The City has partnered with two start-ups to focus on improving overall mobility in Sacramento.
In the coming weeks, the City will work with Unleash Live to improve pedestrian safety through artificial intelligence (AI) technology, and with Xaqt to better understand travel patterns across all modes of transit.
“Sacramento is rapidly becoming a prime location for start-ups,” said Louis Stewart, the City’s Chief Innovation Officer. “Start-ups are looking for places like Sacramento to develop and deploy new technologies in collaboration with supportive government partners who can move quickly.”
Currently, pedestrian data is collected by the City via a labor-intensive, manual process. Unleash Live aims to change that by tapping into the City’s network of traffic cameras and processing real-time imagery.
“Smart cities like Sacramento are great examples of how leveraging visual identification and analysis through AI can help build safer environments for our communities,” said Hanno Blankenstein, CEO of Unleash live. “We’re thrilled to be partnering with the City and expect to share a tremendous amount of insights about how pedestrians use crosswalks and where signage would be most effectively positioned for their safety.”
Xaqt collects data from different transportation and parking systems, giving the City a more comprehensive view of the types of individual trips taken by residents. That information will help shape future policies that support equitable access to sustainable transit modes, better parking management and progress toward climate goals.
“Xaqt is excited to help Sacramento gain deeper insights from various sources of transit data and greater visibility into mobility trends and patterns in an easy to consume analytics tool,” said Chris Crosby, founder and CEO of Xaqt.
The partnerships were made possible through Startup in Residence (STIR), a program that connects start-ups with government agencies to develop technology products that solve civic challenges.
Through the 16-week STIR program, both Unleash Live and Xaqt will co-develop their solutions in partnership with the City of Sacramento. Project phases include discovery, user research, design, development and testing/deployment.
The City may choose to move forward with a full implementation of the solutions after the 16-week program ends.