Web Conference 2022.06.14 Curb
- Every other week Tuesday call at 9am PT, 12pm ET, 5/6pm CET
Meeting ID: 898 5980 7668 - Passcode 320307
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0lcuCgrjwsHNyZRagmc86b12iCmWGBHfjq
One tap mobile: +13126266799,,89859807668#,,,,*320307# US (New York)
Dial by phone: +1 929 436 2866 (US) (Find your local number)
Main Topics
- Welcome (5 mins) - Marisa Mangan, SANDAG
- Open House Topics (40 mins) - Michael Schnuerle, OMF
- CDS and MDS for carshare as part of Modes
- WZDx connection
- MDS overlap
- Guests topics
- Hosts: Marisa Mangan, SANDAG
- Note Taker: Eric Mai, Lacuna
- Facilitator: Michael Schnuerle, OMF
- Outreach: Angela Giacchetti, OMF
- 30 Attendees
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Meeting Recording - Passcode:
9=M3&8Yn - OMF Slide Presentation
- Michael Schnuerle - Create an issue to talk about CarShare and how we can support it in the next CDS release. DONE
- All - Share your thoughts on the curb zone restrictions discussion. What would have to change if we added a restrictions field to curb zones?.
- Local roadway operators - Share your thoughts on the WZDx discussion.
- The next WG meeting June 28 is cancelled for an OMF Member Board meeting. Our next meeting will be July 12.
- MetroLab Chicago happened last week. It's an in-person summit.
- MetroLab is on the OMF advisory board.
- Michael and a few other OMF members attended.
- Mary Catherine Snyder (SDOT) provided a city perspective of curb usage.
- Karen Lightman (Carnegie Mellon) provided a university perspective of curb usage.
- Anil Merchant (Automotus) provided a technological perspective of curb monitoring.
- Mary Catherine Snyder: Great attendance and engagement from the audience. MetroLab is fascinating - lots of connections between cities and universities.
- Hosted by Mobility Data
- Attendees from North America and Europe
- Mobility Data are the stewards of GTFS and GBFS.
- Andrew was there to talk about MDS and CDS. Many people were hearing about CDS for the first time and were intrigued.
- Non-US stakeholders were particularly interested (having follow-up conversations with folks from France and LatAm).
- Lots of interest!
- We've aligned on naming, architecture, structure, field names, concepts where possible.
- MDS 2.0 will focus on revisiting the Policy API. There is overlap with Policy as defined in the CDS Curbs API. We could add things to MDS Policy to support CDS. This will be a back burner effort unless people have strong suggestions since it doesn't directly tie to use cases.
- Also looking at how CDS connects to MDS modes. Zones for maintenance or charging?
- More opportunities for alignment - MDS has robust definitions for Policy, Geography, Jurisdiction, Metrics. CDS could leverage those but we should figure out why we want to do that - what's the benefit of merging the ecosystems?
- Carshare is a new mode in MDS 2.0.
- There is an overlap with CDS: how are carshare vehicles using the curb? Charging? Pick up / drop off?
- There are many carshare companies and many cities where they operate. It's a big ecosystem.
- Is there a need to define how carshare vehicles can use the curb in CDS? How might CDS need to change to support carshare use cases?
- Becky Edmonds (SDOT)
- Uses MDS to get trip data for some carshare.
- Want to know how long zipcars, getaround, etc are dwelling at the spaces that they have permits for.
- Been difficult to get some of the carshare companies to "modernize" and provide data to the city.
- Carshare companies get permits for free-floating and permitted spaces.
- Turo isn't required to get a permit and so is invisible to SDOT.
- New modes are an "add on" to MDS - they use the core MDS foundation but add new concepts as well (like trips).
- Andrew Glass Hastings - Does SDOT have access to P2P carshare activity? Turo has not approached the city for a permit. Getaround has. SDOT's relationship with these companies varies depending on their model - whether they want a permit for free floating or dedicated spaces in the right of way. Other companies are running unpermitted mini-carshare operations. As long as they're following the rules (time limits, paying for parking) SDOT may not have any knowledge of them.
- Angela Giacchetti - One challenge with carshare is that companies tend to contract out their software and backend technology which presents problems for modernization and data access.
- We have a "rideshare" user-class in CDS, maybe we should add a "carshare" value too?
- This seems to be a pretty compelling use case. It would be great if we could get data to see how efficiently these companies are using the public space.
- Mary Catherine - How do we define efficiency? The city probably has a different definition than the provider.
- Links:
- CDS could reference WZDx when there is work being done adjacent or overlapping to a CDS curb area, space, or zone.
- We can add a link to the WZDx ID to our CDS geography objects.
- Jacob Larson (Omaha) - If a work zone intersects a curb zone, we want to be able to close that curb zone or some of its spaces. Spaces have an availability property. Should we add an availability property to curb zones? Should we add a field for "restrictions"? If a work zone has restrictions (e.g., work zones become tow zones when people park there) can we reflect that in CDS?
- Nate Towery (USDOT) - There are two types of restrictions. There may be a scheduled closure which restrictions can be attached to. There are also more permanent restrictions (e.g., bridge height must be published to prevent bridge strikes). A road restriction feed could publish information on things like school zones which would overlap with CDS use cases. There aren't many road restriction feeds in use quite yet.
- Jacob Larson (Omaha) - Would separating the activity types out into "positive" and "negative" activities be a breaking change? Yes, any existing feeds would no longer be in compliance after this change so it would be breaking - but we can handle that.
- Omaha's use case for "positive" and "negative" activities is to associate a rate with a negative restriction. Right now you can't have a rate on a negative value. Their use case: someone pulls up to a zone and is registered to their fleet database. As invoicing and billing proceeds they want to send out directed enforcement (bill by mail) after a certain number of days based on a negative rate. Currently, the spec specifies that "if a negative activity is used, the rate array should be empty" which presents a problem for this use case.
- Akshay Malik (Philadelphia) - Two general operational questions from their pilot implementation.
- How are dynamic curb specifications consumed by Google Maps / Apple Maps / Waze? How can private vehicles learn about dynamic curb status?
- We haven't had conversations with consumers like Google or Apple. There aren't many feeds out there yet that we could point to. We could tell them that it's coming. Once we have more feeds online we should talk to entities like that.
- Has any city tested out dynamic bike signage that allows cities to change restrictions on the fly?
- Pittsburgh has QR codes on signs with all the rules - that's dynamic in a way.
- The challenge is that it pushes the tech burden of discovering the regulation onto the user.
- Is anyone doing anything more dynamic than a QR code? Like a digital sign?
- Jacob Larson (Omaha) - We're starting with QR codes and have considered digital signs at the ends of blocks or curb zones. Also publishing a web-based map with curb restrictions.
- Kenya Wheeler (SF) - We've talked with Waze and Google Maps about having them ingest data, including a pre-CDS regulations API. They were hesitant to integrate because other cities don't have similar feeds. They do consume incident and street closure data though. We probably need critical mass before the big map vendors will integrate.
- Kenya Wheeler (SF) - An Australian vendor has an e-ink digital curb sign in use in Sydney and Melbourne that communicates things like parking restrictions. The major challenge is the cost and also they haven't deployed in the US yet.
- How are dynamic curb specifications consumed by Google Maps / Apple Maps / Waze? How can private vehicles learn about dynamic curb status?
- Akshay Malik (Philadelphia) - There are legal challenges with publishing digital APIs and web maps. They need to have a 15-30 day period for public comments before they make changes which presents problems. Do others have these problems?
- Mary Catherine (SDOT) - Seattle can change regulations without any comment period required. But for special events (college football games) they have to publish information. They would rather direct people to a website instead of publishing each event individually. There are ongoing data / information / technology issues with that. It's an ongoing process to figure out.
- SFMTA has a new WZDx feed with incident data!
- Let's build on some of these good discussions by creating Discussions in the curb-data-specification repository on GitHub.
