A nifty animation of traffic in Ho Chi Minh City, produced by Rob Whitworth.
From Rob: “Everyone who has visited Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam knows part of the magic (love it or hate it) is in the traffic. Ever since I first set foot in HCMC I have been captivated by the cities energy. Saigon is a city on the move unlike anything I have experienced before which I wanted to capture and share.”
In this New York Times article, Christopher Leinberger, a professor of urban planning at the University of Michigan, offers his thoughts on how the Great Recession has led to a shift in real estate demand.
The loosers: drivable suburbs and the car dependent suburban fringe.
The winners: walkable, centrally located neighborhoods in cities and small towns.
But as the author himself acknowledges, these areas will require significant investment. “Bus and light-rail systems, bike lanes and pedestrian improvements — what traffic engineers dismissively call “alternative transportation” — are vital,” says Leinberger. “Congress must must give metropolitan areas greater flexibility for financing transportation, rather than mandating that the vast bulk of the money can be used only for roads.”
In this article on Forbes.com, author Michael Kanellos looks at auction-based systems for parking spaces in urban areas.
While we at Parkio focus our efforts on helping employers to manage dynamic charge policies for employee parking lots, this article points to cities such as San Francisco that have begun to experiment with gradual forms of dynamic pricing.
With the help of the parking technology innovators at Streetline, select cities are able to price certain spots at a premium, for instance, during certain times of the day or during certain months. The cities aren’t necessarily selling spots to the highest bidder on the spot, but using pricing to maximize revenue and change behavior.
Vegas, baby, Vegas.
That’s right, Team Parkio is gearing up to head to the National Parking Association annual convention & expo in Las Vegas, NV.
We’re excited to learn from parking industry veterans, as well the new kids on the block who are introducing some exciting technology in the space. Specifically, we’re looking forward to learning more about the following companies:
As noted in this Wall Street Journal article, in many downtowns across the country a scarcity of parking has driven demand sky high.
While this article focuses on the rising cost of residential parking, the demands on commercial parking are much the same — crowded conditions and urban revitalization efforts are fueling demand, and building more parking garages isn’t necessarily an option (or is prohibitively expensive).
At Parkio, we help our customers to effectively charge for parking so that they can take full advantage of their existing parking infrastructure while limiting the need to build additional lots. By giving organizations the right tools to manage and properly incentivize their employee base to minimize the number of cars driven to work, hopefully more organizations can avoid the cost of the $100K parking spot.
It should come as no surprise that we here at Parkio are big believers in cloud computing and the wide range of benefits offered by web-based enterprise services.
That said, moving critical business processes to the cloud requires careful thought and consideration. We came across this Wall Street Journal article which we felt offered a good summary of the key questions to be considered before committing to the cloud.
Are you interested in taking ownership of an exciting and growing software project? Do you have a passion for evaluating new technologies and drafting product roadmaps? Do you take great pleasure in writing elegant, efficient code?
If so, we want to talk.
The dust has settled, and our company finds itself with a new office to compliment our new Parkio branding.
In moving on from Pioneer Square, our team will certainly miss the old world charm of Occidental Square, the friendly staff at the Grand Central Bakery, and the drop-in visits from President Obama.
Our new space puts us in the heart of the Pike/Pine corridor, just a few steps from Stumptown Coffee and around the corner from the Block Party main stage. In fact, the neighborhood is so trendy that we are prepared to scoop The Stranger in declaring Pike/Pine as ground zero of Seattle’s yet-to-emerge PBR&B scene. Not to be forgotten among the appealing geography and music scene, our Coho Building office offers the size and services necessary to support our company’s growth.
We’re excited for the the fresh start, and look forward to continuing to produce great software in our new digs.
In this four minute video from TED, venture capitalist Gary Lauder offers a rapid-fire argument for a broad approach to thinking about the relationship between driver behavior and transportation efficiency.
Yesterday, Microsoft announced on the Bing community blog that Bing Maps will be adding transit routing to its directions options.
Initially transit directions will be available in just 11 major North American cities (Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New Jersey, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington DC, and Vancouver), though Microsoft has indicated its intention to expand transit directions to additional markets. Continue reading