[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 101 (Thursday, June 23, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Page S4537]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   CONGRATULATING COLUMBUS, OHIO, ON WINNING THE SMART CITY CHALLENGE

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I would be remiss if I didn't first say 
that I am pleased to see in the Presiding Officer's chair a fellow 
Eagle Scout from Wyoming who is as good to the Scouts as a middle-aged 
man--close enough--as the Scouts were to him as a young man. So it is 
an honor to speak on the floor with Senator Enzi being in the Presiding 
Officer's chair.
  This has been a great week for my State, the State of Ohio. 
Yesterday, I was on this floor joining my colleague from Cincinnati to 
speak about the Cleveland Cavaliers' historic NBA championship victory. 
Cleveland had not had a winning sports team--winning meaning a 
championship team--since I was 12 years old, when Jim Brown ran for the 
Cleveland Browns. In those days, we expected the Cleveland Indians to 
win every year. They never did. The Cavaliers didn't even exist in 
1964. So this was a particularly exciting week for the Cleveland 
Cavaliers and for my city of Cleveland.
  My wife joined literally a million people on the streets of downtown 
Cleveland to celebrate yesterday. This is in a county of 1.2 million. 
So either everybody who lives in the county was there or people from 
all over Northeast Ohio came to join them.
  The second great thing for my State this week is that this afternoon 
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx is in the capital, Columbus--one 
of our other major cities and the largest city in the State--in the 
Linden neighborhood, on the sort of east-northeast side of town, to 
announce our city as winner of the Smart City Challenge. Secretary Foxx 
created this competition to define what it means to be a ``smart city'' 
in the 21st century. It was a challenge for our cities to integrate new 
technologies--from self-driving vehicles to electric vehicles, to smart 
sensors--into this transportation network.
  Just as importantly, Secretary Foxx challenged applicants to think 
beyond adopting new technology for its own sake. Applicants were 
encouraged to offer a vision for how that new technology can make a 
difference for all Americans--from connecting low-income neighborhoods 
to jobs and opportunity to reducing congestion; to making streets safer 
for pedestrians, bicyclists, and children to get, certainly, to work, 
but to get to the doctor or the grocery store; to all things that a 
modern big-city transportation system could be.
  Earlier this year, 78 cities from across the Nation submitted 
applications. In March, the Department selected from those 78 just 7 
finalists to compete for today's award. The competition was tough. 
Cities such as Portland, OR, Denver, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, San 
Francisco, and Austin were all finalists, joining the city of Columbus. 
Columbus' win was all the more impressive as a result.
  Our city would not have won without, first of all, Mayor Andy 
Ginther's leadership. The mayor didn't do this alone, although he 
played such a prominent role. The Central Ohio community united to 
develop innovative solutions to our city's challenges, and that made 
all the difference in the world.
  So $40 million in grant funding from DOT will be matched by an 
additional $10 million from Vulcan, Inc., and $90 million of matching 
funds will come from the community of Columbus. This investment will 
allow the city to deploy some very impressive technology. Columbus will 
expand the use of electric vehicles. It will be testing a range of 
sensors, connected vehicles, and smartphone applications.
  At Easton, a major commercial hub, a small fleet of driverless 
vehicles will link the Easton Transit Center with nearby employers. 
This will expand horizons for bus riders from lower income 
neighborhoods, such as Linden, who will be able to more easily travel 
to jobs not near the busline or the transit center.
  I am particularly excited that Columbus will focus on the way the 
transportation systems affect the city's health. In some neighborhoods, 
the infant mortality rate is four times the national average. My State, 
shamefully, is 47th in the Nation in infant mortality and 50th in the 
Nation in Black infant mortality. It is shameful, and it is for a lot 
of reasons, one of which is that we have a State government that has 
never really invested in public health in the way they should.
  We can't think about problems like this in a vacuum. It isn't just a 
health care problem. It is a public works problem, and that includes 
transportation. The ``Smart Columbus'' plan will measure missed 
prenatal and pediatric visits so we can align our transportation system 
with the goal of reducing infant mortality by 40 percent and cutting in 
half the racial health disparity.
  I would add that Mayor Ginther, as council president prior to his job 
as mayor this year, led the charge citywide on reducing infant 
mortality. The Greater Columbus Infant Mortality Task Force's Celebrate 
One Program has made impressive progress in building a coalition and 
setting aggressive goals to tackle this issue. These new transit 
options will build on this work.
  This is what becoming a smart city should be about--expanding how we 
think about infrastructure and public works, harnessing technology to 
ensure a transportation system that benefits everyone, making it a 
truly public work.
  Today's award wouldn't have happened without a very long list of 
regional partners. I can't name them all, but the Ohio State 
University, the Columbus Partnership, Columbus 2020, Battelle, 
Nationwide, Honda, American Electric Power, and many, many more came 
together to build the application, and they will be working side by 
side with the city to roll out this vision.
  I want to thank Secretary Foxx and Administrator Flowers, with whom I 
spent part of an afternoon just a couple of weeks ago in Columbus as 
she was announcing something else we were doing along the CMAX 
corridor, along the east-northeast Cleveland Avenue part of Columbus.
  Our Nation's transportation system is undergoing radical 
transformation. A decade from now, my children, who live in Columbus, 
and my grandchildren, who live in Columbus, will travel in different 
ways than we do today. The Secretary's vision for this program was 
bold, and I am so excited for cities--for Columbus, specifically, but I 
also know that other cities will see what the smart city of Columbus 
has done with this grant, with this new technology in transportation, 
and they will work with Columbus, mimic Columbus, and turn it into a 
success for our whole Nation.

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