Open Data Ottawa

Google Transit: How (and Why) the Search Giant is Remapping Public Transportation

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:10:33 -0500

Google Transit: How (and Why) the Search Giant is Remapping Public Transportation :

Long article on Google Transit including GTFS and GTFS-realtime formats.

DATA eh? Interviews Reham Gorgis, Open Data Coordinator, City of Toronto

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:11:00 -0500

DATA eh? Interviews Reham Gorgis, Open Data Coordinator, City of Toronto:

DATA eh?: Tell us what you do as part of the team.

RG: I help coordinate all the requests for data that come to us through various channels like twitter and the Open Data mail box (opendata@toronto.ca). I sort these into ones needing answers that I can provide or ones I can’t answer and have to send to division staff. Beyond that, I also initiate contact with the client divisions – introduce City staff to the initiative and set up initial appointments so we can get to know their area and what data they have and host.

Open Data Ottawa / OC Transpo GPS API

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:37:20 -0500

Open Data Ottawa / OC Transpo GPS API:

Discussion forum for OC Transpo GPS open data questions: http://groups.google.com/group/open-data-ottawa—oc-tranpo-gps-api/topics

OC Transpo's GPS data to be made public

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:34:00 -0500

OC Transpo's GPS data to be made public :

The quest for open data in Ottawa has been put back on track after the city’s transit commission announced it will release OC Transpo’s GPS data to the public on March 22.

…

Alex Lougheed, a Centretown resident and advocate for the group Open Data Ottawa, has been helping lead the effort to win the release of OC Transpo’s GPS data to the public. The decision to comply means Ottawa will take another giant step forward to becoming an open data city, he says.

nycdigital: Check out the Health Department’s new mobile NYC...

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:32:16 -0500

nycdigital:

Check out the Health Department’s new mobile NYC Condom page: go to NYC.gov/condom on your smartphone.

Adventures (in code) - Alastair Coote: Think all government data is boring? Think again: a showcase of location data you want to use.

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:30:43 -0500

Adventures (in code) - Alastair Coote: Think all government data is boring? Think again: a showcase of location data you want to use.:

nycopendata:

Great post by one of our Reinvent NYC.gov Hackathon winners, Alastair Coote:

alastaircoote:

There’s a ton of government data out there- you probably already know that. But it’s no good to you, right? Education statistics, financial reports… very important stuff, of course, but kind of… dry. Not exactly “every day use” sort of stuff.

Well, I’m going to try to challenge that perception a little. I signed up for a contest called NYC BigApps, which is a city-run competition to encourage use of city data. I was pleasantly surprised by the data I found. So, I thought that for a little bit of Friday fun I’d run through some of the more interesting and unexpected geo datasets. At the end, I’m going to discuss how I’m using NYC open data in my BigApps entry, Taxonomy.

The embedded maps you see are provided by CartoDB, which rocks. Seriously, go check it out. Each of the markers are clickable, giving you a sample of what data is available. The data, of course, comes from the NYC Open Data web site. I’m sure other cities have similar data out there- and if they don’t, urge them to release it.

WiFi hotspots

An absolute no-brainer, this one. Everyone needs a WiFi connection every now and then, and this dataset shows you their locations, and whether they are free or paid (in the map above, green is free, orange is paid). The world is crying out for ratemywifi.com - how’s the connection speed? Does the guy behind the counter get angry when you only order one small coffee every four hours? Do you get a cool IP address or some lame 192.168 handout? What’s the hacker to amateur novelist ratio? Surely a billion dollar IPO awaits.

Filming Locations

File this one under “I never even thought of this before”. A ton of stuff gets filmed in New York every year, and of course permits need to be approved before the cameras can roll. It turns out that the New York government has made that data public, going all the way back to the 60’s and before. Maybe next time your friends visit you can assemble a walking tour of your favourite movies. Fun fact: NYC BigApps entry Scene Near Me uses this data to text you when you check in near a filming location.

Public Bathroom Locations

OK, OK, this isn’t exactly the sexiest dataset going, but don’t try to tell me you wouldn’t use it. Whether you’re in Central Park or just out shopping, no-one wants to buy a coffee just so that you can go to the bathroom- it’s only going to make you need to go again in half an hour. Never was there a greater resource for the public good - bathroo.my, anyone?

Parking Locations

I don’t own a car, but I’ve heard they’re quite popular. I also heard at the BMW iVentures launch partythat parking in the city is an utterly miserable experience. So it was pleasing to see that the city has an open directory of parking garages, even including the number of parking spots in each one. As you may be able to tell from the map above, there are quite a few.

How I’m using NYC Open Data

As I said at the start of the post, I’ve used NYC Open Data myself, in my NYC BigApps entry. One sits at the heart of the app- it’s the taxi driver dataset. I use it to allow Taxonomy users to review their taxi driver- the idea is that over time we collect feedback on the best and worst drivers, as well as tracking which ones take the most efficient routes, and which ones don’t know their way around.

I made another- more fun- data mashup, though. I wanted the map in my app to be dark rather than the usual Google Maps bright and bold, so I made custom map tiles. As part of that process, I used the following datasets:

Building Perimeter Outlines

Street Centerline

Roadbed

(from the NYC DoITT GIS downloads section) to create the higher zoom-level maps. I’m very happy with the way they turned out, and I’d encourage you to give them a try next time you’re making a map-based app or site:

Taxonomy is available in the App Store, and even has a web site for you to find out more.

"Consider the following scenario: a Quebec government that freely offers provincial data instead of..."

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:28:00 -0500

“Consider the following scenario: a Quebec government that freely offers provincial data instead of censoring, rejecting, or charging for information requests. A government that invites citizens to help find solutions to the province’s problems, instead of talking down to them.”

- The push for open government (Montreal Gazette)

"Alex Lougheed, spokesperson for the local advocacy group Open Data Ottawa, said the group is..."

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 07:52:45 -0500

“Alex Lougheed, spokesperson for the local advocacy group Open Data Ottawa, said the group is “super excited” about this next stage in the ongoing process of fighting for open data. In the end, it was community pressure that led to this success, said Lougheed, a Centretown resident. That pressure went beyond the open data community and tech-minded developers because transit users are able to see the benefit and express that to councillors and commissioners. “There is a lot of genuine demand for this stuff,” Lougheed said, who handed out “certificates of awesome” to transit commission members to thank them for their support.”

- OC Transpo agrees to release GPS data - News - By Laura Mueller Ottawa South Local Community News

nycdigital: ChallengePost’s Brandon Kessler speaking at the MTA AppQuest Award Ceremony,...

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 06:58:41 -0500

nycdigital:

ChallengePost’s Brandon Kessler speaking at the MTA AppQuest Award Ceremony, “Government can do so much more when it works with the public and makes itself a platform.”

Traditional city maps visualize just one aspect of urban...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:19:00 -0500

Traditional city maps visualize just one aspect of urban design—the city’s intended structure, full stop. But add in a layer that visualizes how people actually use the city, and then the map becomes much more interesting. Eric Fischer did exactly that when he used Twitter’s API to collect tens of thousands of geotagged tweets and map them onto the streets of New York, Chicago, and the San Francisco Bay area. The maps amount to something close to adesire path on a macro scale: The maps show where our buses and subways should be, if they conformed to the way we actually move and live.

US national government placing such a high priority on better...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:08:40 -0500

US national government placing such a high priority on better transit information that the CTO of the USA and the Deputy Secretary of Transportation convened a discussion “to see what we can do to help millions more transit riders get better access to information”.

‘Other agencies around the country are less certain about opening their data to the public. [US CTO] Aneesh Chopra reminded particpants that the experience of the Obama Administration’s Open Gov initiative suggests that, “Openness empowers people with information to make decisions.”’

Fast Lane - the Official Blog of the US Secretary of Transportation - Transit apps empower riders with information - January 24, 2012

/via @bthubbard

DLD Conference: App World Panel

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:41:23 -0500

DLD Conference: App World Panel:

dld:

A combination of young talent and entrepreneurship took the stage for the App World panel, moderated by Hubert Burda Media’s own Patrick Wölke.

With the panel made up from Summly’s Nick D’Aloisio, Amen’s Felix Petersen, Mobile Roadie’s Michael Schneider and Khoya’s Shilo Siv Suleman,…

In the word’s of the panel’s youngest participant; “there are a lot of 13-year-old app developers out there.”

"New York - If Mr. Russianoff were at the bargaining table, he would ask that countdown clocks on..."

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:27:55 -0500

“New York - If Mr. Russianoff were at the bargaining table, he would ask that countdown clocks on subway platforms be installed at a faster pace; they’ve made it thus far to less than 40 percent of the system’s 468 stations. Elsewhere on the technology front, he’d like swifter adoption of Bus Time, a service that enables riders to use their cellphones to find out how much longer it may be before their bus arrives.”

- New York Times - A Voice for the Riders, Lost Amid Transit Talks. What’s on the mind of Metropolitan Transportation Authority commuters?

One of the benefits of getting comprehensive public transport...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:12:13 -0500

One of the benefits of getting comprehensive public transport information fully integrated in Google Maps is the potential to include public transport in all forms of local search. An example of this is the experiment launched over the weekend to search for hotels based upon a travel time from a location. In the example below searching for Hotels within 25 minutes of the Google Office

"TheTransitWire.com says: Saturday was my first time at TransportationCamp, the so-called..."

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:08:39 -0500

“TheTransitWire.com says: Saturday was my first time at TransportationCamp, the so-called “unconference” that brings together transportation and data enthusiasts in a one-day event to explore the intersection of urban transportation and technology. OpenPlans organized the event. A couple of hundred participants converged at the School Without Walls on an icy morning, and the first order of business was to stand up, introduce ourselves, and offer three key words.”

- TransportationCamp comes to DC…and The Transit Wire was there (via opentransportation)

"This started as a standard “why don’t agencies release more open data?” discussion but Michael..."

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:07:45 -0500

“This started as a standard “why don’t agencies release more open data?” discussion but Michael Frumin of the MTA summed up the nagging problem I had with this session way more eloquently than I ever could. His argument was that we can sit around and list all the reasons that agencies are reluctant to open up their data, rehashing the same discussions that have been happening at events like TransportationCamp DC over the last five years, but the people from agencies who need to hear those discussions generally are never in the room. How do things really change? Politics - the tried and true method of lobbying the decision makers at the top that open data is important so that the staff within the agencies who can actually make open data happen have an institutional mandate to do so. The arguments are the same but each battle is specific - coordinated campaigns to reach out to the people who matter like council members and general managers - to convince them that this is important. I think the challenge for events like TransportationCamp is that there isn’t a lot of institutional memory across events quite yet, so we spend a lot of time rehashing introductory discussions. Which is not to say that great work isn’t happening at TC on this front, but I think we can do even better.”

- Great summary of three sessions at TransportationCamp DC from Brian Ferris, in I had a lot of good conversations at TransportationCamp DC…. Check his full post for details of the Standards Throwdown and the provocatively-titled “Does it really matter?” (via opentransportation)

OC Transpo GPS Data discussion

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:32:12 -0500

OC Transpo GPS Data discussion:

Ottawa developer Jonathan Rudenberg (@titanous) put together a Storify collection of tweets showing the broad interest in OC Transpo realtime gps open data.

Storify: OC Transpo GPS Data discussion

"Today in Washington, the “School without Walls was full of of civic energy around open data, tech,..."

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:26:46 -0500

“Today in Washington, the “School without Walls was full of of civic energy around open data, tech, community, bikes, smart cities, systems, efficiency, sustainability, accessibility, trains, buses, hacking, social networking, research, policy, crowdsourcing and more. Transportation Camp, an “unconference” generated by its attendees, featured dozens of sessions on all of those topics and more. As I’ve reported before, transit data is open government fuel for economic growth. Below, the stories told in the tweets from the people show how much more there is to the world of transit than data alone. Their enthusiasm and knowledge made the 2012 iteration of Transportation Camp in the District a success.”

- Great Storify from Alex Howard: Transportation Camp DC gets geeky about the present and future of transit (who also led two sessions today). (via opentransportation)

The fight for Ottawa realtime transit open data

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:28:00 -0500

The fight for Ottawa realtime transit open data:

Great coverage of the news so far from @scilib

Science Library Pad - In the news: Fight for Ottawa realtime transit open data

OC Transpo realtime GPS data belongs to citizens

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:58:00 -0500

Isn’t #OCTranspo GPS data that we all paid for? http://cot.ag/zSc2OP. Why not make all #OTTCITY operational information open source? #YOW
— Metro Ottawa (@metroottawa) January 18, 2012

Above tweet linking to a news story from @MetroOttawa is just one example of the many news reports today about the OC Transpo open data issue.