City:One Challenge Winners Revealed In Austin

AUSTIN, TX — Officials on Tuesday announced the winning pilot proposals for the City:One Challenge, an effort to identify transportation challenges and proposals to improve mobility and enhanced access to health in the community.

Good Apple and Tappy Guide have been chosen as co-winners of the City:One Challenge, city officials revealed in a press advisory. Thanks to the addition of $50,000 in prize money from the Austin Transportation Department, the teams will split $150,000 in funding to test the implementation of their proposals in a real-world setting, officials noted.

Good Apple is an Austin-based produce delivery service aiming to increase reliable access to healthy groceries in East Austin. The service partners with local farmers in securing fresh fruits and vegetables that would otherwise go unsold before inspecting, packaging and delivering the food to local families. By delivering food directly to families’ homes, Good Apple hopes to create a reliable, healthy service that also gives valuable time back to working families, officials explained.

Tappy Guide is a mobile app that provides navigation guides for the visually impaired, hearing impaired, senior citizens and others with mobility impairments. In addition to offering guides for indoor and outdoor locations, Tappy Guide employs live advisers who can provide people the comfort of interacting with a real person to truly understand their surroundings and accessibility needs, officials said.

“How wonderful that our city will now realize and benefit from the vision of these standout, local winners of the City:One Challenge,” Austin Mayor Steve Adler said in a prepared statement. “Austin is an incubator of innovation and I love that some of our newest and best ideas have now been crowd-sourced.”

Further support for Good Apple and Tappy Guide will be provided by the Austin Technology Incubator at the University of Texas, which will offer in-kind services and membership to its incubator to the two Challenge winners, officials added. In addition to supporting the winners, the Austin Transportation Department and the Austin Transit Empowerment Fund are exploring further work with other Challenge finalists.

Launched in Austin this past June, the City:One Challenge is a crowd-sourcing platform created by Ford to help prepare cities for the future by identifying new mobility designs and innovations that could improve the way people get around their city. The platform brought together government officials, local residents, startups and entrepreneurs in an effort to understand mobility issues and design solutions.

City:One Challenge is sponsored by AT&T, Dell Technologies and Microsoft, whose participation is key in bringing such a diverse group of stakeholders together to solve for some of east Austin’s toughest mobility challenges.

“The selection of these winners wouldn’t be possible without the participation of Austin residents who brought up issues and put forward solutions based on their real-life experience of their city,” Jeff Jones, vice president, Ford City Solutions, said in a prepared statement. “For our cities to be successful, it’s crucial that local residents, businesses and governments all come together to identify opportunities for innovation – and our City:One Challenge is designed to do just that.”

After hosting a series of workshops with east Austin community members, City:One Challenge received more than 150 unique proposals for mobility solution pilots to address access to health. The Challenge’s steering committee, comprised of mobility industry experts, healthcare organizations, community leaders and local residents, selected 12 finalists. The finalists had the opportunity to work with the Austin Technology Incubator and participate in community immersion and racial equity experiences to further refine their proposals before the winners were selected.

Throughout the City:One Challenge, community members, finalists and other participants were encouraged to consider solutions that thoughtfully integrate the needs of the East Austin community while addressing the history of racial inequality in that part of the city, officials explained. The Challenge specifically asked the entrepreneurial community to submit proposals that would make an immediate impact in East Austin. Key opportunities included supporting families with mobility issues during unexpected health events; making it easier for people of color and immigrants to trust mobility services; delivering healthcare and health services to people when and where they wanted it; and better connecting neighborhoods to local health and transit hubs.

“The identified opportunities attracted creative thinkers, innovators, entrepreneurs and community advocates who wanted to pair their technologies with community insights, allowing us to continue to seek equitable access to health and transportation services for all Austinites,” Rob Spillar, Austin Transportation Department director, said in a prepared statement. “We look forward to working with these challenge finalists to address mobility and access to healthy living in East Austin.”

For more information on the finalists and other proposals that were submitted, visit the City:One Challenge website.

About the Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Co. is a global company based in Dearborn, Michigan. The company designs, manufactures, markets and services a full line of Ford cars, trucks, SUVs, electrified vehicles and Lincoln luxury vehicles, provides financial services through Ford Motor Credit Company and is pursuing leadership positions in electrification, autonomous vehicles and mobility solutions. Ford employs approximately 191,000 people worldwide.