Public-private non-profit organization the City Innovate Foundation (CIF) has announced that Miami-Dade County in Florida will be the first metropolitan region to implement insights from its Urban Mobility Collider Project, which is focused on how urban residents can better navigate their cities.
Across the USA, urban transit systems and road networks in major cities are unable to keep up with demand as populations grow, with residents struggling to cope with increasing congestion and the growing challenges to getting where they need to go. As traditional transportation systems struggle to keep up with demand, alternative methods such as cycling, carpooling and ridesharing are becoming more popular. CIF believes there is potential for cities to incorporate these new modes with existing public transportation services, to build a network of accessible, affordable, and sustainable options for citizens, with data as the key to the problem.
The Collider is an intense 12-week planning and policy workshop that brings together city planners, academia, and private industries to focus on resolving policy issues around one specific urban challenge, and to outline solutions and emerging technologies that could be part of the solution. The partnership with the Miami-Dade Department of Transportation and Public Works will allow City Innovate and its private and public sector partners to apply learnings from the collaborative research carried out as part of the Collider workshop. The goals set forth from Miami-Dade County include reducing road congestion, digitally connecting all transportation services in the county, and creating a seamless transit experience for citizens.
By navigating these issues in Miami-Dade, City Innovate hopes to bring benefits for the residents of the 34-city metropolitan region, and use the results to scale best practices that can be used in other cities. Together with its partners, including Microsoft, Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS), Siemens, Lyft, and Zipcar, CIF will create a ‘Playbook on Urban Mobility’ for Miami-Dade – a comprehensive look at how to integrate public transit and private transportation services for multi-modal mobility across the region.
“Transportation is a pillar of city infrastructure, yet it consistently creates challenges for communities,” said Scott Mauvais, director of technology and civic innovation at Microsoft. “We believe that public-private partnerships can help tackle these issues, creating solutions that improve people’s daily commutes, while saving cities money. We are honored to work alongside City Innovate Foundation as it assists cities in their digital transformations of transportation systems across the USA.”
