Based on the number of vehicles with Uber and Lyft stickers on them I’ve seen around Ann Arbor, it’s obvious that ridesourcing (or ridesharing) has become a significant transportation mode even in small cities. But given the difficulty of obtaining data from these companies, how can we study this important new phenomenon? I decided to […]
Hubway Data Visualization Challenge
Curious about how people are using the new bike sharing systems that have been popping up in cities around the world? The bike sharing system in Boston, Hubway, has released detailed data for roughly half a million trips as part of a data visualization challenge. Sponsored by Hubway and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, competition […]
Bike Sharing Coming to Boston: What Infrastructure Is Needed?
Boston has been slow to join the urban bicycling renaissance. In this very strong-mayor city, Mayor Menino had a public about-face in 2007. After long neglecting bicyclists in the city, he hired a “bike czar” and the city began implementing bike racks and lanes. The mayor himself even bought a bike for neighborhood rides. With […]
Could the Big Dig Have Cost Less?
As the parks it created finally fill with activity and the project fades from newspaper headlines, Boston’s Big Dig is subtly slipping into the city’s history. Officially known as the Central Artery Bridge/Tunnel Project, the Big Dig buried an elevated freeway in downtown Boston and added a new freeway tunnel under Boston Harbor connecting Logan […]
Why the T is Broke
The Boston MBTA, the city’s public transportation agency which operates public ferries, buses, the subway, and commuter trains, is broke. The agency’s budget for last year was patched by a one-time payment of $160 million funded by a state sales tax increase, and the agency has over $8.5 billion dollars in outstanding debt. In addition, […]
Which Big City Has the Greenest Transportation Profile?
When I was in San Francisco in October, I met Chava Kronenberg, a bay area transportation planner and Metro Boston native. During our conversation she commented Boston’s quite extensive alternative transportation profile is often overlooked in national discussions. Instead, usual suspects like Portland, Oregon get all the credit for their green transportation systems. I decided […]
Transit Apps, Visualizations, Data Plans Announced
Today I attended the MassDOT Developers Conference on transportation apps and data. The conference was organized by Chris Dempsey and Josh Robin, two Massachusetts state employees who have been spearheading work to publish transportation data and encourage third party developers to create apps in the state. The big news at the conference was their announcement […]