{"id":58110,"date":"2017-10-31T11:00:27","date_gmt":"2017-10-31T15:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=58110"},"modified":"2017-11-03T10:01:02","modified_gmt":"2017-11-03T14:01:02","slug":"lorinc-search-clarity-sidewalk-labs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2017\/10\/31\/lorinc-search-clarity-sidewalk-labs\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: In search of clarity on Sidewalk Labs (plus correction)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/06\/feature-lorinc.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-44316\" src=\"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/06\/feature-lorinc.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"85\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Before what will be a sold-out house tomorrow night at the St. Lawrence Centre, officials with <a href=\"https:\/\/sidewalktoronto.ca\/\">Sidewalk Labs<\/a>, Alphabet\/Google\u2019s smart city division, will lay out their vision for Quayside, a modestly scaled 4.9-hectare chunk of fallow industrial land at the foot of Parliament Street.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this month, Waterfront Toronto (WT) announced the two-year-old Manhattan firm, headed by former New York City deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff, won a competition for consortia interested in redeveloping Quayside with proposals to build \u201ca globally-significant community that will showcase advanced technologies, building materials, sustainable practices and innovative business models that demonstrate pragmatic solutions toward climate positive urban development.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>WT chief executive Will Fleissig describes Quayside as a \u201ctestbed.\u201d Sidewalk and agency officials will spend the next year consulting with various stakeholders to hone the plan. Sidewalk has pledged to allocate $50 million to this exploratory phase, although details about precisely how the money will be spent remain thin.<\/p>\n<p>But in an interview with <em>Spacing<\/em> yesterday, Doctoroff, who headed Bloomberg L.P. after entering municipal government, explained that Sidewalk\u2019s ambitions extend far beyond the confines of Quayside \u2013 an area which, he said, is \u201cnot sufficient\u201d to test the various transportation, clean-tech and building technologies it wants to develop.<\/p>\n<p>The company, in fact, has made it clear that it hopes to scale its blend of built-form and smart city technology solutions to not just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.waterfrontoronto.ca\/nbe\/portal\/waterfront\/Home\/waterfronthome\/projects\/villiers+island\/villiers+island\">Villiers Island<\/a> and the port lands, but eventually to the rest of Toronto, and other branches of government, including transit agencies and the provincial health ministry.\u00a0(Sidewalk has already spoken to two senior Metrolinx managers, officials there confirmed, although Fleissig stressed that these conversations only took place after the winner of the RFP was announced. A health ministry spokesperson said they&#8217;ve not been contacted by Sidewalk officials yet.)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe do believe we\u2019re at a moment in history where there are a set of technologies that when thoughtfully applied in a smartly designed urban context can fundamentally alter that curve on quality of life metrics,\u201d Doctoroff told <em>Spacing<\/em>. \u201cThat really is what our objective is here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s anything but clear is how Waterfront Toronto will go about structuring and valuing a financial relationship with a company that makes no bones about its intention to use Toronto\u2019s waterfront as a R&amp;D platform for transformational technologies that could someday be marketed to other cities.<\/p>\n<p>Doctoroff offered a few examples of what he\u2019s got in mind:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A community health clinic model, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cityblock.com\/\">CityBlock Health<\/a>, that combines a range of medical and social services under one roof but also uses a data platform that provides prevention-based information to users;<\/li>\n<li>Sidewalk&#8217;s &#8220;Model Lab,&#8221; a novel approach to transportation demand forecasting that can be used at a metropolitan or even regional level; Doctoroff described such models as \u201cvery slow and unresponsive\u201d (see clarification below);<\/li>\n<li>A sensor-based traffic signal system that detects the presence of cyclists and pedestrians as well as vehicles; the need for such technology anticipates the eventual introduction of autonomous vehicles and smart traffic signals that communicate with driverless vehicles.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/10\/Sidewalk-Labs-Community-Vision-copy.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-58079\" src=\"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/10\/Sidewalk-Labs-Community-Vision-copy-600x337.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"337\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/10\/Sidewalk-Labs-Community-Vision-copy-600x337.png 600w, https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/10\/Sidewalk-Labs-Community-Vision-copy-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/10\/Sidewalk-Labs-Community-Vision-copy-768x432.png 768w, https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/10\/Sidewalk-Labs-Community-Vision-copy-940x528.png 940w, https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/10\/Sidewalk-Labs-Community-Vision-copy.png 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Doctoroff said Sidewalk expects to eventually generate both development and licensing revenue from whatever the two parties agree on after a year of consultations and planning. Fleissig noted that the WT board regards the agency\u2019s relationship with Sidewalk as not merely financial.<\/p>\n<p>But if Sidewalk\u2019s Toronto ventures yield marketable solutions that can to be sold to other cities or regions, it seems reasonable to ask whether WT or its three government stakeholders should aim for a licensing or royalty arrangement that allows the agency to profit from its role in the creation of these new technologies. After all, Sidewalk officials have said repeatedly in the past few weeks that they see Toronto\u2019s waterfront as an ideal space in which to test drive their ideas.<\/p>\n<p>Fleissig didn\u2019t offer any details about how the agency will do its due diligence on the potential upside, but WT officials confirmed that there are active internal discussions about this specific issue. The agency agreed to release a summary of the framework agreement with Sidewalk even though the WT board initially sought to keep the deal private for reasons of commercial confidentiality, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestar.com\/news\/city_hall\/2017\/10\/27\/public-to-get-some-of-waterfront-tech-hub-details.html\">as the <em>Toronto Star<\/em> reported Sunday<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Besides demands for more transparency, the challenge facing WT is the vastly uneven scale of the parties to this eventual negotiation. Sidewalk is a firm with the deepest of pockets and direct access to the one of world\u2019s pre-eminent information technology giants. WT, by comparison, is merely a local land development agency that\u2019s only completed one significant tech procurement deal.<\/p>\n<p>Further complicating this picture is the fact that Sidewalk has a shallow track record. While the firm has plunged into the roiling multi-billion-dollar smart city industry, which includes mature and very active vendors like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ibm.com\/smarterplanet\/us\/en\/smarter_cities\/overview\/\">IBM<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.siemens.com\/innovation\/en\/home\/pictures-of-the-future\/infrastructure-and-finance\/smart-cities-dossier.html\">Siemens<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/about.att.com\/sites\/internet-of-things\/smart_cities\">AT&amp;T<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cisco.com\/c\/en_ca\/solutions\/industries\/smart-connected-communities.html\">Cisco<\/a>, Sidewalk is still the R&amp;D operation envisioned by Google co-founder Larry Page, who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2016\/4\/26\/11512256\/google-sidewalk-lab-smart-city-dan-doctoroff-larry-page\">began talking about building a Google city-within-a-city in 2013<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Its most visible commercial deal is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.link.nyc\/\">LinkNYC<\/a>, which is converting 7,500 former payphone sites around New York into free Wifi kiosks (the project is run by a Sidewalk subsidiary called Intersection). The goal, said Doctoroff, is to provide broadband to the 2.5 million New Yorkers who don\u2019t have access to high-speed internet. He said the service is entirely free to users and will be financed by kiosk advertising. New York City, Doctoroff added, could see revenues of up to $1 billion over the life of the deal, which is a 12-year contract extendable to 15 years.<\/p>\n<p>While he said the point of the project is not to collect user data, civil liberties groups raised questions about that claim, noting that users have to leave emails and some personal information when they sign on. Eventually, Doctoroff added, the kiosks may be outfitted with ultra-sensitive air quality and traffic sensors developed by a <a href=\"https:\/\/news.uchicago.edu\/article\/2016\/08\/29\/chicago-becomes-first-city-launch-array-things\">University of Chicago\/Argonne National Laboratory joint venture<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Doctoroff insisted that LinkNYC has been extremely well received by New Yorkers, but the project was marred last year by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.citylab.com\/life\/2016\/09\/linknyc-pulls-web-access-from-its-wi-fi-kiosks-over-porn-use\/500015\/\">reports<\/a> that some users were viewing porn on browser-enabled tablets affixed to the kiosks. The company had to remove the browsing capabilities in response to media accounts of these incidents.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, Sidewalk has been scouting around for real world opportunities to trial the technologies being developed by its various subsidiaries. During a 2016 competition for federal funds for smart city projects launched at the very end of the Obama administration, Sidewalk touted the fact that it would be working with a dozen mid-sized cities and Transportation for America, a national advocacy group.<\/p>\n<p>One of those was Columbus, Ohio, which won a $40 million federal grant, a Google smart cities prize and has attracted other players interested in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techrepublic.com\/article\/how-columbus-ohio-parlayed-50-million-into-500-million-for-a-smart-city-transportation-network\/\">transforming the city<\/a> into a test site for autonomous vehicle, one of Google\u2019s major corporate goals (Alphabet, Google\u2019s parent, in recent weeks <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/lyft-1-billion-investment-google-alphabet-capitalg-2017-10\">placed a $1 billion bet<\/a> on Lyft as the vehicle to advance its suite of AV and mapping technologies).<\/p>\n<p>Last year, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.technewsworld.com\/story\/83663.html\">according to a report in TechNewsWorld<\/a>, Sidewalk also began talking to Columbus about using Flow, its cloud-based transportation technology, to \u201crestructure [the city\u2019s] public transportation system.\u201d But more recent reports indicate that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vulcan.com\/About\">Vulcan<\/a>, a catalytic technology incubator set up by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, has gained the upper hand in Columbus.<\/p>\n<p>A Columbus spokesperson said Sidewalk completed a \u201cstudy\/assessment of opportunity\u201d which is currently being reviewed by city officials. Of the Columbus project and others associated with the federal smart cities competition, Doctoroff said Sidewalk and the Ohio municipality are still in the \u201cideation process.\u201d \u201cWe participated with several cities but it is really hasn\u2019t ripened into anything at this point. We\u2019re still in conversations with Columbus but it really hasn\u2019t evolved at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Over the next year, Toronto can expect to hear much more about Sidewalk\u2019s ideation processes. There\u2019s no doubt that inside government circles, there\u2019s a huge appetite for this kind of work. Both the federal and provincial Liberals are actively pursuing innovation agendas, with an intensive focus on strengthening the existing cluster of tech industries that extend between Waterloo and Toronto and expanding the region\u2019s presence in the burgeoning artificial intelligence space, in which Google is a leading player. Mayor John Tory has also touted the tech sector for its economic development potential.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, Fleissig now seems to see Waterfront Toronto as a delivery vehicle for some of the policy making, and said yesterday that he can see how the agency could work with Sidewalk to set up mini-pilot projects in various locales along the waterfront even before the actual development of Quayside begins. \u201cWe\u2019re very excited about trying some things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>With development in the West Donalds and East Bayfront well underway, and the $1.25 billion secured for the construction of the Lower Don River flood protection berm, Fleissig says the \u201ccontext\u201d for Waterfront Toronto\u2019s development plans \u201chas changed\u201d since the agency was established in 2001.<\/p>\n<p>What that change will look like \u2014 and Sidewalk\u2019s precise role in the evolution of the agency\u2019s ambitions \u2014 remains to be seen.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Correction:\u00a0Sidewalk and Vulcan are involved in different projects in Columbus. \u00a0Sidewalk is proposing approaches to non-emergency medical transportation. More details of their project are here:\u00a0<a id=\"yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1509376475466_438464\" href=\"https:\/\/sidewalklabs.com\/blog\/improving-transportation-options-to-reduce-infant-mortality\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">https:\/\/sidewalklabs.com\/blog\/improving-transportation-options-to-reduce-infant-mortality\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Clarification:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In an interview with <em>Spacing <\/em>on Monday, Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff offered some comments about how the company intends to improve transportation modeling in urban environments.<\/p>\n<p>During the conversation, Doctoroff described traditional regional transportation forecasting models as \u201cvery slow and unresponsive.\u201d The article incorrectly stated that a new approach being developed by Sidewalks, Model Labs, could \u201creplace existing models, such as <a href=\"http:\/\/uttri.utoronto.ca\/research\/research-groups\/tmg\/\">U of T\u2019s Travel Modelling Group<\/a> (TMG) system, which has long been used by Metrolinx and the TTC.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Doctoroff did not mention TMG. We have corrected the <a href=\"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2017\/10\/31\/lorinc-search-clarity-sidewalk-labs\/\">original article<\/a> and apologize for the implication.<\/p>\n<p>The full text of Doctoroff\u2019s comments is as follows:<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[O]ur <a href=\"https:\/\/model.sidewalklabs.com\/\">Model Lab<\/a>\u2026is a very different approach than what is typically done with the regional models, which are very slow, unresponsive. Fundamentally, it involves the creation of synthetic populations. In the U.S., we\u2019re beginning to work with our first metropolitan area with that approach.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Doctoroff declined to name the city, except to note that it is in the mid-west. He added: \u201cThere\u2019s incredible enthusiasm among transportation and planning agencies around North America about this approach, because it\u2019s very different.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The TMG has been overseen for many years by Eric Miller, a professor of civil engineering and director of the University of Toronto Transportation Research Institute, which provides demand forecasting to GTA municipalities and the Ontario government. He is working with Sidewalk\u2019s Model Labs on its Toronto project. In a letter to <em>Spacing<\/em>, Miller says he believes the collaboration could lead to \u201cimproved modeling methods that may well eventually replace existing methods.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The data core of the TMG\u2019s long-standing statistical forecasting methodology, known as <a href=\"http:\/\/dmg.utoronto.ca\/pdf\/reports\/1996to2000\/report77\/sim_am_gta.pdf\">GTA Model V4.0<\/a>, includes detailed transportation surveys conducted every five years, census data, and other granular information about land uses, etc. In recent years, Miller\u2019s team <a href=\"http:\/\/news.engineering.utoronto.ca\/on-the-right-track-new-icity-collaboration-addresses-torontos-transit-woes\/\">has added<\/a> other tranches of real time data, including smart phone apps, Presto boardings and other signals, through its <a href=\"http:\/\/uttri.utoronto.ca\/news\/icity-urban-informatics-sustainable-metropolitan-growth\/\">iCity<\/a> initiative.<\/p>\n<p>The TMG\u2019s micro-simulation model, Miller says, \u201cis a state-of-the-art model system that is\u2026`best in class\u2019. In particular, it has explicitly been designed to run fast, without sacrificing behavioural representativeness, and to be sensitive to a wide variety of policies.\u201d City of Toronto planners have made extensive use of the system to model various transportation scenarios. Miller also contends that the software operates far faster than some other transportation forecasting models.<\/p>\n<p>Sidewalk officials, meanwhile, have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestar.com\/news\/gta\/2017\/11\/01\/quayside-vision-of-torontos-waterfront-includes-self-driving-cars.html\">talked in detail<\/a> about their own views of transportation modeling, and the opportunity to use various alternative sources of real time data to track activity on streets, including anonymized cell phone signals, traffic cameras, sensors and other <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/google-sidewalk-labs-toronto-quayside\/\">mapping<\/a> technologies.<\/p>\n<p>In an essay published last December in <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/sidewalk-talk\/improving-urban-mobility-starts-with-better-travel-data-e2a180c9c6c0\"><em>Medium<\/em><\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/corinnali?lang=en\">Corinna Li<\/a>, Sidewalk\u2019s City Lead for Mobility Services, offered a critique of traditional demand forecasting approaches:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor most of the last century, any understanding of travel demand has been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rita.dot.gov\/bts\/sites\/rita.dot.gov.bts\/files\/publications\/journal_of_transportation_and_statistics\/volume_08_number_03\/html\/paper_07\/index.html\">founded on<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalhouseholdtravelsurvey.com\/\">surveys<\/a>. People document details like starting points, destinations, modes, and estimated travel times over a 24-hour period, in addition to their demographic information. Transportation planners and engineers use these data to model and predict transportation patterns across a whole region.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe shortcomings of travel surveys are widely acknowledged,&#8221; Li continues. &#8220;They can\u2019t always capture changes in our day-to-day travel behavior, nor do they reflect people\u2019s tendency to underreport certain trips, especially non-commutes (such as that quick trip to the corner store). They <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hartgengroup.net\/Projects\/National\/USA\/household_travel_summary\/2009-11-11_Final_Report_Revised.pdf\">cost a lot<\/a> to administer with a large, representative sample. In short, travel surveys can\u2019t provide a full picture of how people actually move around our cities and regions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Model Labs has also developed an <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/sidewalk-talk\/a-first-step-toward-creating-a-digital-planning-laboratory-is-populating-it-beeb87d485f1\">open-source simulation tool it calls Doppelg\u00e4nger<\/a>, which combines a wide range of census data to create \u201csynthetic populations\u201d and is meant to provide municipal planners with \u201ca deeper understanding of the community\u2019s characteristics and how people may be impacted by potential transportation or development interventions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In its <a href=\"https:\/\/sidewalktoronto.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Sidewalk-Labs-Vision-Sections-of-RFP-Submission.pdf\">pitch<\/a> to Waterfront Toronto and elsewhere, the company noted the opportunity to use such systems in the development of autonomous vehicles and the associated navigation\/mapping technologies, all of which represent a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/alanohnsman\/2017\/09\/15\/at-1-1-billion-googles-self-driving-car-moonshot-looks-like-a-bargain\/#18ff4f0f57bb\">major corporate goal<\/a> for Sidewalk\u2019s parent, Alphabet\/Google, and its AV division <a href=\"https:\/\/waymo.com\/\">Waymo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>During his interview with <em>Spacing <\/em>this week, Doctoroff added these observations about Sidewalk\u2019s local goals for its new approaches to forecasting:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve already begun to expose [the Model Labs systems] to the transportation and planning agencies here. As we begin to iterate over the course of this year about what a plan could actually look like, understanding transportation and what different approaches actually mean not just on the site itself but the implications for the area surrounding it, and potentially more broadly to the metropolitan area, we think giving [the] model we\u2019ll be developing for Toronto to the local agencies could be of extraordinary value to them, well before we\u2019ve ever thought about building something. Our hope here is that some of this prototyping can really begin to demonstrate the value that can be brought very early on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before what will be a sold-out house tomorrow night at the St. Lawrence Centre, officials with Sidewalk Labs, Alphabet\/Google\u2019s smart city division, will lay out their vision for Quayside, a modestly scaled 4.9-hectare chunk of fallow industrial land at the foot of Parliament Street. Earlier this month, Waterfront Toronto (WT) announced the two-year-old Manhattan firm,<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2017\/10\/31\/lorinc-search-clarity-sidewalk-labs\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;LORINC: In search of clarity on Sidewalk Labs (plus correction)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":58074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[157,21758,18,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-civic-engagement","category-community","category-neighbourhoods","category-waterfront"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>LORINC: In search of clarity on Sidewalk Labs (plus correction) - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2017\/10\/31\/lorinc-search-clarity-sidewalk-labs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: In search of clarity on Sidewalk Labs (plus correction) - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Before what will be a sold-out house tomorrow night at the St. Lawrence Centre, officials with Sidewalk Labs, Alphabet\/Google\u2019s smart city division, will lay out their vision for Quayside, a modestly scaled 4.9-hectare chunk of fallow industrial land at the foot of Parliament Street. 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