TransitCamp at Northern Voice 2008
Dustin Sacks
I've signed myself up to lead a TransitCamp related session this
Friday at the MooseCamp part of the Northern Voice conference. Seems
fitting since that's where Karen introduced it to Vancouver last year.
Is there anything you can think of that I shouldn't fail to mention?
All comments and suggestions welcome. Here's my current session
abstract:
TransitCamp & Open Source Government
Follow-up and expansion on issues from Vancouver Transit Camp. Why on
earth is our public transit data closed? We need to convince
government to embrace open source & open data. An open letter to that
effect will be drafted and signed. Open data is the KEY enabler of
user generated content and services. What are other ways we can open-
source our transit system and government in general? Designing catchy
new logos for government branches ourselves and publishing them under
Creative Commons. Vlogging the UI problems with SkyTrain stops and
other public spaces. Turning boring bus stops into community bulletin
boards. Public images, stickers, buttons, T-shirts and other swag you
can create.
I've been reviewing everything in the wiki (which is down right now,
but google cached. I'm considering replicating the text contents into
the barcamp wiki)
Anybody else going to be at the conference? They still have tickets
for the friday day if you want to.
peace,
dustin
Karen Fung
I'm glad someone's going to be talking Transit Camp at MooseCamp! It's
a great time to do it, since Bay Area Transit Camp is happening this
weekend. I'm sorry I'll be missing it! (Across town at another
conference for work)
One thing that might be cool to mention is that Transit Camps are
being formally adopted as a part of MetroLinx, the renamed Greater
Toronto Transportation Authority, and their public consultation
process. I got to sit in with the Toronto Transit Camp crew and where
they are taking the Transit Camps sounds awesome. Some info on this is
at Mark Kuznicki's post here:
http://remarkk.com/2008/02/05/accelerating-the-transitcamp-community/
There is also mention of the Toronto Transit Camp case study as
written about in the Harvard Business Review article. It's a good one
- check it out if you haven't already. Links are in the above post.
I'm also super-interested in the open data question. I've been
exploring it a lot here in Toronto as part of my research for my
thesis. If we can get video on this session to refer TransLink people
to watch, I'd be tickled pink :D
Karen
mweisman
Sounds like an interesting talk. There are a couple issues preventing open data in Vancouver. Both have workarounds, but translink has really dropped the ball:
Our geospatial data is derived from proprietary street network data. I have spoken to the guy who owns it, and he said an API to access transit data is fine, as long as people don't scrape the data to mirror it. I have proof that google transit does not use this data, as all lines between stops are euclidean shortest paths, rather than manhattan. I wrote a geospatial transit scraper, which is kind of buggy, but will estimate the bus network based on data on translik's schedules. Which leads to the other issue.
Translink restricts its own, non derived data. According to their aup, my scraper is fine, but I can't redistribute the data. I have already been threatened by transliink for running it for academic reasons. This is rediculous, and almost makes me want to write a web app based on it which scrapes the site everytime it is run to get around this issue, while essentially ddosing translink, as it takes several hours to run.
For your talk, you may want to read up on google transit feeds. It's an open format for representing transit networks, developed for google transit. Every city on google transit has a feed, but only portland, houston, and sf make them public. We could get a public one by getting translink to release the one they already have (which I have proof that it is not derived from proprietary sources), or creating our own through scraping (requires translink to remove the stick from thier ass) or manually with gps (like open street map).
Let me know if you want to talk more about this. A few of us from transit camp are working on google transit feed stuff, and promoting open transit. You should ome to our next meet up.
-----Original Message-----
From: "Karen Fung" <ka...@countablyinfinite.ca>
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:52:03
To:vantran...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: TransitCamp at Northern Voice 2008
Luke Closs
Thank you for the background on this.
Our geospatial data is derived from proprietary street network data. I have spoken to the guy who owns it, and he said an API to access transit data is fine, as long as people don't scrape the data to mirror it. I have proof that google transit does not use this data, as all lines between stops are euclidean shortest paths, rather than manhattan. I wrote a geospatial transit scraper, which is kind of buggy, but will estimate the bus network based on data on translik's schedules. Which leads to the other issue.
I think by now it is clear that having our public transit system use a proprietary, non-redistributable data source is not a tenable long term solution.
Translink restricts its own, non derived data. According to their aup, my scraper is fine, but I can't redistribute the data. I have already been threatened by transliink for running it for academic reasons. This is rediculous, and almost makes me want to write a web app based on it which scrapes the site everytime it is run to get around this issue, while essentially ddosing translink, as it takes several hours to run.
Perhaps a technique to comply with Translink's policy is to implement a scraper in javascript, so that no re-distribution is necessary. This could lead to the creation of a shared mashup base library - Translink.js anyone?
Let me know if you want to talk more about this. A few of us from transit camp are working on google transit feed stuff, and promoting open transit. You should ome to our next meet up.
I'm interested in following this conversation too - do you have a wiki or list for the discussion?
Cheers,
Luke
Joe Hughes
As far as I know, there isn't a generic group for discussing "open
transit" other than http://forums.opentransit.info/ (which has been
very TTC-centric in the past due to its roots in the original Toronto
TransitCamp), though it's certainly something I'd like to see.
Incidentally, you might be interested in this talk about data sharing
that TriMet's CTO gave yesterday at a transit industry conference:
http://headwayblog.com/2008/02/21/trimet-data-sharing-talk/
Joe
Michael Weisman
owned the domain we wanted to use, so we thought, "why not work with
them?"
At this point we are focused on creating interesting things with
google transit feeds. We feel that if there are some awesome tools out
there that work with any GTF, it will encourage translink and others
to open their feeds. Imagine all an organization had to do was release
a GTF, and then they had free access to dozens of great tools for
their customers. We feel this may be especially beneficial to smaller
communities, which may not have enough nerds to create custom tools.
At this point we are still getting off the ground. We met once, just
before christmas, and have been talking mostly through email since. I
think the handimobility guys are pretty close to having some tools
ready for a beta release, and I have been working on some tools to
import and export GTF from industry standard geospatial software (my
day job is with a company that makes geospatial interop software), but
it may be while before it's ready.
Also, there is a Bay Area transit camp this weekend which has some
reps from Google attending (http://barcamp.org/TransitCampBayArea).
Something interesting may come out of that.
Michael
--
Michael Weisman
mic...@mweisman.com
http://www.mweisman.com
Joe Hughes
> At this point we are focused on creating interesting things with
> google transit feeds. We feel that if there are some awesome tools out
> there that work with any GTF, it will encourage translink and others
> to open their feeds. Imagine all an organization had to do was release
> a GTF, and then they had free access to dozens of great tools for
> their customers. We feel this may be especially beneficial to smaller
> communities, which may not have enough nerds to create custom tools.
> Also, there is a Bay Area transit camp this weekend which has some
> reps from Google attending (http://barcamp.org/TransitCampBayArea).
> Something interesting may come out of that.
among other things, we built some bridges between developers and
people from local agencies, and had some good discussions about
formats for things outside the realm of GTFS (service alert and
routing query syndication). It's also led to one more feed being made
public, with more on the way.
In any case, keep me posted on the progress of your tools, and let me
know if there's anything I can do to help.
Joe
> On 22-Feb-08, at 9:34 AM, Joe Hughes wrote:
>
>
>
> > Very interesting, Michael.
>
> > As far as I know, there isn't a generic group for discussing "open