The Alliance’s new Mobility Evolution Initiative exemplifies our approach to leveraging regional and cross-sector collaboration to tackle community scale challenges.
By Jake Rishavy
Co-Founder and Executive Board Member, Colorado Smart Cities Alliance
Vice President of Marketing, Denver South
When the original founding members set out in 2017 to create the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance, the effort was based on a single underpinning assumption: That in an increasingly more complex future filled with equally complex challenges, no one company or city would be able to solve problems on their own. The complexity would require fully regional, cross-jurisdictional and cross-sector collaboration.
Now, just a few short years later, this approach is bearing real, tangible fruit in the form of new collaborations consisting of multiple cities, private sector companies, nonprofits and leading institutions of higher education.
Case in point: The Alliance’s new Mobility Evolution Initiative.
Leaders within the Alliance’s membership understand that the future of mobility is more than just asphalt and steel rail. It also includes a host of new and emerging technologies that will lead us to a transportation future that is increasingly ACES: Autonomous, Connected, Electric, and Shared.
With this understanding, the Alliance has led the formation of the MEI project team—including the technical staff of Denver South’s member jurisdictions including the cities of Greenwood Village, Centennial and Lone Tree as well as Arapahoe and Douglas counties; locally-based engineering firm AECOM; a team of researchers from the University of Denver; and the Alliance itself.
Together, the group is now working to establish a data driven approach to investing in advanced mobility technologies and those efforts have recently produced the now publicly available Mobility Evolution Initiative StoryMap.
This unique visualization is a living document that summarizes the overall process, methodology, existing conditions, toolbox, and data analysis that underpins the region’s collective mobility planning process. It provides the data to make informed decisions about the future of mobility throughout the region, and it provides the tools to evaluate innovative technologies, projects, and partnerships that can benefit commuters and residents alike.
Beyond being a ground-breaking approach to mobility planning, the project also represents a real world example of the Alliance model in action. Participants are working across sectors and jurisdictional boundaries, supported by cutting edge data collection and visualization, to tackle complex challenges at the confluence of mobility and technology.
The StoryMap, with links to a wealth of valuable insights in the form of maps and data sets, has informed a completely novel methodology for evaluating which autonomous, connected, electric and shared mobility technologies have the greatest potential to benefit the region.
This living document will be updated regularly as land-use conditions and other factors change in Denver South’s built environment. Next phases for the project include development of a toolkit for participating jurisdictions to assist in implementation planning for specific advanced mobility projects.
Stay tuned to www.denver-south.com and https://coloradosmart.city/projects/ for more project announcements, and visit Denver South’s NEW data center at https://denver-south.com/data-center/
