Infrastructure

Plus, new broadband legislation has been introduced, the BEAD program remains on hold amid pressure to expedite its review, Philadelphia has launched a laptop distribution initiative, and more.

Public- and private-sector officials gathered this week at the CoMotion Miami conference to air new visions for mobility, and how to get there. Reimagining requests for proposals was one idea considered.

The $7 billion project now being planned would be one of the largest such investments in Indiana history and create more than 1,200 construction jobs. But officials wonder whether power can ultimately be supplied fast enough.

A sprawling 70-year-old high school in Silicon Valley swapped its complex network for a NaaS subscription. The school’s tech director said the service saves his team time while boosting performance and cybersecurity.

An exec at Duquesne Light Co., which provides electricity to the city, cautioned state public utility commissioners that data centers’ “extreme energy demands” could cost other customers.

Officials in the city of about 129,000 residents are probing a server outage detected Friday. They’re working with cybersecurity experts and have disconnected “affected and critical assets to secure our systems.”

At the annual Curbivore conference in Los Angeles, city transit and tech leaders discussed how to keep moving forward in a new environment of shifting political priorities coming from Washington.

The Pennsylvania city has recently launched two new interactive devices, a dashboard and a free Wi-Fi locator. They’re intended to help expand awareness of the free Internet service available to residents.

The $11 billion data center campus going up outside of Northwest Indiana will have a 2,250-megawatt capacity. It will be able to use as much electricity as 1.5 million households, or up to half the households in the state.

A transit network in Seattle has introduced technology to reduce “bus bunching” and space vehicles evenly on a route. And a suburban bus company in Chicago is taking steps to transition its fleet to zero-emission vehicles.

The proposed legislation, a bipartisan proposal, would create a certification system offering tax incentives to entities that build data centers. Critics worry about lost revenue and power demands.

In a first, the California Department of Transportation is using two remote-controlled excavators to clear a landslide that closed a portion of Highway 1 in 2024. The equipment enables work in challenging areas.

Markets around the world have been reactive to recent U.S. tariff announcements and rollbacks. State officials are concerned trade friction with other nations could lead to equipment shortages and contract turbulence.

Well over half of the electricity that powers activities at the Michigan city comes from renewable energy sources. The city has also made progress toward electrifying its vehicle fleet, including electric refuse trucks.

Officials shuttered the system on the Maine Turnpike for half a day in March to avoid a potential cybersecurity incident. Accounts and their private data were never at risk of being compromised.

Construction has commenced on a high-speed Internet network that will connect 34 city facilities including City Hall. Kingman, Ariz.-based Wecom Fiber will build 1.1 million feet of fiber to nearly all of the city.

Officials have expanded the service to seven parks and a four-mile stretch of business corridor, in a bid to improve digital literacy and quality of life. An additional rollout is planned later this year.

As data centers are built to underpin the use of artificial intelligence, energy analysts have raised concerns that their power draw will outpace electricity generation. This could necessitate using a variety of energy sources.