Transportation news, curated through an EECS lense. Special interest and emphasis on autonomous vehicles, scalable solutions, cost-efficient transit (e.g. busses), innovations in infrastructure, security, IU/UX, and insights into the behavioral/legal/ethical aspects.

Efficiencies and Regulatory Shortcuts: How Should We Regulate Companies like Airbnb and Uber? – Working Paper – Harvard Business School 2015-10-25 Enjoyed reading a comprehensive working paper from the Harvard Business School on the upsides, downsides, and potential downsides of two-sided markets (aka platforms); implications and challenges for the legal system with respect to regulating these new types of services. The paper suggests ending “protectionist” regulation and discusses negative externalities (many of which have initial evidence ...

Getting Over Uber — Backchannel — Medium 2015-10-25 Susan Crawford (Professor of Law) promotes improving taxis in urban areas, as a way to provide reliable and cost-effective mobility to people in general. Uber aims also to provide reliability, but the definitions are fundamentally different. This following trends makes sense, given the incentives (and purpose) of corporations to produce profit: Uber drivers have a tough time ...

From Mobile Data, Drawing Social Circles | MIT Spectrum | Fall 2015 2015-10-11 MIT CEE group utilized cell phone traces from 25mil people in 155 cities in France, Portugal, and Spain over 6 months (7+ bil records). Through this data, González and her team deduced that one-fifth of urban movement is for social purposes. González is currently working with the metropolitan planning office in the Saudi Arabian capital of ...

Greek town glimpses mass transit future: driverless buses – US News 2015-10-10 The buses go no faster than 20 kph (12 1/2 mph), but the trials in Trikala (pronounced TREE-kah-lah) potentially represent a major advance for automated transport. Trikala already has already tested EU-funded pilot medical programs, including schemes to relay heart test data from home to the doctor’s office and use tracker devices for Alzheimer patients. In ...

The Data You’ll Get Your Hands On | HubHacks 2 | ChallengePost 2015-03-19 Every 911 call made to Police with time and address (except domestic abuse) Every 911 call made to Fire with time. Address included only for non-medical calls. Every 911 call made to EMS. Every parking ticket written. GPS location of every bus every minute Every user reported alert (jam, double parked car, pothole, accident) on Waze Other City data including Permitting ...

AT&T to hook up its automated home and connected car services | Reuters 2015-03-13 AT&T said it had about 20 million connected devices from cars to cargo ship container sensors in 2014, up 21 percent from the year earlier. It has not yet revealed its revenue from its "Internet of Things" business. via AT&T to hook up its automated home and connected car services | Reuters. Ready for all sorts of ...

Apple Making a Car Isn’t as Ridiculous as You Think | WIRED 2015-02-15 For one, LinkedIn shows forty-six current Apple employees who were formerly at Tesla—rumors have it the company’s offering up to $250,000 and a 60 percent raise to those who agree to cross over—and 640 Apple employees with past experience in the automotive industry. The company has also been rumored to be aggressively recruiting engineers who ...

Image credit: Neil Kremer

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