allocation program that will be
deployed and demonstrated through the Marketplace.
4. Provider Engagement (Supply – Tools): We will continue to engage mobility tool and platform providers (in
addition to those who have already indicated interest in
the Marketplace, including RideAmigos, Civic Resource
Group, Cubic, Swiftly, moovel, RideTap, Hacon, Vizalytics, Via, and Xerox) to make their offerings available to users and channels via the marketplace and/
or develop additional tools and functionalities for it.
5. Provider Engagement (Supply – Services): We will continue to engage mobility service providers who have
committed to or indicated interest in the Marketplace
(including CapMetro, Bridj, SPLT, GoCarma, BlissTransit, SuperShuttle, WeDriveU, Chariot, Uber, Lyft, GetMe,
Rocket Electrics, RideLeads, Metropia, Hacon, Bytemark, Austin B-Cycle, Zipcar, Car2Go, Local Motors,
Roadie, and CARTS) to make their offerings available to users and channels via the marketplace and/
or develop additional tools and functionalities for it.
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The Urban Delivery Exchange will consist of a website
set up to accommodate voluntary (“pull”) engagement
with the marketplace by providers and users. We will
also pursue active community engagement through out
Smart ambassadors program to ensure potential delivery
service users, particularly those residing in areas of
Austin that could benefit from them most, including
areas of Austin lacking easy access to food, medicine,
and other critical goods and services, are aware of the
options available to them.
Approach to Urban Delivery
1. Website Development: We will establish the Urban
Delivery Exchange with input from our partners WalMart, Peloton, UPS, Roadie, and GetMe, then make
adjustments based on continuous monitoring and evaluation from users.
2. Customer Engagement (Demand): We will include information on urban delivery options in our outreach efforts
with the Smart ambassadors program.
URBAN DELIVERY SMART STATIONS &
CONNECTED CORRIDORS
Infrastructure is the physical manifestation of the Smart
City and the interface with the community. The two
major infrastructure components of our Smart City
proposal – Smart Stations and Connected Corridors –
work together in order to build an integrated, intelligent
transportation network. Smart Stations are embedded
within communities of need in order to provide neighborhoods with access to places of opportunity. Connected Corridors link the Smart Stations to one another in
order to provide people with a range of mobility services
between key access points.
Smart Stations are designed to serve three purposes:
• Provide customers with access to travel choices
– Stations provide travelers with choice and convenience. By bringing together automated and connected services; electric vehicle access; public transit;
transportation network companies; taxis; car and bike
share services in a “one-stop-shop”, travelers would
have the flexibility to select from a variety of modes
to fulfill the complete trip based upon cost, time, and
environmental preferences.
• Provide travel amenities – Stations not only help
people get from Point A to Point B but also deliver valuable services. Located on site are food trailers for the
morning cup of joe or lunch on the go. Lockers provide
a place for packages and groceries bought online to be
delivered curbside to be picked up on the return trip.
In future stages, other retail services may be offered
on-site or by concierge.
• Engage citizens through outreach and education
– Located at each of the Stations are Smart Ambassadors who offer introductions and training to new
technologies and mobility services. In order to facilitate consumer adoption, it will be critical for the City to
6. Customer Engagement (Demand): We will build
demand for the Mobility Marketplace by expanding
existing efforts of Movability Austin and Rocky Mountain Institute to engage channels, starting with Austin
employers. This will establish a pipeline of service
requests to launch new mobility services and tools
with interested employers. We will then engage additional users and channels, prioritizing engagement
based on potential to impact City-selected metrics.
We will also launch our Smart Ambassadors program
to engage unbanked, undocumented, digitally-divided,
multicultural and isolated users and communities.
7. Scaling: Through a series of annual workshops in
which we refine the Mobility Marketplace based on
external input and develop implementation roadmaps
and action plans, we will introduce or expand the Marketplace among first the six other finalist cities in the
Smart City Challenge, then all 77 applicant cities, then
cities globally, selected based on interest and need.
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bridge the digital divide by demonstrating the technologies to the elderly, young families, and underserved
communities. Austin will do this by partnering with
diverse community organizations such as Huston-Tillotson University (Austin’s HBCU), Austin Community
College, and the Austin Independent School District,
as well as organizations serving Austin’s disabled and
elderly population, including ARCIL, ATCIC, AGE, and
the Mary Lee Foundation, to identify multi-lingual and
culturally astute candidates for the Smart Ambassador corps. Smart Ambassadors will be set up to serve
communities with greatest need and will not be geographically limited only to Smart station locations.
They will serve as a feedback mechanism to engage
with citizens to understand their needs and how the
City of Austin can best serve its growing population.
Connected Corridors are designed to serve three
purposes:
• Improve safety – The City of Austin is dedicated to
becoming a leading Vision Zero city and is committed to reducing the number of traffic-related incidents. Applications within the Riverside Corridor are
focused on improving safety, particularly in the areas
of advanced bicycle and pedestrian detection. In conjunction, incident management programs will monitor
near misses as well as crashes in order to take the
necessary actions, including emergency vehicle preemption, to reduce response times and save lives.
• Build Ladders of Opportunity by Enhancing Mobility — The Riverside Corridor, located in south and
southeast Austin, is a traditional corridor of affordable housing. It is largely characterized by communities of color and university students. However, it is
quickly urbanizing and in many places gentrifying. The
proposed Riverside Connected Corridor Smart City
improvements include a dedicated lane for electric
bus rapid transit (e-BRT), freight delivery opportunities,
and connected vehicle and infrastructure technologies. Transit priority will transform the efficiency of the
roadway in order to reduce travel times for all vehicles.
The plan is consistent with the neighborhood corridor
plan, developed in collaboration with local residents
and adopted by both the local neighborhood organizations and the Austin City Council. Within the corridor there are opportunities for access to food, access
to community college training opportunities, access to
affordable housing, and access to jobs and universities.
• Serve as a beta test site for connected, electric,
and automated vehicle technologies – Instrumented
with sensors and communications technology, the Riverside Corridor and ABIA Controlled Access Roads will
advance the research and development of next generation technologies. One of our proposed target transit stations is located adjacent to Austin Bergstrom
International Airport (ABIA). We have partnered with
Chargepoint Technologies to deploy a first of its kind
Electric Vehicle Refueling Station. This station would be
capable of recharging up to 12 electric vehicles within
10 minutes and operates at 3-times the charge rate
of currently deployed DC Fast stations. Proving that
our industry partners are ready to build a rapid prototyping environment where vehicles, sensors, and other
technologies may be piloted, evaluated, and further
developed. Beta testers will offer feedback in order to
improve the customer experience, providing the necessary insights to bring the technologies to market.
Pilot Connected Corridor: Riverside Drive
The East Riverside Corridor is a 6-mile long auto-centric
corridor with three lanes of fast moving traffic in each
direction. The corridor connects Downtown Austin to
the Southeast Austin suburbs and the Austin-Bergstrom
International Airport, and is undergoing a period of
redevelopment with higher density and mixed use frontage. Commuter traffic, through-travelers, commercial
vehicles, and unfamiliar visitors make this a corridor with
major challenges but also major opportunities — as a
connection point to/from the airport, as an economically
evolving corridor, and as a commuter route for large
numbers of citizens moving about.
As a part of our Smart City effort we are proposing
enhancements that represent an opportunity to design a
pilot Smart Connected Corridor.
We will convert the outside lanes to prioritize non-selfdriving travel, which will significantly improve mobility
and safety for these modes. The proposal is to designate
an outside transit/bike priority lane to support electrified
bus rapid transit during the timeframe of this grant. A
combination of quick-action tools, likely including dedicated transit lanes, protected bicycle lanes, transit queue
jumps, and/or shared bus/bike lanes, would be used.
The City is proposing a $40 million general obligation
bond investment in reconstruction of the Riverside
corridor. The bond is likely to go before voters in the fall
of 2016 and will be used to construct the final sidewalk
and bike lane configuration and signalization, allowing
the transit lane to be positioned in its preferred and
permanent center-running location. Proposed changes
would be pending the completion of a detailed traffic
studies and public process. Funding exists for the proposed interim corridor modifications.
The e-BRT service would feature 100% electric-powered
buses running in dedicated lanes along the Riverside
corridor with attractive stations featuring wi-fi, real-time
bus arrival information and other features providing
safety and convenience. Service would operate every
10 minutes or better in the peak periods and every 15
minutes or better throughout the majority of each day. In
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partnership with the bus manufacturer, we expect to be
able to begin piloting automated bus operations with this
electric bus fleet in the corridor by 2018.
While the East Riverside Corridor is transforming, it still
has a high poverty rate (58% of children qualify for free/
reduced lunch), is predominately Hispanic/Latino, and
its numerous older apartment complexes are popular
residences for low-income and first-generation college
students. The second part of our Smart Corridor effort
is to provide an enhanced suite of Connected Traveler
and Mobility Marketplace services, including education
and outreach on using the new e-BRT line, and access
to real-time information to help all segments of the
community make informed travel decisions.
The community is pursuing development of an Affordable Housing Strike Fund (separate from our grant
proposal) exceeding $50 million to preserve and
subsidize the maintenance of affordable housing stock
in transit corridors. With this fund, the City will be able
to preserve affordable neighborhoods, even as we make
dramatic improvements to public infrastructure. From
past experience, we know that when public investments
are made without appropriate policy and funding, the
neighborhood surrounding the investment will naturally
gentrify.
The third component of the East Riverside Smart Corridor effort is to capitalize on the opportunity to serve as
a laboratory for many Smart City pilot projects, such as
connected and automated vehicle (C/AV) applications
and deployment. A number of safety, mobility, and
environmental applications will be considered, including
the use of connectivity to better enable safe and efficient
movement through intersections, improve pedestrian
detection and awareness, enhance bus transit operation, and evaluate other current and upcoming C/AV
applications. This corridor will be sensor-rich to provide
data to operate and assess the pilots’ performance on
safety, operations, and climate change. Extensive public
outreach will help us measure the effectiveness of various tools in enabling ladders of opportunity and broader
awareness of transportation options.
At the end of the Riverside Corridor lies the Austin
Bergstrom International Airport (ABIA), which provides
valuable employment opportunities as well as a secured
roadway network that will be used in piloting automated
transit deployment. We are partnered with NAVYA, Local
Motors, and BYD to develop and deploy other automated vehicle technologies within the protected roadway
environment of ABIA. The purpose of choosing the ABIA
location for initial piloting is four-fold:
1. The Austin airport presents a simplified network of
urban streets to test the deployment of automated transit pods. The test site will allow Austin to investigate
issues related to deployment of an automated service
(not just individual automated vehicles) — for example, if people will feel comfortable using the automated
vehicle if an ambassador or technician is not onboard.
2. The Austin airport serves a high number of early adopters, inventors and leaders of the community. By placing new mobility technologies such as connected and
automated vehicles, Connected Traveler and Mobility
Marketplace offerings, and electric vehicles at-scale,
Austin will expose the innovators and job creators to
these new technologies.
3. Early deployment of automated and connected vehicles
in a service regime will provide operational experience
and knowledge for a secondary deployment at other
transit stations to address the first/last mile connectivity in neighborhoods where ladders of opportunity
through accessibility can be created.
4. By connecting the Riverside Corridor (including downtown employment centers) with the Austin airport and
Del Valle community further to the east, residents will
have greater access and improved mobility to work,
food opportunities, and education.
Approach to Delivery:
Riverside Connected Corridor
The Riverside Drive connected vehicle test bed will
serve as the City of Austin’s corridor for developing and
deploying V2V and V2I smart connected-vehicle (CV)
arterial applications. This corridor has a total of 16 intersections operated by 14 traffic signal controllers.
As part of the Smart City grant, the City of Austin will
do a full-scale deployment of DSRC and other connected-vehicle technologies in the corridor to servicespromise safety, mobility and environmental benefits.
The Riverside Corridor team will be closely integrated
with the Data Rodeo and ROMC in order to understand
and leverage the wealth of information enabled when CV
communications, such as DSRC, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and
cellular technologies, become prevalent in the transportation operations data stream. A significant element of
the Smart City proposal involves learning, documenting
and transferring knowledge to adapt the city’s operational strategies to accommodate these vehicles and the
robust data they may provide. The ultimate goal is an
evolutionary, city-wide roll-out of technologies piloted in
this corridor.
Within this corridor, connected vehicle technologies will
be integrated with conventional traffic sensor technology
to support robust intelligent traffic signal applications
that are (DSRC) market-penetration agnostic. The applications to be tested in this corridor include multi-modal
intelligent traffic signal operations, connected vehicle
transit signal priority, and pedestrian mobility and safety
applications. The following provides a brief description
of these projects.
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The team has performed a preliminary needs assessment based upon a traffic and safety analysis performed
by the city. The preliminary results indicate needs in the
following areas:
• Reduce morning peak hour queues
• Reduce pedestrian conflicts and improve pedestrian
safety
• Provide signal priority to electric Bus Rapid Transit
(e-BRT) and freight, improve trip times and safety
• Improve signal coordination and traffic progression
• Reduce crashes, injuries and traveler delays
The signal system of the future utilizes both movement
based upon information from connected vehicles as
well as traditional traffic-sensor data and other traffic
information to optimize flow along the arterial network.
The integration of roadside and vehicle ITS sensors
with DSRC and other CV data streams enable robust,
market-penetration-agnostic connected vehicle applications (with both infrastructure and vehicles devices that
behave as proxies for unequipped vehicles).
The Smart City team proposes to showcase these benefits in a number of real-world settings. Planned projects
include:
• Installation of enabling roadside infrastructure and
intersection applications — including installation of
traffic signal controllers at sixteen intersections on Riverside Drive. This work will leverage lessons learned
and applications developed by industry, including the
MMITS CV Pooled Fund Study and the USDOT CV
Pilots. It will also evolve into a system that provides low
market-penetration benefits for V2V applications within
the corridor. CV data will be integrated into Integrated
Corridor Management and other decision-support systems to enable advanced traveler information and incident management, including reliever routes.
• Robust connected-vehicle signal operations upgrade
— This is the development, testing and deployment
associated with integrating conventional ITS sensor
data (camera and/or radar) into the connected-vehicle
signal logic to emulate CV data for unequipped vehicles. The project will also investigate emulating and
broadcasting Basic Safety Messages for vehicles that
are unequipped with DSRC units to provide greater
benefits for V2V safety applications in the years prior to
near/full market penetration.
• Equipping light and commercial vehicle fleets — This
project involves the installation of DRSC and other CV
technologies on public agency, commercial fleet, transit
vehicles and privately owned vehicles. The COA will
work with TXDOT, CTRMA, private businesses such as
Peloton, Dell and others, and private owners to equip
a minimum of 4,000 vehicles during the grant period,
with expectations that the number will grow to10,000.
The equipment will include a mixture of Vehicle Awareness Devices (VAD, e.g., BSM emitters), Aftermarket/
Retrofit Devices with partners such as partner VW/Audi
and others, and OEM vehicles, such as equipped 2017
production Cadillac CTS vehicles in the region. The
specific breakdown of device types and applications
by vehicle type will be determined during the planning
phase. Our current estimate is shown on the table on
this page.
• Consumer Connected Vehicle Program – Aims to
quickly connecting consumer vehicles for the primary purpose of promoting safe, environmentally
friendly driving behaviors. With this program, vehicle owners transmit data regarding their vehicle’s
operation and are subsequently scored and could
earn rewards (e.g. merchandise, parking perks,
etc.) on the basis of their driving habits. The program is powered by Intel edge hardware that easily
plugs into the vehicle’s OBD-II port beneath the driver-side dash—no professional installation required.
Each of these deployments will require close coordination with the relevant stakeholders and partners. Austin
will team with automated vehicle technology developers
and providers to acquire the platforms necessary for
the aforementioned pilot programs. The team has held
discussions with a number of these providers, including
Quantity Entity Vehicle Type Device Type Comm
Technology
Application Type
2000 TXDOT Fleet and other
vehicles
ARD and VAD DSRC V2V/V2ISafety, mobility and
environmental
2000 CTRMA Fleet and
consumer
VAD DSRC None – enables V2V/V2I
mobility, safety and cloud
services
TBD (<100) Capital Metro Transit ARD DSRC V2V/V2I mobility and safety
TBD (<100) Commercial Articulated and
straight unit trucks
ARD, VAD DSRC,
cellular
V2V/V2I mobility, safety,
environmental (eco-signal)
and other cloud services
TBD (<100) Light Vehicle Private vehicles ARD Cellular Safety, Mobility and
environmental
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Google X, Local Motors, Nissan, GM, Daimler, Peloton,
BYD, and Proterra, among others. The city has received
commitments from several vendors to provide vehicles
and support as an in-kind contribution for the program.
For the remaining systems and services required, the
team will develop and issue an appropriate request for
proposal for procurement purposes.
The Riverside connected vehicle corridor will include a
number of tasks across multiple phases of evolutionary
and new technology deployments.
Task 1: Design/Planning – Under this task, the team will
develop a complete project management plan including
management and safety plans for the CV corridor. The
team will engage USDOT and other stakeholders in the
development of ConOps for the various applications,
system architecture documents, and system/device
requirements. The team will develop individual planning
documents for experimental design, subject recruitment,
device requirements including device technical, interface,
data and security requirements, vendor requirements for
certification/ongoing compliance and updates, and evaluation.
Task 2: Testing and Certification – The city will work with
partners to ensure that the devices, vehicles and technologies comply with the requirements specified with the
planning phase. Suppliers will be expected to provide
evidence of self-certification. The city will offer access to
USDOT-approved certification services though Southwest
Research Institute (SwRI) and Omni-Air. For products that
don’t meet certification or are early in development, the
city will also offer access to connected vehicle expertise,
services and controlled test facilities though partners at
the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) and SwRI.
Task 3: Deployment and Evaluation on Riverside Corridor. The corridor serve as a living laboratory for the team
integrate and assess technologies and collect data and
perform relevant analyses to determine if the pilots are
achieving the desired outcomes on the small scale. This
task includes installation, integration, operations, maintenance and system upgrades for infrastructure and vehicles.
Task 4: Deployment in other corridors – Depending on
the results of Phase III, individual technologies will be
advanced to the full deployment phase, where restrictions
and limitations will be removed, and the systems opened
up to a less controlled deployment environment. This
scaling will allow the technologies to migrate to some of
the other proposed Smart Stations and Connected Corridors, reaching additional parts of the community.
Approach to Delivery: Connected and Automated
Vehicles
The Smart City team proposes to showcase a diverse
suite of benefits in a number of real-world settings that
directly address the needs of all segments of Austin’s
population. In all cases we will utilize the standards that
have been developed by USDOT surrounding C/AV and
interoperability in previous efforts to derive a path forward
for our program. Our pilots include:
• Automated Airport Circulator – Will transport arrivals to a number of travel options near ABIA, including
the local Smart Station. This will present automated
vehicle technology to a large audience, including the
early adopters and innovators that are a crucial part of
the Austin culture. The team will select and deploy a
number of automated “pods” and mini-buses that can
accommodate up to twelve passengers at a time. The
shuttles will traverse a dedicated, pre-determined route
at relatively slow speeds (approximately 15 mph)stopping at parking lots, rental car centers, local hotels, and
the nearby ABIA Smart Station. Autonomous systems
with V2X capabilities will leverage infrastructure sensors and DSRC roadside units to increase situational
awareness for improved safety and mobility.
• Autonomous First/Last Mile Connectors – Will radiate into surrounding neighborhoods to bring commuters to and from Smart Stations, connecting them with
other transit options and a variety of services. These
vehicles will be a mix of similar automated “pods” and
mini-shuttles, as well as automated light-duty passenger vehicles being developed by automotive OEMs and
automated vehicle technology companies.
• Connected Riverside Corridor – Will provide a focal
point for saturation of DSRC equipment for analyses of
CV-enabled safety and mobility applications:
» Intersection Movement Assist (IMA) – warn driver
if unsafe to enter intersection
» Transit Signal Priority (TSP) – interface with signal
controllers to request priority for transit vehicles
» Emergency Vehicle Preemption – interface with
signal controllers to request priority for emergency vehicles
» Incident Scene Work Zone Alerts – provides
warnings to drivers about incidents or work zones
they are approaching, as well as recommendations to slow down or change lanes.
Each of these deployments will require close coordination
with the relevant stakeholders and partners. For connected vehicle projects, and particularly along the East
Riverside Smart Corridor, Austin will team with a number
of partners to help provide state-of-the-art DSRC roadside units (RSU’s), on board units (OBU’s), relevant backhaul communications, and (most importantly) the systems
integration knowledge and experience needed to develop
a system that can communicate useful data two-way with
vehicles and the infrastructure. The city has received
commitments from Siemens (traffic controller upgrades),
Savari and Moovee Innovations (RSU’s and OBU’s), AT&T
(backhaul communications), HERE (map content), Volkswagen/Audi and UPS (vehicle-oriented applications),
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and more. All components of the connected vehicle
ecostructure have been either committed by partners or
will be procured by the City of Austin in pursuit of seeing
these demonstrations through.
For automated vehicle projects, Austin will team with
technology developers and providers to acquire the platforms necessary for the aforementioned pilot programs.
The team has held discussions with a number of these
providers, including Google X, Local Motors, Nissan,
GM, Daimler, Peloton, BYD, and Proterra, among others.
The city has received commitments from several manufacturers to provide vehicles and support as an in-kind
contribution for the program. For the remaining systems
and services required, the team will develop and issue
an appropriate request for proposal for procurement purposes.
The deployments will be carried out in a multi-phase
approach:
• Phase I: Design/Planning – For each of the pilots, the
Austin team will identify and work with one or more
technology or service partners, who will provide the
connected vehicle technology, automated vehicles, and
engineering services, themselves. The team will work
with the partner to understand the limitations of their
respective technologies. The team will subsequently
work with the relevant stakeholders (ABIA, Capitol
Metro, Travis County, etc.) to identify the appropriate
setting to deploy the vehicles, when ready. The team
will develop a comprehensive safety plan to ensure the
vehicles are deployed in a safe manner. The team will
coordinate with US DOT personnel to ensure the proper
standards, guidelines, and protocols are being utilized
so as to gain knowledge from these pilots for future
deployments.
• Phase II: Testing – This phase will involve closedcourse testing of the connected and automated vehicle
technologies at one of our partner organization’s test
facilities (Southwest Research Institute). The team will
perform this testing in coordination with the technology
partner to verify that the systems are safe to deploy in
the relevant real-world setting.
• Phase III: Initial/Small-scale Deployment – The initial pilot deployments will take place at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (ABIA) and the nearby Smart
Station, and in dedicated lanes along the proposed Riverside Corridor. This environment will present a limited
access, partially controlled deployment environment,
and will serve as a “living laboratory”, where the team
can begin to collect data and perform relevant analyses
to determine if the pilots are achieving the desired outcomes on the small scale. This is also the time when
installation, operations, and maintenance schemes are
tested – assuming large fleets will eventually include
CV technology means planning and preparation for
the installation and maintenance of in-vehicle devices,
which is markedly different than roadside devices.
• Phase IV: Full/Open Deployment (Scale up)
– Depending on the results of Phase III, individual technologies will be advanced to the full deployment phase, where restrictions and limitations will
be removed, and the systems opened up to a less
controlled deployment environment. This scaling
will allow the technologies to migrate to some of the
other proposed Smart Stations and Connected Corridors, reaching additional parts of the community.
The scheduling of the phases will very much depend on
the availability and provision of the required automated
vehicle technologies, but will generally occur as follows:
• Phase I: To begin immediately upon contract award,
and to take place over approximately six months.
• Phase II: To begin upon completion of Phase I, and to
take place over approximately six to nine months.
• Phase III: To begin on a case-by-case basis, depending
on the outcomes of Phase II, and to generally and subsequently take place over approximately nine to twelve
months.
• Phase IV: To begin on a case-by-case basis, depending
on the outcomes of Phase III, and to generally and subsequently take place over approximately twelve months.
While carefully carrying out this deployment strategy, the
team will employee several “best practices” for automated
vehicle testing, including NHTSA’s 2013 “Recommendations Concerning State Activities Related to Self-driving
Vehicles” and forthcoming best-practice guidance on
establishing principles of safe operation for fully automated vehicles. The Austin Smart Cities Team does not
believe there are any federal regulator issues, and there
are no know state or local policy impediments to testing.
Approach to Delivery: Smart Stations
The following is the sequencing of events for Smart Stations and Connected Corridors, including the pilots to
serve our Ladders of Opportunity initiatives:
• Initiate a Smart Station at ABIA
» Partner with ABIA to confirm a site for the Smart
Station near SH71, complete environmental process as dictated by FAA
» Construct necessary improvements using financing not tied to the Smart City grant
» Attract and locate mobility services at Smart Station (TNCs, car-sharing, etc.)
» Locate travel amenities at Smart Station (e.g.
food trailers)
» Locate informational resources at Smart
Station (kiosk with trip planning and travel
time information, Smart Ambassadors)
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• Establish service in the Riverside Corridor and ABIA
• Initiate a Smart Station at Pflugerville
» Partner with the City of Pflugerville and Developer to select a site and allocate space for Smart
Station
» Repeat applicable steps above
• Initiate Smart Station at MLK
» Partner with Developer to select a site and allocate space for MLK Smart Station
» Repeat applicable steps above
» Pilot an automated vehicle first/last mile service
at MLK
• Designate the ABIA internal roadway system a Connected Corridor for purposes of automated transit
deployment demonstration
» Instrument the internal roadway system with sensors (loops, weather, cameras, etc.)
» Install communications technology
» Procure transit shuttle pods (12 vehicles) necessary for providing start-up sustainable service.
Seek headways of no more than 5 minutes.
Austin has identified at least three manufacturers
capable of providing transit pod technology as
part of a competitive procurement process who
can deliver within 6 months of initial selection.
Operational by year two.
» Partner with OEMs in order to test other C/AV
shuttle or similar vehicle services in the corridor,
operational by year two.
• Establish a Downtown Station to serve as a destination
for shared shuttle services
» Working with Capital Metro, identify an on-street
(or off-street) destination location to use as a
distribution hub for the downtown employment.
Vans used as shared vanpools would meet up
with a private transit driver at the downtown station. The private transit driver would distribute all
passengers to their downtown location and then
use the van for mid-day services such as downtown employment shuttle, health care access
mobility, or food delivery.
» Establish partnerships with transportation network companies and mobility services
» Partnering with UPS, establish freight lockers at
all stations (downtown and at the residential station) to allow for package and grocery delivery
» Informational Resources (kiosk)
• Initiate conversion of Riverside Corridor into a SMART
Connected Corridor
» Working with Capital Metro as a partner, the City
will dedicate a transit and bicycle lane within the
corridor. The lane will result in a complete street
operational solution for the corridor.
» Pursue debt financing for station and corridor
improvements to move towards a permanent
corridor configuration
» Implement transit priority throughout the corridor, based on measurable performance goals for
on-time-service, ridership, and average throughput for transit
» Instrument corridor with sensors (loops, weather,
cameras, transit priority, Bluetooth detectors,
boarding sensors, etc.)
» Install communications technology
» Upgrade controller firmware
» Increase bandwidth
» Install Mobileye and connect with data platform
» Partner with CapMetro and BYD in order to pilot
the e-BRT service at scale Service would begin in
year two, commensurate with the start of automated transit pod service at ABIA.
» Conduct advanced bike/ped detection
» Establish an incident management plan
• Launch Rundberg Connected Traveler Initiative + Smart
Ambassador Program
» Partner to create a Connected Traveler App with
Payment Platform
» Create Packaged Mobility Services supported by
App + Payment Platform
» Hire team of Smart Ambassadors
» SMART Ambassadors to engage with community
• Launch HACA/Google Fiber Connected Traveler program
» Deploy Connected Traveler App with Payment
Platform
» Create Packaged Mobility Services supported by
App + Payment Platform
» Hire team of Smart Ambassadors
• Launch Highland/ACC Connected Traveler Initiative +
SMART Ambassador Program
» SMART Ambassadors to engage with community
• Launch CommUnityCare clinic program
» Deploy a Connected Traveler App with Payment
Platform
» Create Packaged Mobility Services supported by
App + Payment Platform
• Integrate ICM projects (I-35, etc.)
• Establish Smart Station at Highland/ACC
» Partner with nearby senior living communities
» Pilot an automated vehicle first/last mile service
» Mobility Services (TNCs, car-sharing, etc.)
» Travel Amenities (food trailers, city resource trailers, lockers)
• Informational Resources (kiosk, Smart Ambassadors)
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THE MOBILITY INNOVATION CENTER
Supporting the integration of the Regional Operations and
Management Concept, Intelligent Sensors, Data Rodeo,
and Urban Analytics by creating an overall decision making capability that promotes learning and scaling opportunities.
A common challenge for the Austin region, shared with
many other regions around the country, is the fractured,
siloed nature of transportation management – freeways
are managed separately from arterial street networks,
and those are managed separately from transit and other
modes of surface transportation. However, from the traveler’s viewpoint, these separately operated surface transportation systems are perceived as one. Within the Austin
region, some traffic management centers are connected,
with limited system-to-system coordination amongst
agencies with regard to incident and congestion management. As opportunities for deeper, more integrated connectivity amongst agencies are realized, together we can
accomplish better multi-agency coordinated responses
to incidents and recurring congestion, manage traffic and
transit operations as one, share sensor data shared collectively across agencies to respond to conditions, understand challenges and measure outcomes of strategies.
Through regional collaboration, Austin is pursuing a One
System vision. A One System approach leverages the
expertise and resources within each entity to create an
operational approach whose sum is much greater than
the individual parts. This shifts the paradigm to proactively improving safety and mobility of all users regardless of facility and mode of travel, while improving efficiency and coordinated emergency response.
As part of our Smart City proposal, Austin will launch
interrelated projects that move the region toward a One
System approach: (1) Regional Operations Management
Center (ROMC) and (2) Intelligent Sensor-Based Infrastructure.
The same approach to coordinating operations characterizes the Data Rodeo, our two-way data portal that
forms a key component of the Mobility Innovation Center.
Right now, there are various disconnected data sources
in the public and private spheres, disparate tools and
technologies for working with and analyzing transportation data, and a wide-ranging community of researchers,
hobbyists and entrepreneurs whose members are working in relative isolation. Through the Data Rodeo, we aim
to bring these resources together to enable the broader
transportation community to take advantage of the latent
potential of this dynamic ecosystem.
The mission of the initiative is to foster interagency collaboration, promote synergy between the public, private
and academic sectors, and to engage with the Austin
community with a focus on high-impact applications. To
fulfill this mission the Data Rodeo is focused on three
overarching implementation objectives: data archiving,
data analysis and data accessibility, with an ultimate goal
of creating real-time access to data.
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Data Archive
The core of the initiative is to bring together all available
transportation data into a single framework. Data will be
backed up, version-controlled and curated using secure,
open and standards compliant technology. We plan to
allow for flexible privacy settings and in particular to
support HIPAA compliant storage options. The goal for
the platform is to provide a single point of access for all
regional transportation data and other data types needed
for the smart city pilots.
Data Analysis
A key feature of the Data Rodeo will be the implementation of an analysis and development environment in order
to help both researchers and software engineers jumpstart their projects by leveraging our data and computational resources. Our first target objective will be traffic
modeling and visualization, but then we will expand and
add additional functionality in collaboration with the wider
community.
Data Access
Arguably the most important part of the initiative will be
to make data access easy and convenient. Public data
will be made available via a number of open APIs and
interchange formats both for public agencies and for
developers in private industry. We will collaborate with
the academic and open-source communities to develop a
variety of proof-of-concept applications and educational
resources in order spur rapid adoption and build momentum.
Approach to Delivery: Regional Operations and
Management Center and Intelligent Sensors
1. One System: Advance the Integrated Corridor Management (ICM) Analysis, Modeling and Simulation; Scenario Planning on I-35 through downtown Austin.
The Austin Smart City team sees an advantage in leveraging past and ongoing investments in ICM Planning
in order to kick-start Smart City deployments. These
activities have welded and galvanized bonds between all
regional transportation agencies. TxDOT’s vision of the
ICM is to provide a foundation project by which the Austin
Smart City team can launch into One System planning
for the region. Given the anticipated reconstruction of
I-35 through downtown to commence in 2019/2020, the
region’s transportation agencies need a user-focused
system to manage mobility and safety during and after
reconstruction. The project area of the ICM Corridor
consists of the primary freeway, frontage roads, arterial
streets within approximately 2 miles of the freeway, and
transit routes along I-35 between US 183 and US 290/SH
71. Note that all of our Smart City projects are within the
peak period travelshed. Smart City funding will be used
to complete the analysis, modeling, and simulation phase
and begin the development of system requirements by
conducting scenario planning using the One System
approach with the region’s transportation agencies. The
team will then leverage these outcomes for inclusion in
the Smart City deployments.
The One System approach also entails a combined and
coordinated public communications approach among the
transportation agencies to provide one consistent, reliable voice of data and information to the traveling public.
This one voice will coordinate resources to manage, web,
social and traditional media communications and public
outreach and feedback. TxDOT’s traffic management
center (TMC) will be the primary facility housing ICM operations with the City’s TMC integrated.
2. Develop Smart City System Agreements (Lead: City of
Austin)
Agreements are the foundation to achieve the One System vision and ensure transparency andwill serve as templates for other regions pursuing similar visions. They will
contain negotiated terms, conditions and obligations and
stakeholder engagement plans for the parties involved.
Agreements to be developed and executed:
• One System Vision, Operating Concept, and Objectives
• Common ROMC Vision, ability to add other partners
(e.g., physically, virtually, subscription service)
• Data Sharing (e.g., ITS, CV, AV, EV, healthcare, social
services, etc.)
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• Multiple Use Agreements to share infrastructure (e.g.,
communications network)
• Purchasing and Maintenance Agreements to standardize equipment (e.g., sensors, communications
equipment) and share resources.
3. Integrate Shared Infrastructure (Lead: TxDOT)
Integration of infrastructure elements facilitates data sharing and shared management operations under the ‘One
System’ vision. The Systems Engineering process will
be applied to implement infrastructure sharing projects
during the Smart City project:
• video sharing
• dynamic message signs (DMSs) sharing
• communication network sharing.
Video sharing and role-based camera control and DMS’s
will be integrated across the City, TxDOT, Capital Metro
and CTRMA surveillance networks to enable an operator
to have one list of all cameras to access for situational
awareness. Communication networks will be connected
to reduce individual agency costs, expand coverage, and
increase reliability by providing network redundancy.
4. Support Smart City Pilot Projects
Certain Smart City pilot projects require ongoing field
monitoring and other services from the ROMC. These
services are listed in the accompanying table for each
Smart City project. The City of Austin’s TMC will deliver
these services.
Smart City Project ROMC Services
Smart Stations • Monitor security at stations
• Monitor movement of vehicles in real-time
o AVs at AIBA
o Vans (Pflugerville-CBD, off-peak usage)
• 2-way comm. with vehicle cabin
• Dispatch services to vehicles (maint., first responders)
• Manage info displayed on DMSs
• Monitor station performance via dashboard
• Monitor package deliveries via dashboard
(locker utilization - are more lockers needed)
Mobility Marketplace/
Connected Traveler
• Supply multimodal operational data (via Data Rodeo)
Provide traveler information
Connected Vehicles • Provide communications to CV field equipment
• Integrate CV equipment with other roadside equipment
Autonomous Vehicles • Monitor movement of vehicles in real-time
• 2-way communication to on-board staff
• Dispatch services to AVs (maintenance, first responders)
Electric Fleets • Monitor charging station availability
• Facilitate turnover at charging stations
Data Rodeo • Supply multimodal operational data
Intelligent Sensor System
Sensor data is the foundation for a Smart City. They provide robust data to more efficiently and safely operate
and maintain the mobility network. Sensors increase
transparency allowing transportation agencies to know
how the city is operating in real-time and where enhancements can be made. Sensor data enables travelers to
make more informed decisions and provide connected
vehicles with real-time information needed for guidance
and optimized travel.
Ultimately, sensors provide the data that end users (e.g.,
travelers, entrepreneurs, transportation agencies) use
to make decisions that affect individual and community
outcomes (mobility, safety, climate change, ladders of
opportunity).
The Smart City Challenge enables the region to accelerate expansion of its mobile and fixed sensor network
while more closely integrating multi-agency sensor
equipment and networks. An overview of sensor types
and communication networks for the Smart City project
are shown below. An asterisk (*) indicates a new sensor
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or communications network that will be enabled
through the Smart City project. The remaining sensors and communication networks are currently in
operation.
The Riverside Smart Corridor will serve as a laboratory for many Smart City pilot projects and,
therefore, will be sensor rich to provide data to
operate and assess the pilots’ performance on
safety, operations, climate change, and ladders of
opportunity. New sensor-based applications that
will be piloted through the Smart City project are
highlighted in the following table.
Approach to Delivery: Data Rodeo
Governance Tasks
1) Develop Data Rodeo Governance Structure
A governance structure must be developed to
ensure that all participating agencies can come
to a consensus on the way in which the Data
Rodeo is developed and how the data is managed.
Several leading private companies are providing
assistance to facilitate consensus, standards and
architect solutions.
2) Establish Data Standards Working Group
To allow for interoperability among the diverse
array of datasets needed to create a smart city, we
must work toward data standards. The Data Standards Working Group will interface with the various consortia working in this area. Members will
include people involved directly in the Austin Smart
City Challenge, and across the country. Leveraging
existing networks such as the MetroLab Network
and the new national peer network of urban chief
data officers. To the extent feasible, the standards
developed will extend existing open standards
such as those used by the OpenStreetMap (OSM)
Application Description Sensors
Intelligent Sensor Projects (standalone)
Near-Miss Crash Analysis The frequency of near-miss crashes and red light running events will
be captured at 16 signals using sensor-based detection and analytics
to support Vision Zero engineering and enforcement initiatives. Incorporating data from the CV pilot and Mobileye system will be explored.
• Video/radar detection
Roadway Weather
Information System (RWIS)
RWISs will be deployed at the Riverside bridges over I-35 and SH 71.
Austin’s climate routinely has the region on the border of freezing
roadway conditions often making a decision to close schools, etc.
unclear. This data will support the decision making process.
• Roadway weather
sensors
Private Sector Operational
Data
Data and an analytics platform will be acquired through a private
sector vendor to support before/after analyses and to develop tools to
improve system operations throughout the City.
• Data sourced through
private sector vendor
Pavement and Markings
Performance Monitoring
Mobileye’s on-board collision avoidance system to be deployed on
Capital metro’s buses also provides data to assess pavement and
markings quality. Passively collecting this data on a continuous basis
has the potential to save agency resources and lead to more timely
maintenance.
• Mobileye’s on-board
system
Kiosks Sidewalk Labs’ Link Kiosks will be installed to address the digital divide.
Twenty kiosks will be placed around the region with a focus on underserved communities.
• Link Kiosks
Intelligent Sensor Deployments in Other Pilots
Connected Vehicle (CV)
Pilot
CV pilot focuses on improving safety and providing transit signal
priority in the Riverside corridor. Fleet penetration of DSRC onboard
units (OBUs) is a focus. Sixteen signals will be equipped with DSRC
roadside units (RSUs). BSM emulation from traditional traffic sensing
solutions. Nine V2I CV Applications will be deployed.
• DSRC OBUs
• DSRC RSUs
• BSM emulation
Next Generation
Emergency Vehicle
Preemption (EVP) (CV Pilot)
New EVP system integrates emergency vehicle GPS location and
route through a center-to-center connection to preempt signals. This
approach is expected to reduce response times and equipment maintenance needs.
• GPS location
Pedestrian Sensing
(CV and AV Pilots)
Pedestrian presence detection will be deployed to monitor crosswalk
activity. This data and real-time pedestrian signal timing data will be
made available to the CV and AV pilots to improve safety.
• Pedestrian detection
Food Lockers
(Smart Station Pilot)
Food lockers will be installed at the AIBA Smart Station to address the
area’s food desert.
• Locker sensors:
availability, capacity
utilization, temperature
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Project. (OSM is an international community-driven initiative where people contribute and maintain open map data
of a wide variety of types. It is supported by the not-forprofit OpenStreetMap Foundation.)
3) Develop Data Management Plan
Working with stakeholders a plan will detail what types
of data will be produced, what policies for access and
sharing are needed, and how the Data Rodeo will ensure
appropriate protections of privacy, confidentiality, intellectual property, and other rights and requirements. Each of
these aspects of the plan is discussed in more detail in
the Data Management section of this submittal.
Pilot Data Readiness
1. Develop schedule to ensure priority data (for pilots) is
incorporated into Data Rodeo.
For each pilot that will be conducted through this
smart city challenge grant, a detailed list will be
created outlining the data needed, data sources and
schedule for incorporating the data, and how the data
will be managed, to ensure the pilot is a success.
2. Test data input, output, and analysis using available
and synthetic data.
Once data needs are determined (see previous step),
the data rodeo system must be tested to ensure
that the system can accommodate the data in the
desired way. For data that is readily available, it may
be directly incorporated. For data that is not readily
available, test data sets will be developed to test the
system functionality.
3. Develop Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) processes for
interoperability.
While we are working toward common data standards,
not all available data will adhere to the standards. ETL
processes will be developed to translate data between
its existing format and the standard.
4. Develop Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
APIs will be developed to take data, which has been
transformed into the common standard, and make
it accessible for outside use, and allow for querying
across datasets to develop performance metrics and
create new information.
URBAN ANALYTICS AND POLICY
RESEARCH (UAPR)
A key feature of the Data Rodeo will be the implementation of an analysis and development environment to help
both researchers and software engineers jump-start their
projects, leveraging computational resources. The analytical capabilities enabled by the Smart City deployment will
support the public agencies in optimizing service delivery
as well as powering performance measurement and policy research.
Real-Time and Predictive Urban Analytics
Urban analytics are at the core of Smart Cities. The
real-time analytics capabilities for the Austin Smart City
program support the immediate interaction by a range of
users with live events, incidents, and weather situations
in ways that provide visualization, situational awareness,
and immediate decision making. Predictive analytics that
anticipate conditions offer an additional level of functionality. The analytics support for the pilot deployments are
essential to testing the full capabilities of the demonstration.
Performance Measurement and Policy Research
The Austin Smart City Performance Management Plan will
define the goals, questions or hypotheses, data requirements, and analytical tools needed to effectively evaluate
performance of the pilot deployments and MIC capabilities.
In addition, the UAPR area will provide capabilities for policy and behavioral research analytics. The success and
scalability of a new accessibility ecosystem will require
changes in the current public policy framework. Austin’s
recent experience with TNC regulations has demonstrated the need for informed policy development. Evolving travel behavior characteristics – both measured and
predicted – will play a key role in policy development.
Policy research is defined broadly as data analysis that
identifies and informs potential changes at the local, state
and federal levels, in areas such as:
• Legislation
• Regulations
• Administrative processes
• Institutional and governance arrangements
• Procurement, public-private partnerships, and data
monetization
• Investment or reallocation of public resources
The capabilities within this element of the program will
provide expertise in analyzing and fusing multiple data
sets – transportation and non-transportation, public and
private - to create new knowledge and understanding that
informs policy development. Examples include consumer
acceptance of new mobility services, travel behavior
changes, travel needs and accessibility for underserved
communities, and travel costs.
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Approach to Delivery – Urban Analytics and Policy
Research
Building from the Data Rodeo, the Austin Smart City team
will develop and/or acquire the tools that can enable data
mining, advanced analytics, and predictive modeling
capabilities in support of program goals. seeking to leverage existing public and private tools first. This analytical
capacity will support
• real-time data analysis and visualizations to optimize
performance of transportation services across modes,
and
• exploration of archived data for planning, performance
reporting, and data-driven decision making.
Task 1. Develop the Performance Management Plan and
the Evaluation Support Plan which will define the goals,
questions or hypotheses, data requirements, and analytical tools needed to effectively evaluate performance of
the pilot deployments and MIC capabilities.
Task 2. Define needs and requirements for real-time
analytics needs to support pilot deployments for real-time
visualization, decision support systems, and predictive
analytics, in alignment with the goals of pilot deployments.
Task 3. Define public policy research needs. The team
will use a Delphi process to identify key public policy
questions, related hypotheses, and associated data and
analytical requirements to conduct supporting policy
research. The use of non-transportation data sets, and
the tools to fuse disparate data sets, will be of particular
interest to analysis of accessibility for underserved communities.
Task 4. Examine experiences and best practices from
existing transportation analytics platforms and open
source applications. The objective of this task is to identify gaps between the analytics needs defined in Tasks
1, 2 and 3 and the tools available in the public or private
realm that are transportable to Austin’s implementation.
The team will undertake a literature review and targeted
interviews with organizations, both public and private,
that host existing transportation analytics platforms. For
example, the Regional Integrated Transportation Information System (RITIS) at the University of Maryland has
developed a comprehensive suite of analytical tools,
including real-time visualizations and probe data analytics, which may be portable to the Austin initiative and
allow for rapid deployment. The USDOT Prototype Open
Source Application Development Portal (OSADP) includes
software solutions for a range of ITS applications. Additionally, private companies that have provided letters of
commitment for analytics support at no cost to the project
include Transport Foundry, Hitachi, Cubic, GRIDSMART,
Vizalytics, and many others. Of specific interest are questions related to how vendor solutions would interface with
the Austin Smart City data environment and structure and
how they would add value.
Task 5. Prepare a strategy for implementing analytics
capabilities, defining 1, 3, and 5-year development and
implementation plans. Develop a strategy for deploying
public and private resources to meet the analytics needs
of the Smart City, including performance measurement,
real-time operational support, and public policy analyses. The team will define resource needs and leveraging
opportunities, particularly research support through university UTC programs and TTI’s Policy Research Center.
The execution strategy for the out years will incorporate
a sustainability plan for continued analytics capabilities
beyond the period of performance of the grant.
Task 6. Execute the analytics implementation strategy
with activities such as::
• Collect baseline, pre-deployment data
• Provide support and assistance to USDOT’s independent evaluator
• Support analytics capabilities for real-time applications,
performance metrics, and policy research, conducted
both in-house (UT-CTR, TTI, and SwRI) and by private
partners (as assessed in Task 4)
• Collect post-deployment data
• Conduct performance analysis and develop reporting
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
City of Austin, Texas Page 37
The rapid development of mass market electric vehicles
presents an opportunity to change our transportation paradigm in beneficial and potentially harmful ways. Understanding the manner in which our infrastructure is ready
to handle the electrification of the fleet is a critical part of
our strategy to leverage the USDOT and Vulcan Foundation monies throughout the grant period.
Strategy Part 1: Target high-mileage, best ROI
vehicles
The core of Austin’s strategy to greatly proliferate electric vehicles and eVMT is to target high mileage, mobility
service vehicles. These vehicles include taxis, municipal
vehicles, TNC vehicles, certain corporate fleet vehicles,
and public transit vehicles (including buses). There are
four key reasons we are primarily targeting high-mileage,
mobility service vehicles:
• Maximum leverage to replace gasoline/diesel vehicles
quickly: Displacing one high mileage gasoline vehicle is the equivalent of replacing up to 10 personally
owned gas vehicles.
• Compelling economics to benefit drivers, consumers,
and allow scaling: At high mileage, electric vehicles
make pure economic sense over internal combustion
vehicles due to lower total cost of ownership (TCO) from
lower fuel and maintenance costs.
• High visibility to Austinites and visitors: Taxis, TNCs, the
municipal fleet, and public transit vehicles are highly
visible and serve many people per day. They give millions of rides combined per year, so when we electrify
these fleet vehicles we essentially have created the
world’s largest EV “ride and drive.” supporting efforts
towards consumer adoption.
• Paved path for rapid scaling of eVMT in Austin and
beyond: Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is growing rapidly
VEHICLE FLEET ELECTRIFICATION
and we must ensure that the vehicles providing these
services are electric by ramping up infrastructure,
friendly policies, and business models in parallel.
We believe we get the most value for our effort and per
grant-dollar by primarily targeting high-mileage fleets.
However, personally owned vehicles will still be the primary mobility method of most Americans and we must
engage in high-leverage efforts to enable and increase
personal electric vehicle adoption. Therefore, as part of
our holistic EV strategy, we also have plans to target personal vehicles as well. This includes education/awareness campaigns, public and workplace EVSE programs,
direct engagement/incentives with auto dealers, and bulk
purchase leverage with carmakers.
Strategy Part 2: Ensure eVMT are low-carbon:
Power EVs with renewable energy
A key element of our plan is to ensure we do not just
shift CO2e from transportation to electricity generation.
As such, we propose to continue to power all public and
fleet stations by Austin Energy’s GreenChoice™ program,
green-e certified renewable energy credits.
• To further increase benefits of mass EV adoption, we
propose to launch the Vulcan Foundation Residential
EV+Solar Grid Integration Pilot to demonstrate the benefits and feasibility of EVs providing value to the electric
grid. This will be part of Austin Energy’s larger Austin
SHINES project. Austin SHINES is a $12.8M project that
leverages funding by a competitive grant from the US
Department of Energy SunShot initiative ($4.3M) and
a State of Texas Innovation Grant ($1M) to integrate
distributed energy resource at the residential, commercial, and grid scale with a focus on PV Solar and
battery storage. Key metrics of SHINES is affordability
and scale.
Use EVs to increase renewable penetration on the entire
grid
• Austin Energy’s has a goal of 55% renewables (and
over 80% non carbon) by 2020. Increasing renewables
mix above 50% and beyond is a technical challenge
due to the non-dispatchable nature of solar and wind.
• As part of the Smart City project, we will test smart
charging and other methods to incentivize off peak
charging in order to ensure that EVs benefit a renewable grid and don’t add to peak demand.
Strategy 3: Scaling solutions to maximize impact
Austin is developing a comprehensive scaling strategy
characterized by five elements:
• Development of a roadmap and playbook for other cities
to follow based on lessons learned from the program
• Deployment and vetting of new financing and business
models to allow the private sector to proliferate EVs
rapidly
• Collaboration with the other six finalist cities and other
major US and international cities
• A city liaison program provides a mechanism for other
city representatives to come to Austin to learn and
scale to their city
• Auto Dealers are a critical bottleneck in the deployment
of consumer electric vehicles. We have an innovative
plan to incent dealers and salespeople to gain expertise
and sell electric vehicles. This model will scale to other
cities and greatly increase personal electric vehicles
sales.
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
City of Austin, Texas Page 38
Approach to Delivery: Electric Fleets
Enabled by the Smart City grant from USDOT and Vulcan, the city will undertake eight interrelated electric
vehicles efforts that have both immediate CO2 reduction,
and long-term catalytic effects for eVMT proliferation. In
addition, our efforts will incorporate V2X technologies like
DSRC in hundreds of vehicles and will enable the mobility service economy to grow and reduce costs. We will
leverage existing resources and programs as well as the
Vulcan Smart City funding to launch, manage, and ensure
success of these efforts. Each project targets critical barriers and addresses one or more of USDOT’s 12 Vision
Elements and Vulcan’s five Elements.
Integrating Electric Vehicles into the existing DOE
SHINES grant
Leverage Vulcan funding to include EVs in an existing
Austin Energy/DOE funded program, Austin SHINES, to
investigate potential for EVs to provide grid services and
mitigate the variability of renewable energy generation.
SHINES is a $12 million, 39 month project that started
Feb 1, 2016 and works well with a proposed 3 year Smart
City Challenge timeline. Austin Energy’s partners include
The University of Texas, Pecan Street Research and the
US Department of Energy Sunshot/SHINES program.
Austin SHINES will integrate PV Solar, battery storage,
and smart controls at a residential, commercial, and grid
scale. Adding EVs to the residential storage solution is an
incredible opportunity to leverage two key technologies;
PV Solar and residential-scale energy storage.
As part of the project, Pecan Street’s lab, and the SHINES
project such as high penetrations of rooftop solar, electric vehicles, and residential energy storage. Pecan Street
will acquire commercially available V2G equipment and
install it in their lab and in one or two homes that are
connected to heavily monitored distribution transformers
and substations in Mueller.. The proven systems will then
be deployed to residential structures in the Mueller neighborhood.
Since SHINES partners already monitors grid assets, PV
array production, disaggregated home energy use, energy
storage charging/discharging, and EV charging, they will
be able to conduct a comprehensive before-and-after
comparison of how V2G impacts the distribution system
and the homeowners lifestyle.
The goal is a sustainable business model that allows consumers to share in the value proposition of using an EV
beyond just transportation thus driving EV sales. Business
cases for the utility and grid operator are also validated
to demonstrate a “win-win” business model that can be
replicated in other energy markets. High EV adoption has
tremendous potential as a distributed storage asset that
could eliminate renewable spillage/shortfalls and help
make technically feasibly an 80-100% renewable grid.
Electrifying Taxis: ABIA Airport Concession Project
The City of Austin is in the process of transforming taxi
regulations, including turning airport taxi service into a
concession whereby taxi companies will bid to become
the sole airport taxi provider. In return for the concession,
the city can dictate certain parameters of the service,
including vehicle type.
If awarded the Smart City grant, Austin proposes to
require that all taxis operating in the as part of the airport
concession will be required to be electric vehicles. This
is an extremely aggressive and impactful move that will
convert 300 high-mileage gasoline vehicles into electric
vehicles in less than 3 years.
We face several barriers to implementation including
refueling time and EV charging ubiquity, vehicle range,
vehicle capital cost, and availability of new EVs like Chevy
Bolt. We have a solid plan to mitigate these barriers. We
will partner with ChargePoint to deploy their latest fastcharging technology at the airport. Their new system can
charge dozens of taxis simultaneously at powers that are
3 times faster than most “fast chargers” on the market
today.
In addition, we will provide the taxi company with financing aid to ensure that they can procure the electric vehicles. In addition, we will partner with General Motors to
procure 100 of the first Chevy Bolts produced so that
Austin will have the world’s first mass deployment of
long-range, lower-cost electric vehicles like the Bolt.
Electrifying TNC vehicles: Enabling new business
models
Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) have deployed
thousands of vehicles on their networks in Austin alone.
Many of these vehicles drive similar mileage to taxis,
many times more per year than a typical vehicle.
Electric vehicles make pure economic sense for many
TNC vehicle usage cases. Innovative companies have
begun taking advantage of this economic advantage by
procuring electric vehicles and making them available
to rent by TNC drivers. This aggregates the once disaggregated TNC fleet and allows drivers without personal
vehicles to participate in the sharing economy. We will
use a portion of the grant funding to enable these new
businesses to launch and thrive in Austin and scale to
other US and global cities quickly.
We will partner with Evercar, a company that rents EVs
to TNC drivers for $5 per hour currently operating in Los
Angeles, to enable their business model to launch and
flourish in Austin. Evercar solves two of our barriers by
aggregating a fleet of TNC vehicles and purchasing the
EVs to mitigate capital cost barriers to drivers.
As with the taxis, we will partner with ChargePoint and
GM to provide advanced EVSE and access to long-range
electric vehicles respectively.
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
City of Austin, Texas Page 39
Innovative EV financing
The City of Austin proposes to create a financing program
for electric vehicles that uses city funds, backed by Vulcan grant funding, to mitigate the increased capital cost
of EVs and ultimately generate returns economically due
to the lower operating cost of EVs. Essentially, the city
will pay for the batteries in the EVs so that fleet operators
can buy an EV for the same cost as a gasoline or diesel
vehicle and then pay “rent” on the batteries to the city.
This “rent” will be lower than what they previously paid for
gasoline or diesel, so the operators save money and the
city makes a reasonable rate of return on its loan. If successful, this will give other cities a precedent to electrify
high mileage vehicles.
Primary Use Cases: Buses and Taxis:
Electric Buses: Capital Metro will purchase between 8
and 16 electric buses at an approximate premium of
$300,000 per bus for electric powertrain versus diesel.
The City of Austin will loan Capital Metro $300,000 per
bus to cover the additional capital cost of an electric
powertrain at an approximate interest rate of 3% for a
duration of 12 years (the warrantee life of the buses).
Capital Metro will then owe the city $357,604 per bus,
to be repaid monthly over 12 years, or $2483 per month.
The city will make a reasonable 3% return and Capital
Metro will actually save money, as the diesel cost per bus
would be $2610 per month at EIA’s projected diesel cost
of $2.90/gallon and electric fuel will cost just $4.17 per
month due to Austin Energy’s Plugin Everywhere program.
Vulcan funds will be used as a “backstop” to de-risk the
investment for the city and provide downside protection
in the event of low diesel price, OEM bankruptcy, or other
unforeseeable downsides.
Taxis: The taxi company that is awarded the Airport concession will be required to upgrade its fleet of 300 vehicles
to be fully electric. Each vehicle will cost roughly $20,000
each more than a comparable gasoline sedan. The city will
loan the taxi company $20,000 per vehicle at an approximate interest rate of 3% for 4 years (the low end of Taxi
service life). The taxi company will pay the city $443 per
month to “rent” the battery while saving $520 per month
in avoided gasoline cost ($2.50 per gallon). Electric fuel
will cost just $4.17 per month due to Austin Energy’s
Plugin Everywhere program. Vulcan funds will be used
as a “backstop” to de-risk the investment for the city and
provide downside protection in the event of low gasoline
price, OEM bankruptcy, or other unforeseeable downsides.
Increasing EV sales: Outreach and Incentivization
This is a multi-pronged strategy to engage various, key
stakeholders to increase the adoption of electric vehicles.
Specific programs of outreach, incentives, and engagement include:
• Public Awareness Campaign. Expand messaging content, media types, and exposure of Austin Energy’s
existing and award-winning “Charge Forth” campaign..
Since 2011, Austin has seen a 100-300% annual
growth rate in EV adoption supported by the “ChargeForth” campaign and affordable/innovative utility programs to include a flat fee of $4.17/month for unlimited fill-ups at public charging stations.
• Auto Dealership Incentives/Outreach. A key barrier is
lack of incentives and training for auto dealer sales
staff to sell EVs to customers looking to buy a new
vehicle. We will help remove this barrier by setting
up an incentive program for sales staff for attending
training, demonstrating proficiency in EV benefits/programs, and provide incentives to promote EV sales.
• Train TNC/EV Taxi Ambassadors. A major push of our
electrification efforts is to support the purchase and
infrastructure of electric vehicles for TNC and Taxi
drivers. Training these new EV drivers is an excellent
opportunity to create conversations between drivers
and their passengers on the benefits and real-world
experiences of driving an EV.
• Industry and Community Outreach. The University
of Texas Austin Technology Incubator has agreed to
launch a specific transportation incubator vertical. We
wish to support this organizational founding to increase
the impact of our messaging, host events, leverage
their existing network, and help vet the most promising
start-ups to participate in this overall effort.
• Fleet Owners: As part of the Vulcan funding, we will
develop materials and assistance for fleets to go electric. This will include cost analysis support with partnership with the Electrification Coalition as well as promotion in targeted events.
Electrifying the Municipal Fleet:
City Council has already passed a resolution to direct City
Fleet Services to move to 100% adoption of alternative
fueled vehicles. As recently as May 2016, City Council
passed an ordinance to have a specific EV adoption plan
in place to take advantage of the recent development of
new EV technologies. To further amplify the benefits of
EVs, all city facilities (and public charging) are backed
by Austin Energy’s 100% renewable energy program,
GreenChoice™.
Learning, Scaling, and Playbook Development
As part of the grant, Austin will fund and staff a project
to monitor, evaluate, report, and record information and
lessons from the other projects. This information will be
used to evaluate success, report to USDOT and Vulcan,
and create a “playbook” for other cities. This project will
also serve as a “city liaison” to other US and global cities,
both learning best practices and sharing insights from
Austin’s efforts.
Electric Public Transit
Described in detail above, we will deploy electric public
transit vehicles as part of our smart corridor effort.
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
City of Austin, Texas Page 40
Austin is committed to an open, collaborative relationship with every city that strives to be a Smart City. As we
learned on our travels with the Secretary to Scandinavia,
innovative policies and use of technologies and partners
can be found everywhere. If we can learn from other
cities and share what we learn through the deployment
of Smart City concepts and policies, then the future that
we all seek can truly be achieved
Austin has proven collaboration works. In June 2016,
Austin will host a Smart City Conference, bringing
together worldwide leadership on Smart technologies in
the energy, transportation, and government sectors. In
addition, the City is a host to the world-famous SXSW
Interactive Conference. Mayor Steve Adler has been
instrumental in getting commitments from the conference to include a government track that allows mayors
and leaders from around the world to come to Austin to
collaborate and learn about SMART advancements. As
part of our SMART proposal and in coordination with our
research partners, we will continue to host an annual
SMART City Conference and will advocate for on-going
interest through SXSW who has agreed to partner with
the City of Austin as part of our proposal. The partnership will assure that the conference remains focused on
SMART technologies.
In addition to these established collaboration tools, Austin
proposes the following new elements as part of our Smart
City proposal:
• Smart Cities Buy/Purchase List: As part of our deployment plan, we will develop a partnership with the
USDOT to launch a Smart Cities Buy List. Our partner,
the Texas Transportation Institute, has previously tested
the market with a national request for information that
will be incorporated in the procurement process. Most
importantly, we propose that any city that partners with
the USDOT on Smart Cities would have access to our
national two-step procurement process. The first step
would consist of a nation-wide request for information (RFI). Companies responding to that solicitation
would receive guaranteed notice from any government
partner choosing to use the list to initiate procurement. Government partners gain ma readily available
list of companies and products to use in planning for
a procurement process. Austin will select commodity
providers from the RFI. Once a firm has been competitively selected, then government partners, through
their association with the USDOT could have access to
those companies selected for contracting with the City
of Austin. Austin has successfully used this technique
when we modernized our SMART parking management
system, purchasing new parking stations by tapping a
contract already held by the City of Seattle. It is a common practice in the Transit industry.
• Council of Smart Cities (first proposed by Denver and
Portland as part of their proposals): Austin will assemble a council of SMART Cities to include the other six
SMART City finalists and additional representation from
small cities. We propose quarterly briefings via Google
Chrome Video Conferencing facilitated by our partner
Google X. In addition, Austin would continue to host an
annual SMART City meeting with the Council of Smart
Cities meeting to share strategies, define problems of
joint interest, and opportunities for cooperation.
• Teleconferences/webinars for larger community of
SMART Cities group (70+ cities): through our partnership with the Texas Research Triangle (UT Center for
Transportation Research, ATM Texas Transportation
Institute, and Southwest Research Foundation) we will
offer professional development opportunities for City
staffs to learn about SMART Cities outcomes and findings. We will use the City’s network facilitated through
the National Association of City Transportation Officials
(NACTO,) for communication and solicitation of participants.
• Smart Mobility Venture Capital Fund: Austin will facilitate
and encourage the creation of a SMART City Venture
Capital Fund to focus on emerging mobility technologies. Working with our partners at Capital Factor and
the Technology Incubator, we will develop investment
strategies to help spur the research, development, and
commercialization of new technologies. This model will
be agnostic to the location of the technology, and seek
to expand new mobility models world-wide.
• Texas Learning and Scaling Network: To support Austin’s bid for the Smart Cities Challenge and to fill a critical gap in statewide collaboration toward advancement
of automated, electrified mobility-on-demand strategies, a statewide consortium supported by TXDOT, the
Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, DART, the
Regional Transportation Council, Tarrant County, the
city of Houston, and VIA has been formed. The consortium will focus on learning from and knowledge transfer to other Texas cities, establish Texas as a center of
AV-CV demonstrations and deployments, make Texas
an epicenter of innovation for mobility on demand, and
provide a coordinated and combined mechanism for
harnessing private and philanthropic funding.
As we collaborate with other cities, we will also remember
to collaborate with our communities that make up Austin,
especially those communities that might not have easy
access to the technological future. We have formed a
partnership with Huston-Tillotson University to innovate
on how best to reach our entire community – especially
those in our communities of color or impoverished neighSCALING SOLUTIONS AND TRANSFERRING
KNOWLEDGE
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
City of Austin, Texas Page 41
borhoods. Through thoughtful collaboration, we will create new ladders of opportunity and strengthen those that
already exist.
In an effort to maximize the effectiveness of scaling in this
dynamic, entrepreneurial, multi-stakeholder environment
of transforming our mobility system, there are many influential factors to acknowledge, understand, and comprehend in the design/implementation:
• No city intends to sit on the sidelines waiting for successful solutions to be proved out in the winning city
and then disseminated for replication.
• Scaling will not be a “plug-and-crank” replication activity. While much of the basic technology and concepts
must be directly transferrable, successful scaling is
realized at the solutions level, with unique requirements
to understand and then the ability for adaptation, customization, and tailoring.
• In this dynamic and entrepreneurial environment, catalyzing and cultivating broad based innovation in a spirit
of “co-opetition” across the full national/global spectrum of public and private players will be highly beneficial - we can all learn from each other.
• Scaling from well-served/developed markets to underserved markets almost always presents challenges, so
we should invert the normal and start with the underserved.
Approach to Delivery: Scaling, Replicability,
Commercialization and Incubation
• Launch Transportation/Mobility vertical at Austin Technology Incubator
» The Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), the startup
incubator of The University of Texas at Austin, is
the longest-established venture incubator in the
nation (founded 1989). ATI works with both university-derived and non-university-derived startups, preparing them to compete in the markets
for risk capital.
» ATI-Transportation/Mobility will:
» Promote innovative solutions to
transportation/mobility in the
entrepreneurship community and
generate new startups in this industry,
» identify and vet transportation/mobility
technology companies sourced through
ATI’s local, regional, national, and
international networks of partners,
» leverage the expertise of ATI’s 350+
member mentor network on behalf of
selected companies,
» design and deploy pilot programs with
strategic partners,
» and prepare incubated companies for
success in the capital markets (“get
them funded”).
» ATI is embedded in both the university and the
community. It has longstanding, successful partnerships with both the City of Austin and Austin
Energy that have delivered significant ROI for
public-sector partners.
• Provide beta grants for transportation/mobility startups
to test/demonstrate transportation and mobility technologies in Austin (modeled after existing Austin Energy
program)
• Support acceleration programs at Capital Factory
focused on transportation/mobility technologies.
» Capital Factory hosts an accelerator program
designed to attract, test, fund, and distribute
innovative new Smart City businesses. These
businesses will help enhance the Smart Stations,
Urban Analytics, Connected Traveler, and Packaged Mobility initiatives while inherently providing
ladders of opportunity for the Austin community.
• Host an annual technical conference on transportation/
mobility technologies, business models, and deployment strategies.
» Host an annual technical conference in the
region (1-2 day, technical focus) to engage talent
in the industry to attract cutting-edge researchers and solutions to the region.
• Procure technologies through challenges and prizes.
» City of Austin as “first customer” for startups,
small businesses.
» Source innovative solutions through rapid, nimble procurement processes throughout the grant
cycle that are responsive to specific needs/challenges of the project as they are identified.
• Leverage SXSW, SXSW Eco Startup Showcase,
Defense Innovation Summit, and other conferences to
identify new technologies and entrepreneurs in transportation/mobility.
» Startup pitch events are a fantastic “pipeline” for
incubators and accelerators and energize the
startup community in an industry.
» Emphasize transportation/mobility startups and
solutions at technical and policy conferences
hosted in the region.
• Attract leading talent in transportation/mobility to
Austin through an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR)
program.
» Recruit all-star industry talent from the transportation, mobility, and venture capital industries to
Austin to mentor students, startups, community
leaders and stakeholders.
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
City of Austin, Texas Page 42 • Recruit transportation/mobility-focused VCs, other
funders to Austin. » Engage the national funding community in the
lessons learned and best practice findings of
the pilot programs, demonstration projects, and
startup activity surrounding the Smart Cities
demonstration projects.
» Monitor trends in transportation/mobility VC and
reach out to new or increasingly active VC or cor
-
porate venture funds in the industry.
• Problem-centered “Hackathons” » Leverage data from the MIC, Data Rodeo, Smart
Stations, and other pilot and demonstration proj
-
ects to inspire local entrepreneurs to “hack” new
solutions.
» Specific challenges or solutions gaps should be
identified and shared with the entrepreneurship
community in order to source innovations around
specific roadblocks to implementation or deploy
-
ment that are documented in real-world testing
environments.
• Host an Statewide Transportation/Mobility Forums » Host 4 regional programs across the state to train
aspiring entrepreneurs in an immersiveprogram
focused on transportation/mobility innovation.
» Provide access to Data Rodeo, other data
resources from pilots.
» Pitch problems that need solutions to the entre
-
preneurs. This could include technical problems,
deployment or business model challenges, and
as well as social justice/ladders of opportunity
challenges as areas ripe for innovation.
• Paid internships at incubators, accelerators, & startups » Engage talent throughout the region in value-added internships associated with DOT Smart
Cities activities housed at incubators ATI/Capital
Factory
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
City of Austin, Texas Page 43
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
City of Austin, Texas Page 44
VOLUME 1B: DATA MANAGEMENT
INFORMATION AND CYBER SECURITY
The Austin Smart City Challenge team recognizes the
importance of information and cyber security. Our
approach relies on the goals established by the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s goals for cyber
and information security. Our approach has identified
three categories that must be addressed; Personally
Identifiable Information (PII), Enterprise Security and Vehicle Communications (V2V, V2I).
PII
Austin’s protection of PII has public and internal parts.
• For the public: Austin is a leader in open governance
and open data. We place over 400 City data sets on
our existing open data portal. Those data sets are
governed by published Open Data Licensing and Open
Data Terms of Use documents that facilitate and protect
usage of City data.
• Internally: Austin’s practice of protecting PII internally is informed by federal guidelines, guidance
from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts and
the laws of the State of Texas. Policy is administered out of the City of Austin’s Controller’s Office in
accordance with City of Austin Administrative Bulletin 15-04: Personally Identifiable Information.
Enterprise Security: Austin’s high technology status
includes a focus on information security for our existing
public data and information systems. Austin recently hired
a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), a new position
with responsibility for all aspects of security across the
City and who will work with the Austin Smart City team.
Austin’s security practices are based on the standards
and best practices of the NIST Cybersecurity and Risk
Management Frameworks. Austin coordinates security
activities with other regional agencies through participation in government and industry organizations such as
InfraGard, the Texas CISO Council, and the Cloud Security
Alliance (CSA).
V2V, V2I
Austin recognizes the importance of physical security,
communication security and device access control while
realizing that system level and end user needs may vary
somewhat based upon device type, data flows and applications. For communication security and privacy, we will
leverage the established USDOT Security Credential Management System (SCMS) and comply with the USDOT
recommended industry standards (e.g. SAE J2735/2945,
IEEE 1609.2-1609.4 and IEEE 802.11p) for DSRC
devices communications. We will ensure that security for
all non-DSRC based V2X and IOT devices comply with
relevant industry standards and best practices.
For physical security and privacy protection, we plan to
ensure adequate conformance with Federal Information
Processing Standards (FIPS), specifically FIPS 140-1
and 140-2 for cryptographic modules and their physical
and operational security. Additionally, we will require
our partners and their suppliers to adequately protect
devices, including the integration of hardware security
modules (HSM) for the storage of, and the processing
involving cryptographic security as a means of mitigating
attacks, especially for safety critical processes and systems. Any HSM and encrypted storage considerations
will extend beyond connected, automated, electrified V2X
devices to include backend systems and our offsite data
repositories.
We will develop and implement a system-wide device
access control plan and policies to govern access, software updates, authentication, and security credential
storage. We will include planned and concentrated penetration testing (e.g., white hat hacking) to identify and
correct potential vulnerabilities, DSRC spectrum utilization and DSRC interference testing to inform the public
and private sectors.
DATA MANAGEMENT PLANNING
WITHIN THE DATA RODEO
A first priority upon award of the grant is to work with
stakeholders to craft a data management plan. The plan
will contain details on what types of data will be produced, what policies for access and sharing are needed,
and how the Data Rodeo will ensure appropriate protections of privacy, confidentiality, intellectual property, and
other rights and requirements. Each of these aspects of
the plan is discussed in more detail below.
What types of data will be produced?
The types of data produced include technical types
(machine readable - row-column, geo-spatial (gis), video,
audio, telecommunication streams) and user-focused
types (reports, visualizations, row-column, searchable
in familiar ways (Google for our repository). Data will be
provided in database format and also graphically to make
more user friendly (via portal); provide ability to review
trends in the data, as well as real-time conditions. Secondary data will also be included, which includes data
products created by using the data provided, as well as
standards documents, inventories of standards and services, guides and best practices documents. More details
on the exact types of data to be incorporated is discussed
in the sections describing the pilot projects.
Policies for Access and Data Sharing
MOUs and data-sharing agreements will be necessary to
share data between agencies and with any third partyThe
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policies will address ownership (definition and assignment), and tiers of access (public sector entities, private
sector, regular public); private sector access may be on a
subscription basis and private-sector data may be made
available as part of a sharing agreement. Policies that
incentivize data sharing among transportation providers
and adherence to minimum data requirements could
drive or accelerate adoption of and adherence to those
requirements, such as:
• Policies for data collected on public property and/or
with public property
• Security policy
• Performance (Throughput, Response, Availability,
Disaster)
• Uses of public data, uses of private data
• “Traceability” for some data (PII or near-PII)
How to ensure appropriate protections of privacy?
The team will work with all data providers to ensure
data is anonymized at the source, before it enters the
Data Rodeo. A security policy will be developed that will
ensure all security of all data systems with an emphasis
on removing all personally identifiable information (PII).
All data that may contain PII will be stored on servers
(e.g., at UT’s Texas Advanced Computing Center, Amazon
Web Services) that comply with the U.S. Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Adherence to
(and in some cases definition of) privacy requirements
associated with PII, with a focus on lack of traceability,
will be a key enabler of effective use and sharing of data.
How to ensure appropriate protections of intellectual
property (IP)?
Individual agencies will retain data ownerships and IP
unless otherwise agreed upon. Starting with definition of
data minimum requirements that answer the question:
“What is the content and quality of data required?” will
help private data providers concerned about IP understand whether they will be required to provide IP-sensitive information. If users require IP-sensitive information,
incentives may be required to encourage private transit
providers to make that information available in the portal.
How to ensure appropriate protections of confidentiality?
Beyond the PII issues discussed above, the portal will
ensure appropriate security/firewalling between systems.
Also, a review will be conducted on how data may be
used to ensure Ethical Use of Data.
EXISTING AND POTENTIAL
OPPORTUNITIES FOR DATA COLLECTION
Challenges:
• How do we measure the shift from SOV travel to transit,
shared mobility or alternate travel?
• How might we get higher utilization from existing mobility resources using existing data or collecting new data?
• How might we ensure seamless integrated transfer
between modes, including one-stop trip booking &
payment?
• How do we use private data to understand and measure mobility?
• How do we use private data to improve safety?
• How might we get more local data professionals
involved?
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• How might we use data and performance measures to change the stigma around non-SOV travel?
Active and Non-SOV Transportation:
Bike and Pedestrian Counts:
Existing:
• Short term (temporary) tube counters for seasonal
counts
• Counters use Bluetooth/GSM, but only to transmit data,
not collection
• Permanent counters use inductive loops and can
record directionality
• Pedestrian counters using infrared on posts
• All permanent counters and some temporary counters
transmit data automatically to our Eco-Visio website
Potential:
• Expansion of existing counter technology to more permanent locations
• Make count data available to public on online GIS
• Coordinate with car collection and Trails data collection as much as possible to have a common system of
count collection
• Live IP cameras with automatic bike and ped detection
are the most promising option
Survey Data:
Existing:
• NHTS
» The current NHTS survey gives data on purpose
of trips, mode used, households, etc, but the
» The Texas Add-On adds many more surveys,
but t a couple thousand Austin surveys will not
include enough samples to show bike and ped
travel patterns
• TxDOT/CAMPO survey program
» Every ~5 years, there are household, workplace, and travel time surveys completed for the
CAMPO area, yetcurrently there no bike and ped
specific questions
Potential:
• Coordinate with CAMPO and TxDOT before their next
set of surveys to include bike and ped questions, particularly for central Austin
Origin-Destination Data:
Existing:
• CAMPO has zone to zone O-D estimates in their model,
but without detailed bike and ped data from NHTS
or TxDOT survey program, they are rough estimates
Potential:
• Various agencies (including TxDOT) are transitioning to
using Bluetooth and GPS phone data for collecting O-D
data for vehicles, which should be possible for bikes
and peds
• B-Cycle in at least a few other cities (Denver and Fort
Worth for example) have GPS built into the bikes. If
brought to Austin, this could provide GPS O-D data,
although the travel patterns would likely be very similar
to what the check-in/check-out at the kiosks show. The
addition would be more important for wayfinding and
bike tracking. Analyzing routes taken in context of existing bike lanes we can find gaps where demand exists
• AirSage collects anonymized wireless cell data (15
billion mobile locations daily) and is used pretty
extensively by agencies for O-D and speed data.
Parking Data:
Existing:
• ParkMe and ParkingPanda are searchable for Austin for
parking garages
• The City’s ParkMe map (http://austintexas.gov/page/
parking-spots-downtown) shows the “percent full” of
metered parking near the capital and part of downtown.
Potential:
• Use Parking garage with fixed meter pricing as the
cheaper alternative with capacity that would fill first.
The garage dynamic parking could be based on in/out
monitoring, time of day, seasonal, traffic counts, etc.
Crash Data:
Existing:
• Crash data is received from TxDOT’s crash reporting
and analysis application, CRIS, which is separate from
the APD database.
• Pedestrian and bicycle accidents reporting is completely manual and there are many accident reports
without clarity about the crash location vehicle type
involved.
• New annual crash data requires a new data request.
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Potential:
• Coordination with TxDOT or APD to create a more
automated method of obtaining and geocoding crash
data for use in reporting and tracking progress.
Overall Data Accessibility:
Existing: Currently, each of the above data sources are
collected, stored, and distributed in their own separate
ways.
Potential: Collection, storage, and distribution of data
could be centralized to one “data warehouse” through the
University of Texas Center for Transportation Research for
the City of Austin, CAMPO, TxDOT, and maybe others.
Connected Traveler and the Mobility Marketplace Data:
• Ridership
• Time of arrival and departure
• Travel times for transit and pool vehicles
• On-time performance of transit
• Vehicle location and routing
• Availability of travel spots (is a seat open at specific
time)
• Info on service orders (package delivery)
• Travel club membership (needed for shared vanpool
program)
Automated and Connected Vehicles Data:
The proposed automated and connected vehicle pilots
can potentially provide an immense amount of data that
can be categorized as follows:
• Pose Data – Data representing where a vehicle is, and
where it has been. This could come from AV state estimation systems and/or from CV basic safety messages
(BSM). This could include self-assessed accuracy/precision of the pose data, to correlate geographic regions
where accuracy is degraded.
• Perception Data – Data representing how the automated vehicle views the surrounding environment. This
could simply include perceived objects of interest, such
as pedestrians or other vehicles; or other on-board
sensor data related to the road structure
• Navigation Data – Data representing where the automated vehicle is going. This could potentially include
information about routing decisions, such as reasons
for changing routes (congestion or incidents leading to
a increased anticipated travel time).
• Event Data – Data representing AV and CV events “of
interest”:
» AV crashes/impacts or near crashes/impacts,
» AV/CV hardware or software faults or errors,
» AV safety-related manual control take-overs (i.e.
vehicle perception system did not see object,
vehicle navigation system traversing too close to
object, etc.),
» CV events – emergency electronic brake warnings (EEBL), forward collision warnings (FCW),
intersection movement assist (IMA) warnings,
blind spot warnings (BSW)/lane change warnings
(LCW), etc.
» Mobility Data – Data could include AV pickup
and drop-off locations and times, miles traveled
in automated mode, estimated and actual travel
times.
Non-Transportation Data Sources:
In connection with the deployment of Smart Stations,
Connected Traveler and the Mobility Marketplace to
support our Ladders of Opportunity initiatives, the Smart
City team will be working with many public-sector and
community partners working outside the transportation
space. These include:
• Austin Police Department and its community policing
work on Restore Rundberg
• Central Health and CommUnityCare, both for utilization
data and for information on health outcomes
• Google Fiber and the Housing Authority of the City of
Austin, Austin Pathways and Austin Free-Net
• Austin Independent School District and other local districts (e.g., Pflugerville ISD)
• Austin Community College
• UT Dell Medical School and LBJ School of Public Affairs
We will also be working with public- and private-sector
partners to gather and maintain useful operational data
on weather, an important consideration in a community
that has been prone to destructive weather events (floods,
wildfires).
Source: Central Health
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Placeholder Footer Copy / BU Logo or Name Goes Here 1
Urban Transportation
Logical Architecture
E-Ticketing
3rd Party
Systems
Device
Attestation
Security, Configuration &
Management
Asset Info,
Policies &
Metadata
Data Transport
Broker
Data Ingestion
& Processing
Persistence
& Concurrency
Query
Analytics
Storage
Compute
Partners
Business Logic
& Rules
Business
Portal
Services
Orchestration
APIs, API,
Libraries, SDK
Data Center Management & Security
(Monitoring, Auto-scaling, Logging, Eventing)
Network
Infrastructure
Mobility Services
Public Transit
Traffic
Management
Video
Surveillance
Passenger
Information
Systems
Traffic Management Center
Traffic Control Center
Gateway
--------
RIFD Reader
---------
Electronic Toll
Collect
Gateway
--------
RIFD Reader
---------
Electronic
Vehicle ID
Gateway
--------
RIFD Reader
---------
Electronic Toll
Collect
Electronic
Vehicle ID
Displays
Sensors
Video / Camera
Surveillance
Parking
Sensors
Electronic
Vehicle ID
Fuel
Sensors
Video / Camera
Surveillance
Others
V2X / C2X
Digital Signage
Traffic Lights
Traffic Cameras
Sensors & Alerts
RFID Tag
(RFID)
RFID
DSRC
RFID
Gateway
----------
Smart
Parking
RIFD
Reader
Mobility Pass/
Payment
(Cellular\Wi-Fi)
On-Premise or Off-Premise Data Center or Cloud
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VOLUME 1C: PROGRAM MANAGEMENT
The leadership team will utilize a number of traditional
tools such as a Program Management Plan (PMP), and an
Outreach Plan plus unique tools like a Partner and User
Database.Close alignment with US DOT project managers, including the independent reviewer, and regular
collaboration among stakeholder champions will ensure
that our program not only achieves the goals we establish
but leverages the incredible amount of knowledge, experience, and opportunity associated with conducting the
nation’s first large-scale Smart City operation.
PROGRAM MANAGEMENT PLAN
The Program Management Plan (PMP) is the primary tool
used by the team to ensure the program stays on track,
follows a systematic approach, and meets obligations of
the US DOT Contracting Officer (CO). The Austin Smart
City team will base the PMP on proven project management principles. The PMP development will be led by
Austin Transportation Department (ATD) staff with input
from a variety of partners identified within our proposal.
The PMP will be written and executed by individuals that
are well-versed in the Project Management Institute
framework. The Austin Smart City Core Team will deliver a
draft PMP within 60 days of contract award and use it as
a guide during the kickoff meeting.
The draft PMP will contain:
• Statements of goals, objectives and expected outcomes
• The project scope of work
• A work breakdown structure (WBS) and detailed schedule in MS-Project format showing how the work will be
accomplished. Begin and end dates for each task will
be provided. Draft and final deliverable dates will be
indicated.
• A management plan including an organization chart
and staffing plan matrix indicating responsibility for
each task shown on the WBS.
• A communications strategy describing interfaces with
US DOT modal administrations, partner organizations,
and other external stakeholders
• A risk register describing potential risks, the associated
assessments of likelihood of occurrence and severity of
effect, and mitigation measures that will be taken
• Provisions for quality reviews
• An integration work plan that is continuously maintained by program leadership to ensure the system
and operational designs are supporting the key performance indicators and key objectives of the program
• Tables for the high-level KPIs and their associated
objectives. These KPIs will be supported by creating
lower-level KPIs to ensure these overall targets are met.
The draft PMP will be distributed to US DOT staff prior to
the kickoff meeting.
For some elements of the Smart City Challenge effort, it
will be ideal to follow a traditional concept development
phase, followed by design and engineering, and concluded by deployment and operation. In those instances,
document control and traceability, from initial concept
development through requirements definition, are critical.
This traceability will be carried forward as the system is
designed, built, integrated, tested, operated and maintained.
Because many of the strategies and tools we will deploy
as part of the Smart City Challenge are evolving quickly
during a time of technological revolution, a Change Management Plan and process will be developed to manage
changing requirements over time. Clear lines of communication are necessary between single points of contact
at ATD and the USDOT for important decisions. But many
of the discussions won’t be major decisions, therefore a
“hierarchy” relationship matrix will be developed to align
technical and outreach resources on the project team
with USDOT resources for knowledge sharing.
Not all components of the Smart City program are conducive to a rigid project management process, and in those
instances it is incumbent upon the Austin team to work
closely with the partners delivering a tool or service to
make sure that a clear understanding of risks and mitigation strategies are prepared. Risks exist both of an organizational and technical nature. Risks will be identified,
prioritized, managed, and tracked on a regular basis and
mitigated when and where appropriate. Every effort will
be made to minimize risks as will be explained in the Risk
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Management Plan (RMP) developed for the Smart City
effort. The infrastructure projects will be organized into
manageable phases, and for each phase a risk assessment will be performed.
The Austin team will maintain an overall risk register that
begins with those risks identified and presented at the
Kickoff Meeting with USDOT, but more importantly serves
as a tool for later components of the Smart City program
to evolve and be included as they come online. The Austin
team will regularly discuss collaborative ways to mitigate
risks with the impacted partners.
In addition to the foregoing, the culture and climate of the
work plan will be for specific work tasks to succeed or fail
rapidly, and in case of failure to pivot and move forward.
Due to the complexity of the program and the concurrent work and integration required, classic hierarchal PM
processes must be able to adapt to the multidimensional
work across all fronts. Delays and failures in predecessor tasks or enabling technologies will be addressed at
the integration/PM level if required. While clear system
acceptance processes will be followed, the City’s program
approach is collaborative with partners contributing significant system level work and agreement to work collaboratively across the points of integration.
KICKOFF MEETING WITH USDOT
The Core Team will work with the USDOT Contracting
Officer (CO) to schedule the Kickoff Meeting at USDOT
Headquarters or locally at Austin Transportation Department headquarters. An agenda will be prepared and
distributed to those invited to the meeting along with
the draft PMP. A webinar will be arranged for others to
participate remotely, including other local or federal staff
at the discretion of USDOT.The Core Team will deliver a
PowerPoint presentation that will provide an overview of
the PMP as outlined above.
The presentation will describe the different levels of
stakeholders we intend to engage, methods for reaching
them, and most importantly our approach for maintaining
the many complex and evolving relationships necessary
to achieve our vision and goals. The presentation will be
prepared with the objective of fully engaging those participants who have not had an opportunity to fully review
and understand the project scope. The meeting will be
conducted with the intent of garnering feedback on our
proposed approach and any issues or concerns that the
project team might have.
Our goal is to make sure that everyone involved is aligned
with regard to project expectations including scope,
schedule, and deliverables. We understand that some
elements of the project can and will evolve, but our goal
for this initial meeting is to set the stage and do our best
to stick with a stated direction so that everyone can contribute equally.
Minutes of the kickoff meeting focusing on action items
will be prepared and submitted along with a revised
version of the PMP reflecting any changes to any of the
items discussed and agreed to at the meeting.
STAKEHOLDER AND COMMUNITY
ENGAGEMENT
The City of Austin will lead the charge for implementation of the vision in partnership with our Smart City team,
which consists of local public agencies that plan, build,
operate and maintain the regional transportation system.
This team has been and will continue to conduct regular meetings not only plot the course of our effort, but to
develop this proposal and consider parallel efforts independent of the Smart City Challenge.
Community engagement is a requirement of Austin’s
Smart City project. Understanding user needs and priorities ensures the most important needs are designed into
the project. User feedback is also needed post-deployment to ensure the project is meeting user expectations.
• Infrastructure projects: user (traveler) engagement will
be part of the I-35 ICM project.
• Engagement tools: in-person and electronic surveys
• Awareness via web, e-mail subscriptions, social media,
press releases, etc.
• Councils, boards, commissions should also be part of
outreach
• Consider developing an annual report card for overall
and individual SC initiatives
Our proposal moves us Beyond Traffic to achieve a future
of new transportation possibilities. In an extremely short
period of time, Austin’s Smart City Challenge effort has
garnered the interest and support from many of the
world’s most innovative and powerful companies in the
mobility space. We have been able to foster an immediate
spirit of collaboration and momentum, as demonstrated
by our April 27 workshop inviting any and all to bring their
ideas and interest to the table in pursuit of achieving our
vision. Attended by more than 150 representatives of
nearly 85 companies and organizations, this workshop
was a testament to private companies and academic
institutions interested in the Smart City program.
Moving forward, we will maintain a partner database that
allows us to welcome and engage current and future
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participants, tracking their skills, experience, and in-kind
offerings. Some will have skin in the game immediately,
while others have interest but aren’t ready at this stage
of their development or the program’s development.
The database will allow us to track the current status of
partner agreements, manage contacts for both technical
input and marketing, identify any infrastructure needs
the Austin team will need to consider, related research
underway, and the potential and/or realized benefits
to the citizens of Austin that this partner is helping us
deliver. Maintaining this database will allow the team to
constantly be aware of opportunities and leverage investments acting as force multipliers of the USDOT Smart City
Challenge endowment.
The other stakeholders of importance are the end
users—citizens, visitors, and businesses. We will develop
and maintain a user database that allows us to welcome
and engage a number of organizations that will be critical in helping us with outreach, engagement, and, most
importantly, feedback necessary to help us constantly
improve our efforts. While individual persons can be
included in the user database, a majority of the entries
will be focused on community organizations, employers
and business organizations, church groups, and any other
grouping that might provide a channel to engagement.
Outreach for Connected Traveler/Smart Stations/
Packaged Mobility: Smart Ambassadors
Although transportation has created historic barriers
between communities, transportation can also serve as
a link to unify communities. Packaged mobility services
offer a suite of transportation and delivery options that are
designed to meet the diverse transportation needs of all
individuals. Driven by user preferences, an individual may
customize his or her selections in order to make informed
decisions based upon personal preferences.
The City of Austin will create a network of Smart Ambassadors: grassroots outreach practitioners and activists
from the community and early adopters that live in the
community they will be serving. The team will provide
learning opportunities to the community and report any
technological or cultural gaps in the system along with
real life lessons learned.
SMART Ambassadors Program Goals:
• To master developed technologies
• To provide feedback to the technology developers
(language preference, readability, usability, needs
addressed, comments from the community, etc.)
• To assess community needs such as access to technology, transportation and goods delivery needs, specific
situation analysis, financial challenges, etc.
• To demonstrate the use of technologies and mobility
and delivery options available in the community
• To encourage participation and recruit other Ambassadors
• To celebrate victories and milestones with communities
• To connect communities to opportunities through
transportation planning
Promotional Activities:
• Community media, sponsored events, social media
Incentives:
• Public recognition to thank volunteers for helping make
a difference in the community
• Awards to volunteers based on their achievements
• News releases about the Smart Ambassador program
• Color-coding volunteers name tags to indicate achievements (hours, months, years of service)
• Pin representing the Smart Ambassador program
• Certificate presented by the Mayor to outstanding volunteers
• Access to technologies and ability to give feedback
about improvements
Outreach and Feedback for the Data Rodeo
For the Data Rodeo to be successful, it must meet the
needs of the partners in the public sector, private sector,
and broader community. Below are some specific steps
that will enable both outreach and obtaining feedback to
improve the systems.
Workshops with agency staff
Inter-agency collaboration can be greatly enhanced by
bringing data together into the Data Rodeo, which serves
as a single point of access. For agencies to participate,
it must be easy for them to use. We are already working
with the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization
and its member agencies to pilot the Data Rodeo for the
region’s active transportation data and plans. Through
this effort, processes are being developed to bring the
region’s data together with minimal extra effort by agency
staff. The Data Rodeo is designed to input most common
data types and allows for creation of data through direct
editing as well.
Workshops with private sector
Workshops will be held with our private sector partners to
engage them in the process of building the Data Rodeo
to figure out the best ways to create win-win situations
where the private sector can access City data and then
feed back added value into the Rodeo. Copenhagen’s City
Data Exchange is being examined as a model.
Host hackathons
Our partner OpenAustin has agreed to facilitate hackathons whereby data in the Data Rodeo will be leveraged to answer important questions or create tools that
meet a pressing need. We also envision hosting virtual
hackathons to engage the developer community beyond
Austin, and partnering with other cities working on similar
goals.
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Outreach to start-up communities to create ladders of
opportunity
An important goal of the Data Rodeo is to provide Information Equity. By opening up data, we are enabling small
businesses to start around creating value from the data.
When data sets are not open then the few companies that
own the data have an unfair advantage. We will reach out
to the start-up communities (e.g., Capital Factory, Austin
Technology Incubator) and find opportunities to educate
entrepreneurs about the available data and obtain feedback on how to improve the availability of the data to
reduce barriers to entry to business.
Workshops with equity groups to develop mechanisms for
reaching across barriers
Specific plans will be crafted to engage various language
communities (e.g., there are 30 languages spoken in the
Rundberg neighborhood alone), the elderly, blind, and
visually impaired, and other groups identified as needing
targeted outreach. It will be important to engage representatives from each of these communities early in the
process so they can act as liaisons to the communities to
create the necessary feedback loops.
Outreach for Automated, Connected, and Electric
Vehicles
On-site staff will provide information on the AV/CV and
electric vehicle technologies deployed to users at Smart
Stations and Corridors. We will also continue to engage
fleet operators of transit, freight, and TNC vehicles to
ensure they are aware of the economic benefits and
implementation options of electrification and automation.
We will also host seminars on AV/CV pilots at regional
universities, including information for potential job seekers on what types of job opportunities these technologies
will create.
REPORTING
The communications plan will include monthly and
annual reporting. Monthly progress reports will document
progress on deliverables, accomplishments, anticipated
activities, schedule updates, and cost to complete. The
risk register will also be updated and a risk report will
detail mitigation activities and risk status.
Easy access to work products and deliverables for team
members will be very important. We have already established and are using a document sharing and collaboration
website using ProjectSolve, an easy-to-use group-sharing
website offered by WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff. ProjectSolve allows members access to documents in-progress,
and includes strict version-control tools to make sure any
changes are tracked carefully. The USDOT, members of
the Austin team, and other key federal or local stakeholders will be invited to this collaboration site to allow access
to work products and deliverables from any location at
any time.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
The Smart City team will develop a System Requirements
Specification (SyRS) Document based on the Smart City
ConOps prepared for the individual pilots and programs.
We are very familiar with this process and use it routinely
for ITS projects. The identification and inclusion of stakeholders is important to developing good system requirements. The Austin Regional ITS Architecture (2015) will
be referenced as well in determining requirements, especially to ensure that interrelated stakeholders interests are
all-inclusive. A Requirements Traceability and Verification
Matrix will be developed to trace requirements back to
needs defined in the ConOps and provide a documentation process for verification. The matrix will be further
expanded to provide forward traceability to design specifications, verification/test plans, operations, and evaluation
activities.
SAFETY
The Austin Smart City team recognizes that Safety is a
core mission of USDOT, and that the Smart Cities program
should promote safety in all aspects of the pilots and dayto-day operations. With this in mind, we will develop a
Program Safety Plan that illustrates the necessary steps
a pilot must follow in order to demonstrate the ability to
provide a safe environment from closed testing environments, to small scale open demonstrations, and finally
to full scale public facing implementation. The Program
Safety Plan will be flexible enough to work in conjunction with the variety of the proposed projects, from public
outreach and engagement to full scale automated vehicle
testing and deployment. We will also produce a quarterly
safety audit to ensure that program staff are aware of
revisions, issues that have arisen, and mitigation strategies.
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METRICS AND EVALUATION
Each of our pilots and programs will be designed, implemented and evaluated with a set of hypotheses and evaluation criteria, including indices of success or failure. The
Austin Smart City team has adopted a “rapid prototyping” approach that will make nimble adjustments to pilot
projects based on performance with respect to metrics.
These metrics will be available to both pilot and program
developers and US DOT.
Performance Measurement Hypotheses:
Overall Goals and Metrics
The Austin Smart City pilots seek to demonstrate the
effects that transportation-enabled technologies have on
improving safety, enhancing mobility, enhancing ladders
of opportunity, and addressing climate change.
The metrics we will measure and track for monitoring
and evaluating project performance with respect to these
four outcomes are listed below. Each of these metrics will
require a baseline against which to measure progress
toward the Smart City outcomes. The Data Rodeo, in conjunction with the urban analytics function, will provide the
data required to establish these baselines as well as the
continuous data collection required to execute monitoring
and evaluation.
Improving Safety
• Accident frequency and causes
• “Near miss” frequency and causes
• Emergency and incident response time
• Bicycle and pedestrian accident frequency and causes
Enhancing Mobility
• For each mobility service, community by community
» Point-to-point travel time
» Cost per mile
» Overall ridership
» Reliability: average and actual vs. advertised wait
time
• Overall miles traveled by mode, community by community
• User satisfaction with available mobility services
• Traffic flow (volume/speed)
Enhancing Ladders of Opportunity
• Population-weighted access to jobs, community by
community
• Access to schools, community by community
• Access to healthcare, community by community
• Missed healthcare appointments, clinic by clinic
• Training courses offered at area colleges on Smart City
technical areas and associated attendance and completion rates
• Percentage of residents exposed to a Smart City
ambassador and satisfaction rating, community by
community
Addressing Climate Change
• Grams of CO2 emitted per passenger mile traveled for
transit vehicles and services as a whole
• Electric vehicle miles traveled
The following questions form the overall basis of our performance measurement approach:
• Can the metrics be reliably measured?
• Can we expect measurable results in a 3-year timeframe?
• Are there targets that can be defined?
• What data will be needed and from what sources?
• What will be needed as baseline data and when?
• What exogenous factors do we need to consider?
The following questions form the basis of our hypothesis-driven performance measurement approach.
Overarching Questions:
• Have jobs been created through the Smart City deployment?
• Have those jobs been filled by local residents?
• How many new training courses are offered at area colleges for Smart City technical jobs?
• What City revenues can be tied to smart city development (for understanding and planning for sustainability)?
Project-Specific Questions:
Smart Stations and Ladders of Opportunity
For each Smart Station:
• Is there a decrease in overall travel time, per-mile cost,
and grams of CO2 emitted per passenger mile and an
increase in non-SOV miles traveled for residents living
within a quarter mile of the Smart Station and residents
passing through the Smart Station?
• Does the Smart Station facilitate greater access to
health care services for residents living within a mile
of it?
• Are bicycle/pedestrian accidents reduced and can
we link the reduction to the Smart technology?
For Healthcare clinics:
• Is there a reduction in missed appointments that can
be attributed to enhanced mobility?
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
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For Austin Community College:
• Is there an increase in the number of college courses
offered in Smart City technical areas? Is there an
increase in associated attendance and completion rate?
For East Riverside Smart Corridor:
• Is there a decrease in overall travel time, a decrease
in per-mile cost, an increase in overall ridership, an
increase in non-SOV vehicle miles traveled, and a
decrease in grams of CO2 emitted per passenger mile
for residents living within a quarter mile of Riverside
Drive?
• Is emergency and incident response time improved in
the Riverside smart corridor?
• Does new e-BRT service on Riverside create a mode
shift to transit?
• Does CV-enabled bus rapid transit (BRT) improve fuel
economy for transit fleets?
Mobility Marketplace
• Is there a decrease in overall travel time, per-mile
cost, and grams of CO2 emitted per passenger mile
and an increase in non-SOV miles traveled that can be
attributed to the Marketplace?
• Do packaged mobility services increase use of nonSOV miles traveled among our disadvantaged communities and student populations?
• Is there an increase in population-weighted access to
jobs that can be attributed to the Marketplace?
• Is there an increase in access to schools that can be
attributed to the Marketplace?
• Does first/last mile service increase alternate mode
share?
• Has the Smart City demonstration led to commercialization of new products or services?
CITY-CONTROLLED ELECTRIC VEHICLE DEPLOYMENT PLAN
YEAR 1 YEAR 2 YEAR 3 (STRETCH GOAL)
Project
Electric
Vehicles
Deployed (#)
eVMT
(x1000 miles)
CO2
Reduction
(kilotonne/
year)
Electric
Vehicles
Deployed (#)
eVMT
(x1000 miles)
CO2
Reduction
(kilotonne/
year)
Electric
Vehicles
Deployed (#)
eVMT
(x1000 miles)
CO2
Reduction
(kilotonne/
year)
Main
Vulcan
Element
1. Grid Supporting Effort Supporting Effort Supporting Effort 1
2. Fleet 50 900 0.324 150 2700 0.972 300 5400 1.944 2
3. Taxi 100 7000 2.52 300 21000 7.56 500 35000 12.6 2
4. TNC 100 5000 1.8 300 15000 5.4 500 25000 9 3
5. Consumer See project section for estimates of increased consumer adoption of EVs due to SCC program 4
6. Finance Supporting Effort Supporting Effort Supporting Effort 5
Assumptions: Vehicles displaced had 25mpg. 9kg CO2/gal emitted by IECs. 18K mi/yr fleet, 50K mi/yr TNC, 70K mi/yr taxi
Automated and Connected Vehicles
• Is there a decrease in overall travel time, per-mile cost
and grams of CO2 emitted per passenger mile and an
increase in non-SOV miles traveled attributable specifically to automated and connected vehicles deployed as
new mobility services or at Smart Stations?
• Is there a reduction in near misses, accidents, and red
light running for corridors and stations where automated and connected vehicles are deployed?
• Is there an increase in population-weighted access to
jobs attributable specifically to automated and connected vehicle deployment?
• Does DSRC-enabled transit signal priority result
in decreased travel time, improved reliability, and
increased ridership?
Electric Fleets
• What is the adoption rate of EV vehicles?
• How many electric vehicle miles traveled have resulted
from EV deployment?
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Platform-Specific Questions:
MIC: ROMC and Intelligent Sensors
ROMC Projects
1
Deploy ICM on I-35
Questions to be answered:
1. Are incident delays and emissions reduced?
2. Does timely data to travelers affect congestion levels and alternate paths to avoid
delays?
3. Are secondary collision reduced?
4. Does ICM improve operational efficiency during non-incident conditions?
5. Are ICM activities producing more benefits than costs?
Success:
1. Delays and emissions decreased
2. Secondary crash rates are reduced
3. Average daily delay on freeway and frontage roads decreased
4. ICM benefits > costs; mature ICM has benefit/cost ratio > 10
Metrics/output measures:
1. Incident delays, emissions (source: decision support system (DSS) to be created)
2. Incident frequency (source: APD, TxDOT); volumes (source: TxDOT)
3. Travel times (source: private sector data)
4. ICM benefits (source: DSS); costs (source: agencies)
2
Develop Smart City System Agreements
Questions to be answered:
1. Do the agreements lead to sharing data and infrastructure?
Success:
1. Agreements signed/executed; data and infrastructure actually shared
Metrics/output measures:
1. Number of executed agreements; instances of sharing (source: agencies)
3
Integrate Shared Infrastructure
Questions to be answered:
1. What cost savings resulted from integrating infrastructure?
Success:
1. Actual shared project cost are less that estimated cost if not shared
Metrics/output measures:
1. Actual shared project cost; estimated cost if not shared (source: agencies)
4 Support Smart City Projects
Not included
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Intelligent Sensor Projects
1
Near-Miss Crash Analysis
Questions to be answered:
1. Does the system accurately measure near misses and red light running
violations?
2. Does the information provided by the project result in actions that reduce
near misses and red light running?
Success:
1. System accurately measures (a) near misses and (b) red light violations
2. Engineers and law enforcement take actions based on the data; crashes
reduced; red light running events reduced
Metrics/output measures:
1. System and actual (via video) data comparisons (source: system, video)
2. Engineer treatments implemented (source: ATD); enforcement assignments
(source: APD); crashes (source: APD); red light running events (source:
video)
2
Roadway Weather Information System (RWIS)
Questions to be answered:
1. Does bridge temperature data help the decision making process?
2. Does this data reduce crash rates during ice events?
Success:
1. Decision makers find information highly valuable to decision making
process
2. Crashes rates during ice events are reduced
Metrics/output measures:
1. Surveys of decision makers (source: ATD)
2. Crash data (source: APD)
3
Private Sector Operational Data
Questions to be answered:
1. What is the cost savings resulting from using private sector data compared
to the agency purchasing, operating, and maintaining equipment?
Success:
1. Private sector data costs are less than agency-owned equipment
Metrics/output measures:
1. Private sector data costs (source: agency); life cycle costs for equipment
deploy over same coverage area (source: agency)Discernable pictures of
(a) license plates and (b) driver (source: APD)
Intelligent Sensor Projects (continued)
4
Pavement and Markings Performance Monitoring (Mobileye)
Questions to be answered:
1. Does the system produce accurate information about (a) pavement and
(b) markings quality?
Success:
1. System produces accurate information; agency uses data from system
for developing maintenance plans
Metrics/output measures:
1. System and actual field data measurement comparisons (source:
system, agency); demonstration of how agency uses data in
maintenance programs
5
Kiosks
Questions to be answered:
1. How frequently are the kiosks being used?
2. Do the kiosks increase access to (a) transportation services; (b) jobs?
3. How often do the kiosks require maintenance for (a) vandalism; (b)
equipment failures?
Success:
1. Citizens who don’t have access to smartphones use kiosks to gain
access to information and services
2. Citizens use kiosks to access transportation services and job
advertisements
3. Equipment life cycle is > 3 years (note: ~equating to life of business
computer) or maintenance costs are less than advertising revenue
Metrics/output measures:
1. Surveys (source: kiosk user interface); Wi-Fi usage
2. Surveys (source: kiosk user interface); application usage stats
3. Maintenance records (source: ATD)
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
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VOLUME 1D: STAFFING PLAN
The Austin Smart City Team is comprised of an excep
-
tional combination of agencies, partners, and com
-
panies with the resources, skills, and experience to
deliver a successful Smart City demonstration project to
the USDOT. Under the City of Austin’s leadership, this
dynamic team will cooperatively leverage each member’s
talents to achieve our Smart City vision while validating
outcomes and applications for replication throughout the
nation. The following sections outline our project delivery
approach consisting of: (1) the Austin Smart City Con
-
sortium – agency leadership, governance, and continuity
during and after the project period; and (2) Staffing Plan
– daily operational roles and leadership responsibilities
for each pilot and focus area.
CONSORTIUM
To provide continuity independent of political cycles, an
Austin Smart City Consortium will be established with a
Joint Executive Team (JET) and dedicated full-time staff
to oversee implementing the Smart City project. This
structure provides stability, expanded capacity, nimble
-
ness, and continuity not only for the three-year USDOT
Challenge period but beyond, to carry on implementing
future projects. Our many stable, established partners will
ensure both continuity and capacity. Austin is investing in
this for the long haul and has already started down the
path towards a new smart mobility system.
Our Smart City Consortium provides the MIC’s oversight
structure and is the mechanism that will assure the
implementation and maintenance of our interconnected
project elements. The figure on this page demonstrates
how we envision the institutional framework to deliver a
successful Smart City program. The City and its partners
recognize that the ambitious scale and timeline of the
Smart City Challenge will require a dedicated team with
the capacity to focus exclusively on the Challenge and its
outcomes. Therefore, an Austin Smart City Consortium,
under the auspices of the City of Austin, is envisioned to
provide the oversight, structure, and support necessary to
assure the transformation of Austin into a Smart City. The
Consortium includes the following bodies:
Joint Executive Team (JET), led by the City of Austin City
Manager: Provides technical program oversight; assures
adherence to grant policies; sets policy; assists with
resolving escalated issues; and makes recommendations
to the participating governing bodies. Team members will
include:
City of Austin, Capital Metro, TxDOT, CTRMA, Travis
County, and CAMPO, UT, TTI, SwRI, and Austin CityUP. The
City Manager, as the chief executive for the City of Austin
will serve as the fiduciary point of contact for the USDOT
and will be responsible for the grant.
Advisory Board: Provides project oversight and perfor
-
mance monitoring; approves draft deliverables to submit
to USDOT; and facilitates partnerships. Board composition
includes Departmental Executives from the Core Team.
Consortium Director: Manages the Smart City project;
reports to the city manager as chair of the JET; manages
private sector involvement; and serves as the point of
contact to USDOT. Rob Spillar, P.E., Director, Austin Trans
-
portation Department will be assigned this role and serve
as the full-time Consortium Executive Director. The Direc
-
tor and the overall Smart City program will be supported
by an experienced program management firm (e.g.,
reporting, budgeting, performance management, compli
-
ance, etc.) including a premiere data management firm
to support the data infrastructure needs of our partners.
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
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TEAM ORGANIZATION
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
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STAFFING PLAN
Baer, Joshua (CF)
Baireuther, Kathleen (ATI)
Barchas, Isaac (ATI)
Bouisseau, Jay (Aus:n CityUP)
Chin, Kris:e (UT)
Craig, Brian (City-‐ATD)
Dale, Jim (City-‐ATD)
Duthie, Jen (UT)
Esquibel, MaEhew (City-‐CTM)
Flores, YveEe (TxDOT)
Goodin, Ginger (TTI)
Greenberg, Sherri (UT)
Gregor, Katherine (City-‐ATD)
Hemingson, Todd (Capital Metro)
Lehr, Ted (City-‐CTM)
Lukuc, Mike (TTI)
Popham, Karl (City-‐AE)
Reilly, Tim (CTRMA)
Rucks, Greg (RMI)
Spillar, Rob (City-‐ATD)
Taylor, Karla (City-‐ATD)
Thorn, Eric (SWRI)
Turner, Robert (City-‐CTM)
Walker, Jon (RMI)
Weiland, Jerry (RMI)
Smart City Pilots
Connected Vehicles ! "
Packaged Mobility Services " !
Electric Fleets ! "
Automated Vehicles " !
Smart Sta:ons ! "
Connected Traveler Ini:a:ve ! "
Regional Opera:ons Management Center " ! " " "
Intelligent Sensor-‐Based Infrastructure " ! " " " " "
Urban Analy:cs & Policy Research " ! "
Data Rodeo ! " " "
Ladders of Opportunity " !
Commercializa:on " ! "
Collabora:on, Learning & Scaling " " " " !
Grant Administra2on
Consor:um Director !
Strategic Partnerships + Communica:on !
LEGEND
! Pilot Lead Staff
" Pilot Key Support Staff
City-ATD Austin Transportation Dept.
City-AE Austin Energy
City-‐CTM Aus:n Communica:ons and Technology Management
City-‐F Aus:n Fleet
ATI Austin Technology Incubator
CF Capital Factory
CTRMA Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority
RMI Rocky Mountain Institute
SWRI Southwest Research Institute
TxDOT Texas Department of Transportation
TTI Texas A&M Transportation Institute
UT University of Texas
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
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VOLUME 1E: CAPACITY AND CAPABILITY
Austin has the drive, commitment, and capacity to successfully deliver its Smart City vision. The City and Austin’s public- and private-sector leadership are excited and
highly motivated to use the Smart City Challenge opportunity to tackle Austin’s transportation issues. Here are
some examples of ongoing initiatives that will leverage
the Smart City effort.
ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION
• Austin has installed an average of 30+ miles per year
of new and improved bicycle lanes for the last 5 years
including a total of 44 miles of buffered and protected
bicycle lanes. This work is largely coordinated with
street resurfacing.
• Austin’s most recent Bicycle Master Plan adopted in
2014 calls for a $150 million all ages and abilities bicycle network that is designed to capture short trip travel
demand and bring regional mobility benefits to Austin
including a forecasted 7% reduction of vehicle trips to
the downtown area.
• Austin is currently working on an update to the Sidewalk Master Plan which includes innovative approaches
to increasing walkability through aggressive vegetation
control on existing sidewalks, exploring the idea of
shared streets, a data-driven maintenance program
and expanding financing tools.
• Austin will be finalizing a Pedestrian Safety Action Plan
using data prepared by the Texas Transportation Institute.
• We are in the process of obtaining a cutting-edge
crowd-sourced bicycle network analytics tool that uses
smart phones to passively collect trip information by
mode, focusing on creating bicycle network use maps
with user stress information over time.
• Austin’s Safe Routes to School program provides school
engagement and education for elementary school students throughout Austin, including customized bicycle
and pedestrian route maps for schools, HUB devices
that count kids bicycling to school, pedestrian safety
education and crossing guards.
• Austin’s Vision Zero Task Force is wrapping up their work
and has resulted in significant public and multi-agency
support. To support the effort, five plus staff will be hired
across multiple city departments including a Vision
Zero Program Manager and Pedestrian Coordinator.
SMART LAND USE
The significant growth Austin has seen has required the
city to rethink how it uses its land. New mobility services,
enhanced data integration, or electric vehicles will not on
their own solve these challenges. We must create walkable and bikeable urban environments that enable our
citizens to eat, sleep, work, and play without requiring
vehicle ownership or lengthy, sprawl-inducing commutes.
In order to do so, we must optimize and reclaim land that
has—and continues to be—allocated for road expansions and parking facilities that tend to induce more use
of vehicles, thereby worsening congestion and increasing
emissions.
Significant opportunities exist in property redevelopment,
infill, and transit oriented development, to cultivate stronger, less car-dependent and more equitable communities.
In the past year, the City of Austin has made use of Envision Tomorrow (see below) to quantify the economic value
of parcel-level developments and to measure their impact
on nearby traffic. The City would like to bolster the use of
this tool to do the following:
• Measure the impacts of key corridor redevelopment on
the broader transportation system
• Prioritize areas for transit oriented development
• Prioritize corridors for redevelopment and affordable
housing
In 2012, the Austin City Council passed Imagine Austin,
a comprehensive 30-year plan to address these changes
by growing into a compact and connected city. The City of
Austin is currently drafting the code to implement Imagine Austin’s principles, known as CodeNEXT, which will be
finalized and implemented in 2017.
• First comprehensive code revision in 30 years
• Form-based codes will bring an end to persistence of
single-use zoning
• Significant overhaul of transportation chapter
• Will set the stage for innovation in land use, facilitate
smart development, encourage increased transit ridership
The rapid growth of Austin has added new housing, new
jobs, and, of course, more cars. As a result developers,
continue to build parking facilities that take up valu2015 Metrics Report Austin Transportation Department
City of Austin | 2015-2016
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
City of Austin, Texas Page 61
able land that, otherwise, could be used for housing or
commercial space. The City of Austin sought to stifle the
growth of parking facilities by removing downtown minimum parking requirements in 2012, but the measure had
little effect, because lenders remains unwilling to invest
in developments without a significant amount of parking.
This is due, in large part, to a lack of data on parking utilization that would ideally optimize where and how much
parking is constructed. A comprehensive plan for parking
has not been conducted in eight years. In that time, Austin
has changed dramatically.
To address this challenge, the Downtown Austin Alliance
and Nelson Nygaard are conducting a study of existing
parking utilization. The end result of this effort will be to
craft a plan for an improved parking management system
enabled by new enforcement, regulatory, and pricing policies. Just as important, though, will be the use of technology that can reduce vehicle-miles-traveled associated
with searching for parking :
• Apps that enable real-time discovery and reservation
of parking spaces
• Highly visible, digital wayfinding signs that communicate parking availability to drivers
Although this study concentrates only on the central
business district, it will provide a valuable template for
tackling parking in other areas, where parking minimums
currently exist.
City of Austin - East Riverside Corridor Regulating Plan 19
Building Placement
Lot Size
Minimum Lot Size: 2,500 sf
Minimum Lot Width: 20’
Minimum Setbacks
Front and Street Side
Yard*:
No ground-level front yard
or side yard setbacks are
required. Instead, development must meet the building
placement standards in Section 4.3.
Interior Side Yard: 0’
Rear Yard: 0’
Upper-Story Building
Facade Street-Side Stepbacks:
The building facade at the
fourth story and above must
be stepped back a minimum
of 10 feet from the groundlevel building facade line.
* If the street right-of-way is less
than 60 feet in width, see Section
4.3.3.C.
Maximum Impervious Cover
Impervious Cover:
90% or Maximum Allowed
by LDC 25-8.
Maximum Building Height:
60 feet maximum w/
a minumum of 2 stories.
Maximum Building Height
with Development Bonus:
See Figure 1-8.
Floor to Area Ratio (FAR)
Maximum Floor-to-Area Ratio
(FAR) by Right: 2:1
Desired minimum FAR: 60% of
maximum FAR by right.
Note: Additional building height
may be granted in exchange for the
provision of public benefits. Maximum
FAR waived with a development
bonus. Development bonus criteria and
standards are detailed in Article 6.
CORRIDOR
MIXED USE (CMU)
SUBDISTRICT
IMU
NR
NMU
Max. 60’
Building Height
By Right
3 Stories
10’ Min.
Step-back
after 3 stories
2 Story Min.
Building Height
CMU
ABOVE:
Typical minimum stories, height limit,
and step back requirements for
buildings within the Corridor Mixed
Use (CMU) Subdistrict.*
*Max. Building Height with a Density
Bonus is established on Figure 1-8.
Building placement
determined by Roadway type
and Active Edge Designation.
*See Fig. 1-3 for Roadway Type
designation and Section 4.3 for design
requirements.
Compatibility
See Section 4.2.4 for compatibility standards.
Land Use
Residential, attached Permitted
Residential, detached Not Permitted
Smaller-scale Retail (less
than 50,000 sq. ft.)
Permitted
General Retail Permitted
Office Permitted
Warehousing & Light
Manufacturing
Not Permitted
Education / Religion Permitted
Hospitality (hotels/motels) Permitted
Civic Uses (public) Permitted
Corridor Mixed Use (CMU)
Land Use Summary*
ABOVE & BELOW:
Examples of development similar
to that allowed in the Corridor
Mixed Use Subdistrict.
*The table above provides a summary only of
land uses permitted within the Corridor Mixed Use
Subdistrict. See Section 2.3.3. for a complete list of
permitted land uses.
UR
Corridor Mixed Use is the highest density
district designation within the East Riverside Corridor and will typically be expressed as residential or of ce uses over
commercial ground oor uses, such as retail or of ce. The ground oors of these
buildings are envisioned to be primarily
retail or of ce while upper oors may
be of ce and/or residential. Mixed use
development is key within this subdistrict
because it will help to create a walkable
environment with a variety of land uses
located in a compact area.
IMU
NR
NMU
CMU
UR
Figure 1-9: Corridor Mixed Use (CMU)
Summary of CMU Subdistrict Development Standards
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
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ENVISION TOMORROW
Developed through the HUD Sustainable Communities
Regional Planning Grant (as part of a partnership with
USDOT and EPA) the Austin reqion received in 2010, Envision Tomorrow (ET) is an open-source scenario-modeling
tool that allows users to develop urban buildout scenarios,
from the scale of a region down to an individual building
site. These scenarios are associated with data that drive
a range of indicators about site performance related to
ecological, economic, and social impacts, such as
• Safety: traffic accidents (injury); traffic accidents (fatal)
• Mobility: transit trips per unit; daily walk trips per unit;
transportation costs per household;
• household affordability and family disposable income
(housing+transportation+energy)
• Efficiency: daily vehicle trips; daily walk trips per unit;
daily transit trips per unit; daily VMT
• Sustainability: daily VMT/daily VMT per capita; transit
trips per unit; daily walk trips per unit; transportation
costs per household; household affordability and family
disposable income (housing+transportation+energy)
• Climate: water quality pollutant load reductions; transportation carbon emissions; other transportation emissions
• Equity: household affordability and family disposable
income (housing+transportation+energy); jobs-housing balance; housing distribution by income; workforce
housing model; balanced housing model
Envision Tomorrow relies on travel behavior algorithms
based in current, peer-reviewed analysis. The Smart
Stations proposed in Austin’s Smart City vision may be
modeled initially as transit-oriented developments centered on transit stations. This would show the impact of
reducing sprawl by tying Smart Stations to compact land
use planning, with resulting improvements in transportation system safety and reductions in climate change
emissions. ET has the capacity to provide analysis on net
new taxes and also increase in family disposable income
specific to geographic areas. ET’s robust suite of tools
related to housing and transportation affordability and
access would also help evaluate the impact of Smart Station in creating ladders of opportunity for Austin’s disadvantaged communities. Additional real-time data through
sensors would be an asset to the outcomes. Austin hopes
to have the opportunity to utilize this important impact
measurement tool, created through federal investment,
on this important investment in Smart City technology
and thereby leverage the investment in the development
of ET.
AUSTIN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
INITIATIVES
Workforce & Educational Development: In response to the
growing inequality in Austin, the city’s Economic Development Department (EDD) supports educational development for children and improves workforce opportunities
targeted to children from minority and low-to-moderate
income families. Resources are also allocated towards
lifting working adults out of poverty and into living-wage
careers through education.
Connecting people to capital and place: The EDD’s work
program focuses on linking people to the resources they
need to thrive in Austin’s dynamic economy. This includes
assisting entrepreneurs to obtain the necessary capital
they need to grow their businesses and create jobs.
Redevelopment: The EDD invests in creating vibrant
activity centers and other strategic areas through wise
infrastructure investment, organizing healthy commercial districts that meet the surrounding neighborhood’s
market needs and incentivizing catalytic mixed-use real
estate investment that provides for the public good.
MOBILITY MARKETPLACE, SMART
STATIONS, LADDERS OF OPPORTUNITY
The chances for success of these user-focused mobility
options is enhanced by the fact that many of them leverage successful efforts already under way. These include:
Movability Austin: Partnering with Employers and Services
Austin already has strong relationships with our largest
employers to participate in efforts to shift their employees’ commuting behaviors, including investing in packaged services of the kind to be made be making widely
available through the Mobility Marketplace. Services such
as Car2go, zipcar, V-Rides (via Capital Metro) and Austin
B-Cycle were pioneered here, are setting national records
for usage and continue to grow. More shuttle services
operate in and around Downtown Austin per capita than
any other city in the US.
Movability Austin, the Downtown Austin transportation
management association, has built on its employer relationships with 30 companies who have received consulting assistance to develop mobility implementation plans
for their 70,000 employees. These companies have committed significant resources including: redesign of work
spaces to allow hoteling, upgrading IT for telework, purchasing transit passes and distributing them to employees at discounted rates, investment in last-mile services
Section | 1
City Council Adopted
June 15, 2012
Vibran t. Livabl e. Connected. COMPREHENSIVE PLAN
Vibrant. Livable. Connected
LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Smart City Challenge
City of Austin, Texas Page 63
and parking cashout. Austin’s Smart City efforts are driving build interest from even more companies.
Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI)
In a critical first step toward building the Mobility Marketplace now proposed through this grant application, in
2016, Movability partnered with Rocky Mountain Institute
to develop a packaged commuting service including 1)
a shared shuttle connecting commuters to public transit and 2) a package of on-demand mobility services.
Austin downtown employers Whole Foods, Cirrus Logic,
and GSD&M have committed to purchasing this packaged commuting service and making it available to their
employees.
In September 2015, RMI became our on-the-ground
community partner when it chose Austin as its lead partner for a new mobility transformation initiative focused on
electrified, automated mobility as s service (or “packaged
mobility”). RMI brings decades of experience in facilitation, program management, entrepreneurship, transportation research, and public and private sector collaborative relationships and has already committed six full-time
employees to Austin over the next several years. RMI has
further committed to leveraging its philanthropic and feefor-service support bases to bring a matching contribution of additional capacity worth several million dollars to
the Austin effort should it win the grant
Smart Trips: Personal Mobility Training and Education
Smart Trips Austin is a program that aims to increase trips
taken by foot, bike, bus or shared car. The City of Austin
and Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Capital Metro) are working together to encourage Austinites
to consider more sustainable options for getting around
town.
Ladders of Opportunity: Community and Equity Partners
As noted earlier in this submittal, our Ladders of Opportunity initiatives are designed to add transportation access
and equity to existing success stories in community revitalization, crime prevention, improving access to health
care and health outcomes, increasing workforce opportunities and access to education, and providing complete
communities where housing, services, and employment
are tied together by transportation. These include the
Spirit of East Austin community engagement initiative in
the Eastern Crescent, the Housing Authority of the City
of Austin’s national model program for digital inclusion,
and the participation of Google Fiber in creating digital
access to neighborhoods on the wrong side of the digital
divide. The letters of commitment in this submittal reflect
participation by dozens of community and equity partners
whose participation in the Smart City effort broaden its
scope and impact far beyond transportation in itself.
Austin B-Cycle
Austin B-Cycle, which is one the nation’s most successful
bike-sharing programs, will work with the Smart City team
integrate e-bikes into the current Austin B-cycle service
area to test market viability of e-bikes in bike share and
their effect on increasing ridership..Results would determine the viability of a full e-bike deployment with charging
stations in an expansion neighborhood including Ladder
of Opportunity areas in the Smart City Challenge grant.
In addition to participating in bike-sharing installations at
Smart Stations and along the Riverside Drive Connected
Corridor, Austin B-Cycle looks to transition our entire
operations maintenance and balancing fleet to electric
vehicles as new operations vehicles are added and old
vehicles retire. Austin B-Cycle will allow access to rider
travel information and station status (number of bikes)
in real time. Austin B-Cycle will install live GPS tracking
units on all bikes in the fleet to provide real time location,
direction, and speed of bike share bikes and partner with
North American Bike Share Association to develop data
standards, system architecture, demand modeling, and
bike share industry best practices for sharing of live data.
Austin B-Cycle will actively participate in the development of the Mobility Marketplace so that bike share is an
available service in a mobility package. We will pilot and
validate new pricing products and bike checkout access
to meet the needs of travelers. Austin B-Cycle will provide
API access to any third party developer looking to add
Austin B-Cycle system access to their package offering.
AUTOMATED AND CONNECTED
VEHICLES & CONNECTED CORRIDORS
The culture of innovation in Austin makes it the ideal city
in the U.S. to introduce these technologies in a very public way, to begin to understand the implications based on
real-world deployments. Some of the ongoing efforts that
position Austin well include:
• Public automated vehicle testing - Google X has been
on the ground in Austin since the summer of 2015,
testing its automated vehicles on public roads, and
is committed to partnering with the team to align its
efforts with solving the city’s mobility and access challenges. It is also important to note that Texas does not
have any legislation on the books governing testing
RIVERSIDE DRIVE CORRIDOR DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM 1 AUSTIN MOBILITY // CITY OF AUSTIN TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT // DECEMBER 2013
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EAST RIVERSIDE DRIVE CORRIDOR
DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
DECEMBER 2013
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or deployment of automated vehicles on public roads.
While the team sees this as being a significant advantage, it will take the steps to ensure Austin does not
truly become the “wild west” of automated vehicles.
• Research partner expertise – The new “Texas Research
Triangle,” comprised of the University of Texas Center for Transportation Research (UT CTR), Texas A&M
Transportation Institute (TTI), and Southwest Research
Institute (SwRI), brings immense expertise and background in both basic and applied research related to
automated and connected vehicles. UT and TTI have a
broad portfolio of planning and policy-related programs
investigating the implications of deploying automated
and connected vehicle technologies. SwRI has tested,
certified, developed, and deployed automated and connected vehicle technologies for the DOD, automotive
and commercial truck OEMs and suppliers, and a number of State DOTs.
Focusing the pilot deployment around the proposed
Smart Stations and along the proposed Upon completion
of the grant program, Austin intends to ramp up deployment, rather than down. Austin envisions additional
deployments further into the neighborhoods surrounding
the numerous Smart Stations and Smart Corridors. As the
grant program is being executed, the team will simultaneously hold engagement meetings with additional partner
cities near Austin and beyond:
• Smart City – Austin ->Round Rock, Georgetown, San
Marcos
• Smart Region – Austin -> College Station, Temple,
Waco
• Smart State – Austin -> San Antonio, Houston, Dallas,
El Paso, Laredo, etc.
ROMC, SENSOR DATA &
INFRASTRUCTURE
The One System vision has been alive in the region for
some time and has led us to take the natural next step
to becoming a Smart City. Past and present initiatives
include:
• Formation of the region’s Combined Transportation,
Emergency, and Communications Center (CTECC)
in 2003. CTECC brought together transportation and
emergency responders under one roof to leverage
resources and improve service delivery. Its multiagency governance model (City of Austin, TxDOT, Capital Metro, Travis County) is a best practice that has been
successful at managing CTECC for more than a decade.
• Deployment of the region’s first Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)
line – MetroRapid – in 2014 requiring close coordination between Capital Metro and the City to deliver a
successful project to the community.
• Creation and updates to the Austin Regional ITS Architecture under TxDOT’s leadership since 1996. The
Architecture has been updated in a cross-agency collaborative manner multiple times with the most recent
in 2015.
• Successful pursuit as a region of a USDOT integrated
corridor management (ICM) deployment grant that
began in 2014. ICM embodies a One System approach.
• Establishment of the City of Austin’s Open Data Initiative
2.0 — “with the development of new technologies and
an increasingly connected and engaged population, a
growing expectation is being placed on government
leaders to promote transparency, citizen participation,
and collaboration”.
• Establishment of a contract with the UT Center for
Transportation Research to develop a roadmap for
increasing the openness of transportation data to the
public, businesses, entrepreneurs, non-profits, and
agencies.
The Smart City project provides the foundational elements that scale towards operating transportation
throughout the region as One System. I-35 ICM provides
an initial project by which the Austin Smart City team can
launch into One System planning and implementation
for the region. The Smart City System Agreements and
Integrated Shared Infrastructure project set the tone to
achieve the One System vision for operations as well as
sharing data and infrastructure (e.g., sensor data, communication networks) across agencies. Together, these
projects establish the foundation to facilitate regional
scaling.
Replicating Austin’s successful outcomes in other urban
areas is a key measure of success for the Smart City
project. The Austin team has taken steps to foster replicability through project design and knowledge transfer activities (e.g., webinars, conference presentations,
technical papers, social media, etc.) that share lessons
learned (what worked and didn’t). ROMC projects like
the I-35 ICM will add to the body of knowledge developed through proven ICM deployments in other parts of
the country (e.g., San Diego, Dallas). The USDOT has also
been instrumental in developing and supporting tools, like
the Systems Engineering process, that foster replicability
and success..
The One System approach is designed to leverage
resources across agencies to enable us to do more
together than independently. For example, the ROMC
projects share infrastructure, like communications networks (fiber) and video, instead of each agency expending similar funds for redundant infrastructure. These
business model changes not only maximize the value of
limited public funds, they demonstrate our efficient use of
resources to elected officials that control the sustainability of transportation funding.
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DATA RODEO AND URBAN ANALYTICS
The Austin team has extensive experience building and
managing large-scale data portals and discovery environments.
Texas Advanced Computing Center
The University of Texas’ Texas Advanced Computing Center leads the development of the Cyverse web portal for
bioinfomatics that provides users with the ability to work
with data within its web-based portal or from within many
programming languages, leveraging its AGAVE API layers
which provide simple to use RESTful APIs in languages
such as R, Python, and Matlab. Users are able to discover
public data, upload their own data and control access
to the data. Data can be collected and sent to applications within the system for further analysis or processing
including many visualization layers tuned to address specific problems.
The power of this environment is being leveraged in
many other TACC based portals including the DesignSafe-CI efforts for natural hazards civil engineering data
and model results, as well as the Virtual Drug Discovery
portal VDJServer for modeling and analyzing the uptake
of drugs by proteins.
The TACC lead for the Austin Smart City efforts is Dr. Niall
Gaffney who was responsible for development and support for the data archive for the Hubble Space Telescope
project. This project involved collecting streamed data
from remote sensors, preserving data, processing data,
protecting data access policies, and creating value added
data products from 20 years of data.
University Transportation Center for Data-Supported
Transportation Operations and Planning
The University of Texas at Austin is home to the Tier 1
University Transportation Center for Data-Supported
Transportation Operations and Planning (D-STOP). Dr.
Jen Duthie is the D-STOP lead for the Austin Smart City
efforts and she is also the lead for the ongoing D-STOP
project focused on creating a data discovery environment
for transportation data. It is through this project, and Dr.
Duthie’s work with regional transportation agencies, that
the Data Rodeo concept was born. D-STOP faculty also
specialize in several areas that will directly benefit the
Austin smart cities data efforts including novel ways for
storing big data, machine learning algorithms to extract
the most useful information from the data, and travel
behavior models for using the data to predict future conditions.
Texas A&M Transportation Institute
The other UTC offers national-level expertise in performance measurement, USDOT Independent Evaluator for
UPA/CRD, Dallas ICM evaluation, extensive use of private
sector data in congestion/mobility performance analysis.
Also skilled at technology policy research and finding
ways to leverage opportunities to create better outcomes.
Replicability and Scalability Through Enabling Research
Efforts will be made to engage researchers both locally
and nationally. We are hosting a series of webinars to
educate researchers about the data available, potential
use cases, and obtain feedback on how to make the Data
Rodeo better meet their needs. The two-way nature of
the Data Rodeo will be emphasized, whereby any data,
tools, or other value created from the Data Rodeo information will be fed back into the Rodeo for others to build
off of. The University of Texas at Austin’s University Transportation Center (UTC) on Data-Supported Transportation
Operations and Planning will lead the outreach efforts to
other UTCs across the country. Additionally, we will leverage our membership in the MetroLab Network to engage
other university researchers working on smart city efforts
and bring them into the Data Rodeo.
All university-based research that involves human subjects or their information must go through an IRB process. Steps will be made to expedite the IRB process
including submitting general descriptions of the research
planned when the contract is awarded to obtain concept
approval. This initial step will let the IRB know of the type
of research to be done and give them an opportunity to
raise any concerns before the study is planned in detail.
As the research planning process progresses, this initial
protocol will be modified to include all of the details of
the study including how participants will be recruited and
rewarded, instructions they will receive, and descriptions
of the study procedures and safety processes in place to
protect them and their data. We will also arrange for all
researchers involved with human subjects data to receive
the required nationally accredited training. Copies of the
submitted final protocol and approvals will be provided
to USDOT.
The Data Rodeo presents a unique opportunity for educators to bring large-scale real-world data into the
classroom. We will work with our partners at the Austin
Independent School District and our local colleges and
universities (including Austin Community College, The
University of Texas at Austin, Huston-Tillotson University)
to educate teachers how to access and use the data, and
also obtain their feedback on how to make the Rodeo
more useful to them.
CAPACITY BUILDING: CREATING SOCIAL
& ECONOMIC VALUE
Community Partnership: Austin CityUP
As Austin builds its smart infrastructure, services and
living community, it must engage its community in discussions to create, sustain, deliver and share the value
that arises. We will partner with a local nonprofit, Austin
CityUP, a consortium of companies, organizations, and
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individuals who collaborate on activities that advance
Austin through digital technologies, data collection, analytics, and modeling.
The Austin Smart City team believes we need the private
sector to help our team function and continue to develop
as a smart city. The dialogue and collaboration with Austin
CityUP will provide the ongoing connection between public-, private- and nonprofit sectors in the Austin area.,
initially focused on the following:
• Establishing a ‘safe harbor’ for open dialogue on prioritizing problems to be addressed, solutions available,
outcomes to be delivered, and relevant technologies
• Ensuring Austin Smart City investments are made to
leverage our grant funding, our partner contributions
and other initiatives.
• Developing a plan for financial sustainment for our
Austin Smart City Investments.
• Providing opportunities for piloting or prototyping innovative transportation and mobility solutions and providing environments to build concepts and test hypotheses
• Facilitating public-private sector dialogue and collaboration to solve other problems facing Central Texans.
Austin CityUP will work with the City and its Smart City
partners to establish competencies centered on research,
partnering, prototyping, innovation incubation, open data
platforms, talent development, and outside expertise.
Through facilitated discussions, meet-ups and focused
workgroups Austin CityUP has the processes in place for
government representatives to discuss an idea/initiative
that may address a problem faced by Austin area residents. Under the auspices of Austin CityUP, these discussions will assist in developing proof of concept efforts,
solution refinement and demonstration of a viable solution.
Community Partnership: Austin Technology Incubator
ATI is among the most successful incubators in the nation
and has been recognized by the Kauffman Foundation for
its track record. Over the past 7 years, roughly 90% of ATI
companies have received investment, totaling over $837
million dollars. Over the same time period, ATI companies
have accumulated total book value of $1.5-2 billion. ATI
alumni have contributed almost $1 billion and over 6,500
jobs to Central Texas; each public $1 invested in ATI has
yielded $66 of economic activity.
ATI’s Clean Energy Incubator (ATI-CEI) has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Energy as one of the
three “best practices” energy/cleantech incubators in the
country. ATI is a node in the DOE’s National Incubator
Initiative for Clean Energy (NIICE) and acts as a hub of
university-based clean energy incubation programs in the
Southwest. ATI’s Energy & Cleantech companies have
raised more than $200 million in investor capital (including one IPO). These companies have generated more
than $85 million in economic impact.
The City of Austin and Austin Energy have a longstanding
partnership with ATI. The Austin Energy Beta-Test program is a nationally distinctive best practice developed by
Austin Energy in collaboration with ATI-CEI. Through this
program, Austin Energy provides expertise, test access,
and translational funding to vetted clean energy technology solutions that could impact Austin EnergTo-date,
16 grants have been awarded to ATI companies in the
Clean Energy Incubator (CEI) and awardees have raised
more than $43 million in follow-on funding. Beta-grant
awardees have raised an additional $109 in outside funding for each beta-grant dollar contributed and created
over 105 direct jobs to-date.
Draft 3 May 23, 2016
South Central Waterfront Illustrative Vision Plan
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ELECTRIC FLEETS
Austin is the ideal place to demonstrate to the nation and
the world how electric vehicles can scale quickly, support
grid reliability, and bring value to owners all while being
powered by renewable energy to maximize green house
gas (GHG) savings.
Significantly reducing GHG emissions in the transportation sector is a critical component of Austin’s Smart City
transportation program, Climate Protection Plan, Austin
Energy Generation Plan, and the focus of the Smart City
Challenge. It is important that transportation electrification does not just transfer GHG inventory to the electricity
sector, and as such an important component of our strategy is a continued decarbonization of the electric grid and
continue to power all public charging infrastructure with
100% renewable energy from Texas’ growing wind and
solar resources through Austin Energy’s green-e certified
GreenChoice program.
For the transportation sector to maximize the benefits of
Austin’s low-carbon grid and 100% renewable GreenChoice program, we must scale electric vehicles and
electric vehicle miles traveled (eVMT) quickly and aggressively. By targeting high mileage mobility service vehicles
and removing key barriers to consumer adoption, the
Vulcan grant will enable Austin to electrify up to 5% of
its total VMT in 5 years, and a significant portion of that
within the three-year grant duration.
This combination of accelerated eVMT growth and fossil
fuel free energy equates to maximum GHG reductions.
The business models, strategies, and tactics used will be
scalable and repeatable for other cities such that we see
massive CO2 reduction from the transportation sector as
a whole. In addition, this program will improve air quality,
keep millions of energy dollars in the local economy, and
be a key “tipping point” project in Austin’s trajectory to
achieve its carbon Net ZERO 2050 Plan.
CONCLUSION
The vision for 21st century mobility in Austin includes ensuring initial investments are sustainable, value generating and creating new revenue streams over the long term. The potential for improved quality of life that’s
enabled by a Smart Austin must promote equal economic potential: with all genders; across all racial and ethnic
backgrounds; among all socio-economic classes; and across all public institutions and commercial sectors of
the economy.
Achieving these outcomes requires engaging our community. We will bring together stakeholders of every kind
– citizens, businesses, city officials, technology developers, universities and entrepreneurs – to enable the community as a whole to serve the underserved and enfranchise the dis-enfranchised. In the end, these innovative
transportation services will touch every single person living, working or visiting Austin. They will also result in
innovative business models that can monetize and create new resources to sustainably fund ongoing Smart
improvements to Austin as well as incent the private and other non-government sectors to invest in projects and
products for Smart Cities.
“Austin has a collaborative approach, a can-do attitude and solution-driven, consensus-oriented leaders who are eager to work to improve our city rather than limit it.”
GERARDO INTERIANO, External Affairs, Google.
“As one of the largest employers in the area, we want to work with the City to identify where
advanced technologies and innovative solutions can be implemented to improve the lives of
Central Texas citizens, especially in underserved areas. We have a special interest in mobility
systems that provide opportunities for the most talented and diverse workforce throughout
the Austin metro area.”
MICHAEL DELL, Chairman and CEO, Dell Inc.
“An innovative, collaborative , enabling environment like that of Austin, Texas is critical to
ensuring the successful introduction of the vehicles and services that will shape our much
improved mobility system of tomorrow.”
MARCUS WELZ, Chief Executive Officer, Siemens
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