Crossposted from

Streetfilms’ Elizabeth Press files this dispatch to headquarters from South America:

Every year the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP) picks one or two cities deserving of the Sustainable Transport Award. San Francisco and Medellín, Colombia, are this year’s winners.

Streetfilms worked with ITDP to document these two cities and we’ll be releasing videos on each this spring. But since I just returned from Medellín, I can’t help but share a few highlights.

I met Carlos Moreno from despacio.org at the airport. Carlos translated and helped coordinate the logistics of this video shoot. We started with a 45-minute cab ride down the mountain to the valley where Medellín is situated. The view as we descended was absolutely spectacular and set the tone for our week’s work.

Once in Medellín, we met Jorge Iván Ballesteros and Jesús Acero. These two gentlemen were going to show us why their city was nominated for ITDP’s prestigious award. And we were to dedicate each day to a different theme, starting with “public space” on the first day.

Throughout the day we must have visited half a dozen public spaces where young people were playing in fountains and giant sand boxes while their folks relaxed in the nearby shade. In Medellín there are permanent public space projects popping up seemingly everywhere. Then there are the temporary public space projects like the annual festival of lights, better known as Los Alumbrados.

Here is Carlos Moreno talking about Los Alumbrados:

Streetfilms Shortie: Los Alumbrados (Festival of Lights) from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

We set aside time to ride the new bus rapid transit lines called MetroPlús, which are integrated with Metro (subway) and MetroCable (cable tram) lines.

There are multiple lines in the MetroCable system, including one that is now accessible for those living in the steep mountainside neighborhood called Comuna 13.  For the residents of this community it used to take 45 minutes to climb the mountain by foot to get to the MetroCable line. With newly installed public escalators, it will take under 10 minutes.

Here’s a very brief look at children learning to use this newly installed escalator system:

Streetfilms Shortie: Outdoor Escalators in Medellín, Colombia from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

And of course we rode bikes. We biked in Ciclovia:

Jesús Acero, Mauricio Moore, Carlos Moreno & Jorge Iván Ballesteros after interviewing ciclovia coordinator Mauricio Moore.

We rode in the Wednesday night community-building ride. Here’s some footage from this Critical Mass-style ride:

Streetfilms Shortie: Wednesday Night Ride in Medellín, Colombia from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

And we rode EnCicla, the new bike-share program. This bike-share system is small, with 145 bikes, but the model is rather unique with public bikes used mainly in the university part of the city but also up in the rural area in Park Arvi. Here we are riding EnCicla on a bikeway to our next interview:

From what I saw and heard, Medellín is serious about becoming a leader in developing an integrated transportation system to facilitate better health and education for all residents of the city.

On Friday, Feb 10, you’ll have a golden opportunity to come meet, mingle, and share ideas with fellow educators and GothamSchools writers. We’ll be gathering in the upstairs part of Professor Thom’s (219 2nd Ave between 13th & 14th St) from 4-6PM. The event will be mostly free-form schmoozing, with a bulletin board to collect story ideas and suggestions from readers, and an informal welcome and sharing of thoughts and ideas at 4:30PM.

Stepan Boltalin, Genevieve Hoffman and Paul May of NYU’s ITP had an idea: What if those increments of nickels dime, quarters and dollars could be funneled to charity?

MetroChange is a charity donation platform using MetroCards. Inspired by farecard-to-charity projects in other cities, they set out to put those balances to good use. Once your hard earned coin makes it onto a MetroCard, it can only be used for NYC Subway and Buses.  You can try  to sell a card for its face value, but as anyone has attempted to do, its easier said than done and you look like a hustler. They sought a way to interface to the existing network to pull money from the card.  Utilizing Arduino and off the shelf parts, they built a prototype machine for, lets call it, reverse fare collection – the leftover balances can be given to a charity of your choice.  Theoretically you would go to a MetroChange terminal, swipe and the balance of the card gets transferred to charity fund.

The next step is making it go somewhere. And thats where it gets tricky.  Plus the bonus amounts make it hard to discern between what was that sweet sweet coin and what was sweet sweet bonus.  Despite the effort, for now, that money will stay stuck on the card.

Dont cry over spilled MetroCards.

The blogosphere and twitterverse exploded last month with excitement about MetroChange.  It momentarily captured New York’s imagination. Its an ingenious solution to a slew of metropolitan questions – why can’t you get money back after putting it on a MetroCard? how can we make donating to charity easier? what happens to that extra cash? why is the bonus structure so weird?  But most of all the public responded well to the idea that we can give these chunks of pocketchange to a good cause.

MetroChange from Genevieve Hoffman on Vimeo.

• GeoServer: Added Basic HTTP authentication with cascaded WMS servers
• GeoServer: Support for loading “non-advertised” layers
• GeoServer: Web Processing Service (WPS) now included
• GeoServer: Better INSPIRE View Service compliance
• GeoWebCache: Significantly improved UI for configuration of GeoWebCache

GeoServer incorporates the new features from the recently released GeoServer 2.1.3. It now has Basic HTTP authentication for cascaded WMS servers, a feature that has been asked for by a number of our clients. GeoServer also has support for non-advertised layers, with layers configured and active, yet not publicized in the capabilities documents. For our European friends, we’ve made enhancements to the View Service for the GeoServer INSPIRE extension.

The GeoServer-embedded GeoWebCache now has a significantly improved UI, exposing many options previously only configurable via a text editor. It’s now possible to add a new layer, configure tile size, view disk quotas, enable GWC services and cache formats.

GeoExplorer has improved stability when deployed under Glassfish and WebSphere containers. Logout functionality has now been exposed, based on many user requests. In general, GeoExplorer now has a faster loading of JavaScript resources.

The OpenGeo Suite is and continues to be 100% open source and we’ve migrated the source codeonto GitHub to improve our development process and make it easier for anyone to check out our source code.

We invite everyone to check out our new release—register for a trial of the Enterprise Edition or download the free (but unsupported) Community Edition. If you’re looking for support, unlimited bug fixes, access to core developers, updates, telephone support, and even custom development hours, we invite you to consider becoming an OpenGeo Suite Enterprise Edition client.

Thanks to everyone who submitted bug reports and feature requests. Thanks as well to all developers involved in our component projects. Finally, thanks to our current Enterprise Edition clients, who enable to us to continue to develop the best geospatial software.

2010 Winter Olympic Village Bus Shelters - Vancouver

Robyne and Sarah work solves one of modern living’s  flaws – we occupy spaces and furniture that are designed for everything but the human being.  Modern designers create products and spaces that eschew the interests of our health, comfort, and the condition of the human body, by pushing us into boxes instead of curves, if you will. Urban Movement Design takes how the body wants to and should be into account, and they wind up some pretty cool looking stuff.  But coolness isn’t the final goal.  Inspired by yoga contemplative learning and eastern medicine, they seek to promote health and comfort by designing products and spaces that accomodate the body in it most natural positions and encourage users to rest or stretch in positions that are most conducive to health.

They are also adamant about designing great usable products for the disabled and elederly, driven by their desire to create quality spaces and experiences for all.

The bench.

“We are trained in, and passionate about, movement/health and architecture/design, have merged to form ‘Urban Movement Design’. This collaboration works under the premise that true health occurs when it is integrated into our daily lives and patterns, and that innovative and meaningful design happens when driven by human needs, what we call ‘Human Sustainability’.”

MonkeyBar Bike Rack

“As designers, we believe that we have a responsibility to design ways to better people’s lives. As movement experts and yogic therapists, we believe in teaching people how to take responsibility for their own health and wellness, and that this is in fact where true health care occurs. By merging these two disciplines into one, we are enabling and empowering those who engage with the work.”

• Curious about web tools or social media in planning? Frank Hebbert is presenting about web-based planning tools on Sunday at 1:30pm, at “Incorporating Web-Based Tools into Transportation Practices” (session 156, at the Marriott)
• Want to find out more about the Jackson Heights portal, powered by our open source publishing tools? Come and check out a poster from NYC DOT and OpenPlans, at the Public Involvement in Transportation session, Monday at 4:15pm (session 421, at the Hilton)
• If you can’t get enough of the NYC bike share map, DOT project manager Neil Freeman will be kicking off Monday with an in-depth look, in Beyond Social Media 101. 8am, early birds only (session 225, at the Hilton)

Come and say hi!

UPDATE 1/25/2012

If you missed our Jackson Heights poster at TRB, check it out here:

It's multipying.

You can learn about the technical specifications and characteristics of the new open platform here.  Right now, lets play around with Bus Time. You can access it at bustime.mta.info on your desktop or mobile device, or text a unique bus stop ID to 511-123 .  Heres some tips on using it:

• To see mutliple lines as pictured, search for “St George Terminal Island”  It will display all the buses that go through this hub, representing about 70% of the local buses running on the island. Sit back and watch the buses lurch on by.  While it may sound boring, its quite captivating.
• Zoom in to the first or second closest zoom levels.  The individual bus stops become visible, clicking on a bus stop roundel displays the bus stop ID, and next arrivals for all lines serving that stop.
• On your mobile phone, text one of those six-digit ID’s to 511-123. You’ll get a text back displaying how far or close the next buses that serves that stop is.
• Service changes, alerts and diversions are all updated live.  SMS responses and bus stop call out boxes alert you to any changes in service.
• Bus Time works outside of Staten Island – express routes travelling into Manhattan via Brooklyn or New Jersey can be tracked for the entirety of their run including while they are plowing the canyons of Manhattan.

Cheers and accolades for Bus Time:

Gothamist:
“The MTA is really trying to get this service out there in a timely manner. Not to mention how developer friendly they are being with it—BusTime launched with an open API which allows for awesome things like this DIY ‘the next bus is in xx minutes’ sign that stores can put in their windows.”

New York Times:
“The program represented not just an added convenience for Staten Island bus riders, but also a sign of the growing embrace of, and collaborations with, the technology community in the city.”

Crains:
“Bus Time…can be instrumental in job creation, leading to small businesses that can form around using or distributing the information that software provides.”

WNYC:
“In my test, doing those three things got me an accurate and comprehensive list of local and express buses that use the nearest stop. And a nifty map popped up on my laptop showing the location of those buses as they came toward me.”

Second Avenue Sagas:
“I’m excited to see what this can do for bus ridership. It essentially takes the guesswork out of waiting…Hopefully, mobile app developers will make good use of the plethora of data that will come out of Bus Time as well.”

Your Favorite Deity:
“Bless your hearts. Now you guys can see buses the way I see buses.”

Switching from Subversion to Git has all sorts of benefits for the development team, as well for anyone interested in playing with the code. There are numerous sites that detail the advantages of Git (we particularly like this one), but it will allow us to more easily incorporate features for our clients, manage multiple release streams, and work simultaneously without breaking development for everyone else. As the client base of the OpenGeo Suite grows (and as more and more people download the free Community Edition) this change has been a long time in coming.

You can also visit OpenGeo’s main GitHub repository as well as the main repositories forGeoExplorer, GXP, and more. Please fork the code and play around. If you have patches, feel free to send us a pull request. While we can’t guarantee that all patches will be accepted, we value every suggestion we receive.

If you have thoughts about our svn to git conversion, we’d love to hear about in the comments section. Though please, no x-is-better-than-y wars. Each one of us is correct!

Matt has a breadth of experience in both the open source and proprietary web mapping worlds with special expertise in the front-end components of the OpenGeo Suite. He has already made a big impact working on GeoNode projects, and his responsibilities have quickly expanded to work directly with more OpenGeo Suite components.  Matt talked to OpenGeo’s David Dubovsky to tell us where he came from, how he got here and where he plans to go:

DD: Hello Matt, welcome to OpenGeo!
MP: Hi, I’m thrilled to be here.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I’m a happily married father of two young children, a trained wildlife biologist, and a web-centric geospatial software developer with a primary focus on client-side development. I’m also a native Texan and love living here. My wife is a veterinarian, and I used to volunteer as an emergency veterinary technician.

Great, and how did you decide to get involved in the geospatial field?
Well I’ve always loved maps, aerial photos, and working with computers. I seemed to drift toward geospatial-related interests while in college at Texas A&M University. Later on, I made heavy use of GIS/GPS in my field research for my master’s degree.

So you didn’t go to school specifically for web development or GIS?
No, not really. After utilizing GIS/GPS so much in school I had a really solid background. Inevitably I became the “GIS guy” at my first job after school. Eventually that lead to forming my own business for custom desktop GIS projects, extensions, and scripts, and finally to specializing in producing custom geospatial web apps for my clients.

And how long have you been at it now?
I’ve been working with geospatial in some form or another since 1999. I’ve been primarily focused on open-source geospatial technologies and web development since 2007.

During that time what projects do you look back on most fondly?
I’ve really enjoyed any project which has allowed me the opportunity to solve an interesting problem for a client. Two such projects come to mind:
First, ParkScore, which was a demonstration project for the California chapter of Trust for Public Land. ParkScore allowed users to enter their addresses and be presented with an interactive map and results tables showing them the distance to public parks, schools, fitness centers, and other “healthily living” opportunities. Data had to be retrieved and compiled from a variety of sources using documented and undocumented API’s and displayed on a map in a rapid, per formant manner. I also developed a YUI based mapping app interface through this project that I was able to re-use on several other projects.

That sounds pretty interesting, and the second?
The second was a train tracking and incident management app which consolidated 3 separate inoperable desktop programs into a single unified map-based interface using GeoServer, GeoExt, and OpenLayers. It presented the problem of how to display large amounts of rapidly changing data with dynamic client-side filtering and specialization using OGC methods. Several GeoServer-specific vendor parameters, filter functions, and some SLD magic made this into a much more manageable task.

Wow, so you got to work with OpenGeo Suite components. Is that how you became involved with OpenGeo?
I’ve been tracking OpenGeo’s growth since it was a part of “The Open Planning Project”. This organization has done so much to promote open-source geospatial technologies and helped position it as a real alternative to proprietary systems. I was very excited when an opportunity to provide some development services related to temporal mapping for the MapStory project presented itself this summer.

So what will you be doing here at OpenGeo?
Along with the MapStory project I’ll be providing support for clients implementing, customizing or extending portions of the OpenGeo Suite.

Before we wrap up is there any interesting facts you’d like to reveal to the world?
Hmm, I can think of a few. I can do a rather good Beaker (from the Muppets) impersonation, in fact I was able to convince my wife to continue going out with me after our first date with that impression. Also I know over 100 North American songbirds by sound alone.

Wow – I honestly couldn’t say which one is more impressive! Thanks for the time and welcome aboard, Matt!
Glad to join the team!