July 2011
3 posts
1 tag
4 tags
Cab share scheme would ease afternoon traffic in... →
I’d love to go there. This via the Cyprus Mail:
The communications ministry scheme involves creating a central call centre for people to contact for afternoon activities, such as pupils’ private lessons. The centre will then coordinate the calls and notify a taxi, which can then pick up groups of pupils who are going in the same direction.
The scheme would cut the number of private...
June 2011
3 posts
3 tags
Better Data & Apps Improve Public Transit Usage
More data, please.
From TechDirt: We’ve noted before the odd fact that various transit authorities around the globe have been trying to stop people from making useful transit apps, with things like schedules and whatnot. The argument from those transit authorities is incredibly short-sighted. It usually has something to do with claims about how the scheduling data is...
May 2011
4 posts
“In transportation, we are shying away from major new projects like high-speed...”
– Yonah Freemark, “A Note on the Future of American Transportation” (via newleft)
March 2011
1 post
4 tags
Transportation Camp: Don't Think of an App
If I had to pick one important lesson I took away from the thought-provoking Transportation Camp this weekend — and I’m glad that I don’t really have to, because there were piles of good ideas and people, and I was only there for day 2 — it would be this idea that Kevin Webb articulated before the (un)conference began (some of which i’ve posted in his words at the...
October 2010
1 post
3 tags
Important Service Advisory: We're Moving to Weeels...
After a few months of quietude, the Social Transit Research Lab is moving its transit futures discussion over to the tumblr for Weeels, the mobile app we’ve built specifically for social transit in NYC.
blog.weeels.org
Follow us there for more ideas about the future of networked transportation, thoughts about the culture of sharing, and for lively discussion on how to make make transit...
September 2010
3 posts
2 tags
Could Social Media Revolutionise the Planning...
smartercities:
thisbigcity:
With social media services allowing people to tag the locations of the photos they’ve uploaded, check-in to shops, bars and parks online, and have geolocation attached to their tweets, it’s clear that online technologies and the city are becoming increasingly integrated, with no signs of this stopping. This data is accessible and is already being utilised by a...
3 tags
Mind the Gap: We're so behind in rail... →
The last large-scale, national surface transportation initiative that took place in the United States was the Interstate Highway System (and that began in the 1950s). The 1950s.
Since then, that ambitious system has been completed and many areas of it are regularly and severely congested,…
June 2010
1 post
5 tags
Real-Time Mapping of the London Underground
An interesting model for other cities — and not very hard to implement given the real-time transit data that’s increasingly out there. Next: cars.
smartercities:
The Internet IS a Series of Tubes: Real-Time Mapping of the London Underground | ReadWriteWeb
Two of our favorite topics to geek out over here at ReadWriteWeb are the real-time Web and the Internet of Things. Today,...
May 2010
6 posts
2 tags
IBM Global Delivery challenge: Social...
Social road transport implies two things: people share vehicles and vehicles share roads.
StarLab is a not-for-profit research, development, and production organization dedicated to the propagation of social transport practices. We hope to implement a new form of transit - social transportation, a transportation protocol wherein resources are shared or coordinated to increase the utility,...
1 tag
Cities as Programmable Operating Systems
Instead of idling in frustration about the delayed bus or subway, the potholes in the street, hazardous traffic signals on a particular corner, or the never-ending lines at Whole Foods, cities are capable of moving towards a read/write urbanism, where they will operate like programmable software.
Bruce Sterling imagines how the future interface of the metropolis might operate:
An...
2 tags
Sharing: The New Recycling
From Sharable.net
Over at the wonderful Streetsblog, Shareable friend Chris Carlsson reminds us that curbside recycling was once considered a wacky, far-out idea. “We tend to take curbside recycling for granted,” writes Chris. “It seems like common sense, and these days the ubiquitous three bins are everywhere: black for landfill, blue for recyclables, and most recently green...
Smarter Cities: Intelligent Traffic Systems and... →
As someone once said, “Anybody driving faster than you is a maniac and anyone going slower is an idiot.” This little statement really applies to Bangalore. This model provides an intelligent mechanism to solve traffic management problem in “Namma Bengaluru”. IBM can involve with the state…
April 2010
5 posts
1 tag
The Future of the City: A Review of the RPA's 20th...
George Orwell was wrong. Although he said advanced technology would create authoritarianism, it actually creates decentralization and democratization.
That was the message of Julia Vitullo-Martin, the director of the Center for Urban Innovation of the Regional Planning Association (RPA) at the RPA’s annual conference, “Innovation and the American Metropolis,” held in New York...
1 tag
MTA Flood Mitigation Streetscape Design wins Urban...
MTA has a new flood mitigation policy for New York City. Rogers Marvel Architects, with di Domenico & Partners and Stantec have implemented a new project to protect the subway from excessive water in times of flooding. Most of the New York City’s excess floodwater pours through sidewalk grates, often directly into the subway system, leading to delays and electrical damage, for example,...
NYC Taxi: Out From Behind the Weeel
Yassky: The drivers are our customers.
The first complaint from the Taxi drivers is illegal street hails.
Taxes on Yellow taxis go to the MTA. Black cars don’t collect these taxes.
Digital Urbanisms: CFP for "Designing the Hybrid... →
Organized by the folks at The Mobile City and The Virtueel Platform, Designing the Hybrid City is a conference “on the role of digital media and technologies in urban design.” The conference is taking place at the Dutch Cultural Centre located at the World Expo in Shanghai from August 16-17…
1 tag
A smartphone app to locate parking spaces
Imagine not having to circle the block ceaselessly, searching for a legal parking spot. Soon this might be a reality.
San Francisco is testing out the “bump”, a four square inch battery-operated wireless sensing device, attached to the pavement adjacent to parking spots. The bumps will form a sensor network that will alert drivers of empty parking spaces either by street sign...
March 2010
19 posts
1 tag
An open-source platform for vehicle-to-vehicle...
Co-operative Vehicle-Infrastructure Systems (CVIS), an integrated project financed in part by the EU’s Sixth Framework Program for Research and Technological Development, presented extensive demonstrations in and around Amsterdam March 23-26 at the Cooperative Mobility Showcase. Over 60 leading industrial, governmental, and research organizations from across Europe have been collaborating on...
3 tags
Poke My Ride: Our Future Cars Will Talk To Traffic...
At SXSW Interactive, I listened to Peter Stone talk about a future of autonomous cars that would be able to navigate through traffic and fly through stop lights with little more than the push of a button. You’d just need to climb into the backseat, press “opaque” on your liquid crystal smart glass, turn on your hologoggles, hang on tight, and let the computer take care of the rest. A robot car...
1 tag
Wuhan Traffic Jam - Some Remarkable Statistics in...
During the opening panel of the Electrosmog Festival for Sustainable Immotility, Sasahivi media in Nairobi admit it takes them two to three hours to commute a meager distance of less than 3 km every day to go from home to work.
From the Panel:
“Architect Daan Roggeveen then connected with us from Xi’an international airport and explained that in their recent studies of Wuhan more...
1 tag
Not a computer, but a car: One Car Per Family
“One Car Per Family” -
Yves Béhar of FuseProject announced his new product last month at the Greener Gadgets conference in New York, a cute, green car aimed for developing nation civiliatns.
Inspired by what he learned as the industrial designer on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, Béhar presented a similarly conceived bare-bones automobile concept whose flexible design encourages...
“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the...”
– Nietzsche (via foyobli) (via ayatollahtamus) (via indiescribe) (via thedarkspark) (via unicornology) (via keeptheballrolling)
Transportation Secretary Announces "Sea-Change"...
From Fast Company:
The much-admired Ray LaHood announces a new emphasis on better bike lanes.
Ray LaHood, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, has just announced a “sea-change” in American transit planning: As he writes on his blog, “People across America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This is the end of favoring motorized...
1 tag
A new augmented reality app - Just point and...
Lonely Planet teamed with Mobilizy to create a new augmented reality app, catered to travelers, that uses your smartphone’s built in camera, GPS and compass. Just photograph a street corner, a cool cathedral, whatever - and get instant information from the web. Or search for hotspots (cool restaurants, bars, cafes…) nearby.
The Lonely Planet Compass, currently available now...
1 tag
Google Maps provides bicycle directions
The long-awaited bike directions are finally available through google maps, which take into account hills, street construction, traffic, street view, etc. Bike mapping is quite challenging, and this is still in beta, but more work is on the way.
Google Map Bike directions from the Empire State Building to City Hall
1 tag
Ride the City meets Facebook
New York bikers who are looking for someone to bike with can soon do so, with the development of Bike Buddy, designed by Transportation Alternatives.
Bike Buddy, at Streetsblog.org
New Yorkers seem reluctant to share cabs so far...
“In its combination of physical proximity and psychic distance, the taxi-sharing experiment sounded like a microcosm of New York. Like hearing your neighbor’s intimate moments through the bedroom wall, but not acknowledging him when you see him by the mailboxes. Or standing closer to a sweaty ogre on the subway than you ever would to your best friend, all the while willing your mind to...
SOFTWARE IS ARCHITECTURE!
some thoughts on the FUTURE
Some poignant points about the future for social transit thinking, from Dennis C:
I gave a talk at the Soho House today about interesting trends I’m seeing. I thought it was a Q&A session so I didn’t prepare anything, but then they asked us to talk for 10 minutes on THE FUTURE so I jotted down some notes real quick.
Posting this as a note to myself to write a blog post on some of this...
3 tags
February 2010
16 posts
“I wonder what Proust would have made of our present-day locus of collective...”
– Jennifer Egan NYTimes.com (via somethingchanged)
4 tags
WatchFrom Motherboard:
As if “street view” wasn’t enough amazing already, Microsoft’s latest volley in the map tech (or if you prefer, maptech) war against Google adds layers to Bing maps to let us see spaces in their “live” incarnations, using streaming video and Flickr photos. It’s part of a concept the Bingers call “spatial search,” and it’s only available for Seattle, San Francisco and Vancouver,...
