Posts tagged with 'technology'
Personal rapid transit could help cities reduce car use and support sustainable transport. Photo via Treehugger.com.
Friday Fun: Can personal rapid transit replace 90% of cars on the road?
Sustainable urban mobility can come from multiple sources. Personal rapid transit (PRT) combines public transport with personalized routing. Though their designs vary, PRT systems generally consist of four- to six-passenger pods that are autonomously controlled while traveling along guide-ways. Instead ...
Transport systems play an important role in shaping the character of an urban environment. Photo by Trey Ratcliff/Flickr.
Friday Fun: Are automated roads the next transport revolution?
Fresh off our discussion of the latest advances in solar-powered roadways, TheCityFix brings you the next future-oriented innovation in road technology: electric roadways. The Tracked Electrical Vehicle (TEV) Project is a radical new concept looking to transform the look, feel, ...
Technology is allowing city residents to interact with their surroundings in new ways, which can have both the benefit of advancing sustainable development and the drawback of reinforcing social divisions. Photo by Daniel Chavez/Flickr.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder: New mapping algorithm poses problems and promise for cities
Yahoo Labs has recently created a mapping algorithm that helps pedestrians find not the shortest route to their destination, but the most attractive one. This is great for visitors who want to spend every second of their time sightseeing in ...
Work schedules outside of the traditional 9 am to 5 pm allow greater flexibility in personal mobility, and in turn decreases congestion in developing cities. Photo by Roger Schultz/Flickr.
The end of rush hour: Technology gives way to new commuting and mobility patterns
For decades, ‘work’ meant spending an eight-hour chunk of your day in an office, industrial facility, or at school. Workers needed to physically occupy a given location in order to do their jobs. Because of this, the trips to and ...
Information-communication technologies have the ability to improve data quality for transport operators while increasing convenience for transport users. Photo by Frederik_Rowing/Flickr.
Across the divide: Information and communication connect users and transport systems
As the situation stands in India, lack of data connectivity inhibits the success of urban transport systems on two fronts. On one hand, transport operators do not have the baseline information to do their job efficiently. On the other hand, ...
Istanbul, Turkey, like many cities in Europe and Asia are turning towards water transport to combat congestion in growing urban areas. Photo by Axeltriple/Flickr.
Friday Fun: Three cities explore water-based transport to improve urban mobility
Rapidly developing cities worldwide, while diverse, have a number of factors in common. Issues that seem nearly universal are congestion and enormous traffic jams, which have, in some extreme cases, stretched the typical commute into a weeklong sojourn. While cities ...
Connecting smart cards and mobile phones enables cities to offer more efficient mobility and a safer, quality experience for all transport users. Photo by EMBARQ Brasil/Flickr.
Connecting data and technology for smarter transport systems
Emerging technologies, together with big data, are tools that allow us to better plan our cities and revolutionize the efficiency and quality of our transport systems. We are seeing threads of this already, as millions of people use smart cards ...
New services are venturing to transform the way the auto-rickshaw sector is managed in Chennai, India - to the benefit of users. Photo by Mattheui Aubry/Flickr.
Hailing autos everywhere: Entrepreneurial ideas transform Chennai’s auto-rickshaw sector
Chennai, the capital of the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, has long been infamous for the poor quality of its auto-rickshaw services. Until recently, it was best known for delinquent drivers fleecing passengers as they refused to use fare ...
"Entrepreneurs passionate about using technology to solve difficult transport problems have the opportunity to turn their ideas into reality. Photo by Benoit colin/Flickr."
Friday Fun: Calling all innovators to the Powerful Answers Award
Do you have an idea that could radically change the world, if only you were given the resources to bring it to fruition? Do you see challenges with sustainability, health, or transport in your community and want to solve them ...
There many creative ways to lower the carbon impact of transport. Some ways are zanier than others. Photo byRichard Masoner / www.cyclelicio.us
Top five under-rated low carbon transport solutions
Climate change is not a joke. Here at TheCityFix, we realize that we need to get serious about our strategies to reduce carbon emissions from transport. The world needs to explore bold, creative approaches to climate change mitigation if we ...
Cities have a lot to learn from one another. New "Wikipedia for urban planners" GreaterPlaces helps them do just that. Photo by Shreyans Bhansali/Flickr.
GreaterPlaces: The emerging Wikipedia for urban planners
Washington, DC recently hosted a Techcrunch meet-up, a Silicon-valley style pitch-off battle for emerging application developers. Amidst contestants like Broomie, which allows people to remind roommates and errant husbands to pick up groceries, and SpeakerBlast, which lets users turn their ...
Alta Bicycle Share has been successful in molding bike-share systems to meet individual city needs and build a culture of sustainable mobility. Photo by aaaronvandorn/Flickr.
“The wind at our backs”: An interview with Alta Bicycle Share co-founder Jeff Olson
Recently Jeff Olson, co-founder of Alta Bicycle Share, took a moment to sit down for a discussion on bike-share and sustainable urban mobility with TheCityFix. Our discussion spanned Olson’s thirty years of work in the field and his thoughts on ...
Finding ways to making riding transport fun and convenient takes innovative thinking, and sometimes, courage to think outside the box. Photo by Adam Cohn/Flickr.
Friday Fun: Four awesome (and odd) gadgets for your sustainable commute
South by South West (SXSW), the yearly festival that celebrates all things in entertainment technology, has just wrapped up in Austin, Texas. The festival featured many cool and innovative new devices – like virtual reality goggles, a computer that doubles ...
Residents of Hyderabad, India, can use mobile devices to be a part of the planning dialogue---whether it's creating clearer maps of the city or crowdsourcing infrastructure projects. Photo by Nietnagel/Flickr.
Public participation platforms change the dynamic between city and citizen
Instead of arguing about how their city did not have enough money to fund the creation of bike paths, a community in Mexico City, Mexico, went ahead and made them. When residents in Beijing, China, saw that cars were encroaching ...
It can be challenging, but sometimes fun, to learn how to bring sustainable transport to cities. Photo by Michael Newman/Flickr.
Friday Fun: Design your own transport network!
Planning an integrated transport network that moves people through cities quickly and efficiently is pivotal for cities to enable sustainable mobility. Few understand just how to difficult this can be, but the new Mini Metro game made by Dinosaur Polo ...
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