Global Contest Puts Anne Arundel Co. In Top 10 For Intersections

ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY, MD — Officials are striving to improve mobility and efficiency at intersections across the county and for their efforts, Anne Arundel County has been named as one of 10 semifinalists worldwide in Parsons Corp.'s inaugural Smart Cities Challenge called Transforming Intersections.

The other semifinalists are Austin, TX; Dubai Roads and Transport Authority, United Arab Emirates; Frontier MPO Fort Smith, AR; Manama, Bahrain; Mississauga, Ontario; Pasadena, CA; RTC Southern Nevada; Walnut Creek, CA; Westminster, CO.

The semifinalists now will work with the Parsons Corp.'s team to submit a final application that will be judged by an independent panel of experts. A winner will be named in April. Andrew Liu, Parsons senior vice president of smart cities, told Smart Cities Dive that it is part of the company's strategy to find "tangible problems to solve and encourage the best solutions to be piloted and scaled up."

"We don't want to go out there and be a solution that's looking for a problem," Liu said on the sidelines of CoMotion LA. "We want to really look to see what are the problems out there in the world with our clients in different cities all over the place, and see what are the commonly occurring issues and can we develop a solution around it."

As cities get smarter, they are seeking ways to refine their intersections, reduce congestion and make it safer for pedestrians and other modes of transport to move through them.

"If you think about it from a smart cities perspective, all the different jurisdictions need to start working together," he said. "When you and I as motorists drive from point A to point B, we don't care that right now we're on this city road, then we get to a state highway, then a county road. We care about the journey. We're really looking at integrating it all together."

The winner will receive various prizes including a year of free services from Parsons, AWS and Verizon to get an intersection solution pilot program up and running.