But perhaps the most sizable and lasting legacy of a grant program aimed at modernizing the way cities use and regulate curbs will be the foundational baseline these projects establish — a baseline for data and how its gathered, an opening for collaborating with other city departments and a launchpad for community engagement.
“Just the fact that this is the first time we’ve ever worked together in this way, we’re already forming some sort of structure changes. And it’s really awesome to be able to partner like this, and to bring teams together, within the DOT,” remarked Sarah Abroff, co-project lead with the planning department in the San Jose, Calif., Department of Transportation.
Abroff has been inventorying all of the city's downtown curbs, working to understand the role those curbs serve and the associated regulations. San Jose is part of the Open Mobility Foundation’s (OMF) SMART Curb Collaborative, a group of 10 cities which received U.S. Department of Transportation Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) grants, which are all using curb data specifications to help support a variety of projects.
Those projects include initiatives such as the formation of a zero-emission delivery zone in Portland, Ore.; creating a digital inventory of curb space along a mile-long section of Nicollet Avenue in south Minneapolis; and similar digital curb inventories in other cities such as San Francisco and San Jose.
A key component of the collaborative has been a series of webinars organized by OMF to hear directly from city officials about their journey, discuss project outcomes and advance the development of public policy that uses digital data tools to rethink how curbs are used and regulated. The pilot collaborative is at the midway point, with nine more months to go.
In Portland, this means completing a curb inventory of the city and repurposing five downtown truck loading zones, installing sensors to accommodate a policy allowing only zero-emission delivery vehicles for a six-month period.
“We’re really hoping to determine whether, and how, some of these tools, as well as curb management, can be an effective strategy on climate action,” said Jacob Sherman, who manages the New Mobility and Electrification team at the Portland Bureau of Transportation.
An early finding concluded commercial truck loading zones are used improperly about 70 percent of the time.
“So when a UPS or Amazon driver pulls up to try and make their delivery, 3 times out of 4, someone else is parked there,” said Sherman.
The delivery drivers then end up circling the block, looking for a space. If those loading zones can be managed and used more effectually, a side-effect will be reduced traffic in downtown and improved safety.
“I think if we can, in many ways, increase the efficiency of the curb in certain areas, and use data and advanced technologies to help us do that, I think that’s a win, win, win,” said Sherman.
Other city transportation officials remarked on the essential baseline of knowledge the projects are providing, establishing a starting point for any number of mobility initiatives.
“Unless we actually know what’s at the curb, there’s no way to analyze it. There’s no way to know how to change it,” said Abroff.
Dillon Fried, mobility and curbside access manager for Minneapolis Public Works, remarked at the ephemeral nature of curb data, and how important it is to have a system to update it quickly and accurately.
“As soon as you map the curb, that’s out of date on day two,” said Fried. “If you don’t have an ongoing plan for the maintenance of that data … that’s something we’re really trying to work through and internalize and understand what that means.”
The project in Minneapolis involves data integration from different systems such as the asset management system, parking management system and enforcement system to produce and populate the various API fields that are within the curb data specification. A long-term goal is to provide real-time information to help improve e-commerce deliveries.
“There’s been a lot of room to do things different,” Fried said. “Whether it’s room to fail, or room to learn, that’s one of the things that I think we’ve appreciated the most, is the focus of this program on building the internal capacity within cities and other jurisdictions within cities that receive the SMART grants, to be fluent in smart city initiatives.”
