“Sometimes you have to go slow to go fast,” said Aparna Dial, the city’s program manager for Smart Columbus. “You have to be thoughtful with what you’re doing.”

The grants from the federal government and Vulcan Inc. span four years. Payouts will start in July. In general, the city should do a lot of heavy lifting in the first three years to implement the ideas laid out in its proposal. The fourth year largely will be about collecting data and evaluating how the technology is working. “This is not stuff that has been tested for 10 years,” said Rory McGuiness, deputy director in the city’s department of development. “The book on autonomous vehicles is being written now.”