In 100 feet, park left!
Weeks before a parking experiment ‘SFpark,’ the city has counted all publicly available parking spaces in San Francisco. Though the number is above 440,000, many drivers still complain that it is hard to park. But surveys show that drivers don’t know where parking is available–especially garages, too often overlooked–so they spend up to a third more driving time just to find parking.
A unique parking experiment, ‘SFpark,’ will take place in a few selected pilot areas of San Francisco starting this summer. It was made possible by the technology of wireless parking sensors developed by the privately hold company Streetline. Installation of a hand-sized device that records the availability of a single parking space is simple. Once a wireless sensor is glued in place on the street, it starts sending one key bit of information: is the space taken or not?
First measurements showed that drivers pay only half of measured parking time, whereas only 5% of violators are fined. Though new sensors could bring stricter parking enforcement, ‘SFpark’ will eventually help drivers to find open parking spots. If today’s GPS device directs you, for example, to a selected restaurant, the new parking sensor technology will enable the same device to tell you where the closest open parking spot is.
But before embedding new features in your navigation device, the information will be available only in a web application and on smart mobile phones. But seeking the safest and least distracting platform for drivers, Streetline developed another solution: a simple parking sign that will show the direction of free parking.
Tod Dykstra, Streetline’s CEO, explains that this sign has an arrow that shows where the free spaces are: “It will say, if you are on this street and looking for a place to park, this is where you should go”. The first parking signs, each costing around $1,000 will be installed this year. To enable the full functionality of ‘SFpark,’ new paying options will be added: parking meters will accept credit cards, SFMTA parking cards and coins. The city believes that easier and more convenient payment will reduce the number of tickets.
Parking 2.0
SFpark will bring big change both in parking availability and pricing policy. Essentially it will set a baseline for demand-responsive pricing. To reach the typical 20% availability of open spaces, prices will be set as high as necessary: an hour of parking will cost anywhere between 25 cents and six dollars. If a driver finds the price too high, he or she can either park elsewhere or postpone the time of travel to a time when demand and price are lower. This will also let the city fix disproportional garage and on-street parking prices. If the demand for on-street parking is higher, garages should eventually be a cheaper alternative. The city, which is cutting public transport services 10%, says that the new parking experiment is not about raising parking revenues but is about making parking easier to find.
New Online Bike Map For San Francisco
Locals will know there is a beautiful piece of urban art on the Duboce bikeway. It celebrates car-free public space, a 340-foot-long mural depicting cyclists. It is a curious coincidence, but the name of the supermarket whose wall carries the mural fits the bikeway below. It is ‘the safe way’ to ride a bike in San Francisco: well paved, no car traffic, just bicycles. Unfortunately, a 20- or 30-second ride takes the visitor right pass it and then the path leads to another famous bike facility, a kind of virtual bike boulevard in the city, the wiggle. It was invented to connect downtown and Golden Gate Park without climbing the hills. Or as cyclist Dave Snyder adds: “If you believe in God, God invented the route. It follows the course of old watershed, an old creek between the hills”. To anyone new to the city, or to an urban cyclist, San Francisco can be a dangerous place to ride a bike. Though an impressive 6 percent of trips is done by bicycle, a lot needs to be done to meet the criteria of a bicycle-friendly community. Andy Thornley of San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC), for example, recalls potholes “big enough to swallow small children,” and this is just one of many problems. Streets are still very dangerous: many motorists still don’t consider bicyclists legitimate road users.
Google Maps Vs. SFBikemapper.org
A tool that helps bicyclists find safer routes was introduced almost two months ago by Google Maps. Directions for cars, walking and the use of public transport were added as a beta version of bicycle routes in 150 U.S. cities. But teaching computers to find bike routes in cities that were designed for cars is difficult, developers admit. According to Thornley, San Francisco also suffers from the ‘hypnosis of auto mobility’ and the notion that everyone travels by car: “So of course streets are only for cars!”
Some criticism of Google maps was recorded–the new web application doesn’t necessarily show the best routes. In fact, suggested itineraries are often problematic. Dave Snyder is excited about the new Google maps, but at the same time admits that there are problems: “I’ve used it a few times and it doesn’t give me the most sensible routes. It is going to take a little while for them to figure out how to create the algorithm that always gives you the best route”. He also agrees that problems on the map are often just a reflection of poor infrastructure on the ground. But as Google is often reluctant to talk about its products, it is impossible to guess how much feedback was given from San Francisco or how many mistakes have been corrected since the introduction of bicycle maps. We used ‘report a problem’ to call attention to a dangerous intersection at Polk and Market Street. Following recommendations of Google Maps, I suddenly found myself surrounded by car traffic, something I could hardly recommend to anyone.
Luckily for bicycle users in San Francisco, a new and more detailed online map was officially announced on May 1st, only days before ‘Bike-to-work’ day on May 13th. SFBikemapper.org is a long planned project of the San Francisco Department of the Environment, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and Bicycle Coalition. In fact, careful development took long enough for Google and Ride the City to overtake the initiative. But that doesn’t seem to be a problem for Marc Caswell, program manager at SFBC:
“Google is leading to a great process in the long term, and they are really on the big picture. It’s going to take some time to sort that out. We focused exclusively on San Francisco; so it is a lot easier to make sure we get it right than say, doing the whole USA.”
Bikemapper also offers features Google maps do not. It lets users select the type of journeys. The calculated route will try to follow bike-friendly paths, either shortest or flattest, depending on user preferences. People who will bike to work on May 13th are more than welcome to test both services and plan their journey. Realize that both are still in beta. Experienced urban cyclists might not be as impressed with either; people still know the streets better than computers. Two maps may eventually merge into one, better system to calculate bikeways in San Francisco. SFbikemapper uses Google maps as its base layer, whereas the more detailed data is public and therefore available to Google to add to their database. Bicyclists will benefit.
Bike Sharing Too?
Andy Thornley is convinced that now is a great time to anticipate other improvements. Later this year the San Francisco Superior Court should completely lift the four-year-old Bike Plan injunction. When the injunction, which prevented infrastructure improvements, is lifted, Thornley is sure this will mean the beginning of European-style cycle tracks with protected bike facilities. That should give a huge boost to the sense of safety:
“If you have a street full of 40 bicyclists, the safety goes up hugely. Facilities that give people a sense of safety add some objective safety, but the sense of improving safety is even more important. That’s when we get past the 25-year -old boys on bicycles who dominate in most cities in the U.S. and see 45-year-old women, grandmothers, grandfathers and families. It will have that inviting, welcoming feeling that you belong here, that there is a place for you and you don’t have to compete with cars. So, that’s something we are very much looking forward to.”
According to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, there will also be a pilot test of a public bicycle -sharing system within a year. The Coalition will be pushing to make sure it is big and dense enough to work. Of course, they will not be targeting people who already use bicycles. “The market is for people who don’t have bicycle,” says Thornley, “but if they saw a bicycle 20 feet away that was free for half an hour, well, of course they would use it. We are ready to have more people on bicycles in San Francisco.”
Can GPS improve urban cycling?
Interview with Billy Charlton, Deputy Director for Technology Services at the San Francisco County Transportation Authority.
Since 2002, San Francisco’s County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) has been using a computer-based tool, SF-CHAMP (San Francisco Chained Activity Modeling Process), to predict daily travel migrations.
Demographic and infrastructure facts, as well as street data, are analyzed in SF-CHAMP to improve the city’s transportation system. So far, the computer model has been used to improve bus services and study the effects of a subway extension to Chinatown or even a possible London like congestion zone for downtown San Francisco in which access would be subject to fees.
But until recently, bicycles were left out of the equation. Now the authority is encouraging cyclists to use a newly developed tool, the smart-phone app CycleTracks to record their habits, since it has become apparent that wheeled vehicles’ operators soon find the easiest, safest and fastest routes that will get them to their destinations. Billy Charlton explains that the system already received substantial input, but lacked information on preferred and used bicycle routes. With such data collected directly from users, a computer model will do a better job at predicting daily migrations:
“We have a general idea of how many people are bicycling from the Mission District to downtown, but we don’t really know what streets they are using. It turns out that cities don’t have such data. They just put bike lanes where street was flat, or there they had room, mostly based on planning hunches on where they thought bike lanes should go. But we never really had information on specifically what people wanted. For Cycletracks, we thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could use smart phones to track people who are cycling and have that information come back to us.”
Not so long ago, most people would fight strongly against sending their exact locations to anyone; especially when the data would be collected by a government agency. But as location-based services are evolving, so is the perception of privacy. According to Charlton, motivating cyclers to report their tracks was not at all difficult.
“It turns out that in this era, when people are posting on Facebook where they are every 10 minutes, and using their phones to find out where their friends are, the privacy issue really evaporated. We didn’t have issues with people worried that we’ll use the data in some problematic way.”
To assure better input from crowd sourcing, SFCTA engaged with bicycling advocates like the San Francisco Bike coalition and blogs that cover transportation issues. They have also put effort into making iPhone and Android applications appealing to users.
“We tried to make the app look nice and let it track details and statistics about your ride. That way users get something also. But really the main thing is motivating people to want to help, to pitch in on making bicycling better for everybody, so there are enough people out there who want to do that, who will download the app, just by hearing about it or seeing friends using it.”
Although SFCTA is targeting people in the San Francisco area, the app works anywhere and the database shows that people from other locations are using it too. In fact, other planning agencies have shown an interest in using CycleTracks. Around 1100 people use it already and more than 8,000 separate trips have been recorded. “We were hoping to get a fraction of that,” says Charton.
Data gathered so far confirms that cyclists are avoiding hills and prefer to ride a few blocks more to reach safe bike facilities. However, the model hasn’t yet been able to further examine the patterns and identify problems like dangerous spots or missing facilities. Smart-phone users will know Cycletrack is not the only bicycle app but it is unique in its feature: information gathered might soon improve the over-all infrastructure. But beware, smart-phone use is not always safe on bicycles. In fact, the State of California is considering a law that will ban texting while riding a bicycle, already unlawful in the case of vehicle drivers.
Bay Area: Prepare For Your Earthquake
Neighbors will most likely be the first responders in the event of a major earthquake, so getting to know your local community is essential. But people rarely think about disasters; often they just don’t have the time or interest to be prepared, despite repeated reminders over the years.
Low motivation for emergency preparedness was one of the key issues addressed at Silicon Valley Crisis Camp in March. Many such camps have been organized worldwide since the start of the Crisis Commons project last year. The project has successfully started a debate among technologists, engineers and first responders on how innovation and technologies can be used effectively in cases of emergency.
After the Haiti earthquake in January, a Crisis Camp was organized to provide the best communication tools for Haiti. Chris Blow is the web developer behind Ushahidi, non-profit software for mapping data that can take reports from SMS, email or web-based forms and put them on a map. A few hours after the earthquake, Ushahidi was used to map emergency reports, providing relatively accurate picture of what was happening on the ground. Chris Blow explains that the information was coming from a number of different sources, as well as Haitians who had access to cell phones and texted their messages to 4636:
“It requires awareness of SMS short code and the reporting cycle, so there was some slow uptake, but once it became widely known that the 4636 number was available for requesting help, it could be considered kind of 911 for Haiti.”
The establishment of Ushahidi for the Haiti earthquake led to 3,500 mapped reports, so far the largest use of Ushahidi. However, as the system is still basic, developers are working hard to improve its speed and reliability before it can be implemented in the next major emergency.
The organizer of the latest Silicon Valley Crisis Camp, Carnegie Mellon Mobility Research Center, has attracted the attention of web developers, industry, non-profit and government organizations. Matthew Bettenhausen of California Emergency Management Agency (CALEMA) was there and stressed the importance of self-reliance. For the first 72 hours of an emergency, individuals have to be prepared. Counting exclusively on government rescue is simply not enough. Martin Griss, director of Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley, raised the question of empowering neighborhoods:
“What can you do to make neighborhood watch more effective, to get neighbors to know each other, to prepare for any kind of disaster? Even if it’s just having a list of who in your neighborhood is a doctor, or a ham radio operator, you should know. People don’t do that. Ideas are being announced about running a block party and asking the local fire department to send a fire engine, just so that neighbors can meet their fire people. This may sound like a simple idea but people don’t think about disasters. Even if they have just water at home or a small emergency supply or first-aid kit, they have made a difference. ”
It is also helpful to understand how mobile communications are changing the way people react. Facebook has been very successful in building networks with friends around the world, but ironically, is not connecting neighborhoods. Building new, geo-spatial networking tools may be essential in bringing neighborhoods closer together so that they can respond effectively when–not if–disaster strikes.
Robert Dolci, Chief of NASA’s Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team (DART), organized a tour to their training facilities and introduced various rescue techniques used in major disasters. He also called attention to cultural barriers between policemen, firefighters and EMC responders that often hinder quick and safe operation.
Parking Made Easy in San Francisco
Parking is easy, but finding a place to park is not. A Global Positioning System or GPS can direct you to a restaurant or a freeway entrance — but not to the nearest open parking spot. But thanks to a San Francisco solution, that information will soon be available. In most modern cities the common perception is that parking is hard to come by. Measurement of parking availability and car turnover in San Francisco, however, proves the opposite. There are plenty of spaces, but most drivers just don’t know where to find them.
Streetline, a privately held company based in San Francisco, has developed technology to change that. Once a Streetline sensor is glued to a parking spot and connected to the system, it gives real-time information on open spaces – to drivers and to urban planners. When the sensors are connected to parking meters, cities can manage parking facilities and set pricing models that match up with actual demand.
Streetline CEO Tod Dykstra explains that the parking sensors use very little power, allowing a sensor—installed in just 60 seconds—to last 5-10 years. This also keeps the operating costs very low.
“The communications structure lets us use the radio only for a fraction of a second, so it’s turned off 99.9% of the time. When it wakes up to transmit, the sensor and receiver turn on at the exactly the same time, transmit a small amount of information and go back to sleep. But as it’s cycling so frequently, it appears as real-time information. To keep power demand low, we keep everything off almost all the time and only turn on for a fraction of a second when we have to.”
San Francisco is in the process of deploying 8,000 sensors, and city planners have already learned some surprising things about parking habits. In the area they’ve measured so far, almost half of the time people either didn’t pay at the meter or didn’t put in enough money — but only 5 % of the violators got tickets.
The system is still limited to San Francisco and Los Angeles, so embedding technology into GPS devices and mobile phones doesn’t make sense yet. Instead, Streetline is developing a simpler solution to be introduced later this year: put information on signs:
“Drivers look at signs. How to make that interface as simple and transparent as possible, so we are not distracting drivers not looking for parking but providing instant information to drivers who are? Our sign just says ‘parking,’ with an arrow that indicates parking. We’ll be delivering data to that sign that says: “If you are on this block, going this direction and you want to find a place to park, turn left, based on what we know about parking availability. It’s simple. Any driver can follow it and it does the job.”
This is all very cool, but the technology itself will hardly solve the problem in San Francisco or other big cities. Dave Snyder is the former transportation director at San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Agency (SPUR). He points out that prices for on-street and garage parking do not correspond to demand. Streets are full, garages are empty:
“We must encourage folks to seek garages. When I go somewhere I pick a parking garage because I have no patience for circling and I realize that it will cost me a little more to park. One problem is that it costs less to park on a street in a lot of places than it does to park in a garage, which makes no sense.”
From his window on the 16th floor of a downtown building, Tod Dykstra doesn’t have to look far to see the problem. He knows the garage on 5th and Mission Street is full when he notices cars parking on the roof – and that only happens about four times a year. With parking sensors connected to a broader system, cities will easily be able to identify problems like those and adjust the pricing and supply accordingly.
While Streetline has focused on California, Dykstra says they are ready to open internationally. Parking is a global problem, and so is their market.
-
RSS FEED
Subscribe to our blog feed and you'll never miss a post!