Columbus, Ohio was awarded the largest grant.

Also on the table is Flow, Sidewalk Labs’ “transportation platform” that uses aggregated, anonymous traffic data to help city managers identify bottlenecks or redirect trains and buses to transit-starved neighborhoods. Aggarwala says that by working with these 16 cities, Sidewalk Labs will be able to improve Flow as a product.

And of course, if the cities want to eventually buy Flow, it seems likely that Sidewalk Labs, a for-profit company, will be happy to sell it to them — although Aggarawala said repeatedly that this wasn’t “a sales effort.”

Platform,HUH.  Information gathering and anaylzing, HUH.