Paul Soglin: Waxing America

City of Madison Recruitment Ads

You may have noticed new ads on the sides of City of Madison Metro buses. The ads, or bus wraps, are the result of a combined effort between the City of Madison Human Resources Department and the Public Works agencies to recruit women and people of color for city employment! The bus wraps, which will run for four weeks, feature Streets Department employees Rachel and Felix.

Staff took it a step further, including two Parks employees, Charles and Juan, in the Metro Ride Guide, advertising seasonal Laborer opportunities.

The bus wraps and Ride Guide ads are a great demonstration of the City of Madison’s commitment to hiring a diverse, and representative work force to serve all residents.

City Bowling Tournament

It was nice to see so many City employees coming together for the City Bowling Tournament recently. Every year participating City of Madison agencies put together a bowling team that gets matched up with another agency. This year staff headed out to Bowlavard Lanes for the friendly competition.

Heidi Fischer, from the City of Madison Planning Division, took the fun a step further last year, organizing a food drive for Second Harvest in conjunction with the bowling tournament.  This year the tradition continued and I am proud to hear that City employees raised $1,093.67, which will provide for 3,281 meals, and collected 221 pounds of canned food items, which will provide for 184 meals! Thank you to Heidi & her team in Economic Development for their leadership and to all those who contributed. It is great to see such generosity from City of Madison staff.

 

 

 

Madison's Platinum Status as a Bicycle Friendly Community

I am delighted that the State Assembly passed an Assembly Joint Resolution congratulating the City of Madison on our recent achievement of Platinum status as a Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclists. We appreciate the recognition from our State Representatives! Special thanks to State Representative Lisa Subeck for all of her work. Without the hard work and collaboration between Madison B-Cycle, Trek, Madison's cyclers, and City of Madison officials, we could not have made it this far. Congratulations to all and keep up the good work!

From left: Representative Taylor; Arthur Ross, City of Madison Pedestrian-Bicycle Coordinator; Scott Langer, Assistant Traffic Engineer; Alder Clear, Representative Subeck; Representative Berceau; Representative Sargent; Representative Kahl

Smart Madison. Shared Madison.

How should Madison design its future smart transportation system? How will we use smart transportation technology to get around?

Those are the questions we are asking you to respond to so we can better prepare our proposal for the $50 million Smart Cities Challenge.

The Smart Cities challenge, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation and Vulcan, asks mid-sized cities to submit their visions for a smart transportation future. One city will win the prize intended to launch the Intelligent Transportation revolution. This will include: Driverless and electric vehicles; automated transit corridors; vehicle-to-vehicle communication; advanced parking management; and open data sharing facilitating a truly multimodal system.

We envision a transportation future in which shared data creates a more equitable and responsive transit system. People have the information they need to make the best transportation choice for each trip, and connections between transportation modes are easy and intuitive. Frequent buses serve main routes, while on-demand shuttles connect people to destinations across the city - day and night. Connected vehicles find the most efficient routes and drivers are guided to the best parking spots from blocks away. A smart delivery system connects regional farmers and other producers with city vendors and buyers. Without building or expanding roads, we create a safer, cleaner community and protect Madison’s environment.

Share your ideas at www.cityofmadison.com/smartmadison

We will be collecting ideas until January 18, 2016.