Every day some of the world’s most respected companies and organizations depend on Goose's commuter management technology to promote, administer, and measure the impacts of their transportation initiatives. 

To help tell their story, and illustrate how your organization can leverage Goose technology to promote your own sustainable transportation goals, we're producing a series of customer case studies.

Our first case study profiles Venture, CA based Patagonia. Download the full-length case study (2 page) as a PDF, or read a summary online on our website.

This month marks the first of Goose Networks' monthly e-newsletters.   

On a more-or-less monthly basis, we'll be emailing out news to help keep our customers and friends informed of new features, service enhancements, and tips & suggestions on how to get the most out of our products. Occasionally, we'll include general news on efforts to advance sustainable transportation.

If you missed the February edition, you can view our first newsletter online.

We use the same technology to build the Goose e-newsletter that we provide to our customers. So, if you like what you see, give us a call and we'd be happy to help you with a newsletter to promote your initiatives within your organization.

Here at Goose, we've always been excited about the potential for mobile technology to improve transportation efficiency. After all, we got our start as a company with an SMS-based service to enable real-time ridesharing.

For that reason, we're very excited to be able to offer SMS alerts to all of our customers.

Our recently introduced SMS alerts allow administrators to send text message alerts to subscribed users from the convenience of a desktop comptuer. Text message alerts are the most effective, direct, and personal contact tool available to organizations today. Simply put, text messages allow you to reach your audience anytime, any place anywhere.

Over the past three months as we've tested this feature with select customers, we've been impressed with the creative ways in which our clients have used text messages to communicate with their commuters. What opportunities will SMS alerts create for you?

Our partners at Genentech recently announced the launch of the new gRide iPhone App. Now, Genentech employees can manage and submit their commute calendars on the fly, and create favorites for unique trip combinations, all directly from the iPhone.

Along with commute reporting, Genentech employees will soon be able to view employee shuttle schedules from the gRide iPhone App, and see when the next shuttle is coming with a  “Where’s my Bus?” feature. 

The gRide iPhone App was developed by Genentech in-house, and is a great example of how an organization can leverage Goose's host of API's to consume and interact with data from the Goose Commuter Management Platform.

The Sunday deployment of the Goose Commuter Management Platform (v3.6) included the following updates & enhancements to our platform:

Introducing Google Maps

We've updated the Goose ride finder to use Google Maps. In addition to Google's sleek visuals, the Google Maps API offers superior geocoding, meaning faster & more accurate results when searching for public transit options to your worksite. We're sure you'll find both the look & performance of the ride finder much enhanced by the switch to Google Maps.

Ride Finder Enhancements

In addition to the switch to Google Maps, we've made a number of updates to the ride finder to optimize for trips on public transit. 

When planning a trip, we now ask users to set departure time using a single slider. We've also removed the 'walking distance' slider; now we'll simply look for the closest options to your point of origin. If there are no transit options near to your starting point, we'll suggest nearby stops that offer service to your desired destination. 

We've also made a number of visual and under-the-hood changes to how we return search results. On the front-end we've made a few changes to the search results display, both within the trip details box and on the map itself. Each leg of your trip -- including walking and transfers -- is color-coded, both within the search results info box and directly on the map itself. On the back-end, we've made a number of updates to the ride planner's search algorithms to greatly improve the speed & quality of suggested trips on public transit.

Ride Finder Widget

Customers with existing transportation services websites will be excited to learn that the ride finder is now available as a fully customizable widget. Developers can now choose embedd the ride finder directly into any existing web page using just a few lines of JavaScript, and control configurations ranging from the size of the ride finder to search options settings.

Front Seat, the Seattle-based team that brought us WalkScore, has recently released a new website where visitors can find public transit applications in their city, and see a list of which transit agencies make their data publicily available to software developers and which agencies do not.

CityGoRound.org launched today, and we here at Goose Networks are pleased to see that the website highlights the need for open transit data, and recognizes and thanks those agencies that already provide their data to third party developers.

“We are calling on transit agencies nationwide to open their data and follow the lead of the Open Government Directive issued this week by the White House,” said Mike Mathieu, Founder and Chairman of Front Seat. “City-Go-Round’s transit apps are a concrete example of how open data can improve citizens’ lives on a daily basis.”

There are 748 transit agencies in the U.S., 84 of which provide their schedule data to software developers. The largest three transit agencies with no open data are: MTA New York City Transit, New Jersey Transit Corporation, and Metro-North Commuter Railroad Company in New York. Visitors to City-Go-Round can add their name to a request for open public transit data in their city.

Genentech's employee commuting program, known popularly as gRide, is broadly recognized as one of the best and most comprehensive programs of its kind. The gRide program offers Genentech employees a range of flexible services and incentives to steer them toward more environmentally friendly commute modes such as carpooling, public transit, and bicycling. (Read about gRide in Genentech's 2007 Corporate Sustainability Report.)

In addition to being a beloved employee benefit, the gRide program recently passed a major milestone -- eliminating over 25 million vehicle miles traveled! 

Congratulations to our gRide partners, and to Genentech employees for their committment to the use of drive-alone alternatives.

The San Francisco County Transportation Authority recently released a report on the role of shuttle services in San Francisco's transportation system. The study seeks to document the role of shuttles citywide, with a focus on examining the operations of regional employer shuttles within San Francisco neighborhoods. The study was spurred by the significant growth in recent years of shuttle operations in San Francisco, especially private employer-provided regional shuttles which provide direct service to the employment site from either residential neighborhood stops, or from major transit hubs (e.g. BART, Muni, or Caltrain stations).

The conclusion: "Shuttles play a valuable role in the overall San Franscisco transportation." The report goes on to discuss the significant and widespread benefits of regional employer shuttles.

From the public perspective, these benefits include congestion and air quality improvements. Respondents to a survey included in the study felt that after the introduction of shuttle services noted that parking on the street also bacame easier, which respondents attributed to some of the people riding shuttle buses having given up their cards.

Employers should also take note of the responses of respondents who were themselves shuttle riders. Many of these respondents said that the provision of shuttle services by their employer was key to their employment and residential location choice. A full 14% of employee respondents stated they would leave their current employment if the shuttle service were unavailable, 92% of respondents indicated that they gained productive work time by riding the shuttle, and 86% said they also gained personal time.

Today we're pleased to introduce the Goose Networks Admin Support web portal. Whether you're reporting a problem, have a question, or are submitting a customization or feature request, you'll now be able to more easily submit requests and track their status.

Beginning today, Admin Users will see an additional link in the Action Bar of their service's Admin Control Panel. Clicking this link will take users directly to the Admin Support Panel. From here, it's easy to either submit new requests or to check the status of any existing issue.

In addition to the web portal, users can also submit requests via email. Simply email support@goosenetworks.com and we'll automatically open a ticket on your behalf.

And, of course, our customers are always more than welcome to pick up the phone and call their account representative directly.

Here at Goose, we have always taken great pride in the support services we offer our customers. We believe our new Admin Support web portal is a major step forward, and will help us to improve the speed and effectiveness with which we can respond to our customers needs.

We look forward to hearing what you think!

"Free Parking is a fertility drug for cars"

This quote, attributed to Donald Shoup, was logged in the comments to an LA Streetsblog post about a Los Angeles City Council resolution advocating free parking to "the highest tech and cleanest cars".  This follows the termination earlier this year of a program that provided HOV exemption stickers to any hybrid vehicles. 

LA is home to Shoup, a UCLA professor of Urban Planning and the author of The High Cost of Free Parking.  Shoup's strategies have been implemented most notably in Santa Monica and San Francisco. He calls for the elimination of building codes that require free parking to ensure that spots are available to those willing to pay, thus ending the pattern of drivers circling a neighborhood multiple times in search of a spot. 

The intent of the LA City Council resolution, to encourage the use of fuel efficient vehicles, seems desirable to manufacturers like Tesla and Toyota.  Beyond purchase decisions by those with the means to consider a pricey electric vehicle, behavioral change from such a resolution seems unlikely.  As Shoup has shown through decades of research and writing, the cost of parking heavily influences transportation decisions.  Far too often parking costs are artificially dampened by regulations and building codes.  Legislation to cap or eliminate fees adds another layer hiding the true cost of parking and such layers tend to be much harder to remove than to apply.