The Challenge
I-35 slices through the City of Waco, cleaving students at Baylor University, residents in public housing, and others from access to commercial and social interests. Businesses in downtown lack foot traffic and the city is designed to be car centric. Waco’s multi-mode downtown Transit Center serves vulnerable communities but is negatively impacted by increased travel time caused by its downtown traffic signals.
After decades of falling short in prioritizing equitable accessibility and overall quality of life for its residents, the City of Waco, TX, has recognized the opportunity technology brings as an enabler to deliver a measurable positive impacts for people, businesses, students, and university staff.
Stakeholder Needs
The Waco Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) is advancing a set of scalable plans and demonstrations to prove that next-generation, integrated mobility technology can reduce friction across transportation modes and contexts.
The MPO applies Systems Engineering discipline to ensure controlled implementation, direct traceability from objectives to outcomes, and the ability to scale in SMART Stage 2. They seek evidence that the solution will stimulate downtown economic activity, support job creation, improve student mobility, and build advanced technical capacity within Waco’s planning and transportation agencies.
SCMC Contribution
- Strategic Advisory & Use-Case Development: SCMC helped the MPO define use cases that directly link mobility challenges to measurable outcomes. These use cases formed the backbone of the successful U.S. DOT SMART Grant awarded in summer 2025.
- Project Management & Systems Engineering QA: After the project launch in October 2025, SCMC provided project management support, quality assurance on Systems Engineering deliverables, and proactive risk mitigation through Stage 1 implementation.
- Stakeholder Needs, Prioritization & Stage-2 Preparation: SCMC is helping define stakeholder mobility needs, prioritize use cases, and develop Stage-2 budget and investment scenarios to support the full SMART Stage-2 application.
Results (so far)
- The MPO has aligned all major stakeholders including City Council, Police, TxDOT, Traffic Engineering, IT, local businesses, schools, Baylor University, cyclists, and representatives of the visually impaired, around a shared set of outcomes.
- Outcomes are defined in terms of tangible benefits to Waco’s residents, businesses, and student communities.
- Technology is positioned strictly as an enabler, embedded in revised operational processes, clarified roles and responsibilities, and a transparent performance and success-metrics framework.