Smart Cities

Officials have wrapped a $1.9 million project to help cut down on tall vehicles hitting underpasses leading to the north Grand Island Bridges in Niagara Falls. The electronic over-height detection systems rely in part on infrared transmitters.

Movements opposing changes to land use and transportation development policies can thwart initiatives capable of confronting urban quality of life challenges, city officials said recently. Some advised pushing back.

The Pacific Northwest city will launch a small zero-emission delivery zone later this year, to gather data and collaborate with service operators on effectively removing delivery-related vehicles with emissions from a section of downtown.

The online guide, accessible via the Bridgeport Police Department website, aggregates information from emergency dispatch to show burglaries and vehicle thefts. Residents can view incident dates, times and partial locations.

A $30 million project to modernize bus shelters in Los Angeles considers them as mobility hubs that could house modern amenities like digital screens, e-bike and e-scooter docking, dimmable lights and movable shade structures.

The 2024 City Clean Energy Scorecard by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy rates 75 of the nation’s largest cities against a number of sustainability and greenhouse gas reduction metrics.

City law enforcement does not have facial recognition, but an ordinance permits the temporary use of unapproved technologies in pressing circumstances. Here, it identified a suspect who otherwise would likely have evaded arrest.

From Minnesota to California, technology workers are confronting a job market that, while long filled with opportunity, appears to now be oversaturated with candidates. The U.S. tech sector has shed more than 74,000 jobs so far this year.

Urban technologists at the recent 2024 Bipartisan Tech Policy Conference discussed the various ways emerging tech like autonomous vehicles have evolved.

The City Council has given final approval to a development agreement with Nebraska-based Allo Fiber, which will spend $40 million to build out the network. It is expected to be complete by the end of 2026.

The San Francisco company has released a new tool aimed at helping make streets safer for bicyclists and buses. It relies on visual artificial intelligence and cameras mounted on buses.

The city hopes to link body-worn camera activation to officer guns and tasers, Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel told the City Council Tuesday. Grant-funded stationary and mobile license plate readers are in the works, he added.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority recently opened another 5.6 miles of bus priority lanes, giving the region a total of 51 lane miles designed specifically for public transit. Another 46 miles are coming next year.

The technology, which uses acoustic sensors on light poles to alert police about suspected gunfire, received a final extension in February from the mayor that would end this fall. But aldermen want to give the City Council the final say.

The Indiana Department of Transportation is working with Purdue University and power unit maker Cummins to build a segment that can wirelessly charge electric vehicles as they are driven. The stretch of road will be roughly one-quarter mile.

The AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone in Fort Worth is becoming a center for developing next-gen transportation technologies. It’s situated near an interstate, rail lines and an air cargo hub.

City councilmembers in Aurora, Ill., this week approved spending nearly $1.4 million to grow the network to additional parts of its water system. The work will wrap an accelerated fiber expansion to water locations begun in 2022.

The city will explore using GPS technology from LYT to give green lights to emergency vehicles. The initiative, at a dozen intersections, will preserve its existing, optical-based system and compare their performance.