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City of Norfolk
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planning for resiliency and transforming Norfolk even further toward a great live/work/play city
that maintains support for the state’s and nation’s economy and security derived from our
harbors. We know that transportation is a means for people and urban life, not an end. The city
of the future addresses safety, accessibility and sustainability, with support from all modes of
accessibility. Third, we live in a world of rapidly changing technologies, and changing
demographics. We must serve an older population, while adjusting to younger generations who
won’t live and work in ways of past generations. We need to build tools that are adaptable and
agile. In short, we not only want our city to be smart, we want our approach to be smart.
Norfolk’s Vision is also influenced by a different relationship with climate change than may be
typical. That of a city, and road network, that will be seriously impacted by sea level rise, and while
not only learning to adapt and survive, must thrive. Our vision for planning and expenditures
must focus on long-term and lasting success – not quick fixes. After population decline to the
suburbs fairly typical of core cities in the latter 20
th
century, Norfolk’s population is rebounding
in this century in no small part due to an impressive array of City and private redevelopment and
investment. That continues and there is substantial land ripe for mixed-use redevelopment that
is pedestrian oriented, with access to bus and light-rail transit. Norfolk’s approach for reducing
oil reliance and carbon footprint is to incent a shift in regional population growth back to the
core, to renewed reliance on pedestrian, bicycle and transit travel, resulting in reductions of
annual VMT in the millions, according to a 2003 Smart Growth Analysis conducted by the
Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization (HRTPO).
In addition, while Norfolk continues to embark on an aggressive flooding prevention and
mitigation plan (see Section 3 for more details), we must deal with the reality of “managing” our
system, keeping our residents and visitors safe and sufficiently mobile, particularly for essential
services, during periodic flood events that are unavoidable. Coupled with other “reliability”
issues faced in our region due to limited connectivity and water crossings, we have the most to
gain by addressing non-recurring congestion. To wit, the HRTPO compiled national statistics of
similar-sized cities and found that this region fared very poorly in travel time reliability measures,
and further that this predominantly accounted for its comparatively high congestion ranking.
Our Vision for Addressing the Challenges of Mobility and Climate Change in Norfolk
Ultimately, the implementation of our Vision will have the following outcomes:
Safer Multimodal Travel – a result of actions at network/system level down to street conflicts
Facilitate Smart Growth, mode and temporal shifts, trip reduction – the overall reduction of
regional Vehicle Miles of Travel and greenhouse-gas emissions
Improved travel reliability – a key for our area, addressing the majority of our congestion and
barriers to synergy amongst the urban core cities, and the resiliency issues of periodic flooding.
Improved accessibility to jobs, goods, services and social life; mitigate the negative aspects of
urban travel through system management, information, smart land-use and digital accessibility.
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City of Norfolk
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With these critical foundational principles, and our “special” traits in mind, Norfolk proposes major
“Smart City” project efforts in three areas, all supported and interrelated by a fourth, a robust
information management system. This approach for the funding will address all Norfolk and
USDOT Vision Elements – more information on those particulars is provided in Section 5.
Key Project Area One: Develop Norfolk “Intelligent Mobility App” and Intelligent Sensing
Easy-to-receive-and-process, actionable information for travelers will be orders of
magnitude above current practice. We will build upon the great work of our partners.
Primary goals will include mode-shift and route/time-shift supportive information
Advance concepts of low-cost system data acquisition from existing, leveraged resources
Integrate intermodal and transit vehicle monitoring for traffic management functions
Leverage the tool by integrating other public and private services to “un-waste” time.
Expand to the “Intelligent Community Platform” as other service platforms evolve.
Key Project Area Two: Connected and Automated Vehicles Development and Testing Support
Norfolk has and is actively expanding/upgrading ATMS infrastructure that allows easy
installation of CV-related devices. “Real-Life-Issues” V2I testing and evaluation on
urbanized arterials should be happening nationally in this time frame and the City will
provide an outstanding test environment and support from local to international experts.
City staff will bring an important perspective as traffic signal operators and maintainers
that should enhance concept troubleshooting and testing design.
We will expand the “connected” concept to all users, not just vehicles, and to a broader
vehicle spectrum, through adaptations using DSRC technology in smartphones.
Our full proposal will elaborate on a collaborative R&D support approach consistent with
the current state of research. One certainty, we know that our approach must include
“change management” as the state of practice will undoubtedly evolve as we proceed.
More details on our system and proposed “test bed” are contained in sections 3, 4 and 5.
Key Project Area Three: Develop Active “Eco” Traffic
Operations Management Tools/Systems
We will focus first on high-impact strategies at
critical locations subject to extreme incident-
induced stress or impassable roads.
Innovative and flexible capacity-enhancing
intersection operations including variable cycle, phasing and lane-utilization strategies,
facilitated by the platforms of intelligent vehicles and sensing, and other partner systems.
Integration of Pedestrian, Bicyclist and Transit utility and safety enhancements. Norfolk is
a strong proponent and an ideal setting for Complete Streets and compact development.
Central System rapid-action signal management tools elevating TMC performance.
Visualization and active flow-chart based decision-support tools for operators (human
operators are still the most valuable tools in the box).
Fulfillment
Key Project Area
Outcome
1
2
3
Safety
Mode/Time Shift
Reliability
Accessibility