Unreliable Data, Contract Issues Slow San Diego's Smart Streetlights Program

In 2017, the city of San Diego began to plan for a smart streetlights program that would provide democratized, anonymous data on real-time movement of vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists to planners and developers. Initially funded by a loan from General Electric, the city teamed up with the private Boston-based company GE Current to launch the program. "The company was promising to fundamentally transform the way the public interacts with its government and its neighbors with data," imparts Jesse Marx. 

More than three years since the formation of the partnership issues with unreliable data and difficulties with the installation of the smart streetlights, there is concern that the program is not living up to its original promotional promises including using the sensors to help drivers find open parking spots across the city. "The city’s Sustainability Department has been looking at the data to see how stay-at-home orders are changing pedestrian activity, but officials said they were unaware of any public-facing apps that had been developed yet," writes Marx.

Despite weekly requests for access to data, researchers and developers are unable to create the kinds of apps promised to improve quality of life for San Diego residents because of faulty, incorrect, or unavailable data. According to Marx, only about a dozen of the 3,000 streetlights are producing information.  

Technologist and the director of the San Diego Regional Data Library says that San Diego is not alone in its difficulties of implementing new big data systems, citing an underestimation of the effort involved in these projects. In addition, while San Diego owns the raw data collected by sensors, GE Current owns all of the analyzed data as a result of the original contract. City officials will present details to the City Council later in 2020. Moving forward, the city aims to bring between five and ten sensors into the network on a weekly basis. With a budget deficit of about $300 million, Mayor Kevin Faulconer hopes to maintain the $1.3 million in annual funding for the project.