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Seattle Joins Transportation for America’s Smart Cities Collaborative

Seattle has been selected to join Transportation for America’s (T4A) new smart cities collaborative, a joint effort to engage cities in developing efficient and affordable transportation options for all.

Over the coming year, we will work with fifteen other cities to tackle the challenges related to implementing smart city policies and projects. Seattle was selected from nearly 60 cities that applied to join the collaborative.

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Member cities will focus on three areas:

  • Automated vehicles, and their potential impact on urban transit systems, congestion, transportation equity, and the environment.
  • Shared mobility, and how it could help cities provide equitable, affordable, and more sustainable transportation choices.
  • Performance measures and data analytics, and how to use data to manage complex transportation networks and achieve transit equity and environmental goals.

Seattle will participate in a variety of information-sharing meetings, with other member cities and with industry-leading transportation experts. We’ll also receive direct technical assistance, create pilot programs and share results with the rest of the group to drive best practices across the country.

Some of the projects that we’re excited to share include:

  • National leadership in shared mobility planning and strategy development.
    • Example: Seattle eliminated caps on the number of free-floating car sharing vehicles that can operate in the city.
  • Car share equity pilots that reduce the barrier to entry for low-income individuals, immigrant populations and communities of color.

The collaborative is the result of a partnership by T4A and Sidewalk Labs. The partnership builds on T4A’s experience collaborating with state and local governments to develop forward-looking transportation and land-use policy, combined with Sidewalk Labs’ expertise working with cities to develop digital technology that solves big urban problems.

The collaborative’s first meeting will be in Minneapolis on November 9-10, 2016.

Other participating cities:

Austin, TX; Denver, CO; Boston, MA; Centennial, CO; Chattanooga, TN; Lone Tree, CO; Los Angeles, CA; Miami-Dade County, FL; Madison, WI; Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN; Nashville, TN; Portland, OR; Sacramento, CA; San Jose, CA; Washington, DC.