Convergence of Mobility and Mobility (ConMaM)
I am a bit obsessed with the idea that travel information plays a crucial (and often overlooked) role in sustainable mobility options.
Ian Sacs on the Planetizen blog has an idea for how one facet of this issue — mobility information on mobile devices — can get more attention. New acryonyms! (If you’ve been involved in the planning or transit fields for long, you are well aware of the preponderence of acronyms that we use.)
Will the planning and transit communinity introduce ConMaM (Convergence of Mobility and Mobility) to its lexicon? We’ll see. But they already are, and need to continue to incorporate the idea into practice:
The technology and transportation industries use the same word “mobility” for two very different purposes. In technology, mobility represents the ease of portability of various devices (phones, cameras, music players, etc.). In transportation, mobility describes the ease of portability of ourselves. The idea of ConMaM is that the more we take advantage of the power of mobile devices, the better we will be able to get around. That is, as we converge mobile devices with mobility systems, we will be able to improve the efficiency and convenience of these systems.
A blog to watch: “Human Transit”
Yesterday, I discovered a new favorite blog, “Human Transit.”
The blog is by Jarrett Walker, a consultant at McCormick Rankin Cagney. On the welcome post, he says:
Since 1991 I’ve been a consulting transit planner, helping to design transit networks and policies for a huge range of communities. My goal here is to start conversations about how transit works, and how we can use it to create better cities and towns.
Just a few posts in, there are some interesting ideas and new approaches on the blog, topics including transit language (transfering vs. connecting) and online apps to help citizens understand transit planning issues.
I’ve added the blog to my feedreader and am looking forward to reading more of what Jarrett has to say.
Of websites, customer information and short-range transit plans
Recently, someone directed me to look the Santa Cruz Metro 2007-2008 Short Range Transit Plan.
One of its features is an evaluation of the Santa Cruz Metro website based on the results of a web-based public survey.
As part of the planning process, it makes a lot of sense to evaluate websites, and other components customer information, both offline and online, and discuss how they fit into an agency’s strategic goals. I believe customer information should be treated as an integral part of good transit service, not a separate, tacked-on component (see earlier blog post: Customer information: not a side dish but part of the main course).
The “Metro Website Evaluation” section makes some good, if obvious, recommendations on how to improve their website and online strategy: create a fast-loading, visually-pleasing, and user-friendly website; include the URL on printed materials and get partners to link to scmtd.com from their sites.
The document points out that “nearly half of passengers using the system are between the ages of 18-23″ (most are likely students at UC Santa Cruz) and that a modern, full-featured website necessary to serve these customers well. In addition, I would point out that this demographic presents some additional opportunities in the online space: College students like to have fun, so partnering with local event calendars to include transit directions, like Trillium helped make happen in Humboldt County, would make a lot of sense. Some transit agencies are reaching out on social networks like Twitter and Facebook to recruit new riders and build rider community and brand identification. That might make sense for SC Metro, because 85% of college students use Facebook.
Despite the inclusion of the website evaluation, online information strategy could have been better integrated in the overall document. The on-board survey of 1902 riders conspicuously did not include questions like “Do you have access to and use the internet… at home? work? school?,” “How often do you use the internet?”, or “What kind of mobile communications device do you carry? – [none, iPhone, Blackberry, cell phone, other, etc.]“
Google Transit benefits
This article appeared in the Times-Standard on October 23, 2007.
Google Transit is a new service that provides customized public transit itineraries. If you’ve ever used a website like MapQuest for driving directions, you will instantly understand Google Transit.
To figure out how to travel somewhere using Google Transit, just enter starting and ending locations and the time and date to arrive or leave by and Google Transit returns a selection of travel options, travel itinerary and map with walking directions. Google Transit even returns instructions for transferring between buses and systems.
Through the participation of Humboldt Transit Authority and the work of my company, Transit Information Solutions, Humboldt County recently became the most rural area in the United States to be included in Google Transit. Try it yourself by visiting www.google.com/transit and entering some locations in our county — “Humboldt State University,” “ACV,” “Moonstone Beach,” or another location. You can also get to the trip planner from our area’s new transit websites, linked from www.hta.org.
Metropolitan districts like L.A., the San Francisco Bay Area, or Chicago have offered online trip planners for years. But Google Transit is novel in its aim to include transit districts whose size, budget, or expertise level has previously limited their offerings in the online world.
Google Transit isn’t only attracting the interest of areas that don’t already have online trip planners, however. Many areas that already offer services like the San Francisco Bay Area’s 511.org have already, or are in the process of, publishing their data to Google Transit because of its advantages.
These advantages come by virtue of Google’s ability to “horizontally integrate” their products and services. For example, Google Maps driving directions maps offer two tabs — “Drive there” and “Take public transit.” A driver unaware of transit opportunities may click the “transit” tab to discover a convenient route they would have never learned about otherwise.
Google Transit compares transit fares with the cost of driving, based on IRS per-mile figures accounting for the fixed and variable costs of driving. A trip from Eureka to Moonstone Beach costs $2.20 by bus, for example, versus an estimated driving cost of $9.60.
The tiny transit stop icons that show up on Google Maps are another example of horizontal integration at work. Say you look up a downtown location and notice a tiny bus icon nearby. Click it, and Google displays the routes that serve the location and the times the bus stops there. Complete transit directions are one click away.
The same feature shows up in Google Earth, Google’s free software to explore the globe in eye-popping 3D. In Google Earth, you can turn on and off a transit layer that shows transit stops. In the future, the software will display the actual transit route paths for Humboldt County.
Having transit stop information included in Google Earth will allow more and better citizen participation in the transit planning process. It will help people use data to make decisions about where they live, work, and play. Google Maplets, for example, already allow people to create geographic “mashups” quickly and easily. For example, if transit is an important consideration in where you want to live, it is possible to view real estate or rental listings and transit stops plotted on the same map.
But, why is Google offering Google Transit free-of-charge to transit operators and riders? In an online conference, Tom Sly, Google New Business Development, explained that “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Additionally, Google has indicated they are concerned about global climate change (it’s worth noting Al Gore is a Senior Advisor at the company) and that they believe promoting good environmental practices within and without of their company is not only a corporate responsibility but good business planning.
From my perspective, I have little choice but to agree. Google has provided a way to make transit more convenient for Humboldt County, and therefore facilitate more sustainable transportation habits.
If you were to ask me what the transportation of the future looks like, rather than point to the latest hybrid model or prototype hyrdrogen car, I’d advise you to check out Google Transit. Look for information technology, in the form of websites and fancy mobile phones and PDAs to play an ever increasing role in helping get to places we need to be conveniently, cheaply, and more sustainably by bus, train, rideshare, and other modes.
Aaron Antrim is the Principal of Transit Information Solutions and the Outreach Director for Green Wheels NEC.
