Public transportation
innovations are an ideal space for social impact investing for governments, as
supporting public transportation infrastructure costs governments copious
amounts of capital, and any inefficiency highlighted by social impact investing
projects can save governments a lot of money.
One example of a project that
would work well as a social impact bond, if the federal grant is not won, is
Pittsburgh’s smart cities proposal. This proposal features an expansion of Dedicated
Short Range Communications (DSRC) equipped traffic signals to provide a more
full picture of Pittsburgh’s transportation system by equipping all system
participants with DSRC and harvesting their data. Participants in the system
include public buses, city fleet vehicles, and bike share bicycles. In
addition, data from smart phone users would be utilized to enhance the
understanding of Pittsburgh’s public transportation ecosystem.[1]
With this influx of data, The
City of Pittsburgh could focus on any number of transportation related issues,
like bus bunching and tie the evaluation of solutions for these issues to a pay
for success model.
Possible partner for a transportation related social
impact bond with The City of Pittsburgh:
A.
Alphabet Labs smart cities arm, Sidewalk Lab[2]
i. Sidewalk
Lab has a product called Flow, which aims to:
1.
“Help cities understand where, how, and why,
people are traveling in order to make stronger transit networks”
2.
“Close the information gap between various sectors
of government, their data and inventory, and the citizens that use it”
3.
“Explore the options people have in
transportation, the choices they make, and the information that factors into
them”
By tying Flow’s three main goals to measurable outcomes,
flow could be an ideal setting to test the information gathered through
Pittsburgh’s proposed DSRC expansion
If Pittsburgh’s DSRC expansion is successful, Pittsburgh
could serve as a sort of City Lab for transportation related federal government
social impact bonds, essentially a model for the integration of transportation
innovations in other metropolitan areas in the United States.
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