A revolutionary new traffic system without traffic lights
Smartphone apps put parking spots at your fingertips
A growing number of drivers are turning to a high-tech solution for a low-tech problem — finding a parking spot in the nation’s congested cities.
From Pittsburgh to Los Angeles — and dozens of cities in between — mobile applications are becoming available to ease drivers’ search for a place to park.
The problem doesn’t always stem from too few spots, but from not enough information about where to find available parking, said Kelly Schwager, the chief marketing officer for Streetline, a smart parking provider.
Mayor Emanuel Expands Open Data on City Portal with Executive Order
Today, the City of Chicago expanded its open data efforts with an executive order by Mayor Emanuel.
“An open and transparent administration makes it easier for residents to hold their government accountable, but it also serves as a platform for innovative tools that improve the lives of all residents,” said Mayor Emanuel, in statement on the city website.
“Chicago’s vibrant technology and startup community will leverage this wealth of open, public data to create applications that will improve service delivery and lead to greater quality of service for residents and more public engagement in City government.”
The city released 21 new “high value” datasets today, including real-time traffic data from Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) buses, environmental data, liquor regulation, and recycling programs.
When asked what made these datasets high value, the Mayor’s Office responded via email.
“The datasets released today aren’t necessarily more critical than the more than 400 others that have been released,” wrote Caroline Weisser, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office.
“They continue the commitment the administration has taken to being a leader in municipal open data. The executive order itself codifies the actions that Brett and John Tolva, the CTO, have taken over the past year and a half to pursue both open data policy and detailed analytics in tandem. Making a firm commitment to continue adding writable data to the dataportal about how the city works provides the raw materials for the City to collaborate and innovate with the developer community, which ultimately helps the City do a better job of serving Chicagoans.”
For more context on opening government, the Chicago way, read our feature from 2011 and more recent coverage of how Brett Goldstein, Chicago’s chief information officer and chief data officer, is using data in the public sector.
Online Audiences Soar With New Mobile Measurements: 10 Sites Have 100 Million | CMO.com
More and more people are consuming content on smartphones and tablets but, until now, the rankings that determine websites’ popularity have largely failed to account for them. This is finally changing as analytics company comScore has formally unveiled a new set of metrics that measure both mobile visits and traditional web traffic at the same time.
Launched this morning, comScore’s “Media Metrix Multi-platform” shakes up the existing rankings in some dramatic ways. Music site Pandora, for instance, jumps from #61 on the list to #23 while ESPN jumped four slots to #19.
A Visualization of NYC’s Frantic Transit Patterns Over 24 Hours
Using data from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, this animation tracks public transportation on a weekday, starting at 4am. Sumus, the Canadian software company behind these visualizations, uses the General Transit Feed Specification data from various cities to create a whole series of videos that you can check out on YouTube. Be sure to watch full screen in 720 HD to see the movement of subways and buses (which appear to be color-coded to match the corresponding lines).
(via theatlantic)
Redesigning Highway Signs, To Talk To Your Smartphone | Co.Design
But the most radical components of Manual’s redesign can be found when you’re getting off the highway. The group’s proposal calls for every exit sign to be fitted with a wireless transmitter, connecting it to a smartphone app provided by the Department of Transportation. As drivers zoom down the interstate, the app would update dynamically with information on restaurants, gas stations, and local points of interest found at the exits ahead.
New Technology Means You’ll Never Run Another Yellow Light | Autopia | Wired.com
There’s a name for that panic-inducing split second when a traffic light turns yellow and you have to choose whether to hit the gas or the brake. It’s called the “dilemma zone,” and a new radar system promises to make it a thing of the past.
TrafiRadar is a new technology from Belgium-based Traficon. It combines video and radar vehicle detection that can control a traffic light, holding a yellow until a car has crossed an intersection.
Google’s Self-Driving Cars Complete 300K Miles Without Accident, Deemed Ready For Commuting | TechCrunch
Google’s self-driving car project is probably one of the most audacious experiments the company has embarked upon. Today, Google announcedanother milestone for this project: its fleet of about a dozen autonomous cars has now driven 300,000 miles without a single accident under computer control. While this is obviously very positive news for the project, Google warns that “there’s still a long road ahead.” The cars still need to learn how to handle snow-covered roads, for example, and how to interpret temporary construction signs and other situations that could throw its systems for a loop.
It’s not clear how many of these 300,000 miles were driven on Google’s secret racecourse, by the way.
According to today’s update, Google also plans to soon let some of the team’s members drive the cars solo for their daily commutes. Currently, the cars are always driven by at least two people, but the team apparently feels that the project has reached a point where it’s safe to just have one person operate the cars.
Google also announced that it has added the Lexus RX450h hybrid car to its self-driving car family.
Greenway Wants To Put An End To Traffic Jams | TechCrunch
Traffic jams are annoying, but they are also responsible for extra CO2 emissions and plenty of wasted productivity. Greenway, Germany’s entry into Microsoft’s 10th Imagine Cup student technology competition in Sydney this week, wants to do nothing less than put an end to traffic jams. To do so, the three-person team has developed a mobile app, which is basically a very smart turn-by-turn navigation system, and a cloud-based routing and tracking service that ensures that drivers use streets as efficiently as possible. Ideally, the Greenway team says, its app can cut driving times during peak traffic hours by half. What’s cool about the service isn’t the impressive underlying technology, though, but also the team’s innovative business model.
Here is how Greenway is tackling this problem: most of the time, drivers choose the most direct route between two points and because of this, traffic tends to converge on a small number of roads, making traffic jams inevitable.
What would happen, though, if you could route cars more efficiently and have them use underutilized roads? To find out, the team developed an algorithm that constantly monitors where cars are in a city and then routes them as efficiently as possible, keeping in mind where all the other cars are as well. The team built a number of impressive traffic simulations to validate its approach. In addition, it’s also running a small pilot project in Germany right now that has already validated the team’s approach.
In Traffic? Next Time, Use an App - NYTimes.com
EVERYBODY complains about the traffic, like the weather, but no one does anything about it. That may finally be changing as new technology to track cars becomes more widely used.
The average commuter in the United States spent 34 hours fuming in traffic in 2010, according to the 2011 Urban Mobility Report from the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. And traffic congestion isn’t just irritating, it’s costly. The report estimates that in 2010 gridlock wasted 1.9 billion gallons of fuel and, coupled with the associated loss in worker productivity, ended up costing $100 billion.
Japan planning ‘driverless driving’ for early 2020s.
Japan’s Transport Ministry is about to start a project to create an autopilot system which would take over for cars on expressways.
The ministry envisages an autonomous vehicle system in which, after leaving your home, you enter an interchange of a nearby expressway while manually operating your car.
When pulling into the expressway’s lane exclusively for the autopilot system, you change your driving mode to “automatic driving” and input your destination onto the system. You would take your hands and feet off the steering wheel, gas pedal and brake.
You would return to driving on your own only after reaching an intersection near your destination. Until then, you would leave all driving tasks to the self-steering system, comfortably enjoying whatever activity you like.
The system is hoped to alleviate congestion by keeping vehicles going at a constant speed, while eliminating accidents caused by vehicles veering out of lanes.
A study panel will being initial discussions about the project this month, with an aim to have the system operational in around 10 years.
(via 8bitfuture)
Making Transit Social by Mission Possible (by GOODIdeasforCities)
As part of GOOD Ideas for Cities Cincinnati, Mission Possible presents their idea for encouraging more residents to ride a new bus rapid transit system. The team is then joined by GOOD Ideas for Cities editor Alissa Walker and Sallie Hilvers, Metro; Gina Douthat, TANK; Mary Stagaman, Agenda 360 and Adena Kass and Bill Scheyer, Vision 2015.
“Smartphones are helping make the densest cities the best places to live, as witnessed by property prices in Hong Kong, New York, Paris and London. By contrast, sprawling cities that rely heavily on cars – Moscow, Istanbul, Beijing – are becoming dysfunctional as roads clog up.”
The app of life (FT)
(via smartercities)
Sheltering A City With Data: The Rio de Janeiro Story (by IBM)
Rio de Janeiro, the most visited city in the southern hemisphere, will soon play host to both the World Cup and the Olympic Games. Unfortunately it is also the location of the biggest natural disaster in Brazil’s history. In 2010, Rio de Janeiro was devastated by severe floods and mudslides, which took hundreds of lives and left thousands homeless.
Out of the need for improved emergency management and better weather prediction, IBM helped the city integrate predictive analytics, real-time data, and weather modeling technology and establish a state-of-the-art operations center. At the heart of the center is PMAR, a high resolution weather prediction system powered by IBM’s Deep Thunder supercomputer. It lets the city predict rains and floods 48 hours in advance, allowing for better management of emergency services and potentially saving lives.
From there the Rio Operations Center grew, and now acts as a nervous system for the entire city: managing traffic congestion, keeping a close eye on crime response and prevention, predicting brownouts in the power grid, and coordinating large-scale events to ensure public safety.
Integrating over 30 agencies and services across the city, the Rio Operations Center empowers the government and its citizens to be prepared for whatever nature may throw their way. IBM is helping make cities smarter. Let’s build a smarter planet -
Sensor Apps For A ‘Smarter’ World :: Communications Technology
The exponentially growing number of objects connected to the Internet is changing our world. What new business models will appear? Which processes can be optimized? How many vertical markets are benefited? Libelium, a wireless sensor networks platform provider, has made a list showing how the “Internet of Things” is becoming the next technological revolution.
The list includes the most trendy scenarios, like Smart Cities where sensors can offer us services like Smart Parking to find free parking spots in the streets or managing the intensity of the luminosity in street lights to save energy. Climate change, environmental protection, water quality or CO2 emissions also are addressed by sensor networks.
“Since 2008, there are more objects connected to the Internet than persons in the world and this figure will hit 50 billion by 2020!. Now we can interact not only with contents in Websites but with real objects,” the company says. “For the first time, we can live in Smart Cities full of sensors that help us to improve our lifestyle and machines that talk to other machines on their own. As a result, people and objects jump into the Internet adding new layers of data and complexity. The ‘virtual’ Internet we knew is becoming more ‘physical’ than ever. We have entered into the ‘Internet of Things’ era.”
