Trillium Solutions blog

TransportationCamp is coming to Washington DC on Saturday, January 21st, from 9a to 5p (eastern time).  These unconference evens are a great place to be inspired, meet leading practitioners in communication technology for transportation, and pick up new ideas.

Here’s more from the event website:

TransportationCamp is a free “unconference” bringing together transportation professionals, technologists, and others interested in the intersection of urban transportation and technology.

After two successful TransportationCamp events in 2011 (East and  West) we’re coming to DC on January 21st, 2012. This is the day before the annual Transportation Research Board conference. Additional event details will be announced soon, but we encourage participants to sign up now. This will help us estimate space needs.

TransportationCamp DC is brought to you by OpenPlans, the Mobility Lab, part of Arlington County Commuter Services, and Greater Greater Washington.

Across the United States, air service for lower population regions is being reduced or eliminated.  In July, the New York Times reported that Delta Airlines is eliminating service for 24 small airports.  My hometown airport, Eureka/Arcata (ACV), for example, has lost the service of two carriers in recent years.  The airport is now served by one carrier.

A Horizon Air Bombardier CRJ700 (recently phased out of the Horizon fleet). The aircraft seats about 70 passengers. Ground-based services can provide alternatives to some short-hop flights. (Image from Wikipedia)

Serving regional airports that have less travel demand is expensive.  30-50 passenger aircraft serving these airports often fly at half-capacity.  Many travelers don’t like prop-aircraft, and instead prefer to travel on regional jets, which are less efficient and more expensive to operate.

Air service to small communities is useful for business travelers and important for facilitating connections with greater world.  One air link to a large hub airport provides a gateway for worldwide travel.  Recognizing this, the U.S. government “Essential Air Service” program is intended to allow small communities to maintain commercial service by subsidizing select routes that would otherwise be unprofitable.  The subsidy program is expensive: the approximate subsidy per passenger is $74, excluding the Alaska market, according to a 2006 New York Times article.

In light of  the social and business costs of reduced travel access, as well as the cost of subsidizing air service to rural markets, it makes sense consider alternative ground-based options for travelers to connect with hub airports.

In Oregon, the HUT Airport Shuttle offers frequent service from nearby towns (some with their own regional airports) to the Portland Airport (PDX).  The shuttle offers onboard wi-fi.  In Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and Utah, Salt Lake Express offers frequent service to the Salt Lake Airport.

I’m sure there are many other great examples of regional ground transportation service connections to a hub airport.  These services make so much sense.  Because it costs less to operate, bus or shuttle service connections to an airport can operate more frequently than air service connections.  The greater frequency can reduce connection times at the hub airport, making overall travel time for all-air and ground-air itineraries comparable. In some cases, a ground-air itinerary may even offer decreased overall travel time.  Ground-based transit service is also usually less expensive for travelers (and taxpayers).  Passengers can use wi-fi onboard.  Finally, ground-based public transportation does not consume as much fuel or pollute nearly as much as air travel.

There are several ways that we can develop and promote ground-based transportation as a viable connection to hub airports.  Earlier, I posted about a Continental Airlines and Amtrak codeshare arrangement — a creative way to address the “last mile” issue for air travel.  Air/rail codeshare arrangements are more popular in Europe.  Creating more of these arrangements will make it easier for travelers to find opportunities to make air/ground transportation connections.

The travel booking site Hipmunk shows Amtrak and flight options on one page, helping travelers to identify the best value and most convenient in travel options. (See “Hipmunk shows rail and air travel options, hotel walkability”.)  A truly complete travel reservations site needs to show intercity bus, rail, and air options. Travel reservations sites will offer a great service to their users if they begin listing all available options, instead of exclusively air travel.

The public transportation and the travel planning experience better by with integrated travel information.  Many travelers already consider whether, for example, it makes the most sense to travel using Salt Lake Express from Idaho Falls to connect with a flight in Salt Lake City, or to fly directly from Idaho Falls and connect through Salt Lake City.  To make this comparison, it’s necessary to look at at least two websites.  The comparison process can be made easier with better travel information websites.  In the future, Hipmunk, Kayak, Expedia, Orbitz and other travel sites should expose and allow travelers to quickly compare combined-mode itineraries.

Does any blog reader know of any policy initiatives in the United States that recognize that ground-based transportation can be an effective, more efficient, and less emissions-intensive alternative to regional air services?  Can anyone share more examples of multi-modal partnerships and travel booking websites?

Google Maps now presents live transit updates for four U.S. cities and two European cities: Boston, Portland, Ore., San Diego, San Francisco, Madrid and Turin. This feature appeared at maps.google.com and in Google Maps for Android about a month ago.

Screenshot and video below. Here’s the announcement from the Official Google Blog.

The Google Transit Partner Program site has information on live transit updates.

It seems that Google Maps is testing something new: temporary detour information.

See these results for TriMet:

I’m assuming the information is collected through TriMet’s Web Services API.  There are several calls for requesting current detour information.

Does anyone know if this is being tested for other agencies?

On a recent trip to the San Francisco Bay Area, I saw a great example of a bus wrap.

In a Marin Transit’s vehicle exterior, the marintransit.org web-address (URL) was used as primary text.  The text serves double-duty to show the web-address and the service name.

One of the reasons this works so well is that, in the logo, the the agency name is presented similarly to how we are accustomed to see URLs presented — all lower-case, and with minimal space between the two words.

Here’s an image the side of the bus.

(From Wikimedia Commons)

Here’s an enlarged version to compensate for the perspective.

Subtle, and thoughtful.  The overall design stays clean.
The careful application of text calls attention to the brand and makes the web-address memorable.  Nice job, Marin Transit!

I missed re-posting this from Human Transit in June:

“Previous generations found freedom and flexibility through the car.  But Generation Ys find their freedom and flexibility by staying connected to their friends, family and workplaces through the various information devices – like their laptops, or iphones.

“They can stay connected on a bus or a train. They can bring the office with them. They can bring their study with them. They can bring their friends with them. They can’t if they’re driving.”

– Peter Newman, Curtin University, Perth, Australia, quoted in the West Australian

A new “transit navigation” feature in Google Maps 5.7 for Android helps unfamiliar riders use transit systems and helps familiar riders nap, read, or otherwise divert their attention.  The feature allows passengers to follow their journey along the planned route, and notifies them when to get off, either to tranfer or to arrive at their destination.

“Transit Navigation uses GPS to determine your current location along your route and alerts you when it’s time to get off or make a transfer,” said Google software engineer Chris Van Der Westhuizen. “This is particularly helpful if you’re in a city where you don’t speak the language and can’t read the route maps or understand the announcements.”

Since the feature uses GPS to determine locations, it only works for above-ground transit, not subways.

The transit navigation feature works in the background: users can browse the web, make phone calls, and use other applications while still receiving alerts.

Transit navigation is another way in which mapping features for Android have surpassed features available on other platforms.  Google Maps for Android features include free turn-by-turn driving directions, transit navigation, 3D view, MyMaps and other unique features.  As an iPhone user, I’m hoping that some of these features will find their way into the Maps application on the iPhone.  In the meantime, I use Google Maps through my phone’s web-browser for biking directions.

The transit navigation feature appears to have generated a fair amount of press, which is great for public transportation.

Here’s more information: from the Official Google blog, and the Google Maps for mobile page.  Below is a nice video that introduces the transit navigation feature.

Google Transit continues to slowly but consistently improve in response to requests from partner transit agencies and end users.  For example, the ability to select a preferred mode and type of itinerary (fewer transfers, less walking, etc.).  See this earlier blog post on this feature.

Still, there are issues that remain.  For intercity transit trips, Google Maps frequently returns long itineraries that could be significantly shortened by walking or driving only a few additional miles.

I’ve posted on this issue before, here.  This blog post shows an additional example as described by Matthew Barnes, the Intercity Program Coordinator at the Oregon Department of Transportation’s Public Transportation division.

Scenario: A potential transit passenger in Redmond, Oregon is using Google Transit to look for transit options to get to Chemult, Oregon. Not knowing anything about the location of available transit services and stops the potential passenger enters Redmond, OR as the trip origin and Chemult, OR as the trip destination.

Google Transit returns a 12+ hour travel option with three different transit agencies and considerable out of direction travel. From this result, clearly there is no “reasonable” transit available between Redmond and Chemult. The potential transit passenger resigns herself to driving alone.

But wait, by shifting the origin by just 2 miles suddenly there is a transit option with no transfers that takes only two hours.  It looks like Google Transit is adding nine and a half hours to this trip in order to save passengers from a two mile trip to transit.

Click an image or link below to see the full itinerary in Google Maps.

Redmond to Chemult, Oregon:

Redmond Airport to Chemult, Oregon (origin is ~2 miles from previous example):