Smart City Challenge Team Greenville

Smart City Challenge Team Greenville

THE SMART CITY VISION OF GREENVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA

VISION NARRATIVE

Beyond Traffic: The Smart City Challenge 2016 Team Greenville February 4, 2016

Smart City Challenge Team Greenville

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 ? Current challenges of city development, Greenville's Smart City Vision, approach to demonstrate the vision........................................................................ 1

Chapter 2 ? Greater Greenville's population characteristics and its alignment with USDOT's Smart City characteristics ........................................................................ 4

Chapter 3 ? Other characteristics .................................................................................................. 6 Chapter 4 ? Annotated Preliminary Site Map............................................................................... 9 Chapter 5 ? Alignment of Greenville's Smart City approach with USDOT vision

elements .................................................................................................................. 10 Chapter 6 ? Risk assessment....................................................................................................... 21 Chapter 7 ? Partnership structure and governance processes ..................................................... 22 Chapter 8 ? Existing transportation infrastructure...................................................................... 23 Chapter 9 ? Smart City data approach ........................................................................................ 25 Chapter 10 ?Use of standards, architectures and certification processes ................................... 27 Chapter 11 ? Greenville's Smart City goals and objectives ....................................................... 28 Chapter 12 ? Evidence of capabilities ........................................................................................ 29 Chapter 13 ? Leveraging opportunities of Federal resources ..................................................... 29

Smart City Challenge Team Greenville

Vision Narrative

USDOT Grant Ref #DTFH611RA00002. Beyond Traffic: The Smart City Challenge

Chapter 1 ? Current challenges of city development, Greenville's Smart City Vision, approach to demonstrate the vision

The City of Greenville was incorporated in 1831 and its original growth was driven by the boom of the textile industry. Infrastructure innovations such as railroad and telecommunication as well as the availability of hydro-power were instrumental in attracting textile mill owners to the Greenville area. With the establishment of textile mills so called mill towns were created where factory workers lived, worked and also could educate their children and which laid the foundation for Greenville to be called "Textile Capital of the World" in the early 20th century. Though most mill village owners chose not to incorporate into the City of Greenville, a very high percentage of the mill village citizens connected to downtown by walking, using bicycles, or using electrified buses operated by the local power company for transportation.

In the decades after WWII, Greenville communities changed as textile manufacturing went offshore. The mill villages lost population and their roads, sewer and water lines fell into disrepair. The privately operated bus system service deteriorated as automobiles gradually replaced bus vehicles and utilization dropped. Today, the ring of former mill villages around Greenville City limits still suffers from industry flight. These areas have high population densities and high levels of unemployment, poverty and crime influenced by drug-abuse. Further compounding these major issues, is the lack of transportation options within these areas thus limiting access to the better paying job opportunities and other quality of life amenities.

Over the last few decades, Greenville city and county leadership has transformed the downtown area into a highly attractive residential, business, entertainment, and recreational environment. Greenville's vibrant downtown supports strategic business sectors and generates well-paying jobs well beyond the city limits. A prime example is the automotive industry.

Greenville envisions a smart city with improved mobility and safety by providing the following core transportation services:

1) high density zones of urban activities are being served with low speed automated electric vehicle fleets that are publicly or privately operated

2) low density urban zones are being supported by on-demand connected zero-emission enabled public and private shuttles in a ride-share model available to all citizens

3) zero-emission public transit buses connect the different high density zones and provide the backbone in a multi-modal transportation system

4) high-capacity intelligent parking structures are centered around key multi-modal transportation nodes

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Smart City Challenge Team Greenville

Figure 1 illustrates which vehicles types could be used to support the Smart City Vision.

Figure 1. Greenville Smart City Vision

The vision of Greenville Metro is to become a place where every citizen enjoys multi-modal mobility options that are optimized to the personal lifestyle with a minimum environmental footprint and the highest safety and efficiency level that is technically feasible and economically responsible. Greenville County's crumbling infrastructure and unsafe road conditions are well documented. In 2013, for the third consecutive year, Greenville County ranked in the top five in AAA Carolinas' annual list of South Carolina's most dangerous counties for collisions. Ranking second in the state for collisions for three years straight, Greenville County averaged 334.5 crashes per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. Many residents choose to accept significant commuting times to their work locations in exchange for affordable housing farther away from job and shopping centers. On the other hand the City of Greenville attracts both younger generations as well as retired people who choose a living place in the downtown area with more options for entertainment. As Greenville is an important manufacturing location ? with a specific focus on automotive industry sector significant numbers of workers need to commute from their homes to manufacturing sites. Of growing importance is the knowledge worker which prefers a work location in attractive business parks or in downtown office locations. With the population growth both in the City and County of Greenville, driven by an attractive downtown area on the one side and affordable housing in particular for families on the other side, the transportation problems in terms of infrastructure capacity, road safety and lack of public transportation options are continuously increasing.

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Smart City Challenge Team Greenville

The Smart City Vision of Greenville is to create a transportation system that in general reduces the dependency of major groups of citizens on owning a personal car and specifically supports the use of automated and zero-emission private and public vehicles supported by suitable infrastructure and regulations. The main goal is to improve transportation for all citizens by providing a variety of multi-modal choices. A cornerstone of the vision is to find ways where pedestrians, bicyclists and low-speed small electric vehicles can jointly use road infrastructure without compromising safety or increasing congestion. A good starting point is the Swamp Rabbit multi-use trail system. Opened in 2010 after being converted from an original rail road, the Swamp Rabbit Trail is being expanded due to its high popularity with Greenville citizens and visitors. In 2007, the Greenville-Pickens Area Transportation Study (GPATS) MPO long-range plan envisioned major transportation corridors - north-south from Travelers Rest to Fountain Inn, and east-west from Greenville-Spartanburg (GSP) International Airport connecting Greenville's urban attractors through Easley to Clemson University (see map). An important part of the Smart City vision of Greenville is to fulfill the GPATS plan with 21st century transportation solutions on major urban corridors. The Greenville Spartanburg Airport is currently in the process to initiate the procurement of a $20 M modern automated transit network (ATN) to connect parking structure with the terminals ? likely to be the first of its kind in the US. Clemson University main campus is interested to explore automated transportation systems to connected university buildings with parking structures.

In order to address the challenges of the Greenville transportation system and illustrate the Smart City vision of Greenville, the following demonstration areas have been chosen: a) Greenville Main Street support the vision of a personal car-free zero-emission downtown mobility zone b) Woodruff Road/Verdae area support the vision of a smart shopping area with a fully automated transportation system for people and goods including remote parking connectivity and c) Automated transportation-enabled airport and university campus pilot automated commute between remote parking areas and buildings (simulated for GSP and Clemson Main Campus) at the property of the South Carolina Technology and Aviation Center (SC-TAC) connected to a solar powered smart grid network

Greenville has a very unique situation with the presence of the International Transportation Innovation Center (ITIC) and Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) in terms of transportation innovation research and demonstration capabilities. Furthermore, Greenville is the home of multiple leading companies that are relevant for transportation vehicle and component design, transportation logistics and transportation infrastructure development. CU-ICAR will play a key role in vehicle and infrastructure concept development for the suggested demonstration projects. ITIC will play a key role in vehicle and infrastructure system validation and supplier selection. The suggested approach is that ITIC will implement a program management office to supervise the design, build and operation of the demonstration projects. Each demonstration project first needs to validate all relevant technology elements at ITIC. For each demonstration project a specific project management team is selected which will be composed of representatives of city/county/citizen community

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Smart City Challenge Team Greenville

interest groups, industry and academia. The planning lead for the demonstration projects is with city/county ? the implementation lead is with industry with support from academia and citizen community interest groups. The involvement of start-up companies in the technology demonstrations is highly encouraged and will be supported by incubation centers and investor groups. The operational lead of the demonstration areas will be with ITIC.

Figure 2. ITIC testing facilities

Chapter 2 ? Greater Greenville's population characteristics and its alignment with USDOT's Smart City characteristics

Greenville County's population was 451,225 according to the 2010 Census and its land area is 785.12 sq. miles and had a density of 574.7 persons per square mile. The City of Greenville is surrounded by contiguous neighborhoods developed as mill villages in the past, other developed communities, and the City of Mauldin. These communities have a combined population of 203,333 and an average density of 2'000 people per square mile. Table 1 provides a list of those communities and their 2010 Census information.

Table 1. City of Greenville and Surrounding Communities Population (2010)

Community

Population C DP (2010)

Land area (sq. miles)

Berea

14,295

7.70

City of Greenville

58,409

28.67

City of Mauldin

22,889

9.95

City of Simpsonville

18,238

8.81

City View

1,345

.52

Dunean

3,671

1.57

Gantt

14,229

9.91

Density 1,855.5 2,037.4 2,300.40 2,070.15 2,586.54 2,338.22 1,435.82

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Community Judson Parker Sans Souci Taylors Wade Hampton Welcome Totals

Smart City Challenge Team Greenville

Population C DP (2010) 2,050 11,431 7,869 21,617 20,622 6,668 203,333

Land area (sq. miles) 0.79 6.82 3.31 10.70 8.96 4.64 102.35

Density 2,594.94 1,675.6 2,376.6 2,020.1 2,301.8 1,438.3 1,986.64

To effectively plan for big, bold, innovative, smart transportation solutions, the size of our transportation area must be large enough to connect a large portion of the places where people's life take place. The following statistics are also provided to make the case that the urbanized area of Greenville County meets the desired population characteristics of the Smart City Challenge. The Greenville-Anderson-Mauldin MSA includes the counties of Greenville, Pickens, Anderson, and Laurens. MSAs are developed by having at least one established core of 50,000 persons and is consolidated with other small cores in the region. The population of the Greenville-Anderson-Mauldin MSA: 824,112 (2010 Census). In addition, the Urbanized Area (UZA)?US Census Bureau statistical area--is the official geography that determines the makeup of the MPOs like GPATS (Greenville-Pickens Area Transportation Study). GPATS contains two UZAs, the Greenville UZA and the Mauldin-Simpsonville UZA.

Like the MSA, the core is established by 50,000 persons, but the size of the UZAs is determined by the Census definition of the "Urban Area." The population of the Greenville UZA: 400,492 (2010 Census) and the population of the Mauldin-Simpsonville UZA: 120,577 (2010 Census). Last, the metropolitan planning organization (MPO) is the federally mandated and funded jurisdiction that fully encompasses the UZA(s) in a region, and including additional areas expected to become urban within the next 20 years. The 2010 population of the GPATS MPO was 621,834 (2010 Census). Table 2 summarizes the population and density for the UZAs, MSA, and MPO.

Table 2. Greenville Urbanized Areas (2010)

Urbanized Region

Population CDP (2010)

Greenville-Anderson-Mauldin MSA

824,112

Greenville UZA

400,492

Mauldin-Simpsonville UZA

120,577

GPATS MPO

621,834

Land area (sq. miles) 2787.56 322.92 84.09 904.47

Density 295.64 1240.22 1433.9 687.51

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Smart City Challenge Team Greenville

Urbanized Region Combined Greenville and MauldinSimpsonville UZAs

Population CDP (2010) 521,069

Land area (sq. miles) Density

407.01

1,280.24

Greenville population numbers--whether MSA, UZAs, MPO, or the combined population of the cities of Greenville, Mauldin, and Simpsonville and surrounding communities--meet the desired population characteristics of the Smart City Challenge funding opportunity.

To address truly innovative solutions being requested by USDOT Team Greenville believes the logical population size is to plan first for the Greenville CCD or UZA (263,637 to 400,492), and in later phases, to include the larger GPATS MPO or the two UZA entity areas (GTA and CAT).

Greenville's CCD density is 1,403.05 per square mile, calculated using its 2010 CCD population (263,367) divided by its 2010 CCD land area of 187.71 square miles, as provided by the US Census Bureau. The CCD population includes the City of Greenville and many small communities/places, such as Berea, City View, Dunean, Gantt, Judson, Parker, San Souci, Taylors, Wade Hampton, and Welcome.

The U.S. population is expected to grow by 70 million over the next 30 years, and most of this population growth will be concentrated in metropolitan areas or cities. Metro Greenville population is predicted to double from about 480,000 people in 2015 to over 1 million in 2030.

Chapter 3 ? Other characteristics

Existing public transportation system

Greenville Transit Authority (GTA)--now named Greenlink--was created in 1974 by Ordinances of the City of Greenville and Greenville County, pursuant to the Regional Transportation Authority Law, originally adopted in 1973 and later amended. The Greenville Transit Authority is governed by a seven-member board. Two members are appointed by Greenville City Council, two by Greenville County Council, and three by the Greenville County Legislative Delegation. Under GTA's contract with the City of Greenville, the GTA Board retains all duties, powers and responsibilities defined in State law. These responsibilities include the duty to purchase, lease, own, operate or provide for the operation of transportation facilities and services.

Historically, GTA has served the urban core of Greenville. However, in 2012, Greenlink expanded transit services to the cities of Mauldin and Simpsonville and in 2013 they developed express service to Clemson University, 30 miles southwest of Greenville. Today, GTA covers roughly 227 square miles and has seen overall ridership grow from 660,000 unlinked passenger trips in 2009 to more than 1 million in 2015.

While the increased usage of transit in Greenville has been well received, GTA has struggled to

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