On January first, two articles appeared: one in South Florida and the other in Lousiana.  Both of these articles had the same message: 511 Doesn't Work If People Don't Know It Is There.

In South Florida, an initial effort by SmartRoute Systems led to a 511 implementation that people didn't want to use once they found it.  In this way it was a blessing that a majority of commuters didn't even know the 511 system existed. 

Harold writer Larry Lebowitz says:

Yet a recent marketing survey conducted for the state Department of Transportation indicates that more than nine out of 10 South Floridians said they knew little or nothing about the telephone and Internet traffic information service. That high percentage also holds true for 511 systems serving Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville.

In New Orleans, cameras have been on the web for quite some time, yet recent commuters stuck in gridlock there seemed unaware:

Cold temperatures iced over a wet portion of Interstate 10 the morning of Dec. 15, between Bonnabel Boulevard and the 17th Street Canal, resulting in a multi-car pile up before rush hour.

Motorists stuck in the gridlock probably did not realize they could have seen the traffic snare before getting on the highway.

One of the issues here is that it's hard to get motorists to integrate the use of ATIS in their daily commute.   Some don't know, but they also aren't making an effort to find out.

If ATIS adds a new task to their day, they will often avoid it.  We are often heartened by the people who bookmark web pages and program in 511 on their cell phones, but these people are not the norm.

I believe that the future of ATIS is to integrate it with other applications that users already have.  This is easy to do, by providing subscription services to specific data streams.  The user, through RSS or XML subscriptions, can then place their traffic information on their desktop, in pop up windows, or in other applications that allow them.

Modern web usage and web design focus on providing widgets that allow people to consolidate their attention.  We have to stop assuming that traffic data is so interesting that people will seek us out.  Increasingly, they will see having to go to our single-function sites as a distraction.

When I ask computer-savvy people why they don't use the ATIS systems we build, invariably they say, "Traffic here always sucks, it doesn't make sense for me to spend five minutes verifying what I already know."  But if I ask them, "What if you just received the information without having to go looking for it."  That they like.

 

When I was growing up in Toronto, I very often heard city politicos referring to our town as a "world-class city". I always took that as overcompensation for a perceived lack of recognition of the status and importance of Toronto in the rest of the world. You never hear people from New York City, Tokyo, London, Rome, Paris, Seoul, Rio de Janeiro, or Shanghai stridently insisting that theirs is a World-Class City. It always annoyed me a bit, because I thought Toronto was (and is) a great city, and by hyperventilating about it, we devalued ourselves.

Well, I imagine Toronto's reputation internationally is a bit more secure these days, and if it it isn't, this bit of news should cement its status as a World Leader: a Torontonian's average daily commute is not only the longest in Canada, but is also longer than that for a resident of NYC, LA, or Chicago. Toronto is now a true trailblazer of congestive nightmarish commuting.

This finding doesn't surprise me. I visit Toronto regularly, and each time I go back, traffic seems to get noticeably worse, as the population grows far faster than the transportation infrastructure. And the problem will not be solved overnight:

"We're probably way behind the rest of the planet," said Baher Abdulhai, the Canada Research Chair in intelligent transportation systems. "There's no single solution that you could buy from somewhere, put it on the road today and tomorrow there's no congestion. It's not going to happen."

But ITS is not about magic bullets, it's about incremental improvements that add up:

Abdulhai, also a civil engineering professor at the University of Toronto, said there are other means of easing traffic, such as traffic lights and speed limit signs that adapt to the number of cars on the road, as well as in-vehicle devices that warn drivers of congestion on the roads.

The government appears to be starting to look at investing in some new technologies, as well as in more conventional responses. I sincerely hope that, in a few years, my hometown will be a World_Class leader in innovative solutions to congestion, rather than in ridiculous commute times.

The aqcuisition of the erstwhile PB Farradyne by Spain's Telvent is now complete, as the linked press release notes, and "Telvent Farradyne" has been born. [I'd've liked to include a congratulatory note in Spanish; but my knowledge of the language pretty much comes from watching "Dora the Explorer" with my two-year-old, and somehow "!Rapido, Tico, rapido!" just doesn't seem appropriate...]

It'll be interesting to see how the acquisition affects Farradyne's strategy and operations. Acquisition is a relatively very quick way to gain entry to a market or to avail oneself of a set of tools or competencies; but it is a perilous road to take, with potential fallout in terms of corporate culture clash, partner relationship dynamics, and employee morale. Of course, we at GHS are hardly disineterested observers; we worked closely with PB Farradyne, and anticipate continuing our relationship with Telvent Farradyne, so we wish them all success.

Big industry news out of Madrid - Telvent GIT S.A., seeking a beachhead into the North American ITS market, has announced its impending acquisition of PB Farradyne. The buyout is not a done deal yet, but it's a sure thing that Telvent would not have made the announcement if it were not confident of the outcome.

This development is particularly interesting to Gray Hill Solutions, as we are PB Farradyne's partner in developing and managing the 511 Traffic Site. We'll be sure to stay on top of this one...

A majority of my business is geographic information systems. I've used the technology to build real time traffic sites, transit information sites, urban planning systems, urban lands management systems and homeland security applications. When GoogleMaps came on the scene, with its open API and aerial photography, suddenly the world started thinking geospatially. Everyone wanted to map everything.

Techcrunch compared the various mapping sites and came up with some nice metrics to judge who is currently leading the pack. What's missing, though, is the analysis piece, but more on that in a second.

People in the GIS world have had mixed opinions about on-line services. My take is that these services are causing a sea change in people's relationship to spatial information. Data's hidden spatial elements are coming to the forefront. This was noted today by Bubba in Scobelizer when he said:

Being candid - I had never thought much about maps until the last 6 months, but now I'm blown away by what is out there and eager to see what is to come. I'm really glad there are so many passionate cartographer out there! FWIW, my favorite map related thing is going by birds eye tourism to see shamu and the like.

For years people in GIS have had to explain in detail why spatial analysis and data representation is so powerful. You can fit a great deal of information into a map and have it expressed in an intuitive and rapidly comprehensible form. Each year ESRI publishes a book of maps created using ESRI software by its worldwide network of users. They are often visually stunning and graphically elegant.

From a User Interface perspective, the map is a gold mine. You an quickly and intuitively locate objects that require action or oversight. You can quickly change data displayed within the same UI. You can easily and seamlessly interact with non-map elements. The low hanging fruit here is asset management, but the same technology is used to manage the power grid, roadway traffic, and the supply chain for large retailers or manufacturers.

Which brings me to the missing element in the mapping technologies reviewed on Techcrunch. They are visualization tools only. Go to the ESRI site and start looking through the functionality provided through their systems. They've been doing this for over 20 years and have a robust and mature set of features for spatial analysis.

Yes, Zillow can use Windows Live Local for their presentation layer - but underneath is some heavy processing not done by the mapping engine.

This is important because real geoprocessing requires careful forethought of database construction. A well designed geodatabase includes topological information necessary to facilitiate elegant analysis. This depth of thought is not necessary for a mashup, where the only link needs to be between the mapped object and it's latitutde and longitude.

For people playing with the APIs, the love affair with merely being able to locate something on a map will be short lived. They will begin to demand more geoprocessing power in the API. As that happens, some very interesting products should start to come out of Microsoft, Google, and the rest.


Technorati Tags: ESRI, GIS, googlemaps, windows, windows live, windows local,

Does eminent domain apply to the ether?

South Florida has installed a network of highway cameras to monitor conditions before, during and after hurricanes (although they can be used as regular traffic cameras at any time).

The system will be used to monitor storm evacuations but may prove more useful after a "hurricane event," Santana said.
"Getting out is the easy part," Santana said. "This will feed back information on the conditions there so we have a better idea when people can start coming back."

This seems to me a clever and extremely valuable use of ITS. There is, however, one interesting side problem: "The ITS system uses a wireless system to transmit its digital images from the towers to the monitoring center in Miami-Dade County." Turns out, the system may be putting at least one local service provider out of business by effectively expropriating the airwaves.

Meanwhile, Digital Sail, a wireless Internet provider based in Marathon, was knocked off line at 9 a.m. Thursday by interference, and remains off, said Digital Sail president Michael Ford. He suspects the ITS system is the cause.
"We may be knocked off for good," Ford said. "If this persists, we're out of business because of the interference."

The agency in charge of the cameras disavows any fault; but Digital Sail's owner says that the agency is encroaching on frequencies reserved for private use, rather than using those assigned to government purposes. The company is requesting a new frequency, but it could be out of business before the lengthy appeal process is complete.

An emerging technology will inevitably produce dislocations, but we certainly want to be wary of causing distress to citizens, or to businesses and their clients, unless absolutely necessary, and even then taking steps to minimize the damage.

An article in the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper notes that traffic jams in Canada's nine largest cities are estimated to "[cost] the economy as much as $3.7-billion a year in delays, wasted fuel and greenhouse gas emissions."
Now, that's a lot of money, but consider that, as of the most recent census (2001), combined population of Canada's nine largest cities comes out to 8,722,246 - or, a bit more than the population of New York City (8,085,742). [The largest city in Canada had a population of 2,481,494; the ninth-largest (Quebec City) had a population of 507,986. That would make Quebec City the 32nd largest city in the US (based on 2003 population figures), after Tucson, AZ.]
In other words, assuming that Canadians and Americans have similar habits, if Canada is losing $3.7B a year in traffic jams, NYC alone is losing about as much (indeed, having spent considerable time in NYC and in Canada's three largest cities, I'd bet the Big Apple loses twice as much). The amount the US as a whole must be losing each year boggles the mind - enough to buy Google Corp and have some cash left over for frappucinos.
I think these numbers underscore the importance of the ITS industry's efforts. Incremental benefits from ITS can save huge dollars, not to mention the reduction in stress and frustration for individuals.