Curb Management

The City of Lakes was recently jointly awarded a U.S. Department of Transportation grant. Officials there will work with their counterparts in Seattle to develop a program assisting package delivery services.

A Populus survey of city transportation officials about curb and parking oversight shows their desire for better data analytics. Munis are confronting other challenges too, including managing deliveries and maintaining data sets.

The devices will go in this week along O Street, on traffic signal arms and streetlight poles, to gather information for a study. It’s part of a pilot aimed at potentially creating new pickup and drop-off spots, and higher parking turnover.

The city will work with technology company Populus and an urban design firm to digitize its streetscape. It’s part of a project known as The Curb Reimagined, which will create a real-time, digital city map.

Curb management is one of the latest areas the New York City Transit Tech Lab wants to explore as it opens its new call for applications to enter the lab’s sixth challenge event urging early growth stage companies to apply.

The digital curb management project in Seattle marks one of the city’s first steps toward fully modernizing how curbs are managed, given the widening demands on these spaces by commercial fleets and conventional parking.

The city's Department of Transportation is considering a rule change that would allow for the use of electric cargo-bike delivery vehicles. Experts say the vehicles often perform better than their gas-powered counterparts in urban settings.

In a sign of yet another demand placed on already busy curbs, officials at the recent CoMotion Miami conference weighed in on the placement of urban EV chargers. Spoiler alert: they don’t like the idea of a single-use curbside.

Peachtree Corners, Ga., is partnering with Smartmile, the maker of technology that helps to integrate retailers and delivery services into smart lockers, to streamline parcel deliveries and free up the increasingly crowded curbside.

A mode shift toward more sustainable transportation like micromobility and transit will take more than an app. It will require a reimagining of cities and how transportation infrastructure is prioritized.

More than 380 loading zones in Oakland will be turned into smart zones, allowing for commercial fleets — like parcel and other deliveries — to seamlessly park and pay by the minute.

The smart management and analysis of micromobility data is part of making the devices integrated pieces of the larger transportation ecosystem and vision, experts say. In Chicago, Populus will help manage this data effort.

The Curb Data Specification was developed among dozens of leaders from tech, transit, transportation, delivery and other areas to establish a set of common specifications to guide deployment and operation of digital curb management systems.

The Nebraska city will partner with Automotus to set up the smart loading zones, which will use video and other technologies to better manage the curbs serving on-demand deliveries, drop-offs and other parking needs.

A citizen-centric parking payment platform in Austin, Texas, that works with connected vehicles’ in-dash systems and better manages curb space is a lesson for other cities on how to power ahead.

The startup, which offers transportation technology with a focus on parking, has grown very quickly in the past four years. Recently the area of curb management has attracted a lot of attention in the tech world.

Citizens in El Monte, Calif., will be taking advantage of digital signage that reveals the availability of roughly 400 parking spots in the city. The system also includes an app that can help residents plan their travel.

Once an overlooked part of the urban landscape, the curb is now considered hot real estate in many cities. The demands of delivery services, ridesharing and micromobility have cities re-examining how they manage their assets.