The technologies of today are shaping the cities of tomorrow, with highly beneficial infrastructure essential to local citizens, businesses, and economies alike. Those who are defining and prioritizing the problems, using technology and innovation as the solution, will have the greatest impact. For the first time, local governments and civil authorities are not only able to collect meaningful and accurate data at scale but analyze it in ways that yield improvements across their domain. Public priorities such as transportation safety and efficiency, air quality, climate change, public safety, accessibility, and narrowing the digital divide are all being addressed through the power of the connected city.
To hear more about how the public sector is building for the future, we sit with Tyler Svitak, Executive Director of the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance. To be successful at scale requires a partnership between both the public and private sector. Technologies such as vehicle-to-grid electrification, autonomous vehicle deployment, and air quality monitoring sensors are only efficiently and effectively deployed through the power of partnership, which is why the CSCA’s work to introduce new technologies and bring the brightest minds to the table is the smartest approach.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
If you had to pick one thing that unites smart
cities infrastructure, it's the ability to communicate, right is the
ability to talk to things, things that generate data, and
ultimately the holy grail is if you can combine those
things that generate data into informed information with edge computing
and you can make real time decisions on that data
(00:23):
and influence the real world. That is where I think
we all want to be. Welcome to the restless ones.
I'm Jonathan Strickland. As you may know, I've spent the
last fifteen years covering technology and learning how it works,
demystifying everything from massive parallel processing to advanced robotics and
(00:44):
everything in between. Yet it's the conversations with some of
the most forward thinking leaders, those at the intersection of
technology and business that fascinate me the most. I think
the tech world has a few categories that can be
confusing to the mainstream. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are
(01:06):
two notable examples, and I would argue that another is
the concept of smart cities. What makes a smart city?
Our guest today, Tyler's Fetech has an answer. Tyler has
spent his career tackling major challenges through leveraging technology. Early on,
he worked on projects to improve the air quality in Colorado,
(01:28):
leading programs that developed markets for alternate fuels and other
vehicle technologies. He became an energy and transportation administrator in Denver, Colorado,
where he worked on projects to reduce transportation emissions. Now
he is working in Colorado Smart Cities Alliance, which aims
to bring together parties in the public and private sectors
(01:48):
to create solutions to real world problems. As you'll hear,
sometimes those solutions involves sophisticated technology, and sometimes they involve
a charmingly simple approach. First, I want to start off
Tyler by welcoming you to the Restless Ones. Thank you
so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me, Jonathan.
(02:11):
I'm really excited for the conversation. A question I'm always
curious about is when did you first start getting interested
in technology in general? So, I I really got interested
in technology when I was thinking about what I wanted
to do with my life. As I was graduating in
high school. I went to school for environmental studies and
political science and had a passion back in two thou
(02:34):
eight for trying to figure out how we were gonna
tackle this climate challenge. And I was also really interested
in cars at the time. My uncle's my dad all
big mechanics and have nice vehicles, and I have kind
of a photographic memory, so I can tell like every
car on the road, like make model, all that kind
of stuff. So my first job out of school was
(02:55):
as an intern working on alternative fuel vehicles the ability
for the electrification of transportation to help reduce emissions, and
so I got to learn about all of the incredible
technologies influencing the transportation space, which turns out are also
influencing pretty much everything in a city. So that's when
tech became really interesting to me as a tool for
(03:17):
solving problems. What actually brought you to the Colorado's Smart
Cities Alliance, So you know, I spent really my whole
career in this space, fortunately, and the first roles that
I had were in taking a specific technology and trying
to apply it to a specific problem. So I worked
for the City and County of Denver, where I got
(03:38):
to develop the strategy and and the goals for reducing
transportation emissions. And that was amazing because I got to
work with automakers and electric vehicle infrastructure providers to figure
out how we were going to accomplish these joint goals
together and then work on actually deploying the technology in
in the real world, in our city fleet, in our
(03:59):
city streets, and those sorts of things. And then I
got a chance to go to the Colorado Department of Transportation,
where I got to lead and start a program focused
on using connected and autonomous vehicle technologies to solve transportation
safety issues across the state. And through both of those roles,
as well as five years I spent before with the
(04:19):
Department of Energy, I got to understand that partnership is
a huge part of deployment of technology. If you have
the best tool in the world, if you can't get
it to market, if you don't have a supportive environment,
if you don't have the partners that you need to
deploy those things, which turns out more and more government
is one of those partners that are needed. It's really
(04:41):
really hard for those tools to see the light of day.
And so the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance was created to
try and bake the marketplace for local government innovation. So
I thought that this was the perfect place for me
to grow what I had done day to day for
specific agencies into a nonprofit model that helps lots of
different governments solve lots of different problems with lots of
(05:03):
different tools. You have touched on so many things that
I love to talk about on this podcast, and we'll
be touching on the more throughout the conversation. One thing
I definitely wanted to get from you, Tyler, is what
your definition of a smart city is, because it's a
term that we see very frequently, and I think a
(05:23):
lot of people have varying ideas on what that actually means.
I spend a lot of time talking about this question,
and I think it's good. I think the industry is
plagued by the desire to define a smart city. I'm
actually going to steal a colleague's definition, Emily Royal from
(05:44):
the City of San Antonio. You know, she said at
a conference recently that smart cities use emerging tech for good, right,
and most simplistically, I think that is true. But to
do that well, we believe and we define smart cities
as an organization by needing a process for applying that
technology to solve a specific problem. And that process, we believe,
(06:07):
usually involves innovation, meaning you have to do something new.
If you're using technology or data to do the same thing.
It's not necessarily, in my opinion, that hard to do.
There's lots of tech that's involved in everything. So taking
a risk and trying something new, there needs to be
some sort of technology that is the tool that you
are approaching that innovation with. And then usually there's some
(06:30):
sort of data element to informing a decision that hopefully
is generating an innovative or new results. And so that's
my best attempt. But I actually I don't feel the
need to define smart cities. I think the diversity of
definition is part of the beauty of it. Generally speaking,
what are some of the benefits that come along with
(06:53):
this creation of smart cities? What what are some of
the outcomes that we're hoping to see through this in
corporation of technology into our cities. So I think that
there is a misconception that the smartest cities are those
that are the most connected or that have the most
technology or the most data. Instead, I think that those
(07:15):
with the best approaches to solving a problem are the
smartest cities. It really depends on the problem that the
city chooses to prioritize. To apply the process to most
smart cities target issues important to everyday quality of life,
like transportation safety and efficiency, air quality and climate change,
public safety, accessibility, digital divide right. Those are all issues
(07:38):
that technology can help solve. In cities are using technology
to improve it's really hard to define the exact benefits
that come from the creation of a smart city until
you define the problem you're solving. Grand Junction here in
Colorado on the Western Slope has very different issues than Denver.
They don't have transportation congestion like Denver does, and so
it's up to them to prioritize it. When I was
(08:01):
at the City of Denver, we prioritize two issues we
knew were important to quality of life in our city,
public health and transportation safety. And for public health, air
quality was a huge primary concern. We are entering into
severe nonattainment for ozone here in the Denver metro region
and it's actually impacting you know, people of color and
(08:21):
people who have been inequitably served by infrastructure for a
very long time. So we decided we wanted to tackle
that issue. Today, the city has a robust program using
forty IoT air quality sensors to provide real time hyperlocal
air pollution information to the public so that they can
take informed actions on how to protect themselves and also
(08:43):
advocate for better air quality and different infrastructure. They've also
deployed on the transportation side technologies that can detect and
communicate vulnerable road users and intersections and extend traffic light
timing and real time to allow for people to cross.
They're also used seeing micromobility data to inform where the
safest and least safe parts of their infrastructure are in
(09:07):
order to improve them. And so that's one example how
the everyday person would benefit from those things. Understanding if
it's safe to breathe and go for a run, Understanding
if it's safe across the intersection. Those are very real,
tangible things that in the case of Denver, they chose
to prioritize. And speaking of benefits, I also wanted to
know what the impact of smart city strategies are on
(09:31):
local economies and businesses. Sure the impact of smart cities
on local economies and businesses is significant. Right, the technologies
of today are shaping the infrastructure of tomorrow, and infrastructure
quality is essential to business and to local economies. You know,
the technologies themselves have enormous consequences for individual people like
(09:55):
who has access to the fastest internet, where are electric
vehicle chargers located, and the cleaner air that they can
provide to the local community, Where do people have convenient,
affordable access the transportation. Those are all very real things
that technologies are influencing where those will be available tomorrow,
and those technologies are also driving economic growth, right And
(10:16):
many of the biggest tech companies that I'm sure you've
had on this podcast are heavily dependent on access to
government in some way. Five G providers need to identify
their infrastructure. Micromobility companies need access to safely ride in
the city, right of way, right share companies need access
to streets and curb space, and you know, electric vehicle
(10:38):
companies need adequate connection to the electricity grid and charging areas.
And so this impact trickles all the way down the
supply chain. Makers of chips have a huge interest in
smart cities because the products they make are going to
go into the products that are operated on five G
and go into cars. And so I don't think governments
(10:58):
understand the role that they have to play in seeding
the future of economic growth and infrastructure just by having
an opportunity to partner and test and be good partners,
because if they aren't, it's going to happen to them,
and if they are, they have a chance to influence
what tomorrow's infrastructure looks like. And one of the technologies
(11:22):
you just mentioned, obviously one of the ones that we
are really excited about on this podcast, the five G
connectivity technology. I foresee that as being a pretty key
component to a lot of smart city strategies moving forward.
The ability to have fiber connectivity but not be tethered
(11:42):
to fiber, and to have high band with low latency
that can enable so many other different technologies. Do you
see five G as being one of those sort of
foundational technologies for for smart city strategies moving forward? I
think it absolutely could be if there was a bust
an equitable displacement of a true five G network that
(12:04):
has low, mid, high spectrum, edge computing, you know, all
of the things that it takes to actually enable the latency,
the densification of infrastructure that can be enabled. Yes, that
would be transformative. Right We are in the process of
trying to launch our own five G network downtown that
(12:26):
would be a private, fully built out five G network
for the testing and development of new products and the
support of startup companies, so that we could give access
to what that actual five G network will be five
ten years from now and give cities access to it
as well to understand the benefits, so that the fiber
investment cities are making today are informed by you know, well,
(12:49):
maybe you won't need fiber five ten years from now.
I assume then that connectivity in general obviously becomes like
the the glue that holds together these various technologies to
enable the solutions that we expect for these cities of
the future. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if you had to
(13:09):
pick one thing that unites smart cities infrastructure, it's the
ability to communicate, right is the ability to talk to things,
things that generate data, and ultimately the holy grail is
if you can combine those things that generate data into
informed information with edge computing and you can make real
time decisions on that data and influence the real world.
(13:32):
That is where I think we all want to be.
Conventional thinking says you have to pay more to get
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(13:54):
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the things I really wanted to talk to you about
(14:14):
was automated vehicles. So I'm curious to hear from you. One,
what's kind of the state of affairs on automated vehicles?
Where do you kind of assess where we are on
that scale? And Two? What are your thoughts about how
automated vehicles are going to play a role in our lives.
(14:37):
Do you think that that's going to be more of
a sort of a public transit kind of mode and
less of a privately owned vehicle. I certainly hoped that
automation comes to public transit before it comes to individual garages.
The industry talks about safety as as the main benefit
of autonomy, maybe efficiency. There are patent benefits there, but
(15:00):
in my opinion, one of the biggest benefits to automation
of public transit is the ability to lower the cost
of transportation and to provide it to more people, and
to do so in a shared way, because we can't
provide more transportation to more people on the same infrastructure
if we don't do it more efficiently. The only way
to do that is to connect to an existing transportation
(15:22):
system that moves people and goods more efficiently. The individual vehicles.
The leaders in the autonomous vehicle space are really in
two areas right now. One is in trucking, and that
is probably the first place that people will really interact
with highly automated vehicles. They may not even know it.
The truck next to them, you know, is likely driving
(15:43):
itself for at least parts of the route or maybe
even entire sections. And then robotaxis that model eventually, if
it's profitable. Public transportation is definitely something that they talk
about wanting to solve. But I see a lot of
individual people hiring their individual vehicle to come and pick
them up and going to wherever they want. And in
(16:05):
that case, you're not moving to people, you're moving one person.
And in a lot of cases you're gonna have vehicles
driving around that have zero occupants in them at all.
And so then what is the point of infrastructure to
to move vehicles and not people? And so a lot
of the work we've been doing is trying to solve
the barriers to using today's highly automated vehicles in a
(16:27):
transit or micro transit environment. When you're looking at these
solutions and you're trying to get buy in from various
parties to look at possibilities of how you can use
these technologies to do things like support public transportation, what
are those conversations, like, I mean, are they remarkably different
when you're talking to say, the private sector versus a
(16:50):
city government agency. Absolutely, those conversations are always different. To
do it right, to understand the problem and to find
a way to co develop the solution takes time, It
takes investment of resources, and it's not easy, and both
the public and the private sector are not used to
(17:10):
doing those things together. What we're trying to do is
create more of a bridge so that before you're developing
that scooter and throwing it on our streets, like, let's
have a conversation about how we could do that in
the most beneficial way for both of us. Let's co
develop a program together, and then we'll maybe give you
exclusive access to our right of way because you worked
with us in order to do this right. Well, can
(17:32):
you tell me a little bit about some of your
success stories. I would love to hear about some projects
that kind of stand as a model toward finding that
collaborative process and finding implementations that make a real difference. Sure, yeah,
I would love to We've been around for about five
years as a nonprofit organization and we've been working for
five years to find that model that can work. And
(17:54):
you know, we have a couple of success stories for sure.
One is cities have a tremendous to desire to a
decarbonized the transportation sector but also be lower the cost
of housing and lower the cost of energy just generated buildings.
And there's a technology called vehicle to grid or the
ability for a vehicle to charge a building or the
(18:16):
grid as opposed to the grid charging just the vehicle.
And for a long time the technology didn't exist in
order for this to really happen. About two years ago,
we were approached by a company called Formata Energy that
has the first UL approved bi directional d C fast
charger and they were looking for partners to really test
this with and in exchange for a free charger, if
(18:40):
the jurisdiction paid for the install then they could be
a beta testing partner. And we were able to find
two partners here with Fermata to do that testing. And
now we're finding that this technology with one charger and
one vehicle can shave three a month off of the
average electricity bill for a commercial building, which is massive.
(19:01):
Imagine if you had five or ten of those chargers
with vehicles plugged in at the right time of day.
And so we're using that to do analysis on what
that would mean for the whole grid if we were
to to robustly deploy that and avoid sinking a bunch
of money into stationary battery storage. So that's one I
would say. One of our our favorite models that we
(19:22):
found is, you know, instead of just working with one city,
why not work with a bunch and find the city
with the best problem to partner the solutions with. And
so we run this annual innovation challenge where we get
multiple governments. This year we have about ten. These are cities, counties,
state agencies, and they all have a problem like how
(19:44):
do we improve the resilience of our infrastructure or how
do we improve the safety of our transportation system, and
we invite ideas from all over the world from different
companies of how they could solve that problem with technology
and data, and then we facilitate the matchmaking between the
jurisdiction and those companies and it streamlines the whole process.
(20:06):
If there's a cost to the solution, it enables the
jurisdiction to buy it directly and we've generated a lot
of our projects through that process. Excellent. So I assume
that data collection and analysis must play a crucial role
in any strategy and the fact that we're in an
era now where the ability to collect and analyze data
(20:27):
at enormous scale has to be a huge benefit as well.
Is that correct? Yes, data is a part of our future, right.
It is absolutely a resource. And just like infrastructure is,
you know, a physical thing that cities manage and have
to to use in order to benefit the public, data
(20:49):
is becoming a part of that infrastructure, a digital infrastructure.
But data is much different than a physical asset and
it requires new sorts of digital infrastructure to manage well,
and most cities haven't figured it out quite yet. A
lot of companies have, but they're using their data for
different means how to figure out which markets are best
(21:11):
and how to push products. Governments need to use it
for a very different reason to solve a real world problem, right,
and unfortunately, governments have a lot of data. One of
our our partners always says we're both drowning in data
and suffocating without it, Meaning they have so much data
already at their fingertips, they just don't have the platforms
(21:32):
to activate that data and to get information from it.
Most systems don't talk to each other, and so they
can't use the data they have, and then there's a
lot of data they don't have. Right, Denver didn't have
local air quality information. They had to go out and
get it and use technology to get it and bring
it to the people. One anecdote I'd love to share
to really bring this all home. One of our partners
(21:54):
is a light our sensor manufacturer and they're working with
the city, and the city had this is you where
there's a really dangerous intersection, but they didn't know why
it was dangerous. So they installed this light our sensor
and we're able to identify near miss accidents with pedestrians
or with other cars, and they could narrow down the
(22:15):
exact time of day, and they were all happening at
the same time of day, and so they went out
there at this time of day and turns out the
sun glare was blinding people and they couldn't see it.
And so the solution was not the lighter, but was
to plant trees in front of where the sun is
at that time of day and dramatically improved the issue.
(22:35):
And so that type of data is what can be
available to make cities proactive in solving a problem before
it gets someone killed. I'm glad that that was a
positive example of a root kit being installed. That's a
terrible tech joke. But but but getting getting more serious
(22:56):
and more to the point about this, I think that
you've brought up some real interesting perspectives. I imagine a
lot of governments have data in silos, and they're probably
based on a lot of legacy systems. Because governments typically
don't have an aggressive schedule too maintain an update systems.
(23:16):
They'll rely on the system for as long as they
possibly can until something goes wrong, and so it's not
as simple as saying the information is out there, let's
just make use of it. So I imagine one part
of strategies has to be how can we work with
governments to come up with processes where we can harness
this information that we know we have, but yet do
(23:39):
it in a way that also makes us good stewards
of information. Clearly, when you're talking about government information, security
should be very front of mind, and to be able
to be a trustworthy guardian of information would, I think
be absolutely critical. So I feel like part of the
(24:00):
collaboration really is to work almost like a consultant with
governments to help judge what are the right pathways forward
to take advantage of this information you have in the
most responsible way possible. Yeah, jurisdictions need to really figure
out what is the role of government owning certain solutions
(24:21):
and the data that come from him, versus partnering and
giving access to a private partner to own and operate
Because governments are limited on their capacity and their understanding
on their funding, companies are not. And you also have
data that's only useful when it's aggregated outside of the
scale of the jurisdiction. Air Qualities one example of that.
(24:43):
When I was at Sea Dot, we had a very
large contract with Pana Sonic to develop a software as
a service platform that could make sense of the connected
vehicle data that we wanted to collect from the roadway.
Because we're not software developed verse, we can't develop that.
So to make use of the technology, we had to
(25:04):
work with them. And so many d ot s across
the country are trying to do it on their own.
They're trying to use interns and contractors to piece mail
together the software that can save people's lives. But I
think what a lot of them are finding is that
it's really hard to maintain a piece of software like
(25:25):
the private sector does if there's not a profit motive
to do it. That's a huge part of the smart
cities industries complexity is what's the role for government, what's
the role for the private sector. There has to be
an opportunity to monetize certain data because without it, we're
never going to get to the scale of the infrastructure
required to really tackle the issue itself. Right, How can
(25:47):
you enter into a partnership with the private sector knowing
that the whole goal of the private sector is to
monetize something in order to return value to stay holders,
whether it's privately held or publicly held, versus trying to
solve actual civil problems in a city. You know, we've
(26:09):
talked a bit about a real world example, and I
love it. The real world example of finding this intersection
and finding the actual root cause of these traffic accidents,
and learning that the solution wasn't technology, it was literally
providing shade so that sunlight was not blinding drivers. I
(26:29):
think that's a great wake up called to people who
are dieharded tech fans like myself that sometimes there are
other approaches that are far more effective. Can you give
us any other examples of how smart city approaches are
going to have a positive impact on, say, civilian life.
I struggled with this question only because there are so
(26:50):
many examples, and that's part of the challenge of of
the space. I think, is it one in five people
have some sort of disability in the United States, and
just navigating cities, getting from a to B if you're
in a wheelchair or if you're blind or visually impaired,
is really difficult. So we've done some work with accessibility
tech companies who there are so many ways that technology
(27:13):
can enable better site or better navigation of city environments,
whether you're mapping the conditions of sidewalks to get to
and from A to B or in one case, we've
worked with a technology to develop a navigation system for
indoor spaces for the blind and visually impaired. So if
you want to go to the museum or if you
(27:34):
want to go to the library, you can still experience
that space by knowing exactly where you are to the
centimeter and knowing what's around you and describing that environment
to you as you walk through it. And so that's
one way that whether you're able bodied, or if you're
young or you're old, you know, there's a lot of
technologies that can help the ease of access and around cities,
(27:57):
that can help people in a lot of ways. But
that's just one that I like to highlight because it's
one that people don't think about very often, right. I
think of augmented reality as any technology that enhances the
experience of you being in a physical place, and that
can include things like audio cues and even tactile feedback,
(28:19):
haptic feedback. That if you take that narrow view of
what augmented reality is and you're just thinking, oh, that's
smart glasses, you're really not tapping into the potential of
that concept, not just technology that's just the manifestation of
the concept, but the actual concept of enhancing the area
around you in some way, whether that might be for
(28:41):
entertainment purposes, educational navigation. The applications are limitless. Yeah, there
are so many cool ways you can use augmented reality.
But we've got a couple of companies, one that that
uses it to visualize new development. So if you're a
citizen and you're concerned about the new development happening across
the street, you can actually visualize it in real life
(29:03):
to see what it would look like and provide your
feedback that way. There's lots of very tangible ways that
governments or utilities can use these technologies if they're focused
on trying to do it right. And I think that's
the key is so many governments are just focused on
providing the services the way they are today. It takes
purposeful and intentional action and process to do it differently.
(29:28):
Before saying goodbye to Tyler, I had to ask him
one more thing, what is a project you personally are
very excited about? Well, our new five G project really
really excited about building a five G network that we
can use to test and develop products. We're gonna be
targeting startups and entrepreneurs that are owned or hire people
(29:51):
of color, Indigenous women, people that are underrepresented, including people
with disabilities, so that they have access to infrastructure to
do testing, to understand these technologies and to grow here
in Colorado. So we're gonna be beginning that work later
this year and are excited to start welcoming our first
companies hopefully in Q one of next year, and that
(30:14):
will really get us into this economic development space where
I think a lot of cities have an interest in
right being the home for a growing company and also
away for us to ensure that these solutions that are
influencing our infrastructure of tomorrow are being built by the
people that have been left behind by the infrastructure of today.
(30:34):
Excellent answer, Tyler, Thank you so much for joining us.
This has been a really informative and and fun conversation
for me. Yeah, I've really enjoyed it. Thank you for
digging into this topic with me, and I hope your
listeners enjoy it. Tyler Speedech opened my eyes when it
(30:56):
comes to smart cities. He has a realistic perspective on
what it takes to incorporate technological solutions into city infrastructure.
Any effort to do so is going to require a
lot of collaboration and innovation. The problems aren't necessarily simple,
and getting all parties on the same page can be
hard too, But the need for those solutions is apparent,
(31:19):
and the payoff of implementing them is incalculable. I think
of it as empowering citizens who then contribute to society,
at which point everyone benefits. I'm excited to learn more
about the five G network Tyler's team intends to build
as a testing ground for all sorts of other technologies.
I expect that foundation of connectivity will help produce some
(31:42):
amazing products. Some of those will likely become commercial products,
perhaps ones that don't actually have a real place in
smart city applications. Others might exclusively be useful for the
maintenance and operation of a city. As we've seen many
times throughout this series, it's connect to it that transforms
limited technologies into powerful tools. Having the ability to channel
(32:06):
large amounts of data with negligible delay is a real
game changer. I hope that Tyler's SPEEDEC and his team
are able to shepherd new technologies into the smart city
space that will ultimately make life better for citizens. Thanks
again to Tyler for joining the show and sharing his
experience and mission. Be sure to tune into future episodes
(32:29):
of The Restless Ones where I'll speak with other leaders
in the tech space to see what lessons they've learned
and their approach to leadership. I'll see you then. Tea
Mobile for Business knows companies want more than a one
size fits all approach to support. I want the world,
(32:49):
so we provide three sixty support customized to your business.
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(33:11):
Mobile for Business
If you had to pick one thing that unites smart
cities infrastructure, it's the ability to communicate, right is the
ability to talk to things, things that generate data, and
ultimately the holy grail is if you can combine those
things that generate data into informed information with edge computing
and you can make real time decisions on that data
(00:23):
and influence the real world. That is where I think
we all want to be. Welcome to the restless ones.
I'm Jonathan Strickland. As you may know, I've spent the
last fifteen years covering technology and learning how it works,
demystifying everything from massive parallel processing to advanced robotics and
(00:44):
everything in between. Yet it's the conversations with some of
the most forward thinking leaders, those at the intersection of
technology and business that fascinate me the most. I think
the tech world has a few categories that can be
confusing to the mainstream. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are
(01:06):
two notable examples, and I would argue that another is
the concept of smart cities. What makes a smart city?
Our guest today, Tyler's Fetech has an answer. Tyler has
spent his career tackling major challenges through leveraging technology. Early on,
he worked on projects to improve the air quality in Colorado,
(01:28):
leading programs that developed markets for alternate fuels and other
vehicle technologies. He became an energy and transportation administrator in Denver, Colorado,
where he worked on projects to reduce transportation emissions. Now
he is working in Colorado Smart Cities Alliance, which aims
to bring together parties in the public and private sectors
(01:48):
to create solutions to real world problems. As you'll hear,
sometimes those solutions involves sophisticated technology, and sometimes they involve
a charmingly simple approach. First, I want to start off
Tyler by welcoming you to the Restless Ones. Thank you
so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me, Jonathan.
(02:11):
I'm really excited for the conversation. A question I'm always
curious about is when did you first start getting interested
in technology in general? So, I I really got interested
in technology when I was thinking about what I wanted
to do with my life. As I was graduating in
high school. I went to school for environmental studies and
political science and had a passion back in two thou
(02:34):
eight for trying to figure out how we were gonna
tackle this climate challenge. And I was also really interested
in cars at the time. My uncle's my dad all
big mechanics and have nice vehicles, and I have kind
of a photographic memory, so I can tell like every
car on the road, like make model, all that kind
of stuff. So my first job out of school was
(02:55):
as an intern working on alternative fuel vehicles the ability
for the electrification of transportation to help reduce emissions, and
so I got to learn about all of the incredible
technologies influencing the transportation space, which turns out are also
influencing pretty much everything in a city. So that's when
tech became really interesting to me as a tool for
(03:17):
solving problems. What actually brought you to the Colorado's Smart
Cities Alliance, So you know, I spent really my whole
career in this space, fortunately, and the first roles that
I had were in taking a specific technology and trying
to apply it to a specific problem. So I worked
for the City and County of Denver, where I got
(03:38):
to develop the strategy and and the goals for reducing
transportation emissions. And that was amazing because I got to
work with automakers and electric vehicle infrastructure providers to figure
out how we were going to accomplish these joint goals
together and then work on actually deploying the technology in
in the real world, in our city fleet, in our
(03:59):
city streets, and those sorts of things. And then I
got a chance to go to the Colorado Department of Transportation,
where I got to lead and start a program focused
on using connected and autonomous vehicle technologies to solve transportation
safety issues across the state. And through both of those roles,
as well as five years I spent before with the
(04:19):
Department of Energy, I got to understand that partnership is
a huge part of deployment of technology. If you have
the best tool in the world, if you can't get
it to market, if you don't have a supportive environment,
if you don't have the partners that you need to
deploy those things, which turns out more and more government
is one of those partners that are needed. It's really
(04:41):
really hard for those tools to see the light of day.
And so the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance was created to
try and bake the marketplace for local government innovation. So
I thought that this was the perfect place for me
to grow what I had done day to day for
specific agencies into a nonprofit model that helps lots of
different governments solve lots of different problems with lots of
(05:03):
different tools. You have touched on so many things that
I love to talk about on this podcast, and we'll
be touching on the more throughout the conversation. One thing
I definitely wanted to get from you, Tyler, is what
your definition of a smart city is, because it's a
term that we see very frequently, and I think a
(05:23):
lot of people have varying ideas on what that actually means.
I spend a lot of time talking about this question,
and I think it's good. I think the industry is
plagued by the desire to define a smart city. I'm
actually going to steal a colleague's definition, Emily Royal from
(05:44):
the City of San Antonio. You know, she said at
a conference recently that smart cities use emerging tech for good, right,
and most simplistically, I think that is true. But to
do that well, we believe and we define smart cities
as an organization by needing a process for applying that
technology to solve a specific problem. And that process, we believe,
(06:07):
usually involves innovation, meaning you have to do something new.
If you're using technology or data to do the same thing.
It's not necessarily, in my opinion, that hard to do.
There's lots of tech that's involved in everything. So taking
a risk and trying something new, there needs to be
some sort of technology that is the tool that you
are approaching that innovation with. And then usually there's some
(06:30):
sort of data element to informing a decision that hopefully
is generating an innovative or new results. And so that's
my best attempt. But I actually I don't feel the
need to define smart cities. I think the diversity of
definition is part of the beauty of it. Generally speaking,
what are some of the benefits that come along with
(06:53):
this creation of smart cities? What what are some of
the outcomes that we're hoping to see through this in
corporation of technology into our cities. So I think that
there is a misconception that the smartest cities are those
that are the most connected or that have the most
technology or the most data. Instead, I think that those
(07:15):
with the best approaches to solving a problem are the
smartest cities. It really depends on the problem that the
city chooses to prioritize. To apply the process to most
smart cities target issues important to everyday quality of life,
like transportation safety and efficiency, air quality and climate change,
public safety, accessibility, digital divide right. Those are all issues
(07:38):
that technology can help solve. In cities are using technology
to improve it's really hard to define the exact benefits
that come from the creation of a smart city until
you define the problem you're solving. Grand Junction here in
Colorado on the Western Slope has very different issues than Denver.
They don't have transportation congestion like Denver does, and so
it's up to them to prioritize it. When I was
(08:01):
at the City of Denver, we prioritize two issues we
knew were important to quality of life in our city,
public health and transportation safety. And for public health, air
quality was a huge primary concern. We are entering into
severe nonattainment for ozone here in the Denver metro region
and it's actually impacting you know, people of color and
(08:21):
people who have been inequitably served by infrastructure for a
very long time. So we decided we wanted to tackle
that issue. Today, the city has a robust program using
forty IoT air quality sensors to provide real time hyperlocal
air pollution information to the public so that they can
take informed actions on how to protect themselves and also
(08:43):
advocate for better air quality and different infrastructure. They've also
deployed on the transportation side technologies that can detect and
communicate vulnerable road users and intersections and extend traffic light
timing and real time to allow for people to cross.
They're also used seeing micromobility data to inform where the
safest and least safe parts of their infrastructure are in
(09:07):
order to improve them. And so that's one example how
the everyday person would benefit from those things. Understanding if
it's safe to breathe and go for a run, Understanding
if it's safe across the intersection. Those are very real,
tangible things that in the case of Denver, they chose
to prioritize. And speaking of benefits, I also wanted to
know what the impact of smart city strategies are on
(09:31):
local economies and businesses. Sure the impact of smart cities
on local economies and businesses is significant. Right, the technologies
of today are shaping the infrastructure of tomorrow, and infrastructure
quality is essential to business and to local economies. You know,
the technologies themselves have enormous consequences for individual people like
(09:55):
who has access to the fastest internet, where are electric
vehicle chargers located, and the cleaner air that they can
provide to the local community, Where do people have convenient,
affordable access the transportation. Those are all very real things
that technologies are influencing where those will be available tomorrow,
and those technologies are also driving economic growth, right And
(10:16):
many of the biggest tech companies that I'm sure you've
had on this podcast are heavily dependent on access to
government in some way. Five G providers need to identify
their infrastructure. Micromobility companies need access to safely ride in
the city, right of way, right share companies need access
to streets and curb space, and you know, electric vehicle
(10:38):
companies need adequate connection to the electricity grid and charging areas.
And so this impact trickles all the way down the
supply chain. Makers of chips have a huge interest in
smart cities because the products they make are going to
go into the products that are operated on five G
and go into cars. And so I don't think governments
(10:58):
understand the role that they have to play in seeding
the future of economic growth and infrastructure just by having
an opportunity to partner and test and be good partners,
because if they aren't, it's going to happen to them,
and if they are, they have a chance to influence
what tomorrow's infrastructure looks like. And one of the technologies
(11:22):
you just mentioned, obviously one of the ones that we
are really excited about on this podcast, the five G
connectivity technology. I foresee that as being a pretty key
component to a lot of smart city strategies moving forward.
The ability to have fiber connectivity but not be tethered
(11:42):
to fiber, and to have high band with low latency
that can enable so many other different technologies. Do you
see five G as being one of those sort of
foundational technologies for for smart city strategies moving forward? I
think it absolutely could be if there was a bust
an equitable displacement of a true five G network that
(12:04):
has low, mid, high spectrum, edge computing, you know, all
of the things that it takes to actually enable the latency,
the densification of infrastructure that can be enabled. Yes, that
would be transformative. Right We are in the process of
trying to launch our own five G network downtown that
(12:26):
would be a private, fully built out five G network
for the testing and development of new products and the
support of startup companies, so that we could give access
to what that actual five G network will be five
ten years from now and give cities access to it
as well to understand the benefits, so that the fiber
investment cities are making today are informed by you know, well,
(12:49):
maybe you won't need fiber five ten years from now.
I assume then that connectivity in general obviously becomes like
the the glue that holds together these various technologies to
enable the solutions that we expect for these cities of
the future. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if you had to
(13:09):
pick one thing that unites smart cities infrastructure, it's the
ability to communicate, right is the ability to talk to things,
things that generate data, and ultimately the holy grail is
if you can combine those things that generate data into
informed information with edge computing and you can make real
time decisions on that data and influence the real world.
(13:32):
That is where I think we all want to be.
Conventional thinking says you have to pay more to get
more I want the world, But Team Obile for Business
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That's unconventioned of thinking from T Mobile for business capable
device required covers not available in some areas. Some US
require certain planter features C mobile dot com. One of
the things I really wanted to talk to you about
(14:14):
was automated vehicles. So I'm curious to hear from you. One,
what's kind of the state of affairs on automated vehicles?
Where do you kind of assess where we are on
that scale? And Two? What are your thoughts about how
automated vehicles are going to play a role in our lives.
(14:37):
Do you think that that's going to be more of
a sort of a public transit kind of mode and
less of a privately owned vehicle. I certainly hoped that
automation comes to public transit before it comes to individual garages.
The industry talks about safety as as the main benefit
of autonomy, maybe efficiency. There are patent benefits there, but
(15:00):
in my opinion, one of the biggest benefits to automation
of public transit is the ability to lower the cost
of transportation and to provide it to more people, and
to do so in a shared way, because we can't
provide more transportation to more people on the same infrastructure
if we don't do it more efficiently. The only way
to do that is to connect to an existing transportation
(15:22):
system that moves people and goods more efficiently. The individual vehicles.
The leaders in the autonomous vehicle space are really in
two areas right now. One is in trucking, and that
is probably the first place that people will really interact
with highly automated vehicles. They may not even know it.
The truck next to them, you know, is likely driving
(15:43):
itself for at least parts of the route or maybe
even entire sections. And then robotaxis that model eventually, if
it's profitable. Public transportation is definitely something that they talk
about wanting to solve. But I see a lot of
individual people hiring their individual vehicle to come and pick
them up and going to wherever they want. And in
(16:05):
that case, you're not moving to people, you're moving one person.
And in a lot of cases you're gonna have vehicles
driving around that have zero occupants in them at all.
And so then what is the point of infrastructure to
to move vehicles and not people? And so a lot
of the work we've been doing is trying to solve
the barriers to using today's highly automated vehicles in a
(16:27):
transit or micro transit environment. When you're looking at these
solutions and you're trying to get buy in from various
parties to look at possibilities of how you can use
these technologies to do things like support public transportation, what
are those conversations, like, I mean, are they remarkably different
when you're talking to say, the private sector versus a
(16:50):
city government agency. Absolutely, those conversations are always different. To
do it right, to understand the problem and to find
a way to co develop the solution takes time, It
takes investment of resources, and it's not easy, and both
the public and the private sector are not used to
(17:10):
doing those things together. What we're trying to do is
create more of a bridge so that before you're developing
that scooter and throwing it on our streets, like, let's
have a conversation about how we could do that in
the most beneficial way for both of us. Let's co
develop a program together, and then we'll maybe give you
exclusive access to our right of way because you worked
with us in order to do this right. Well, can
(17:32):
you tell me a little bit about some of your
success stories. I would love to hear about some projects
that kind of stand as a model toward finding that
collaborative process and finding implementations that make a real difference. Sure, yeah,
I would love to We've been around for about five
years as a nonprofit organization and we've been working for
five years to find that model that can work. And
(17:54):
you know, we have a couple of success stories for sure.
One is cities have a tremendous to desire to a
decarbonized the transportation sector but also be lower the cost
of housing and lower the cost of energy just generated buildings.
And there's a technology called vehicle to grid or the
ability for a vehicle to charge a building or the
(18:16):
grid as opposed to the grid charging just the vehicle.
And for a long time the technology didn't exist in
order for this to really happen. About two years ago,
we were approached by a company called Formata Energy that
has the first UL approved bi directional d C fast
charger and they were looking for partners to really test
this with and in exchange for a free charger, if
(18:40):
the jurisdiction paid for the install then they could be
a beta testing partner. And we were able to find
two partners here with Fermata to do that testing. And
now we're finding that this technology with one charger and
one vehicle can shave three a month off of the
average electricity bill for a commercial building, which is massive.
(19:01):
Imagine if you had five or ten of those chargers
with vehicles plugged in at the right time of day.
And so we're using that to do analysis on what
that would mean for the whole grid if we were
to to robustly deploy that and avoid sinking a bunch
of money into stationary battery storage. So that's one I
would say. One of our our favorite models that we
(19:22):
found is, you know, instead of just working with one city,
why not work with a bunch and find the city
with the best problem to partner the solutions with. And
so we run this annual innovation challenge where we get
multiple governments. This year we have about ten. These are cities, counties,
state agencies, and they all have a problem like how
(19:44):
do we improve the resilience of our infrastructure or how
do we improve the safety of our transportation system, and
we invite ideas from all over the world from different
companies of how they could solve that problem with technology
and data, and then we facilitate the matchmaking between the
jurisdiction and those companies and it streamlines the whole process.
(20:06):
If there's a cost to the solution, it enables the
jurisdiction to buy it directly and we've generated a lot
of our projects through that process. Excellent. So I assume
that data collection and analysis must play a crucial role
in any strategy and the fact that we're in an
era now where the ability to collect and analyze data
(20:27):
at enormous scale has to be a huge benefit as well.
Is that correct? Yes, data is a part of our future, right.
It is absolutely a resource. And just like infrastructure is,
you know, a physical thing that cities manage and have
to to use in order to benefit the public, data
(20:49):
is becoming a part of that infrastructure, a digital infrastructure.
But data is much different than a physical asset and
it requires new sorts of digital infrastructure to manage well,
and most cities haven't figured it out quite yet. A
lot of companies have, but they're using their data for
different means how to figure out which markets are best
(21:11):
and how to push products. Governments need to use it
for a very different reason to solve a real world problem, right,
and unfortunately, governments have a lot of data. One of
our our partners always says we're both drowning in data
and suffocating without it, Meaning they have so much data
already at their fingertips, they just don't have the platforms
(21:32):
to activate that data and to get information from it.
Most systems don't talk to each other, and so they
can't use the data they have, and then there's a
lot of data they don't have. Right, Denver didn't have
local air quality information. They had to go out and
get it and use technology to get it and bring
it to the people. One anecdote I'd love to share
to really bring this all home. One of our partners
(21:54):
is a light our sensor manufacturer and they're working with
the city, and the city had this is you where
there's a really dangerous intersection, but they didn't know why
it was dangerous. So they installed this light our sensor
and we're able to identify near miss accidents with pedestrians
or with other cars, and they could narrow down the
(22:15):
exact time of day, and they were all happening at
the same time of day, and so they went out
there at this time of day and turns out the
sun glare was blinding people and they couldn't see it.
And so the solution was not the lighter, but was
to plant trees in front of where the sun is
at that time of day and dramatically improved the issue.
(22:35):
And so that type of data is what can be
available to make cities proactive in solving a problem before
it gets someone killed. I'm glad that that was a
positive example of a root kit being installed. That's a
terrible tech joke. But but but getting getting more serious
(22:56):
and more to the point about this, I think that
you've brought up some real interesting perspectives. I imagine a
lot of governments have data in silos, and they're probably
based on a lot of legacy systems. Because governments typically
don't have an aggressive schedule too maintain an update systems.
(23:16):
They'll rely on the system for as long as they
possibly can until something goes wrong, and so it's not
as simple as saying the information is out there, let's
just make use of it. So I imagine one part
of strategies has to be how can we work with
governments to come up with processes where we can harness
this information that we know we have, but yet do
(23:39):
it in a way that also makes us good stewards
of information. Clearly, when you're talking about government information, security
should be very front of mind, and to be able
to be a trustworthy guardian of information would, I think
be absolutely critical. So I feel like part of the
(24:00):
collaboration really is to work almost like a consultant with
governments to help judge what are the right pathways forward
to take advantage of this information you have in the
most responsible way possible. Yeah, jurisdictions need to really figure
out what is the role of government owning certain solutions
(24:21):
and the data that come from him, versus partnering and
giving access to a private partner to own and operate
Because governments are limited on their capacity and their understanding
on their funding, companies are not. And you also have
data that's only useful when it's aggregated outside of the
scale of the jurisdiction. Air Qualities one example of that.
(24:43):
When I was at Sea Dot, we had a very
large contract with Pana Sonic to develop a software as
a service platform that could make sense of the connected
vehicle data that we wanted to collect from the roadway.
Because we're not software developed verse, we can't develop that.
So to make use of the technology, we had to
(25:04):
work with them. And so many d ot s across
the country are trying to do it on their own.
They're trying to use interns and contractors to piece mail
together the software that can save people's lives. But I
think what a lot of them are finding is that
it's really hard to maintain a piece of software like
(25:25):
the private sector does if there's not a profit motive
to do it. That's a huge part of the smart
cities industries complexity is what's the role for government, what's
the role for the private sector. There has to be
an opportunity to monetize certain data because without it, we're
never going to get to the scale of the infrastructure
required to really tackle the issue itself. Right, How can
(25:47):
you enter into a partnership with the private sector knowing
that the whole goal of the private sector is to
monetize something in order to return value to stay holders,
whether it's privately held or publicly held, versus trying to
solve actual civil problems in a city. You know, we've
(26:09):
talked a bit about a real world example, and I
love it. The real world example of finding this intersection
and finding the actual root cause of these traffic accidents,
and learning that the solution wasn't technology, it was literally
providing shade so that sunlight was not blinding drivers. I
(26:29):
think that's a great wake up called to people who
are dieharded tech fans like myself that sometimes there are
other approaches that are far more effective. Can you give
us any other examples of how smart city approaches are
going to have a positive impact on, say, civilian life.
I struggled with this question only because there are so
(26:50):
many examples, and that's part of the challenge of of
the space. I think, is it one in five people
have some sort of disability in the United States, and
just navigating cities, getting from a to B if you're
in a wheelchair or if you're blind or visually impaired,
is really difficult. So we've done some work with accessibility
tech companies who there are so many ways that technology
(27:13):
can enable better site or better navigation of city environments,
whether you're mapping the conditions of sidewalks to get to
and from A to B or in one case, we've
worked with a technology to develop a navigation system for
indoor spaces for the blind and visually impaired. So if
you want to go to the museum or if you
(27:34):
want to go to the library, you can still experience
that space by knowing exactly where you are to the
centimeter and knowing what's around you and describing that environment
to you as you walk through it. And so that's
one way that whether you're able bodied, or if you're
young or you're old, you know, there's a lot of
technologies that can help the ease of access and around cities,
(27:57):
that can help people in a lot of ways. But
that's just one that I like to highlight because it's
one that people don't think about very often, right. I
think of augmented reality as any technology that enhances the
experience of you being in a physical place, and that
can include things like audio cues and even tactile feedback,
(28:19):
haptic feedback. That if you take that narrow view of
what augmented reality is and you're just thinking, oh, that's
smart glasses, you're really not tapping into the potential of
that concept, not just technology that's just the manifestation of
the concept, but the actual concept of enhancing the area
around you in some way, whether that might be for
(28:41):
entertainment purposes, educational navigation. The applications are limitless. Yeah, there
are so many cool ways you can use augmented reality.
But we've got a couple of companies, one that that
uses it to visualize new development. So if you're a
citizen and you're concerned about the new development happening across
the street, you can actually visualize it in real life
(29:03):
to see what it would look like and provide your
feedback that way. There's lots of very tangible ways that
governments or utilities can use these technologies if they're focused
on trying to do it right. And I think that's
the key is so many governments are just focused on
providing the services the way they are today. It takes
purposeful and intentional action and process to do it differently.
(29:28):
Before saying goodbye to Tyler, I had to ask him
one more thing, what is a project you personally are
very excited about? Well, our new five G project really
really excited about building a five G network that we
can use to test and develop products. We're gonna be
targeting startups and entrepreneurs that are owned or hire people
(29:51):
of color, Indigenous women, people that are underrepresented, including people
with disabilities, so that they have access to infrastructure to
do testing, to understand these technologies and to grow here
in Colorado. So we're gonna be beginning that work later
this year and are excited to start welcoming our first
companies hopefully in Q one of next year, and that
(30:14):
will really get us into this economic development space where
I think a lot of cities have an interest in
right being the home for a growing company and also
away for us to ensure that these solutions that are
influencing our infrastructure of tomorrow are being built by the
people that have been left behind by the infrastructure of today.
(30:34):
Excellent answer, Tyler, Thank you so much for joining us.
This has been a really informative and and fun conversation
for me. Yeah, I've really enjoyed it. Thank you for
digging into this topic with me, and I hope your
listeners enjoy it. Tyler Speedech opened my eyes when it
(30:56):
comes to smart cities. He has a realistic perspective on
what it takes to incorporate technological solutions into city infrastructure.
Any effort to do so is going to require a
lot of collaboration and innovation. The problems aren't necessarily simple,
and getting all parties on the same page can be
hard too, But the need for those solutions is apparent,
(31:19):
and the payoff of implementing them is incalculable. I think
of it as empowering citizens who then contribute to society,
at which point everyone benefits. I'm excited to learn more
about the five G network Tyler's team intends to build
as a testing ground for all sorts of other technologies.
I expect that foundation of connectivity will help produce some
(31:42):
amazing products. Some of those will likely become commercial products,
perhaps ones that don't actually have a real place in
smart city applications. Others might exclusively be useful for the
maintenance and operation of a city. As we've seen many
times throughout this series, it's connect to it that transforms
limited technologies into powerful tools. Having the ability to channel
(32:06):
large amounts of data with negligible delay is a real
game changer. I hope that Tyler's SPEEDEC and his team
are able to shepherd new technologies into the smart city
space that will ultimately make life better for citizens. Thanks
again to Tyler for joining the show and sharing his
experience and mission. Be sure to tune into future episodes
(32:29):
of The Restless Ones where I'll speak with other leaders
in the tech space to see what lessons they've learned
and their approach to leadership. I'll see you then. Tea
Mobile for Business knows companies want more than a one
size fits all approach to support. I want the world,
(32:49):
so we provide three sixty support customized to your business.
From discovery through post deployment. You'll get a dedicated account
team and expertise from solutions engineers and into street advisors
already right now, I want it now. Three six support
that's customized for your success. That's unconventional thinking from t
(33:11):
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