Comments on: Better Public Transit http://www.overheardinprovidence.com/2008/04/23/better-public-transit/ A blog by EERac Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:37:33 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: eerac http://www.overheardinprovidence.com/2008/04/23/better-public-transit/comment-page-1/#comment-289 eerac Fri, 16 May 2008 16:51:23 +0000 http://www.overheardinprovidence.com/?p=169#comment-289 That is interesting. When my fellow grad students and I were talking about putting GPS on Providence buses, one student pointed out that the town he was from in India already did this technology. I have a hunch that this "town" was actually much larger than the "City" of Providence, but it's still ridiculous to think that these technologies are being readily deployed in India before they are here. Fortunately, I'm optimistic that this will change soon. This year we'll see a lot more GPS-enabled smart phones, and as a result, we'll see a number of websites starting to provide good GPS/Google Maps integration. For example, someone could make a website to track people's driving habits, and to use that information to facilitate carpooling. An easier idea would be to track joggers and bikers so they could learn more about their speed/route. Once this kind of stuff is out there, bringing it to public transit will become an increasingly obvious decision. That is interesting. When my fellow grad students and I were talking about putting GPS on Providence buses, one student pointed out that the town he was from in India already did this technology. I have a hunch that this “town” was actually much larger than the “City” of Providence, but it’s still ridiculous to think that these technologies are being readily deployed in India before they are here.

Fortunately, I’m optimistic that this will change soon. This year we’ll see a lot more GPS-enabled smart phones, and as a result, we’ll see a number of websites starting to provide good GPS/Google Maps integration. For example, someone could make a website to track people’s driving habits, and to use that information to facilitate carpooling. An easier idea would be to track joggers and bikers so they could learn more about their speed/route. Once this kind of stuff is out there, bringing it to public transit will become an increasingly obvious decision.

]]> By: Andy http://www.overheardinprovidence.com/2008/04/23/better-public-transit/comment-page-1/#comment-288 Andy Fri, 16 May 2008 00:03:58 +0000 http://www.overheardinprovidence.com/?p=169#comment-288 You might be interested to know that when I was in India I visited Mumbai's first for-profit ambulance service (that might sound pretty grinch-like, but it lets clients who request transport to a public hospital pay whatever they like, and no one with any money in India goes to public hospitals; also, there is no public ambulance system, people just take taxis and drive) and they used a free application to overlay GPS on Google Maps to track their ambulances' locations. You might be interested to know that when I was in India I visited Mumbai’s first for-profit ambulance service (that might sound pretty grinch-like, but it lets clients who request transport to a public hospital pay whatever they like, and no one with any money in India goes to public hospitals; also, there is no public ambulance system, people just take taxis and drive) and they used a free application to overlay GPS on Google Maps to track their ambulances’ locations.

]]> By: ben http://www.overheardinprovidence.com/2008/04/23/better-public-transit/comment-page-1/#comment-282 ben Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:17:23 +0000 http://www.overheardinprovidence.com/?p=169#comment-282 As late as 2005, when a fire in a switching room near the Chambers Street station shut down the A and C lines, train location data wasn't aggregated anywhere; instead, it was scattered all over switching rooms like the one that caught fire. Considering the speed the MTA moves -- the NYT ran a story about lingering piles of charred switching equipment a year later -- the situation probably hasn't changed much since then! As late as 2005, when a fire in a switching room near the Chambers Street station shut down the A and C lines, train location data wasn’t aggregated anywhere; instead, it was scattered all over switching rooms like the one that caught fire. Considering the speed the MTA moves — the NYT ran a story about lingering piles of charred switching equipment a year later — the situation probably hasn’t changed much since then!

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