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.
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.
Slovenian hackers seek investors!
“Roving Slovenian Hackers Turned Away by Facebook & Google, But Welcomed at TechCrunch” is a title of TechCrunch story that draw unexpected attention to a group of 12 Slovene students on a visit in Silicon Valley. It also spread quickly, both on Twitter and among many TechCrunch readers. This should not surprise most of us: 44,900 Facebook users like TechCrunch. Thanks to the new personalized tools and the button of ‘like,’ I have also learned that three TechCrunch ‘likers,’ previously fans, are friends of mine: Matti, Johanna and Bettina (I hope you don’t mind). But I am the first to like the Slovenian-hacker story officially; something that must be stored forever in my Facebook profile.
The Slovenian-hacker story spread quickly among Slovenian readers. The Twitter version tweaked my journalist’s attention. I did a radio feature for Radio Slovenia. ‘Hackers’ are students of the Faculty for Computer and Information Science at University of Ljubljana” and ‘Roving’ in the TechCrunch news title refers to a fact they are on their a senior student trip. Their entrepreneurship has already been acknowledged: sponsors are covering a substantial amount of their travel costs, though students refuse to disclose the amount raised. Soon they will be raising money again, this time from venture capitalists. They are learning fast.
Needless to say, they were savvy at calling attention to themselves. In a short TechCrunch interview, they offered readers a deal: “We will code for a week for anyone who has a cool idea to code!” More than 20 interesting ideas were submitted, but a dozen ‘hackers’ decided to follow their own paths. They would like to develop a new and revolutionary tourism-guide application for the iPhone. “Lonely planet exists on iPhone,” hacker Jakob Marovt says, “but it is really not taking advantage of mobile platform.” Or crowd sourcing.
Meanwhile, Slovenia remains the only EU country in which Apple is not selling iPhones. Apple’s absence could give Android developers (Android is sold there) a chance to reach Slovenian users. The Apple app store economy, however, remains more appealing and profitable, say students. However, iPhone OS and Android smartphones are really not really as useful in Slovenia as they are in Silicon Valley, at least from my observation. Put candidly, in the Valley there is virtually no life situation without an iPhone application.
Some students are sure they will return to Silicon Valley soon. They say that they are inspired by other compatriots that have succeeded in Silicon Valley startups. They include Skygrid, Zemanta and Noovo. Though they couldn’t visit Google, Facebook or f8 conference, many doors were open and will remain so.
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