WASHINGTON — One U.S. city is going to win up to $50 million to change the way people move.
The Smart City Challenge is being run by the U.S. Department of Transportation and Vulcan in order to reward cities for coming up with new ways to get people around, including self-driving cars, electric vehicles, connected cars and more.
In announcing the challenge, the USDOT says, “… many communities — particularly mid-sized cities — will experience rapid population increases and rapidly growing demands on their transportation infrastructure in the next few decades.”
In a recent conference call, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said that the U.S. population will grow by 70 million people in the next 30 years, mostly in cities.
“The city that develops the most innovative, most forward-thinking plan to harness technology and re-imagine how people move will receive up to $40 million to become the first city in the world to implement that vision.”
Vulcan will give an additional $10 million to support infrastructure for electric vehicles.
“This is about a holistic view of how communities across this country want to live,” Foxx said.
“How they want to adopt new mobility strategies, how they want to embrace innovation and technology, how they want to think about land use, how they want to think about any number of things. …
“We’re trying to reposition government so we can solve problems at the local level. … We want cities to come up with the solutions that best fit their own needs.”
The competition is open to cities with populations between 200,000 and 850,000 people. The deadline for entries is Feb. 4; finalists will be picked in May, and winners in June.
