Columbus wins DOT’s Smart City Challenge
Out of the seven finalists in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge, Columbus, Ohio, emerged the winner this week. The city will receive $50 million in grants from the DOT and Vulcan Inc. to implement its smart city plan.
Columbus will also receive about $90 million in local matching funds, including $19 million in public money. That gives the city a total of $140 million to upgrade its transportation network.
“This grant, combined with its public-private investment, will help reshape the transportation sector in central Ohio for decades to come,” U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) said in a statement. It “will help meet the transportation needs of Ohioans who live in the low-income neighborhoods in and around Columbus to ensure they can get to their job, or receive a good education.”
Columbus beat Austin, Texas; Denver; Kansas City, Missouri; Pittsburgh; Portland, Oregon; and San Francisco in the final round for the prize. Seventy-eight cities total participated in the challenge. Also of note, in 2015, Columbus won the Intelligent Community of the Year award from the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF).
With two smart city awards under its belt, what is Columbus doing that makes it stand out among other cities It could be its focus on improving access to jobs, training and healthcare for low-income residents via shared cars and autonomous buses. People in poorer communities are being left out, the city says.
In its Smart City Challenge application, the city said it wants to tie together all of its neighborhoods to connect people to jobs, training opportunities, higher education and healthcare. It also wants to design safer streets, ensure all residents have access to quality and affordable transportation, and reduce consumption and emissions.
“Improving access to jobs, the efficient movement of goods and increased access to services is critical to the sustained growth and prosperity of the Columbus region,” said Mayor Andrew J. Ginther in the city’s application. "Columbus neighborhoods, new Americans, disadvantaged residents and visitors to the region will all benefit from a smarter, safer and more accessible community.”
Columbus’s initiatives include:
Columbus also may have had an advantage because it is seen as representative of typical U.S. cities and makes it more likely to be emulated by other cities. It has a mix of worker types—white collar, blue collar and older workers—and it has a diverse population.
Because of that, many companies and brands consider Columbus “the test marketing capital of the world,” Ginther said in a Washington Post blog post. Now the city wants to be the place other cities turn to when they begin implementing smart city initiatives.
As it says in its video for the challenge: