How Smart Tech is helping Ensure San Francisco’s Accountability

COVID -19 changed many things across the world and even affected the way cities were viewed and designed. In the US city of San Francisco it was about giving street priority to pedestrians and bikes. During COVID the city turned Golden Gate Park's JFK Drive into a promenade for and cyclists, and with the work of organizations like Kids Safe SF, it was not open to cars again. The city also converted some streets to slow streets where residents, pedestrians and bikes have priority and cars can't exceed 15 miles an hour. With several other non -profit organizations in the city, we led the campaign to keep slow streets permanent. So to take those pandemic era, slow streets, and make them a permanent. thing in the for the city of San Francisco and when we did that we the city adopted performance metrics that they would monitor to ensure that the streets were actually slow so those performance metrics were there were a couple of them but the the two really important ones were a target speed 15 miles per hour and then we also have a vehicle volume a target so we want to have fewer than a thousand cars per day to make sure the rules were being followed the city put down pneumatic tubes however kids safe sf along with the parks alliance started a campaign to make sure the streets were slow and to hold the city accountable for keeping them so to do just that the associations involved turned to smart city technology and deployed telram senses so what these sensors do is that they automatically count all of these the different road users so at the sensors they count the drivers the cyclists people walking and heavy trucks and then they also gather data on how fast they're going and so we can see in a publicly available dashboard like what that average speed is and we can get a sense of whether or not these streets actually feel slow if you're walking or biking is that the device is in a window on a on a street and it monitors a segment of that street so not not necessarily the whole street but it looks at a particular stretch and it will give you a count of the different modes that are of traffic they're using it now it uses artificial intelligence or machine learning and it so it's designed to go in a window now that could be a residential it could be a commercial business it could be a public building as long as it's on that street and ideally it's designed also to be placed on the first or second floor of a building so that it can look down across the street. Kinsafe SF found that the Telram sensor data was the same as that from the pneumatic tubes, only richer because it was counting other modes, not just cars. For sensor users, there is a data dashboard to which information flows. The sensors communicate with the data network through LTE-M, thanks to a built-in SIM card and... have a fallback onto NBIoT. However, the sensors need to be connected to an outlet and can only be used indoors, which can sort of limit their capabilities. In total, the San Francisco organizations are looking to deploy 50 sensors by the end of summer 2023. They already have around 15 out, which monitor some of the 18 slow streets in the Golden Gate City. The funding came completely from the private sector. is a privately funded project the city has not put any i mean besides like talking to us they have been supportive and so far as they've lent their staff time to talk to us and we've we've coordinated about where we're installing these devices if they have questions about the devices and we've you know asked them for requests where they would like us to try to cite devices so we've been very collegial we've worked together with them but no they haven't put funding into either the purchasing of the devices or paying for the data subscription costs. Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman is a great supporter of Safe Streets initiatives in the city and he was one of the funders for the project. Even though this project has only just started, the city had already seen a success story from using these sensors and gathering traffic data on its lake, Slow Street, in December 2022. really helpful and helping them to see just what was going on on the street and how road users were responding to changes like moving the old barricades or installing the new purple signs, right? Like those sensors were actually pivotal in helping to tell a story about how the limited street treatments that MCA had installed were actually quite effective. And so for that reason, we know that they're definitely paying attention to this data. The price of just the sensor is 199 euros. The price of the project, the 50 sensors, was around $25 ,000 and included a data subscription that offers more analytics tools, reports and multiple tracks. A professional user and you need some additional networking tools, dashboards and support. there is a subscription that we charge on top of that but the device cost stays at that that level that 199 includes the VAT so it's less for business but the subscription is on top of that that allows us to do we provide a dashboard which allows you to interact engage with the participants on your network it gives you reporting is your communication tools and pays for the data connection this This type of sensor is also used by cities like Utrecht where the city itself bought sensors and is to deploy around 300 of them. But the issue is that what would be a great return on investment for the city selling the data to private companies does not work with Telram's model as it has an open portal and they themselves also sell data. So the typical model for Telram is the professional user or should we say campaigner, people who... who want who either already have or plan to have a network as such they need additional support and services they really need to take the device and subscription so the data agreement that we have with them wouldn't allow them to resell it necessarily we could talk about it but um it's technically the tal ram data which we make open to to as many people as possible non-commercially the ideal model for us would be to say we're gathering lots of data on traffic we will then we will work as a data provider with other people who just want maybe the data and aren't directly involved in the city or or a campaign for the future telram is looking to create an outdoor version with a battery and a solar panel that would be weather proof and kids safe sf even though their goal right now is to keep slow street slow is looking to make the most of san francisco's municipal transportation authority planning to update and Vision, the bike network, by using the sensors to gather data that could help with the process. The case shows how sometimes citizens are engaging in the smart city world to gather decision-making data that can help them with their demands.