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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
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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.

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.

(Source: sustainablecitiescollective.com)

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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

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

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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?

(Source: The New York Times)
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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

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

(Source: edparsons.com)

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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)

(via opentransportation)
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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)

(via opentransportation)