The two cities were jointly awarded a $14.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) grants program. The funding will be used to deploy technology and additional signage to better establish compliance with loading zones. The projects, which are part of a second round of SMART funding, are a continuation of initiatives to modernize curb management in each of the cities.
“Curb space is a limited resource and, when effectively managed, it can promote economic activity, support multimodal transportation, facilitate access for freight and deliveries, and improve overall safety and mobility,” Tim Sexton, director of the Minneapolis Public Works Department, said in a statement.
Data collected from both Minneapolis and Seattle found compliance with existing curb regulations to be lagging, prompting a need “to update permit eligibility, pricing, and signage policies to improve curb performance,” according to a city of Minneapolis press release late last year.
“We’ll continue to collaborate with our local partners and the freight and business communities to implement positive, data-driven solutions at the curb,” Greg Spotts, director of the Seattle Department of Transportation, said in a statement.
The first phase of the project in Minneapolis, funded with about $2 million from the federal infrastructure program, focused on establishing a digital inventory of the curb space in a designated area, which includes about a mile-long section of Nicollet Avenue in south Minneapolis. Its long-term goal is to provide real-time information to help improve e-commerce deliveries, Dillon Fried, mobility and curbside access manager for Minneapolis Public Works, said, and the new federal funding helps to realize this goal.
“Building that internal capacity around technical smart city things has been really important for us, and helps us put more of a road map forward,” Fried said in September, in comments about the project during a panel discussion. The conversation was organized by the Open Mobility Foundation (OMF). Minneapolis is part of OMF's SMART Curb Collaborative, a group of 10 cities that received SMART grants and which are all using curb data specifications to support projects.
“Our community engagement has been one of the most important, amazing parts of this project,” Fried said, noting discussions city officials had with business owners, block by block, to learn the particulars of their needs at the curb. City officials also engaged with large carriers like FedEx to get their feedback.
“It’s taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture, instead of having a solution in search of a problem,” Fried said.
Other SMART grant projects include:
- More than $12.1 million to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, to develop an integrated trip-planning and ticketing platform in time for the 2028 Summer Olympics.
- $10 million to the Metropolitan Government of Nashville-Davidson County in Tennessee, to deploy lidar and camera technology at key intersections to gather data related to near-misses.
- More than $11.7 million to Fort Collins, Colo., to develop an electric vehicle charging management system for the city fleet.
- Nearly $14.9 million to the New York State Thruway Authority to use drone technology for inspecting critical infrastructure.
- Just shy of $6.6 million to the Washington State Department of Transportation to create a binational system to better manage wait times at the U.S.-Canada border.
