Title
Update on the Smart City Initiatives in the Information Technology Strategic Plan and Related City Council Referral; and
Recommendation to Authorize the City Manager to Execute a Service Provider Agreement with Iteris for a Total Aggregate Compensation Not to Exceed $120,000, Including Contingencies, to Develop the Smart City Master Plan and to Seek Additional Grant Funding. (Information Technology 2611).
Body
To: Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
At the September 19, 2017 City Council Meeting, City Council initiated a City Council Referral to investigate options to provide free public WiFi throughout the City of Alameda (City) as part of the Smart City Initiatives in the Information Technology Strategic Plan (2017). With the recent Shelter in Place orders and the need for increased distance learning, the need for available public WiFi has increased.
The City is in the beginning stages of preparing a Smart City Master Plan, and is seeking consultant expertise to develop the Plan. The purpose of this Smart City effort is to guide the City’s use of new technology to achieve General Plan goals. The City is in the process of updating the General Plan so the timing is fortuitous, given the evolving nature of technology. Once completed, the City will be in a better position to seek grant funding for implementation.
BACKGROUND
Multiple departments in the City are working together to develop a Smart City Master Plan. During the Shelter in Place order, telecommuting and distance learning increased dramatically in a very short period and transportation patterns shifted drastically without the City being able to comprehensively monitor the new behavior. With online learning likely to continue in some way for the foreseeable future, the City has been working with the Alameda Unified School District (AUSD) to explore ways to address the “digital divide”. Specifically, City and AUSD staff have been considering options that would provide free WiFi for qualifying lower income households. Comcast responded with some programs that they currently offer and AUSD also has partnered with Common Networks as another option for an affordable solution. AUSD continues to work with their student population to identify households that have inadequate or no internet service.
The Smart City initiatives include not only more equitable internet access but also traffic signal synchronization, more energy efficient street lights, remote lighting, irrigation for enhanced water conservation, multimodal citywide traffic counts, citywide parking data, enhanced transportation safety measures, better connected City buildings and economic development opportunities. Examples of Smart City initiatives include the following:
• City of San Leandro: The city entered into an agreement with a local company, Lit San Leandro, to provide access to city-owned conduit. This private company installed fiber optic lines in the city’s conduit, to support commercial and industrial customers as well as public uses. In the second phase of this project, the city applied for and received a grant from the federal Economic Development Administration to install additional conduit to extend the fiber network. In exchange, the city receives access to the network for its own use and, eventually, will receive conduit lease revenue. The city incurs costs to support the project and currently generates no direct revenue, but has had success in attracting new, high technology businesses.
• City of Benicia: The city has awarded a contract to Lit San Leandro to provide industrial-grade Internet service to a local industrial and a nearby redevelopment area. This project is funded via a re-purposed transportation grant, and supported by city facilities such as its corporation yard.
• City of Brentwood: For the past 15 years, the city has required new home construction to include empty conduits, which are deeded over to the city. An agreement has been reached with an independent Internet service provider, Sonic.net, to use the city-owned conduit to install fiber lines and provide fiber-to-the-home service to homes already served by conduit, and to extend the system over time throughout the city.
• City of Palo Alto: The municipal electric utility has installed more than 40 miles of fiber optic cables, which it makes available to business and industrial customers, and is supplementing this coverage with publicly available, amenity grade WiFi access (i.e. intended to meet occasional, on-the-spot needs of tourists and shoppers, for example, rather than daily household, business or educational needs). No residential service is offered. The system generates more than $2 million in surplus revenue a year.
• City of Alameda: Launched a two-year pilot project to foster and entice Research and Development Clean & Green For-Profit Organizations to network with the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC), a Scientific Research Network, to analyze high volumes of data collected from sensors and share data with the High-Performance Computing Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and global academic community to address city issues. CENIC was awarded $7.2 billion dollars of ARRA stimulus funds to increase internet broadband network access to the world’s largest education system. Currently, Saildrone is an active ocean data partner in Alameda Point with CENIC.
DISCUSSION
The Smart City Master Plan will guide the use of technology to improve community members’ lives. The plan will focus on connecting community members, especially lower-income households and small businesses, and on ensuring City activities are transparent, responsive, equitable and secure. Given the potential of technology, the Alameda Smart City target objectives are as follows:
• Bring together infrastructure and technology to improve the quality of life of community members by enhancing their interactions and government transparency and responsiveness with the potential for open data portals;
• Reduce traffic emissions and advance the City’s Climate Action goals including monitoring environmental quality indicators such as air quality and protecting the environment;
• Modernize and coordinate traffic signals in a centralized system;
• Provide an equitable internet access option for telecommuting, teleschooling and telehealth to ensure digital inclusion, especially for disadvantaged populations;
• Improve safety with emergency response optimization, disaster early-warning signals and vehicle-to-vehicle communications including advanced collision avoidance systems while reducing threats from cyber-attacks;
• Improve efficiency of transportation operations such as autonomous vehicles, real-time public transit information and multimodal data collection, smart parking, smart street lights, predictive maintenance and car/bike sharing; and
• Improve economic vitality by ensuring innovation with new technologies and considering pilot modal smart neighborhoods such as Alameda Point, Northern Waterfront or Webster Street area.
A key component of the Smart City Master Plan involves the use of software and hardware solutions to solve crises and meet demands, which requires data networks to provide communication between these solutions. Fiber is part of a core network known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution or edge computing for interconnected traffic signals, faster civic engagement/innovation and digital inclusion as well as youth and senior programs or programs for the disadvantaged/lower income. 5G is ultra-high speed and can be used for automated vehicles and collision avoidance systems. The Smart City Master Plan will look into short- and long-term solutions given the infrastructure already in place and what might further be developed. Thiis planning effort will continue to make progress on how to move forward.
In summary, the Smart City Master Plan will review existing conditions, develop goals and objectives, assess community needs, identify gaps in existing infrastructure and make recommendations that could potentially be a hybrid solution of both fiber and wireless telecommunications. This planning effort is expected to take one year to complete. Once the Smart City Master Plan is developed, the City will be in a better position to seek grant funding for implementation.
Staff seeks authorization from the City Council to enter into a Service Provider Agreement with Iteris to develop a Smart City Master Plan that will guide the phased deployment of smart city initiatives that will be supported by the planned communication infrastructure network. Development of a successful Master plan will be essential in helping the City secure additional funding for future smart city and transportation projects. The
ALTERNATIVES
The City Council may consider the following alternatives:
• Proceed with the planning effort as recommended for the Smart City Master Plan.
• Authorize expenditures to fund the Smart City Master Plan in part or in full out of General Fund monies.
• Delay or terminate work on smart cities initiatives.
FINANCIAL IMPACT
Staff anticipates that the cost of developing the Smart City Master Plan is estimated to be $100,000 with a consultant lead and an additional $10,000 for contingency and another $10,000 for potential grant writing efforts for a total consultant cost of $120,000, including contingencies. The $120,000 planning effort is recommended to be funded one-half by Measures B and BB Local Streets & Roads out of the Transportation Planning Unit (TPU) (Fund 287.5) for Multi-modal Projects (4227287) totaling $60,000, which are transportation sales tax administered by the Alameda County Transportation Commission (Alameda CTC), and one-half by the Strategic Technology Plan Project #90003704 totaling $60,000 since not all smart city initiatives are related to transportation.
As of November 16, 2020, the TPU’s Multi-modal Project Fund 287.5, Project (4227287) has an available services expenditure budget of $124,495, and the Strategic Technology Plan Project (90003704) has an available expenditure budget of $125,213. Therefore, both funds have sufficient funding to cover this Smart City Master Plan.
MUNICIPAL CODE/POLICY DOCUMENT CROSS REFERENCE
This action is in conformance with the Alameda Municipal Code and all policy documents, and is consistent with the Information Technology Strategic Plan (2017), the Transportation Choices Plan (2018) and the Climate Action and Resiliency Plan (2019).
ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW
This action is not a project under Public Resources Code section 21065 and California Environmental Quality Act Guidelines, section 15378.
CLIMATE ACTION
The Smart City Master Plan effort will further the implementation of the Transportation Choices Plan (2018) and the Climate Action and Resiliency Plan (2019), and will guide the deployment of new technologies to improve transportation operations and energy and water efficiencies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
recommendation
Authorize the City Manager to execute a service provider agreement with Iteris for a total aggregate compensation not to exceed $120,000, including contingencies, to develop the Smart City Master Plan and to seek additional grant funding.
City Manager Recommendation
The City Manager recommends approval of the $120,000.
Respectfully submitted,
Carolyn Hogg, Information Technology Director
Erin Smith, Public Works Director
Andrew Thomas, Planning, Building and Transportation Director
Financial Impact section reviewed,
Annie To, Finance Director
Exhibits:
1. Agreement
2. Work Scope and Budget
3. Smart City Presentation
cc: Eric Levitt, City Manager