DALLAS -- Seven cities remain in the running for the $40 million federal Smart City Challenge grant aimed at integrating innovative technologies from sensors to smart cars into their road and transit networks.
The Transportation Department had planned to announce five finalists for the effort, but Secretary Anthony Foxx said the field was expanded due to the responses from dozens of cities to the competition.
"The level of excitement and energy the Smart City Challenge has created around the country far exceeded our expectations," Foxx said.
The competition, which was announced in December, drew 78 applications, he said.
"The truth is, after we had a chance to read through the tremendously impressive concepts and designs, it became almost impossible to narrow it down," Foxx said. "Ultimately we decided to invite two additional cities to the next round, to give a broader range of communities a chance at winning the ultimate prize."
The finalists are Austin, Denver, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Columbus, Ohio and Portland, Ore.
The seven cities will each receive a $100,000 grant to develop their proposals for the second phase of the competition.
Foxx said that unlike the first phase, which involved a big-picture overview, the winning city will be selected based on an ability to provide more details on applying their approaches. Each finalist must provide a detailed roadmap on how they would integrate innovative technologies to develop a prototype for an urban transportation system, he said.
The winner, which will be announced in June, will also receive a grant of up to $10 million from Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen's Vulcan Inc.
Vulcan president Barbara Bennett said the selected city would use the grant to support electric vehicle deployment and other carbon emission reduction strategies that are a part of Allen's anti-global warming campaign.
"The creativity and determination of the applicants to envision a greener future represents the best of American ingenuity," she said. "As the Smart City Challenge's philanthropic partner, we hope to catalyze a transportation transformation across the country that will dramatically drive down emissions from this leading source of carbon pollution."
Austin is already involved in high-tech transportation efforts, said mayor Steve Adler.
"We are actually the only city outside of California that has autonomous vehicles operating right now on our streets being tested," he said.
Austin is clogged with traffic, he said.
"We really need to find the new technologies that are going to enable us to use our existing infrastructure smarter in more innovative ways," Adler said. "It's having street lights talking to cars as they approach, it's having emergency vehicles be able to talk to drivers so the car that you're in knows an emergency vehicle is coming before you even see it."
Foxx said it is important for cities to work with private companies to develop a transportation network for the 21st century.
"In technology and transportation there's no way the public sector can solve all of our problems on its own," Foxx said.
"We're chronically underinvesting for one thing, and I think our imaginations have been stunted by the lack of resources," he said. "On the other hand you've got the technology and innovation world that is coming up with all kinds of solutions that could be practically applied to solve these challenges."
Corporate partners in the Smart City Challenge in addition to Vulcan include Mobileye, which will equip the winning city's buses with a collision-avoidance system, and NXP, which will deploy wireless communications modules that allow smart cars to exchange information that could prevent accidents and improve traffic flow. Amazon Web Services will provide $1 million of secure cloud-based information sharing service and support to the winner.
