New technologies are fine so long as there’s something useful to be gained from the cost and effort expended in incorporating them into your life and work. There has to be sufficient incentive and it’s not always there.
The smart meter in the house for reducing energy usage may be a case in point. It can show how much electricity a kettle or a heater consumes, but it won’t stop you having tea or wanting to keep warm.
I have always been a fan of GPS (Global Positioning system) devices. Sat-navs have sold so well because they save time – and fuel – in getting from Point A to an unfamiliar Point B. Now I’m looking out for a Garmin Forerunner 310XT training device. For runners, walkers, swimmers and cyclists this is really useful for plotting and detailed analysis of your course and performance with the data uploaded wirelessly via your PC to a website for storage.
But the GPS based idea that has got me really excited these last three weeks in the US has been Seattle’s OneBusAway app, which is downloadable free onto an iPad, Blackberry or other smartphone. Feed in the bus numbers and stops you are likely to use and you’ll get a map display and a constantly updating list of bus arrival times. (See opposite).
This simple idea has been developed by University of Washington graduate student Brian Ferris, using open source software. The app accesses King County data publicly available, is being developed for other platforms and has already been downloaded for 40,000 individual iPhones. It is used weekly by 25,000 individuals.
As Ferris says in an interview with Government Technology (7th July 2010), “People are more satisfied with public transit, spend less time waiting, take transit more frequently, feel safer at bus stops and actually reported walking more.” A safer, healthier, less congested and greener Seattle – no wonder other cities are looking to copy the idea. Nor is there any doubt about the incentive! Could the car virtually disappear from downtown Seattle?












