Press Links

via metroplanning.org – A day-long gathering of urban planners, software designers, developers, architects, and community-level folks to discuss the information that feeds their work, where breakdowns in information flows are occurring, and where innovation could better assist them in connecting ideas

Is Traffic Making Us Lonely?

via The Atlantic Cities – The video produced by Streetfilms… provides a great graphic visualization of Appleyard’s (Livable Streets) findings.

‘Streetfilms’ showcase the benefits of livable streets

via Cornell Chronicle – Making towns and cities more bike-friendly and less car-dependent not only increases urban safety, but also reinvigorates the local economy, saves money, promotes healthy living and strengthens social ties within the community, according to the films of “livable streets” advocacy organization Streetfilms.

MTA Bus Time coming to the B61 in Brooklyn

via Park Slope Patch – The MTA announced that the B61 will soon be equipped with BusTime — a system that provides real-time bus arrival and location information. The BusTime improvements, which will be installed no later than this June, uses GPS devices on buses, which riders can access from their cell phones or computers, to find out where the next bus on the route actually is.

Urban planning experts say using citizens to guide the process is healthy

via The Bellingham Herald – It’s a mistake for urban planners to dictate where neighborhoods should go and how they should look. “You can’t show up [to a planning meeting] and say, ‘This is how people should live,’ ” agreed Frank Hebbert, whose OpenPlans nonprofit produces planning software shared with anyone who wants it.

Shareabouts: Open Source Maps for Crowdsourcing

via Planning & Technology Today – Successful planning projects make the community an equal partner. But it’s not easy – maximizing public participation in the planning process remains one of the biggest challenges for planners. During the initial phases of a new project, how can we learn what matters most to the community? As a project moves forward, how can we prioritize issues, based on public feedback?

Beautiful Streets: An Experiment in Place Evaluation

via Planning & Technology Today – What’s a beautiful street? Sometimes it’s hard to define what makes a place great. Planners can track a neighborhood through census data, population density, crime statistics, and so on. But it’s harder to establish the softer feeling – is this a place I like? Beautiful Streets (beautiful.st) is an experiment in place evaluation. Users are invited to compare 200 randomly-selected streets in Philadelphia

Transportation’s Messaging Problem

via Governing – “[A]t the most basic level, no one in Washington has mustered the will to tell Americans the truth: ‘Transportation isn’t free’,” writes Streetsblog’s Ben Goldman.

SFMTA upgrades the SFpark.org online parking map using OpenGeo technology

via SFPark.org – Today, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) launched a new interactive parking map for SFpark.org. The SFMTA developed the new map in collaboration with OpenGeo, a division of the non-profit OpenPlans and a leader in open source geospatial technology.

NY MTA’s Bus Time Off To Fast Start

via Transportation Nation – MTA’s BusTime system has been up and running in Staten Island for barely two months and already an estimated 10 percent of all bus riders use it every weekday.

KCAT Celebrates Progress in Active Transportation

via Kingston This Week – The evening forum featured a presentation and discussion of eight short films by Streetfilms, a non-profit organization that produces short films about smart transportation design and policy for ‘livable streets’.

Hot or Not: Urban Planning Edition

via Architizer – OpenPlans, the makers behind Beautiful Streets, want to see how digital tools such as Street View help shape urban planning projects. The group also hopes to “experiment” with the data it collects from user responses…

Peer-to-Peer Pioneer Warns India About the Evils of Cars

via Autopia, Wired.com – Gorton isn’t so naive as to call for the eradication of the automobile, but he wants to see policies that aggressively discourage their use. To that end, he founded OpenPlans, a nonprofit focused on promoting transparent government and civic engagement, and he’s tried to bring an open source approach to urban planning.

The Measure of a Beautiful Street

via The Atlantic Cities – So OpenPlans launched Beautiful Streets.. the site literally asks people, “do you prefer the street on the left or the right?”. With it, the project’s creators are hoping to be able to identify common characteristics of a beautiful street (and a better place).

Traffic Jam Economics

via New York Times – As a clever summary posted on Streetsblog.org (a fascinating platform for debates on urban transportation) waggishly puts it, “Roads cause traffic.”

Country in Crisis: Looking to America’s Mayors to Rise to the Challenge

via The Huffington Post – Similar work being done by OpenPlans, a non-profit that helps cities use data to improve their transportation systems through open-source software. Already the group has been behind New York City’s growing effort to provide real-time tracking for the entire city’s bus system.

The Government Makes Your Rent High

via Forbes – Streetsblog has documented how ugly the resultant parking facilities are*, but the bigger problem is that these garages are an uneconomical land use that drives up the cost of building new apartments and therefore discourages dense residential development.

MTA Bus Time Coming To The Bronx

via TransitBlogger.com – Earlier today, MTA NYC Transit announced that the next borough to be setup with the technology will be the Bronx.

Health Benefits of Ciclovia Far Outweigh Costs

via PlanetSave.com – Angie Schmitt of Streetsblog makes the apt point: “Learning about the tremendous health benefits that result from closing streets to car traffic just a few days a year makes you wonder how much society would benefit if more people felt comfortable being active on city streets every day.” Exactly.

Open-Source, Real-Time Bus Tracking Is Coming to All of New York City

via TechPresident – Today, the MTA announced that this project will immediately go live in the borough of Staten Island — which has buses and a light rail line but no subway — and will be in all five boroughs by 2013. BusTime data will be available through an API, a web dashboard, via SMS and by using QR codes.

Bus tracking expands as MTA eyes citywide rollout

via Crains NY – Every bus route in Staten Island now has GPS tracking that riders can view with smartphones. The system, built in part by OpenPlans, is scheduled to be in every borough at the end of next year

OpenBlock: Can You Explain Data to a Computer AND a Human?

via PBS.org Idea Lab – Understanding each step of the set-up, production and editing process involved with OpenBlock is critical to our ability to describe the expense side of the equation, which we hope and expect will lead to the financial viability of the application as a tool to fill the information needs of rural communities.

The Best Metro Data Releases of 2011

via The Atlantic Cities – Frank Hebbert, who works with the open-data pioneers OpenPlans, says, “There’s an amazing profusion of tools and huge interest in what gets produced. From a policy perspective, what does that mean?”

NYC 2.0: The Travelers

via WNYC – OpenPlans work and mission is featured in this video about the organization.

A Gift Guide to Bike Stuff that People Actually Want

via grist.org – Give your favorite biker a membership with her local bicycle advocacy organization…like Streetfilms, an outfit that has created an advocacy toolbox of short movies from around the world.

In New York, Open Source Data on Bus Location

via smartplanet.com – OpenPlans Transportation were selected by New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority to develop the software for what it calls “MTA Bus Time,” a real-time information system.

Ingartek designs Geo Vitoria-Gasteiz, Utilizes OpenTripPlanner

via basqueresearch.com – According to the person in charge at Ingartek, Isidro Arrieta, “This OpenTripPlanner based technology development enables achieving algorithm results very similar to Google Maps and Google Transit, but enhanced for local requirements…the OpenTripPlanner tool is one of the most ambitious alternatives to Google Maps – with greater visibility, through its presence in more than 470 cities and which provides automatic adaptation for mobile environments.

N.Y. MTA taps real-time information team for Bus Time

via Metro Magazine – OpenPlans Transportation & Cambridge Systematics were selected by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to develop the software for MTA Bus Time, a real-time bus customer information system for New York City.

Making Streetfilms at the RecreActiva, Guadalajara, Mexico

via El Informador (in Spanish) – Clarence Eckerson Jr visits Guadalajara and experiencees the RecreActica – an event which occurs every Sunday where the Guadalajara city governments opens 64 kms of streets to exclusive use of pedestrians, bicycles, rollerskaters and walkers.

OpenBlock to Help Rural Newspapers Get Access to Public Data

via PBS – OpenBlock Rural is going to help these rural newspapers get ahead of the oncoming wave of digital interlopers by lowering the cost of deploying OpenBlock and using it as a tool to engage younger audiences, as well as increase advertising revenue.

Portland Regional Trip Planner to launch October 15

via oregonlive.com – TriMet, Oregon’s largest transit agency, will officially launch the Portland Regional Trip Planner, – or what it calls the “first open-source, multimodal trip planner produced by a U.S. transit agency” on October 15, 2011.

“Class-Size Claptrap” by Elizabeth Green

via New York Magazine – When Michael Bloomberg ran for mayor in 2001, he cited research that claimed crowded classrooms are “one of the greatest detriments to learning” and vowed to reduce city-school class sizes. Now, in year ten of his reign, principals are overseeing what they say will be, when the final numbers are tallied, the most crowded classrooms in a decade.

GothamSchools’ Philissa Cramer featured on NBC’s “The 20″

via WNBC – “School’s Back and Bloomberg’s Numbers Are Down.” Philissa Cramer, managing editor of Gotham Schools and a member of The 20, sat down with David Ushery to discuss the new school year. And despite what the polls say, Bloomberg insists the parents think things are great!

Questioning the Car: A Walk with Mark Gorton

via UrbanOmnibus.net – Mark Gorton is best known as an advocate for livable streets, alternative transportation and open government. Gorton’s involvement with urban issues began in 1999, when he founded OpenPlans, a non-profit devoted to the pursuit of smart planning and civic engagement through media and digital tools.

Open Trip Planner Offers Open Source Multimodal Routing

via Spatial Sustain – The OpenTripPlanner (OTP) project is an international effort to create a multimodal trip planning and analysis tool. This free and open source software is optimized for use with open data sources and standards such as OpenStreetMap and the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) for transit system data.

Intelligent Cities Forum: Nick Grossman Interview

via NBM.org – Interview with Nick Grossman, Managing Director of Civic Commons, was conducted at the June 6, 2011 Intelligent Cities Forum. Nick speaks about how OpenPlans, Civic Commons and Code for America are leading the charge towards improved civic technology for use by city governments.