This week, the Department of Transportation announced a $40 million funding opportunity entitled Beyond Traffic: The Smart City Challenge. This award will be given to one mid-sized city that puts forward bold, data-driven ideas to improve transportation through safety, reliability, and integration. The Department of Transportation is encouraging cities to present creative approaches for innovatively addressing the challenges they are facing. The vision of the Smart City Challenge is to award and encourage integrated approaches to improving surface transportation performance within a city and integrating these approaches with other smart city domains such as public safety, public services, and energy.

This is the first funding opportunity made available in response to the President’s “Smart Cities” initiative announced on September 14th, 2015 that promised to invest over $160 million in federal research and leverage more than 25 new technology collaborations to help local communities tackle key challenges such as reducing traffic congestion, fighting crime, fostering economic growth, managing the effects of a changing climate, and improving the delivery of city services.

You can find more information on the competition here. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx will be hosting a national webcast today, Tuesday, December 8th to discuss the Smart Cities Challenge. Finally, the Department will be hosting a Smart Cities Forum on Tuesday, December 15th from 9:00 am until 4:00 pm.