Potential of apps to tackle gridlock
Heading out of city hall on Wednesday afternoon soon after five, the Swiftly transit app revealed that I had just missed a Bay Street bus. But as it turned out, I hadn’t: walking north at a leisurely pace, I soon caught up to it. And then passed it.
Then I stood on the corner of Dundas, for perhaps eight minutes, mouth agape, watching as eastbound motorists blocked the intersection over and over and over again. At one point not a single northbound vehicle made it through for three consecutive green lights. If you had been quick about it, you could have had a jolly picnic in the middle of Bay Street, anywhere between there and Gerrard.
There are many reasons for gridlock in this city. Some could be ameliorated if politicians had the courage to risk motorists’ irrational anger for the greater good: more restrictions on turns and parking; ending the ludicrous mixing of streetcars and cars; towing away illegal parkers even more mercilessly, and raising fines even more, than has been done under Mayor John Tory’s crackdown; a James Bond- style helicopter magnet that picks up intersection- blocking automobiles and drops them into a junkyard from a great height.
As such courage is not in overabundance, it is all the more satisfying to see private enterprise doing end runs around the problem. Using open data about transit vehicle locations, transit apps now compete to navigate you better through the gridlock. Some offer Toronto Transit Commission, Uber X, Car2Go and bike- share options on the same screen. Swiftly claims it can predict the next vehicle’s arrival better than its rivals, using its own algorithm.
And for motorists, there’s Waze, a free, advertisingsupported GPS navigation app that routes and reroutes you, as necessary, based on other users’ speed ( passively monitored as they go), and any reports of accidents, constructions or gridlock they enter into the app ( hopefully not while driving). The more users there are, the more data there are to optimize your commute.
In 2013, Google bought Waze for US$1.3 billion. But amazingly enough, it relies on a dedicated Wikipedia-esque community of volunteer map editors. Any user can edit any map: add a favourite restaurant, suggest a shortcut, improve the pronunciation of a street name, correct an erroneous turn restriction.
Kris Benson, who works in IT for the University of Alberta and manages Edmonton’s map-building community, says he got involved for reasons both altruistic and selfish.
“I saw an opportunity to benefit the people around me — because we’re talking about an app that was created to ease the morning and afternoon commutes,” he says. “So by having the maps accurate it meant that I had a 25- minute commute instead of what could be a 45-minute commute if I took the wrong ( route) that had bad traffic or an accident.”
The potential of this kind of technology goes well beyond individual commuters. Companies and cities could save huge amounts of valuable time if their employees could better navigate the city — from parks workers to paramedics. And the data could, in turn, help cities identify their biggest traffic problems and craft the most appropriate solutions.
On Friday, the city of Montreal announced it had signed a data-sharing agreement with Waze, the first in Canada. “By obtaining realtime data, the city wants to i mprove i ts reactivity to traffic jams, accidents or other incidents on the road and minimize the impact on drivers,” Harout Chitilian, vice- chairman of the city’s executive committee, said in a statement.
Steve Buckley, general manager of transportation services in Toronto, says it’s unlikely we’ll see a similar agreement here. He doubts most Waze users understand t he company’s business model, which is essentially to give advertisers an ultraefficient real-time way to sell you things: not only does the app know where you are, it knows where you tend to be on any given day at any given time. The app pops up coupons and other offers as you drive, and offers to redirect you with the tap of a finger. Buckley suggests that’s not something Toronto would be seen endorsing.
That’s a reasonable position. But Buckley stresses the city is committed to providing the same sort of open data about road conditions as it does for transit vehicles, and letting people do with it what they wish. The potential is, therefore, huge for private citizens to solve problems City hall has struggled unsuccessfully with for years.
And if Torontonians could learn how to bloody drive, the future might be very bright indeed.