Photo:
View from Atlantic Avenue Subway station, New York, NY.
An intern at OpenPlans in New York City.
Things I care about:
Family | Friends | Transportation | Grad school | Hitting around a volleyball | Cooking | Travel Abroad | Moving a lot | Finding great places to ride | Carpe'ing Diem | Being twenty-something
As part of a project I've been working on with a terrific group of students in my Intro to Transportation Planning class, we created a two-page handout to help describe what open data is and how agencies can build relationships with the development community.
Open data is critical to increasing the availability of a diverse set of apps and products to an agency's riders. It promotes innovation and ensures that the market responds to what riders want.
Take a look and use it as fodder to advise an agency that is considering opening up their GTFS feed.
Everything was a team effort aided by Landon Reed, Jacob Tzegaegbe, Bin Yan and Lauren Pessoa with essential advice from Dr. Kari Watkins.
Today I got to give a lecture in statistics class on visualizing data using different tools like R and Excel. It was a great opportunity for me to learn the material in @FlowingData's book: Visualize This. It was enjoyable because, as my close friends will assert, I love presenting.
Take a look. Let me know what you think!
StopAlert
(An entry a month too late for Beyond the Countdown Clock... but I hope you'll take a look and let me know what you think!)
Loud music. Sleepy. Hearing/Visually Impaired. Playing Angry Birds...
There are a dozen reasons that you might miss your stop. But with StopAlert, your mobile device will alert you as you are approaching your stop. StopAlert puts Automated Vehicle Location (AVL) in your hands to interrupt your multimedia or to vibrate your device in order notify you that you will be alighting shortly. StopAlert also provides real-time transfer guidance. By telling StopAlert where you are going, it will tell you how to get there. As you approach the transfer station, StopAlert will tell you whether or not you have any chance of making a train within the next few minutes. This cuts down on the stress of sprinting up stairs only to see that you were never going to make that transfer. This is gret both for visitors and commuters alike.
How it Works
StopAlert uses an open short-range communication from a bus or rail-based AVL system* to determine where the device, and user, is en route. By pinging the AVL device on the transit-vehicle, there is far less uncertainty for reception in tunnels. It also taps into the sophisticated location from the AVL unit (using speed, distance and heading in conjunction with GPS) which is better than phone GPS for a closed system. When the user boards a train, he or she can tell the app her ultimate destination. When the train departs the stop before the destination, the app will alert and announce that the next stop is coming up. It effectively replicates the audio and visual alerts on Metro and puts them into the device that people are caught up in.
The transfer capabilities will be built off of Google Transit which now provides transit routing. An algorithm will look at the multiple options provided by Google Transit and determine the best route based on real time ability to make a transfer, which will update while on the journey.
StopAlert feeds data into a central database that all apps will periodically take information from. The actual time between stops will be recorded and aggregate bits of anonymous AVL data will be uploaded. On a regular basis, calculations will be run on this database to provide average speed between stops and the reliability of those amounts. It will effectively create a rudimentary version of NextBus which will help with the transfer module.
*Currently, commercial AVL products are not transmitting any wireless signal that could be received by a phone. An AVL unit or mobile data terminal would be able to broadcast this signal if a transit agency required it, but I don’t think it’s currently available.
**Also note that wi-fi will be needed en route for the transfer information to work properly. This is available in DC Metro.
*** This is one more reason for people to keep their heads buried in their mobile devices... for better or worse...
Hi there - Looks like you found me on Facebook or someone told you about this - guess it worked! As you probably realize, I'm starting GA Tech in the fall and am looking for a roommate to go in on an apartment with. I'm interested in learning a little about you and what you're looking for in a roommate; if it seems like a good fit then maybe we can catch up by phone or a video chat and check out some places. So send me an e-mail with some info and we'll see if we can make it work! (jcwong@alumni.upenn.edu. or jcwong86@gmail.com). A little about me...
Social/Random stuff about me
I like to think I'm a pretty easy-going roommate, and a very outgoing person. I enjoy road biking and beach volleyball, and I'd really like to get back into swimming. I've been exploring the world of micro-brews and craft beers, even brewed a few batches with a buddy of mine while I was living in Baltimore. I've been moving around a lot, so I like to keep lots of pictures around to remind me of the places I've been and people I've met. I like going out (a few times mid-week, usually game for weekends) but am more than okay to hang out, watch TV and chill. I do like to entertain - I like cooking and having people over for BBQ's and dinner, or just a few drinks. And I think I'm pretty open-minded for people's points-of-view, backgrounds, orientations etc. I love to travel - I've been to a few different places around the world from Honduras to South Africa, Europe and yes, even Canada. I think these were all phenomenal experiences; the best kind of travel to me is when you can look at it from a local perspective and understanding.
Professionally
I graduated from Penn in 2008 with a Systems Engineering degree with a Transportation focus. I'm passionate about cities and public transit, and am constantly trying to learn more about them. A lot about me relates to my interests in transportation, which is why I'm studying it for a year and a half at Georgia Tech starting this fall. Since I graduated, I've been working with transportation consulting firm called Kittelson and Associaties and they've been great. I worked in Baltimore for a year (Charm City - a great place!) and then had the opportunity to do a work exchange with some folks we know in South Africa. In doing so, I had an amazing chance to work abroad for a year, culminating in two weeks going to matches during the 2010 World Cup. Since I got back last summer, I've been living and working for Kittelson again, this time in our office just outside DC. It's been a great year and I'm sad to leave.
Nuts and bolts
As I said - I hope you'll reach out if you think we might get along and then we'll take it from there! Thanks for reading! Cheers! -James