It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to compete with the likes of Google, but that’s what a little start-up named Conveyal is doing. The firm creates digital tools to help transport authorities better communicate the wide array of available mobility options. Its new product is similar in functionality to Google Maps and the many consumer-based …
Continue reading Behind the Scenes of a Transportation Tech Start-Up
The only transportation demand management (TDM) program for public school faculty and staff in the U.S. has been created in Arlington County, Virginia. The program, called “ATP Schools,” is being administered by Arlington Transportation Partners (ATP), the employer-outreach arm of Arlington County Commuter Services. Funded by a grant from Virginia’s Department of Rail and Public …
Continue reading Arlington County First in Nation with Program to Ease Public-School Staff Commutes
Can social media be used to change a person’s commuting behavior or the way we design cities and transportation systems? There’s growing research to show how behaviors are influenced by networks, and specifically how social media can cause behavior changes that benefit society (such as decreasing energy consumption). The same principles, done correctly, could no doubt help change …
Continue reading A Social Media Playbook for Changing Commuting Behaviors
There’s a story that’s popular in business schools. A blizzard in the California Sierras had knocked out all communications and deliveries to customers of a California FedEx office. Unable to meet the company’s “absolutely, positively delivered overnight” guarantee, a junior FedEx staffer, without approval of his managers, rented a helicopter (charging it on his personal …
Continue reading Transit Comfort Begins with Great Customer Service
When it comes to public transportation, some of Arlington, Virginia’s most forward-thinking businesses are in the hospitality industry. A handful of hotels have recently been recognized for their initiatives, in partnership with Arlington Transportation Partners (ATP), to implement transit benefits and educate their employees about the area’s transportation options. They were honored at a recent …
Continue reading Arlington Hotels Help Drive Public-Transportation Ridership
It has been well documented that large companies offering transit benefits to their employees gain payroll tax savings, lower health-benefit costs, increased employee productivity, and better retention levels. But we seem to hear less about the advantages to small companies. Turns out, offering transit benefits is just as beneficial for small firms as it is …
Continue reading Making it Easy for Small Businesses to Offer Transit Benefits
There are a lot of reasons to be frustrated with the gridlocked federal government, but when it comes to transportation, this headline probably hits home the hardest. And it is the primary claim of a report released today, Subsidizing Congestion, by TransitCenter and The Frontier Group, that describes the numerous ways in which a relatively …
Continue reading The Federal Government is Making Your Commute Worse
Arlington County Commuter Services (ACCS) looks and operates more like a start-up tech company than a government agency. The transportation demand management (TDM) arm of the Virginia county has an energy one might not normally expect in a government office. Busily decorated with site plan documents pinned to walls, bookcases filled with business management paperbacks, and …
Continue reading County Bureau Gets Creative Moving People Instead of Cars
[By Melissa McMahon and Paul Goddin for Mobility Lab. Published on May 8, 2014] Arlington, Virginia takes bicycling seriously. It partnered with Washington D.C. to create arguably the most successful bikesharing network in the U.S., Capital Bikeshare. Arlington contains more than 100 miles of multi-use trails, on-street bike lanes, and designated bike routes over a relatively small …
Continue reading 10 Rules for Construction of Good Bicycle Parking
[By Paul Goddin for Mobility Lab] “How do we begin to covet, Clarisse? Do we seek out things to covet? No, we covet what we see every day.” – Hannibal Lecter in Thomas Harris’s Silence of the Lambs What does this quote have to do with transportation? Here at Mobility Lab, we're in the business of attempting to …
