Posts Tagged ‘Boston’

Boston rolls out GIS Data Hub

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Last November, Boston’s CIO, Bill Oates, and its GIS manager, Claire Lane, told MHT they’d be expanding the use of GIS beyond snow removal. Today, Universal Hub notes the rollout of the City of Boston GIS Data Hub, which lets users monitor city services:

Hours of fun for data geeks and a potentially useful service to see how your neighborhood is doing (you can overlay wards and city-council districts), and any implications this went online only so the mayor could “wifi” his opponents who’ve been calling for something similar is, of course, completely reprehensible.

Boston chooses Bixi for bike sharing, BikeNow looks to Baltimore

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

The city of Boston has chosen the company that runs Montreal’s Bixi program to implement bike sharing in the Hub. It’s like Zipcar for bikes — bikes would be stationed at racks throughout the city, where a user would swipe a card to rent a bike, which they could return at a station near his or her destination. The AP reports: 

Boston officials are hoping to reach a decision with the Public Bike System Co. in the next 60 days to install a network of 2,500 bikes and 290 stations across the city by next summer, with the option of expanding to a 5,000-bike system encompassing the neighboring communities Brookline, Cambridge and Somerville.

It might be good news for bike-enthusiasts, but it’s a setback for BikeNow, a Boston University spinout which had been hoping to do the same thing. Amy Trus, a co-founder of the BU $50K Business Plan Competition finalist, said via email she knew BikeNow had a 50/50 chance at the contract.

BikeNow’s plan included a lower rental rate subsidized by advertising, which the city of Boston didn’t want, Trus said. Plan B for BikeNow, which based its service on Paris’ Velib program, and would act as local operators for the B-Cycle organization’s technology, is to roll out the service in Baltimore, said Trus, a Maryland native.

Google maps Boston to a T

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Google has added Boston’s MBTA to its Google Maps GIS service, as of this morning. The new integration means Bostonians can map point-to-point routes and compare travel times by car, on foot, or by public transit – as on this map of the route from Mass High Tech’s newsroom downtown to MBTA headquarters in the Theatre District. Twitter user @j_b_f was first to notice the development, late this morning.

The MBTA this afternoon invited news media to a joint announcement tomorrow at 11 a.m. at South Station with city transportation officials and Google Cambridge’s engineering director, Steve Vinter. No details of the planned announcement were released, but the website Universal Hub reports officials will announce the new tool at the presser. A Google spokesman said the company is “evaluating data,” but has no information to release. MBTA officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

According to a report on the website Greater Greater Washington earlier this month, Boston and Washington DC were the only two major U.S. transit systems remaining without integration with Google Maps. Since 2006, the T has offered a wayfinding solution on its own website that provides much of the same functionality as the new Google integration.

The T and general manager Daniel Grabauskas are overdue for some good news this week, after three of the agency’s boardmembers wrote letters to state transportation secretary James Aloisi saying they have no confidence in Grabauskas’ leadership. The letters cited a damning NTSB report, out earlier this month, on a Green Line trolley crash that killed an operator in 2008.

Boston Police debut online crime map

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

The Dorchester Reporter … reports … that the BPD, which not only blogs, but also tweets, has partnered with Salt Lake City-based Public Engines Inc. to use its CrimeReports.com website to map incidents to which BPD officers respond.

Good to know MHT’s block is crime-free.

The Dot Reporter itself beat the BPD to the punch with a map with information from police logs from precincts Dorchester and Mattapan earlier this year. 

Via Universal Hub, whose Adam Gaffin built the Reporter’s (and Universal Hub’s) crime map.  

Staff writer Galen Moore has been all over both ends of this phenomenon recently — GIS technology and hyperlocal media.

Bryant University Graduate School

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