Trusted Taxis

I’m in the middle of a lot of travel at the moment so no doubt I’ll have plenty of stories to tell, but here is the first.

Late last night I cam back from Milan, next week I go to Poland, then New York then Spain with a quick trip back to the UK squeezed in between those dates as well.

My carbon footprint is massive I fear.

So my recent trip to Milan found me being very obviously conned by a taxi driver, now at this point I don’t want to single out a nationality for conning passengers out of their money, I’m an equal opportunity blogger I’ve been conned (or an attempt been made to be conned) by lots of taxi drivers from lots of differing countries, its not the nationality that makes me concerned when getting into a taxi.

Its the occupation of the driver and my obvious lack of shared nationality with them.

Anyhow this taxi driver in Milan picked me up from the central station to take me to a hotel on the south west of Milan, according to the hotel’s website this is 8km away from the centre of Milan.

Now some top tips to any would be fraud minded taxi drivers reading this blog;

1. When your pick up has given you a Google map print out of the hotel address its pretty much obvious that I know the general location of the hotel in question in relation to Milan centre, south west.
2. Don’t pre program your pick up with the line “Oh that’s in a different town and long way away ” and don’t then reply that it will only take 10 minutes to get there.
3. Don’t leave your portable navigation system on with the map showing.
4. Don’t program in the destination a third of the way into the trip showing me distance to the hotel.
5. Don’t do the obvious and say “oh look I’ve programmed in the destination and we’ve got 15km left to go” to make it look like its a long way

My taxi driver didn’t have the benefit of hindsight and the pleasure of reading my blog so did all the above, after letting me watch him on the navigation map firstly drive directly East out of the centre for about 6Km, then watch him plug in the destination which then took us round the ring of Milan for a total trip distance of 28Km.

See my nice graphic below (not to scale)

milan taxi route

Now being a navigation designer in my past life I’m fairly sure that this was not the shortest, or even in fact the fastest route to my hotel.

After pointing this out to him plus using my GPS phone to also point out the distance from the Hotel to the central station, the fare was reduced from the 67 Euros on the meter to my offer of 30 Euros (there was some shouting and offers to ring the police as well).

Still after my rant at nearly being ripped off, it raises the question of what we can do to stop this behaviour? Yes there are lots of websites stating about taxi scams. Yes I could have booked before hand etc etc etc.

But sometimes work and life get in the way of all these things, the Isochrones post mentioned that there was moves to integrate fare data along with travel times on isochrone maps. this would have been an excellent way for me to gauge the cost of the taxi journey before hand.

Or even an application that could add the local cost of the taxi companies in the navigation routing, then we could have options such as:

• Quickest
• Shortest
• Avoid motorways
• Avoid dishonest taxi drivers! (or maybe better named as “price of taxi route”)

I’m sure one of the navigation companies out there have already though of this?

I hope so, as a very frequent traveller this would be helpful for the likes of me, let me know and I’ll buy one now.

Isochrones

Are not cold old people….

Sorry bad joke and only one that works for native English speakers.

So turning to Wikipedia to get a definition we can see that the term isochrone referring to contour lines of equal time, for instance, in geological layers, tree rings or wave fronts.

This is an interesting concept that can be applied to displaying travel time from a certain geographical place to another by using contour bands of differing time. From what I understand of the concept the computing process on the fly is very labour intensive and hence any maps produced are produced with a known and controlled data set.

But the display of travel times becomes in my opinion very intuitive, and one can easily display the difference between taking the train or taking the car. The not for profit organisation called mysociety has done several projects where they have produced maps that indicate just this very comparison.

Here the map assumes that we are starting in Cambridge and shows parts of the UK which are easier and quicker to get to by train are coloured red and orange and those that are easier to get to by car are indicated by green and blue, yellow and light orange show where there is no huge difference at all.

A useful map showing drivers that it may be better to take the train after all.

Another use for these maps has been to produce travel times against another metric, for example house prices, maps on the mysociety page show travel times against house prices in London for working at the Department for Transport. The map then has adjustable sliders so that users can input their own constraints.

Hence users can see literally how far their money will go.

“I want to live 30 minutes away from work and I only have £200,000 to spend then I can live in X,Y and Z”

Actually the disappointing news is that £200,000 won’t allow you to live within 30 minutes of the DFT in London!

Have a play yourself its absorbing stuff.

On their website it states that mysociety wish to expand the concept to include travel costs, but its is obvious that carbon could be the second metric or in fact any other travel related item. The mysociety page also describes that the main issue is getting access to the data sets to support the development of the maps.

Therefore I would encourage companies and organisations working in the travel field to consider ways that such an intuitive method to display travel data could help us improve multimodal up take and get involved in the project.

Mysociety do also say that they are looking for ways to offer real time maps on the web but having this power in your hand in an i-Travel device would be an excellent way to display travel choices, bike V car, car V public transport etc, maybe we need to wait for computing power to catch up first, but getting companies like this invoved in European transport research projects seems a must.

Hogg Robinson Group calls for technology standards in travel

Hogg Robinson Group has appealed to the industry to work together to develop a robust set of technology standards.

The call to action came as HRG held its inaugural ‘New Opportunities’ technology seminar on 9 October. The seminar explored technological innovation and new ways for those involved in business travel technology development to work together to provide real value against the current backdrop of complex market conditions in corporate travel.

Bill Brindle, Business Technology and Distribution Director at HRG, said: “There is an urgent need to develop a common set of technology standards in corporate travel for the benefit of the whole industry.

“To date, all those involved in solutions development have tended to work independently, often creating connectivity and integration issues. Existing industry guidelines are extremely broad and lead to different interpretations, with the risk that systems developed by one company are often not compatible with those developed by partners or clients.

“Robust, common standards will eliminate this risk and enable companies to work more effectively together. This should help to prevent large scale fragmentation, strip out unnecessary development costs and pave the way for a new generation of integrated systems that add real value for the corporate travel industry.”

Known for its expertise and pro-activity in developing leading-edge and ‘future-proof’ technology systems, HRG is keen to help the industry reduce inefficiencies and unnecessary build costs for the benefit of all parties. Bill Brindle explained: “The cost incurred in terms of duplication of effort and the sheer time involved in the integration and development process can be significant and these are inevitably passed on to the end user. This is simply not acceptable.”

He continued: “The need to find a common solution is more important than ever as our industry becomes increasingly complex and works hard to contain costs and increase value for our clients.”

Over 100 attendees representing suppliers from across the industry, including air, hotel, car, rail and GDS, attended HRG’s inaugural technology event. The seminar’s packed agenda included an examination of changing market conditions and client needs, with HRG leading a discussion about how embracing technology can create new opportunities in today’s demanding climate. The day also included a presentation from rail experts thetrainline illustrating the challenges and success of integrating technology with industry partners, such as HRG, and an insight from Microsoft as to where the future potential of technology may lead.

To help engage and facilitate further discussions with industry partners HRG has launched an online technology forum accessible to all those who attended the day.

Hogg Robinson group

Travel 2.0 is more important than ever for travellers

Travel 2.0 websites have become just as important to holidaymakers as brochures and magazines, research has shown.

Real traveller experiences and online stories on community websites – known as Travel 2.0 – are an important part of the decision making process, Prophis eResearch claims.

The research firm believes that this is because many holidaymakers now seek personal accounts and images before making a decision to spend on a trip away.

Stuart Hemerling, senior consultant with Prophis Research, said: “Travel 2.0 community site users tend to come from households with more income and tend to spend more on personal travel than non-users of Travel 2.0 sites who travel.

“They are an important group to understand for travel marketers [and] cannot be overstated.”

The study also found that Travel 2.0 users seek dynamic information that is difficult for tour operators to provide in static brochures.

Browsers become location aware

The BBC webiste posted a story that your internet browser, namley firefox will soon become location aware.

It seems there is no no limit to which applications or software that will have a geo location ability. Cameras now have GNSS receivers in, phones, running shoes, everything it seems can benefit from location awareness.

The Geode project is an experimental add-on ahead of a full blown launch of geolocation technology in version 3.1 of Firefox.

Users will have control over how much location information they give.

It uses technology from a firm called Skyhook which works out a computer’s location from nearby wireless networks.

Its so-called Loki system can determine location within seconds with an accuracy of about 10 to 20 metres, already the use case is that arriving at a new town one can find a local restaurant. This seems to be a constant use case that is rolled out no matter what the technology is that is being upgraded to become location sentinet.

“When running into a new town your GPS enabled sneakers can run you to the nearest restaurant for high energy food”

I’m not knocking the addition of location into browsers, I’m sure that adding location as a layer to enable specfic information to be given to a user will prove valuable, but lets think of a better use case than the old “I’m lost and need food”

Nele Dedene tells us why she needs i-Travel in her life

Today was again a day during which an i-Travel Personal Travel Assistant (PTA) could have saved me at least an hour of travel time. I got up early this morning to catch the train to the offices in Antwerp. I had to hurry a lot in order to get at the train station in time. I just arrived in time and was still catching my breath (I use my bicycle to go to the train station) when I hear via the intercom that my train will have a delay of at least five minutes. If I had been informed about this delay before hand, I would not have had to hurry so much and could have had a more relaxed trip to the train station. After 7 minutes my train arrives and I get on the train.

The train continues its journey to Antwerp on lower speed then normal. Once we arrive a few stations further, the train is stopped and they announce on the train that there is a defect goods-train on the rail track in front of us, due to which we can not continue our journey for the moment. The train stops and time passes by. After 45 minutes, the train continues its journey at a very low speed. I finally arrive in Antwerp with a delay of 1h and 15 minutes.

The break-down of the goods-train already occurred an hour before I had left home. Since there was only one rail track in each direction at the location of the goods-train, this break-down created large delays. If a service compliant with the i-Travel concept would have been available, my i-Travel PTA could have informed me about these delays and I could have selected an alternative route or another mode to travel to work.

I have two options to travel to Antwerp by train train. Both possible train routes do not have any overlap. One option takes 15 minutes longer than the other option. Therefore, I always select the fastest option. If my PTA would have informed me about the defect goods-train while I was still at home, I would have selected the other route to travel to work. This would have saved me 60min of travel time!

In normal circumstances (no train delays, usual traffic conditions), going to work by car is 15min faster compared to going to work by train. Taking into account the more relaxed journey on the train, I usually opt for the train to travel to work. However, if I had been informed about these large delays beforehand, I would have used my car. This would have saved me 1h and 30 min of travel time!

On the train, a lot of passengers were complaining and saying ‘If I had known about these delays, I would have…’. Therefore, I think that almost all my fellow-sufferers widely would agree with the statement that i-Travel could really be beneficial for the daily commuters/train travellers.

Nele works for Vlaames Overheid who are a full consortium meber for i-Travel

iPhone travel applications

In a previous project called AGILE where I acted as a project manager, we looked at the social and commercial benefits of GNSS enabled phones.

The point of the project in a nutshell was to promote Galileo applications, or at least provide a useful insight into the business case for Galileo applications.

The project focused on the mobile handset side of things and before moving onto the subject of this post I thought that I would review some of the conclusions and output from the project, even though the project finished only last year the market moves fast. At the time the project finished the Nokia N95 had only just been released and Nokia had just announced the tie up between themselves and the digital mapping company Navteq.

So lets look at some predictions from the project at the time.

Estimating the size of the GNSS handset market.

So at the end of 2005 the number of mobile subscribers grew to 2.129 billion an increase of about 384 million from the start of the year , this figure is expected to increase to around 3964 billion by the end of 2011 (Source CMS info)

In the same time the population of the world will reach around 7 billion, meaning that if we were to believe the figures and at current growth of mobile phone penetration we can, round about the end of 2009 we should see mobile phone penetration passing the 50% mark.

That in short is a lot of mobile phones!

I won’t go into the details of this number, the project did break this figure down by market and region but that is too much for this post.

The next snippet of information from the AGILE is the number of these phones that will have a GNSS capability, and again without going into how the figures were obtained too much, but mostly from combining several sources of analyst data.

The project estimated that by the end of 2020 the number of phones with a satellite positioning capability could reach 1 billion units, my impression is that this number will be exceeded quite easily.

So where is the iPhone in all of this, well the number of iPhone sold is small when compared to Nokia’s 40% market share but the key thing about the iPhone as with most Apple products is the ease of use and integration with Apple’s iTune store.

The AGILE project, the project looked at some of the GNSS application that users would most like to see was that over 50% of users most want mobile mapping and traffic information services, the project also predicted that there would be a growth in the next 2 to 3 years of.

• Strong move towards usage/content segmentation with an increasing number of POI’s and services proposed
• Increasing desire for seamless navigation experience across
• multiple “location aware ” device

So lets turn our attention to the iPhone, Apple’s application store which is an open development platform provides us with a snapshot of the integration of travel applications and a GNSS enabled handset, currently its the first to do this in this way although T-Mobile will launch something similar in Nov.

The killer application/s for iPhone is expected to be location based services, which for someone who has been in this industry for a while it is pleasing to note that this will soon be realised.

The reason the LBS seems to be high on the wish list is that in the first weekend of opening the Apple application store there was over 10 million downloads, startup companies and rushing in to develop LBS applications amongst the raft of social networking applications already available.

On apple’s own website for iPhone apps under the travel application category there are currently as of writing 182 travel applications for the USA, while not the highest number for a category it is still impressive, we can then look at how popular the travel applications are by a click of a button in the actual iTunes program, it is difficult at this point to get good data as the itunes stores are filtered by country but we can do a very unscientific poll by looking at each country in turn.

In France, Germany and the UK traffic information, metro maps, and mapping applications are always in the top ten of applications along with guide me applications for cities around Europe. In the USA we see traffic and mapping applications reflecting the choices in Europe.

Now I know that I’m building an opinion based on my subjective evaluation of the i-Tune’s store, but the wish for information on traffic, metro, next bus times is quite high. People it seems want this information and in the absence of a unified system they are currently building themselves a selection of applications that deliver their needs.

Mapping with one application, bus times with another, traffic cameras and information with another, hotel booking and searching with one more. Not exactly seamless but at the price for an application being in the few Euros people can afford to do this.

Sometimes it is a struggle I feel, to get the i-Travel concept over to people but its exactly the example of many different applications being needed that we are trying to address, in the USA you can buy a next bus application which is great if you are in certain cites not so good in another where there is no information and what if the traffic network is jammed on the bus route? You would have to use the traffic information from another application and compare it against the bus route.

These are still vertical silo implementations, which is exactly the reason i-travel has been formed to offer an integrated solution.

Our solution to the problem is not to tie all the apps together through use of software, but to bring the traffic information providers, public transport providers and navigation companies together and operate under a single architecture and standard to interface with a digital travel assistant on your mobile phone.

This group of companies would operate under an eMarketplace that has an open architecture with digital rights management, billing and security. Such an organisation to support a multi modal travel journey is not currently a reality.

Under the Apple iPhone developer conditions it is unlikely that there will be  any progress towards bringing together several applications to provide a seamless assistant as  Apple restrict the application developers from talking to one another when they sign up to the develop platform.

While this does mean that there are lots of applications for travel it means that people are forced to use several to get all the information for a seamless journey. This is not in the interests of the traveller nor is it in line with the efforts of organisations like ERTICO who are promoting open architecture and travel without walls.

The experience of iPhone does give us a good indication on the type of information and applications that people want for mobile travel programs, but the development of a single marketplace is something that is still missing, i-Travel is not about building services as developers in  the Apple application store are producing, but we are building the structures to enable services to operate seamlessly together, which is not happening currently.

We started this post looking at the penetration of GNSS mobile phones and went on to look at the travel applications being developed for such phones, it is clear to me that location based travel services will be a reality but the operation of these application together is something that is still missing and this is what the i-Travel consortium is all about.

Seamless travel can only be realised when people providing the services operate under a single standard and architecture, then several iPhone applications could be used together to offer the traveller all the information that they need to get from A to B.

Project News announcing the i-Travel open workshop

Some project news, on the 13th November the i-Travel project will host its open workshop in Brussels.

The objective of this workshop is to present the project’s results to the wider travel community and gain feedback on the business process, use cases and architecture suggested to support the i-Travel concept. Attendance at the workshop is free and open to all companies or organisations involved in travel and traveller services from flight booking to public transport information and ticketing.

The workshop will cover:

Traveller state of the art

• Review of the i-Travel use cases
• Review of the i-Travel business processes
• Review of the high level i-Travel architecture
• Building the i-Travel community

We are pleased to announce two invited speakers David Moncholí of IDOM and Nadav Gur, CEO, MobiMate Ltd.

To register for the workshop and download the registration form as well as find out more information about i-travel, please visit the website  www.i-travelproject.com

Public authorities and companies involved in the travel industry may qualify for funding to attend the working by becoming associated partners.

Measuring your carbon shoesize

My hasn’t the world gone green lately?

One only has to open any publication or switch on the radio or TV to see green everywhere, green cars, green houses, green computers, green calculators, green fridges, green food, green….oh you get the idea.

To calculate your green footprint while travelling in the past one has to plug in your travel details and modes into an on-line calculator and hoping that you’ve estimated everything correctly then out pops out how much carbon you are throwing into the atmosphere, by the time you’ve done this you could have jumped in the car and zoomed away.

A new device though, enables the traveller to calculate their carbon footprint while travelling, Cabon Hero have developed an application for a GNSS enabled mobile phone that calculates your carbon footprint while travelling. The GPS uses the speed and pattern of which the user and makes an educated guess about their current travel mode and therefore the carbon footprint.

The system’s inventor, says the Guardian, “claims that in tests over the past year, the software was almost 100% accurate in working out when people were on airplanes or trains; it was between 65-75% accurate at guessing when people travelled on buses.”

A good system though flawed on its accuracy, here in Brussels I sometimes walk faster than the traffic, plus how would the system work while on a plane with the GNSS turned off or using underground metro systems. However such an application merged through some software wizardry with a travel application that knows what mode of transport you are currently this would make it a bit more accurate than currently, early days but actual measuring of a traveller’s carbon footprint is not too far away.

Currently charging people for carbon production is done on arbitrary ranges, it would be long before people realise that charging on actual usage similar to say electricity, water and other consumables is a much fairer scheme.

Travel technology is more important than ever

This morning on my way into the offices of ERTICO I was contemplating how my usual routine had been upset.

Normally I position myself at the front of the train by walking down the platform, and as I live in Belgium this normally entails standing in the rain whatever the time of year.

The train pulls in and human nature as it is most people cluster towards the middle of the train. This is I believe, due to a couple of factors.

The first of theses being that we all live in Belgium as I’ve said, and most people wish to stay dry so stand under the covered part of the platform.

The second being that at our destination being in the middle of the train means less of a walk from the train to the stairs leaving the platform. This has generally lead to the front carriages being empty.

I’ve not by the way, tested this theory out on the rear carriages but I assume this to hold true  as well, a creature of habit I always turn right when I get onto the platform.

However recently I noticed that people are getting wise to my little secret and have braved the elements to stand in the cold and wet weather and get on at the front, no mind I still manage to get a seat by the window to be able to lean my head against the glass and sleep for the next 40 minutes.

However for the past few days this system of mine has been destroyed by the train operator putting one first class carriage at the very front and also a second one about 3 carriages away from the front, this in turn has caused all those people in on the secret to be crushed into a few 2nd class carriages also with the the other people from the previous stations.

Anyway onto the technology part of the post!

Wouldn’t it be nice if we knew where the free seats are in advance of getting on the train?

This issue of unequal dispersion is not only restricted to my trip every morning, I’ve noticed on my trips back to the UK that Eurostar have carriages than are packed with people but some that are completely empty, in one carriage you are forced to sit next to the annoying person with questionable body hygiene, but only one carriage down is empty with plenty of room to spread out.

Last week i was in Stuttgart presenting the i-Travel concept at the FOVUS conference, this time I took the train again, I had reserved a seat ahead, but as with most German ICE trains this one again was full with very little spare seats.

Here people are walking up and down the carriages trying to find seats and seating in other people’s and waiting to see if they get thrown out by some upset German person.

So what is the solution?

Well the i-Travel concept has in the past alluded to floating traveller data, this is one area where this could be applied if we knew which carriages were full in advance of getting on the train we could position ourselves in carriages which are empty. Your mobile device being context aware could communicate your position on the train to the i-Travel community and thus you would know where every one is!

This means that every single person on the train needs to have i-Travel as well as some form of in train position techniques etc but lets not worry about that now as I’m caught up in the usefulness of the idea.

Another way as I’ve seen in parking lots now there is a little green light over free parking slots, what a very simple and effect bit of technology! Why can’t the train company tell us where the non reserved and free seats are? Thus giving us a better chance to find a free seat.

I’ve no doubt that on my trip into work this morning there was an empty carriage somewhere, but its too risky to leave the seat that I have to go find it least I lose it to the 70 evil looking grandmother eyeing me up.

Just because you are 70 by the way doesn’t mean I’m going to let my hard won seat go!

I’m joking of course.

Technology and travel is coming ever closer together as we have said in past posts, online mobile technology and travel services is a fast growing area, in fact the World Travel Market in London between the 11th and 13th November has a session focused on mobile technology and delivering travel services to the user.

With one of the key areas this year being the rapid updates on mobile technology, WTM will focus on this potentially crucial new platform in the EyeforTravel@WTM session.

“This November, World Travel Market is offering one of the largest technology programmes ever seen in the industry as well as more Technology and Online Travel exhibitors with a wide range of products and services,” said Fiona Jeffery Chairman of World Travel Market.

Applications like floating traveller data and the emergence of mobile applications for the traveller means that technology in travel is more important than ever if companies are going to increase their market share and services to the customer.

I for one would pay to know which seat is free on my morning train ahead of time!