Blog
July 2010

Welcome to our blog. Through it, we hope to offer insight into or products and technology, as well as some general news that we hope may affect your transportation habits.

PARK(ing) Day - coming to a city near you

Yesterday, we closed the office doors her at Goose Networks and headed across the street to World Cup Alley, to watch the Uruguay v. Netherlands match. In the moments our attention wasn't fixed on the Flying Dutchmen and Diego Forlán's booming shots on goal, we noticed a small display for PARK(ing) Day.

The idea behind PARK(ing) Day is simple enough; a one-day event where artists, activists, and citizens independently but simultanesously transform metered parking spots into 'PARK(ing)' spaces, i.e. temporary public parks. Now an annual event in a handful of cities across the globe, PARK(ing) Day got it's start in San Francisco in 2005. There, an art collective known as Rebar, devised a creative exploration of how urban public space is allocated and used. For example, up to 70% of San Francisco's downtown outdoor space is dedicated to the vehicle, while only a fraction of that space is allocated to the public realm.

Rebar's premise: 'Paying the meter of a parking space enables one to lease precious urban real estate on a short-term basis. What is the range of possible activities for this short-term lease?' The 2005 result was a converted a single metered parking space into a temporary public park in an area of San Francisco that is underserved by public open space.

Today, PARK(ing) Day has grown into a global project as local organizations have begun to organize events in their own locales. Here in Seattle, the effort is being led by Feet First, a local non-profit dedicated to promoting walkable communities in the Puget Sound region, and is scheduled for Friday, September 17.

After the Netherlands 3-2 win, as I shuffled out of World Cup Alley alongside my 60 or so fellow spectators, I found myself thinking of how nice it was to share an experience with other local office workers, in a space normally reserved for trash pick-up and other less savory activities.

Would PARK(ing) day have a similar positive impact? I cerntainly hope so, though I suspect having the good fortune of a televised international sporting event wouldn't hurt...

Posted by Zac Corker on July 7, 2010.

Common standards are key for more successful online rideshare programs (Climate Change Business Journal)

Recently, Aaron Antrim, president of Trillium Transit Solutions, was interviewed for the Climate Change Business Journal's Transportation Edition. Here's an excerpt discussing Aaron's perspective on the online ridematching space and what drives successful programs in that space.

 

Indeed, using information technology to facilitate ridesharing and transit usage appears to be a growing business that can make these low-carbon travel modes more convenient and attractive. “We’ve see an evolution in the technology,” said Aaron Antrim, president of Trillium Transit Solutions (Portland, Ore.), a three-person IT consulting firm that specializes in helping small and medium-sized transit districts migrate their routes and schedules to Google Transit, the trip planner integrated in Google Maps that currently includes data for over 120 U.S. transit agencies.

“At first the iPhone could only plan driving trips, now it plans driving, transit and walking trips,” said Antrim. “Google Maps now includes biking directions, although that hasn’t shown up on the iPhone yet…. I think in the future mobile devices are going to become more and more powerful and useful for finding and comparing travel options, including transit, carpooling, walking, carshare, taxi, all the options, and compare them by cost and even greenhouse gas impact,” said Antrim. “Multimodal trip planning is going to be a killer app on mobile devices.”

Firms like Avego (Kinsale, Ireland) and Goose Networks (Seattle) are marketing web-enabled ridematching and commute management programs. Avego sells a system that incentivizes drivers to pick up passengers along their route because passengers pay a per-mile fee to defray costs. Goose Networks sells software and services to organizations that want to measure and report the impact of their members commute activities.

There are many regional ridesharing and car/vanpooling websites and ser- vices such as San Luis Obispo County’s iRideshare.org, Rideshare.com which sells monthly vanpool commuting packages ($139 a month for a 50-mile roundtrip) in the Northeast and Zimride.com which is focused on college students. And many people use Facebook or Twitter to find and share rides.

“There are many many different websites and companies out there, but few are really working because they’re not getting a critical mass of users,” said Antrim. “What successful companies like Goose Networks and Zimride have found is that they have to target a group of people with similar travel behavior, corporate campuses or educational institutions being the most common. They also need an external incentive or promotional program to sell the idea.” Antrim said the ridesharing business also needs a common data specification to allow potential users to find and compare their options from multiple services. “There are so many different sites and options that the user base is being divided up,” he said. “In fixed route transit, we have the General Transit Feed Specification for schedules, routes and fares. That doesn’t exist yet for carpooling.”

Posted by Zac Corker on July 5, 2010.
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