A pedicab transports a SXSW festival-goer through Austin
With sessions like “Making Accessible Transportation Modern and Cool,” “Sexy, Safe & Smart Highways,” and “Transportation Apps & the Sharing Economy,” transportation was re-imagined in new and exciting ways at this year’s South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas. Many of these ideas were discussed at local meetups like “Hacking Transportation” and “Bike Culture.”
Ridesharing Goes Mainstream
Peer-to-peer on-demand ridesharing applications stormed SXSW, including: Wheelz, Zimride, Lyft, Getaround, Sidecar, and RelayRides.
Lyft
The enthusiasm partly stems from a recent agreement between the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) with Lyft and Uber to withdraw fines against the ridesharing and limo services, allowing them both to continue operating while it evaluates potential new regulation. The issue at hand is how the CPUC classifies new transportation services that rely on mobile applications to enable ridesharing and handle fares charged to riders.
Those battles continued for Lyft and Sidecar in Austin, however, as the Austin City Council passed an ordinance that unlicensed drivers who accepted payments for rides could have their cars impounded. To get around this, Sidecar offered free rides during the conference and Lyft took an out-of-the box approach of offering free piggyback rides instead of shared rides by car. A petition on change.org is now urging Austin to embrace ridesharing, and the city will soon vote on new ordinances to address this new transportation alternative.
Beyond the Car
Ridesharing and carsharing have inspired other transportation alternatives. Scoot Networks, for example, are electric scooters that come with helmets, don’t require a motorcycle license, and are available in garages and at transit hubs in San Francisco. Your smart phone is your key, dashboard, and payment facilitator.
And Uber Technologies is evolving from offering an on-demand private driver service to launching BlackJet, which books passengers on private planes that are out of use or have extra space.
Aggregating Transportation
RideScout
Technology is making it easy for travelers to choose multi-modal options, and the most usable option for this at SXSW was the transportation aggregator RideScout. Formerly known as GoingMyWay, RideScout is a real-time aggregator and comparison app for all transportation options – buses, transit, subways, taxis, limos, shuttles, carsharing, and pedicabs. What’s simply brilliant about this application is that each transit option can be compared by cost or the time the trip will take, so the user can decide which option is best. Currently only available in Austin, but with offices in D.C., RideScout is sure to expand quickly as a potential solution to aid in promoting alternative forms of transportation.
Dabnab is another Austin-based business that enables you get transit directions by text message. And Moovel is a German application that integrates all transportation options into one, enabling you to decide which mode is ideal in each moment.
Technology Integration
Several other companies are using technology to connect to people on bikes, through items they can wear, and to give guidance to the blind.
The Fukushima Wheel
The Fukushima Wheel, a specially outfitted bicycle with environmental sensors and a mobile app, measures live city data like radiation, temperature, and humidity, so that you can visualize your own carbon emissions as you bike. The app enables you to navigate to places of interest via Foursquare and plans to use location-based advertising to support the project.
In a session called “Making Accessible Transportation Modern & Cool,” TRX Systems touted a project funded by the Federal Highway Administration to build a navigation system for people with vision impairment and blindness. The TRX NEON Indoor Location System is combined with an app that uses a smartphone’s camera to guide the visually impaired in complicated environments and to verify that the user has reached the correct destination.
As technology evolves, we will continue to see new types of transportation alternatives. And with new ways to experience or augment our reality, the very act of getting around is evolving as well.
This article was originally published by Pulsar Advertising.
Pedicab photo by dingatx