Although I would like to believe I could be totally independent of my smart phone in reality I would be extremely lost, especially navigating a big city. Two articles published in CityLab highlighted what is and what is not, but should be, happening with our smart phones and transportation. The two articles discussed transportation and technology pertaining to New York City.
Source: http://www.citylab.com/navigator/2015/10/people-do-not-hold-back-on-yelp-reviews-of-public-transit/412939/
This first article is in some ways kind of humorous but also very empowering and informative to transit users in New York. New York City Public Transit Yelp offers transit users an outlet to express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with different types of public transportation services offered in the city. Some of the funniest yelp remarks include a comment about the G train in Brooklyn "'the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition". Other comments include remarks about bus speeds like "do you know where the gas pedal even its?.. drive faster! you are a bus, a double bus, you Always have the right-of-way". In any case the yelp remarks are very informative and perhaps hold the potential to give insight to planners on what is and is not working from the perspective of the user. What do we think a Tucson Public Transit Yelp would have the most complaints about?
Sources: http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/09/the-most-important-transportation-innovation-of-this-decade-is-the-smartphone/379525/
This article speaks to the important role technology plays in navigating us around big cities, "almost all movement in a major city now begins with a phone". It argues that with our dependency and access to our phones means public agencies should be making more of an effort in developing programs that inform the transit user to all forms of transit. The article notes the smartphone as "the most important (and ) most obvious innovation in transportation" and comments the cities are missing an opportunity to upgrade their transportation systems by not utilizing it. I know the SUN link has an app but I haven't found it very useful. Do we think Tucson is making way in having apps that help us navigate this city?
In my opinion, something similar to the Yelp reviews mentioned in the article could be very beneficial to a transit agency. For example, if the agency wanted to try out a new idea, they could implement it on small scale with a relatively small number of testers. An app like Yelp could then be used to gather real-time, specific information on what a user did or did not like about their experience, and perhaps even offer their own solutions. The prevalence of smartphones makes this type of idea very practical and easy to implement.
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