Buses World News: Better Transportation * USA / California - How Open Data Could Make San Francisco Public One

14.10.11

Better Transportation * USA / California - How Open Data Could Make San Francisco Public One

Solution: Using data to help fix the city's busted transportation system

San Francisco,CAL,USA -Fast Company, by Ariel Schwartz -Oct 10, 2011: -- Unlike many cities, San Francisco offers a wealth of open data, with information available about everything from parking meters to public artwork. The trouble is, not everyone realizes quite how valuable this information can be. At last week's GOOD Design event, which pairs city leaders with designers--San Francisco director of innovation Jay Nath challenged Kicker Studio to come up with an innovative approach to educate the public on the value of open data... Kicker had a slew of open data feeds at its disposal, including bus routes, incident reports, the fastest and safest routes, and parking information. After meeting with MUNI (San Francisco's transportation agency), Kicker discovered that NextBus--the system that updates riders on when the next bus is coming--runs off schedule data and only allows for four updates per year. That means in the case of any delays--and there are many--predicted arrival times are way off, and MUNI has no central communications system (drivers just write down incident reports and turn them in at the end of the day). Note: NextBus contacted us with updated information about this...

Labels: public transportation service