Have you ever been frustrated when looking for a parking spot in downtown Chattanooga, or sat wondering at a CARTA bus stop if you missed your bus or if it was just running late? This Feb 24th, Open Chattanooga will sponsor the first in a series of themed hack-a-thons to address common urban problems through open data and technology. This month’s Transportation-themed Hack-a-thon will bring together thinkers and doers in the fields of transportation and technology for learning, debating, connecting, and creating. If you’ve ever been frustrated or confused by Chattanooga’s transportation systems and thought, “there’s got to be a better way,” this is the event for you!
A camp that does not require or supply duffel bags, trunks, bunks, tents, swim instruction, or counselors, Transportation Camp is an unconference - no pre-planned sessions or experts - with transit, alternative mode, planner and data, self-described geeks gathering for a day of exchanging ideas and learning.
This started as a standard “why don’t agencies release more open data?” discussion but Michael Frumin of the MTA summed up the nagging problem I had with this session way more eloquently than I ever could. His argument was that we can sit around and list all the reasons that agencies are reluctant to open up their data, rehashing the same discussions that have been happening at events like TransportationCamp DC over the last five years, but the people from agencies who need to hear those discussions generally are never in the room. How do things really change? Politics - the tried and true method of lobbying the decision makers at the top that open data is important so that the staff within the agencies who can actually make open data happen have an institutional mandate to do so. The arguments are the same but each battle is specific - coordinated campaigns to reach out to the people who matter like council members and general managers - to convince them that this is important. I think the challenge for events like TransportationCamp is that there isn’t a lot of institutional memory across events quite yet, so we spend a lot of time rehashing introductory discussions. Which is not to say that great work isn’t happening at TC on this front, but I think we can do even better.
— Great summary of three sessions at TransportationCamp DC from Brian Ferris, in I had a lot of good conversations at TransportationCamp DC…. Check his full post for details of the Standards Throwdown and the provocatively-titled “Does it really matter?”
Saturday was my first time at TransportationCamp, the so-called “unconference” that brings together transportation and data enthusiasts in a one-day event to explore the intersection of urban transportation and technology. OpenPlans organized the event. A couple of hundred participants converged at the School Without Walls on an icy morning, and the first order of business was to stand up, introduce ourselves, and offer three key words.
— TransportationCamp comes to DC…and The Transit Wire was there
From Interpreting Children’s Drawings by Joseph H. DiLeo, M.D., Brunner/Mazel Publishers, New York, 1983.
Innovative Mobility for Low-Income Communities
Poor communities around the country often face major transportation challenges. The urban poor is increasingly migrating from the central city situations of the mid- and late-twentieth century, to the disinvested inner-ring suburbs of today. Rural communities have been, and continue to be more impoverished than their urban counterparts. In all of these places regular transit might not be available or viable. What other options are there?
We had a great discussion during the first morning session at Transpo Camp DC about mobility solutions for low-income families and neighborhoods.
What came out of it were some excellent examples which have been collected in a Google Doc here.
The doc is editable, so feel free to add more thoughts. If you participated in the discussion, did we miss something? For people who didn’t join us, do you have other ideas?
Participants were also interested to connect with each other beyond Transpo Camp, so feel free to add your contact information to this Google Spreadsheet.
Today in Washington, the “School without Walls was full of of civic energy around open data, tech, community, bikes, smart cities, systems, efficiency, sustainability, accessibility, trains, buses, hacking, social networking, research, policy, crowdsourcing and more. Transportation Camp, an “unconference” generated by its attendees, featured dozens of sessions on all of those topics and more. As I’ve reported before, transit data is open government fuel for economic growth. Below, the stories told in the tweets from the people show how much more there is to the world of transit than data alone. Their enthusiasm and knowledge made the 2012 iteration of Transportation Camp in the District a success.
— Great Storify from Alex Howard: Transportation Camp DC gets geeky about the present and future of transit (who also led two sessions today).
Transportation experts, however, still focus most of their project engagement around open houses and public meetings. And that, according to the transportation expert I interviewed, is a total brick-and-mortar experience. We are still asking the public to go to a physical location at a specific time in order to transact … “participate” … in the public decision-making process. But wait! Aren’t transportation agencies using Facebook and Twitter to engage with the public? Yes, and no.
— Transportation mashup: Re-thinking public engagement on Talking Transportation.
Wouldn’t it be great if students, parents, guardians, and educators could find out if a particular bus was going to be late and when it was likely to arrive?
Code for Livability event
The White House Office of Public Engagement and The Partnership for Sustainable Communities — U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — invite you to join us for the Code for Livability on January 22, 2012. The Code for Livability brings key stakeholders with backgrounds related to livability, housing, transportation and environmental issues together with experts in web development and technology to work on Solutions in REAL Time that can bring sustainability to the forefront of peoples’ everyday lives.
When: Sunday, January 22, 2012, 9:00am – 1:00pm
Where: American Public Transportation Association. 1666 K Street, NW. Washington, DC 20006
Special Guest: Chris Vein, Deputy Chief Technology Officer, White House
RSVP by January 19, 2012.
(Source: transportationcamp.org)
