"Computer scientists do applications, but they’re disconnected from the realities of how transportation systems actually operate and how they’ve been designed," he explained. "And physicists working in complex systems are the same–very, very disconnected from real systems. We’re all trying to work on Smart Cities from different perspectives."

via Alexey Pozdnukhov: Smartphones and Smart Cities | ITS.Berkeley.edu.

I am optimistic, but only time will tell how important having domain knowledge actually is.

Tablets are mounted in the bus so drivers can easily keep track of when they’re running ahead or behind schedule by glancing at the colored bars, each representing a minute, instead of conversing with dispatchers. Red bars tell drivers to slow down, green bars to proceed normally. The blue bars indicate the driver is on schedule.

via A Cure for Bus Bunching | ITS.Berkeley.edu.

Reminiscent of our backwards propagating traffic wave demo at Transportation@MIT hackathon. Suggests the idea of a game, which could very well provide the motivation to smooth out highway traffic.

Further, many organisations and companies do not fully understand the specific needs of different urban solutions. A new system can only be fully implemented when the developer understands its target culture. Whilst a sudden change in the Netherlands transport payment system might challenge the everyday Dutch commuter, it works spectacularly well in South Korea, where the T-Money system was introduced with few glitches. The reasons why it works so well are simple: first, Korean consumers are, on the whole, very receptive to new technologies and ideas and constantly seek new alternatives to daily habits. Secondly, all Seoul stations are designed in the way that passengers cannot exit without going through a barrier and scanning the smartcard. If you don’t have enough credit on your card, you can reload it at a machine located conveniently near the barrier. Further, in 2004, Seoul’s Metropolitan Government linked up with the electronics firm, LG Group, along with other credit card and telecommunications companies, in order to enable this credit application. Since its launch, the Korean Government has generated an average of $46m profit a day – enabling Seoul’s metro to become absolutely paper-free, and creating savings of over $31m since 2012. Anyone can purchase and recharge their cards at stations, banks, convenient stores and kiosks, and the credit can be used in lieu of cash or credit cards in stores, fast-food restaurants and car parks. It is simple, appealing and available to everyone – but just because this digital fix works in South Korea, doesn’t mean it can be adopted in every city.

via Fare Enough — How Smart Technology Could Waste Commuter Time and Money | Sua Son.

Last year, my colleagues at Stamen and I used a grant from the ZERO1 Biennial in San Jose (with the support of the James Irvine Foundation) to follow the corporate commuter shuttles around San Francisco, count people getting on and off them, and collate and combine their reports into a map of the area’s clandestine private transportation network.

In short, it’s reverse sprawl.

Once we realized how easy it was to tell who was getting on the shuttles and how easy it was to find out where they were (using Foursquare), we hatched the idea of using the project commission to hire people (using TaskRabbit) to do the same all over the city. We also hired bike messengers to follow the shuttles and construct the routes they took, and asked them to use our Field Papers project to document the results on paper, since a lot of the stops are in areas you don’t necessarily want to be standing in with a laptop for several hours.

via Mapping Silicon Valley's Gentrification Problem Through Corporate Shuttle Routes | Wired Opinion | Wired.com.

HT Jason

Needless to say, the possibilities for improvements are endless. We’ve just embarked on a path that can bring together the visionary transportation engineers, architects, urban planners and information technology experts who are willing to collaborate on the design process and flesh out its flaws to make the dream of building the world’s fastest and safest transit system a reality.

via Opinion: Ride the Hyperloop before decade's end? – CNN.com.

By Saurabh Amin