Rachel McCleery is the executive director for SAFE's Coalition for Reimagined Mobility, which supports accelerating real-world deployment of secure and resilient U.S. transportation systems. SAFE is a non-partisan, nonprofit policy think tank focused on the intersection of national security with energy, transportation and supply chain resilience. For American cities, the World Cup was more than a sporting event. It was a national stress test. Across the country, host cities moved unprecedented numbers of fans through streets, sidewalks, highways, stadium districts and downtown corridors, often under intense time pressure and global scrutiny. The result could have been paralysis. But in many places, it was experimentation. Technologies and systems that had long been stuck in pilot programs, planning documents or procurement limbo suddenly became real. Smart traffic signals, real-time data sharing, lidar-enabled traffic monitoring, new shuttle networks and tournament-specific transit systems moved from “someday” to “game day.” Innovative digital infrastructure solutions for transportation are here. In many cases, these solutions are faster, better and cheaper than building new physical infrastructure. The question now is whether we treat these innovations as temporary World Cup fixes or as the beginning of a smarter, safer and more efficient transportation future. In Arlington, Texas, traffic engineers used the World Cup as an opportunity to expand smart signaling to reduce congestion after a successful pilot program. The city deployed the AI-powered platform NoTraffic, an Israeli-developed radar and livestream video detection system that differentiates between vehicle types, cyclists and pedestrians, automatically adjusting signal timing in real time. The $600,000 investment, covering about 30 intersections in the Entertainment District around AT&T Stadium, came after a 2023 pilot triggered by a World Series parade that drew three to four times the crowd. Kansas City, Missouri, which lacks the direct transit infrastructure of coastal host cities, built a new tournament-specific bus