Andy Nash Network

Boston Public Garden

2012-01-28T15:24:00.000+01:00

In September I visited Boston to talk with people in the city and at MIT about GreenCityStreets. Lots of interesting discussion and ideas to follow up on in 2012. I had some time to go down memory lane, and walked through the Public Garden on a beautiful fall day.

When the weather was good I used to walk home from Northeastern through the Public Garden to my apartment in the North End. It was a great way to unwind from my Masters Thesis research. My route took me through the Fenway, people watching on Newbury Street in the Back Bay, then through the Public Garden, crossing the street into The Commons, then past the Park Street MBTA station, through Government Center, by Haymarket, then under the Central Artery to Salem Street.

The Public Garden was always a highlight in early spring and summer. Green lawns with lots of flowers, generally the Swan Boats were stowed away for the night, and a cool breeze. All my Boston Public Garden photos on Flickr.

PICNIC 2011 in Amsterdam

2012-01-22T23:52:00.000+01:00

In September I travelled to Amsterdam for the PICNIC 2011 Festival. The event is like a big fair and this year it was held at the old shipbuilding area called NDSM Wharf, a ten-minute ferry ride from Amsterdam's Central Railway Station. A variety of different structures including temporary buildings, old containers, tents, an old ferry boat, were used for the sessions and presentations.

PICNIC was a great opportunity to meet people thinking about the intersection between design, city planning, internet, history, art ... lots of energy and very creative ideas. Among my favorite presentations were those by Adam Greenfield, Ben Hammersley, and Charles Landry (links are to videos of the presentations).

On Friday I attended a session sponsored by the European Creative Business Network. We split up into teams and developed ideas for venture capital funding. Our team of four developed the concept for an on-line game that would be played via mobile devices ... and we won the first prize: 5,000 Euro to develop the idea in more detail! We're working on it.

The photo below is of us taking the ferry back to Central Station after dinner one night, note that it's a roll-on/roll-off ferry for bicycles and mopeds ... extremely convenient and easy to use.

I'm already looking forward to PICNIC 2012! All my PICNIC 2011 Festival photos (many of which are of the Amsterdam Harbour) on flickr.

New York City Transit Museum

2012-01-20T21:32:00.000+01:00

I always try to find time to visit the NY City Transit museum when I visit New York. One of the things I love are the historic advertisements that are in the old subway cars parked in the museum. This is a particularly fun one I think. The accompanying text says "Bet you do better in a hat!" and states that "84 out of 100 women prefer men who wear hats."

While at the museum I bought the book Helvetica and the New York Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story by Paul Shaw. I finished reading it before Christmas and it's really interesting - you'll never look at a NYC Subway sign the same way again! (Here's a link to a similar article he wrote on the internet - Paul Shaw, The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica and the NY City Subway).

And, one final photo of a mosaic from the Cortlandt Street IRT Subway Station (also in the Transit Museum collection). All my photos of the NYC Transit Museum on Flickr.

Steam Train Wedding - Music Video

2012-01-15T18:14:00.000+01:00

As we were driving by a railway station in the Berner Oberland (Switzerland) we saw a steam engine being prepared for a trip. I screamed that we had to stop and go back. We got to the station in time to see a wedding party boarding the steam train for an excursion.

I just had to write a song about the experience. It's on YouTube: Steam Train Wedding.

Vienna Tram Day 2011

2012-01-10T08:17:00.000+01:00

Vienna's annual Tram Day celebration was held at the Tram Museum this past September. It's always a great party with lots to see and do. This year was great because the Tram Museum was open for free! Lots of historic vehicles and exhibits on some of the new things Vienna's public transport company (Wiener Linien) is doing to improve service.

There was information on everything from the Wiener Linien's social networking strategy to rebuilding track. With entertainment for the whole family - on at least two different stages! - and lots to eat and drink it was a great day.

I especially liked the historic advertisement about why the conductor cannot open the door once it has been closed (below) - it even rhymes! All my Vienna Tram Day photos (2009 and 2011) on flickr.

New York High Line

2012-01-01T13:27:00.002+01:00

I visited New York in September for a series of meetings with OpenPlans about organizing a Transportation Camp in Washington DC during the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in January 2012. While there I was able to visit the High Line, an old aerial railway line that ran along the west side of Manhattan. The rail line has been converted to a walkway and is probably one of the most successful urban design projects from the last decade.

New York Magazine asked to use one of my photos in an article they were doing about tourist photos of New York, but unfortunately, I could not name all the people in the photo (there were about a hundred) so they didn't use it.

If you go to New York be sure to take a walk on the High Line. All my NY High Line photos on Flickr.

Zollamtssteg Bridge Vienna

2012-01-01T13:16:00.001+01:00

I finally walked over the Vienna Zollamtssteg Bridge. I've taken the U-Bahn that goes under the bridge many times - you can see the U-Bahn train in the photo - but never walked over the bridge.

The bridges go over the Vienna River, a small river that runs through much of the city although it's covered in many places.

The bridge is famous in the movie Before Sunrise. The two main characters Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy meet two actors on the bridge who make fun of their American-ness (although, of course, she is French) and invite them to a performance later that night. (As I recall!) It's one of the many great scenes in the movie.

The bridge uses some of the common design elements in many Vienna public works such as the railing along the river.

All my photos of the Zollamtssteg Bridge on Flickr.

Funchal, Madera

2011-12-31T16:45:00.001+01:00

I spoke about social networking and transportation at the CIVITAS Forum 2011 held in October in Funchal, Madera Portugal. Madera is an island in the Atlantic Ocean about an hour-and-a-half flying time to the south west of Lisbon. The conference was great and it was lots of fun to visit Funchal.

Highlights were the public market. The photo above is of a fruit stand that had about ten different kinds of passion fruit!

I ate at a wonderful restaurant called Restaurante dos Combatentes twice, once for lunch and then later in the week for dinner. Very attentive service and great food.

I took a tour of the Old Blandy Wine Lodge which includes a museum and tasting rooms in addition to being used to store and age the wine. Madera wine violates lots of the rules: it's aged in hot attics and the bottles should be stored upright. It's a fortified wine so quite high alcohol content. It was fun being able to taste several types and vintages of Madera. Here's a photo of one of the museum's tasting rooms.

The Funchal Airport was great, one of the few that still has an outdoor viewing platform. Here's a photo of our plane from the viewing area.

All my photos of Funchal on Flickr.

Slow Day at the Wurst Stand

2011-07-04T08:25:00.000+02:00

Wurst stands are ubiquitous in Vienna. I see this one everyday on my streetcar trips "downtown". I took the photo last Friday, it was hot and the chef was so relaxed it just seemed like a perfect opportunity.

Ironically, after posting the photo I had wurst for lunch at the airport and then wurst for dinner at the city hall reception given for the Cities for Mobility Congress in Stuttgart. It was a great reception with lots of international guests. The mayor spent the entire evening there talking with us and enjoying the great local hospitality.

Malaga Spain Recommendations

2011-06-19T14:01:00.001+02:00

Just returned from a trip to Spain. We spent two days in Granada and two in Malaga. We used the free ticket I won from Swiss International Airlines for my "Flowers in Your Horns" music video about going to San Francisco (I won one of the runner-up prizes). I wrote last week about Granada.

Malaga Sightseeing

We arrived from Granada in the mid-afternoon to a sunny and hot Malaga. We walked from the bus station to our hotel at the edge of the historic center of town. That was probably a mistake given the heat and because the area around the bus station is a huge construction site for the city's new metro system. But we made it and the Hotel Posada del Patio was really great. Especially cool is that they incorporated the old Roman walls, found when excavating for the cellar, into the project: there are glass floors where you can look down at the old Roman construction and they hold events down there - we took a short tour.

They, at least try, to speak your language!

Malaga was supposed to be the low key part of our four day vacation to Spain so we did not plan any big sightseeing. After a siesta we walked around the historic center looking for a nice place to eat. We stopped at the Bodegas El Pimpi - which is recommended in many guidebooks - and it was fine. We sat at the bar, checked out the decor - alone worth the trip - and enjoyed beer, tomatoes and cheese, and olives. We were not so hungry so decided to go on walking around before dinner.

Malaga's historic center is full of narrow streets almost all of which have been turned into pedestrian zones. They were full of people walking around, shopping, eating and drinking ... really nice urban feeling. Most of the streets are paved with smooth stone, often in patterns, and they are clean. It's a nice feeling underfoot.

Tapas at El Tapeo de Cervantes

Eventually we found our way to Plaza Cervantes and found the El Tapeo de Cervantes, a recommended tapas bar. We found a place in the small bar and were greeted by a waiter who spoke probably five languages (see photo of sign). The atmosphere was fun and low key. We ordered five tapas to start and then a couple more as the night went on along with several glasses of the excellent local red wine. Since I love tapas this restaurant was a highlight of my visit.

After dinner we walked back through the city. Of course the streets were full including a peaceful protest calling for political reform in the main square (there were similar protests going on all over Spain, including one in Granada) reminding me of the teach-ins of my youth. The restaurants and bars were overflowing into the pedestrian streets and it was a wonderful feeling. Since the city invented the Malaga flavour of ice cream we had some at Casa Mira, which according to my guidebook, is the oldest ice cream parlour in Malaga. It was quite good but the raisins were completely different tasting from typical raisins.

Atarazanas Market in Malaga

On Saturday morning we walked to the Atarazanas Market (Mercado Central de Atarazanas) and bought fresh papaya, salted almonds, bread, tomatoes, peaches and tasted lots of other things including Malaga raisins ... then I realized why the raisins in the ice cream tasted the way they did! The Malaga raisins are completely different from the small rubbery pencil eraser raisins we used to eat in our grade school lunches. They are large, soft and juicy, yum!

Coffee at Casa Aranda in Malaga

We stopped for breakfast at Cafe Aranda which specializes in Churros and coffee. The cafe's outdoor tables spread from Calle Alhondiga around the corner and along Calle Herreria del Rey for a whole block. The cafe also had several separate inside rooms along the streets. We didn't sample the Churros but the person next to us asked if he could try one and they brought him a single Churros (usually they come in sets of 5!), plus I don't think that they charged him (he did leave a nice tip). Service was extremely friendly and the coffee was fine.

Malaga beach

On Saturday afternoon we walked to the beach. It took about a half hour with about 10-minutes being on the beach itself (we went to the far end). We had lunch of grilled fish in a nice restaurant on the beach. The waiter helped us pick-out a fish to share then they took it over to the open fire (built in a rowboat filled with sand) where it was grilled on a spit. We also had an order of grilled sardines as we sipped our beer waiting for the larger fish. It was an excellent meal and again the service was very friendly. Christa went swimming and said the water was nice (the receptionist at the hotel told us it might be too cold to swim).

Fish being grilled in Malaga

After another siesta we went walking through the historic city looking for dinner again. I fought my desire to return to El Tapeo del Cervantes and decided to be adventurous. We started with a beer on a very nice square on Carreteria street. Since the Champions League Final was on television no one was eating so we went to a couple bars before setting in one that seemed to have the most fans and watched the second half of the game. It was lots of fun because, of course, FC Barcelona won and the bar was full of fans singing and dancing.

Fried cheese at La Queseria in Malaga

To celebrate FC Barcelona's win we went to the tapas bar (?) called La Queseria (which means cheese market). Their specialty, naturally, is cheese, but they have other tapas too. We focused on the cheese ordering a mixed cheese plate for two and the fried cheese (I had to try that!). The mixed cheese was great and the fried cheese was fine, but it's not really my taste. Instead of being deep fried (which I hate) it was sauteed and then served with a small amount of honey(?)-based jam. The meal went great with a couple glasses of the same local red wine we drank the night before.

After walking around a little more we decided to stop in to a very nice looking tapas place near the hotel to enjoy the warm evening and busy streets. I had a glass of the sherry wine that we learned about having dinner with Francisco in Granada. We both agreed to come back again soon.

The commuter rail train to Malaga Airport,
what post would be complete without a train photo?

The next morning we took the suburban train to the airport. The station was about a 10-minute walk from our hotel and the trip was fast and convenient.

Here's a link to my photos of Malaga on flickr.

Granada Spain Recommendations

2011-06-10T14:32:00.002+02:00

Gran Cafe Bib-Rambla, Granada Spain

Just returned from a trip to Spain. We spent two days in Granada and two in Malaga. We used the free ticket I won from Swiss International Airlines for my "Flowers in Your Horns" music video about going to San Francisco (I won one of the runner-up prizes).

Granada Sights

In Granada we just relaxed. We tried to go to the Alhambra, but you need to reserve tickets in advance (they sell a limited number of same-day tickets, but we were not successful at getting them). They have a good website so you can order in advance.

We didn't have breakfast in the hotel, opting for local cafes instead. On the first day we went to the Gran Cafe Bib-Rambla, a historic cafe on Plaza Bibrambla, and sat outdoors. I had Churros with chocolate and they were excellent (unfortunately my photos of the cooking process did not turn out, but you can go into the cafe and watch). I am not sure I would want to eat them every morning, but these were really good. The next day we stood at the counter inside (watching the cooking process) and had coffee con leche with chocolate croissants. The cafe also has ice cream which looks delicious.

Francisco at La Oliva

We had dinner in a wonderful place called La Oliva. It's actually a food shop whose owner, Francisco, will cook dinner if you call and arrange in advance. We enjoyed an 11-course (probably, we lost count) dinner with wine that he prepared using ingredients from the shop and a simple one burner camp stove. He only has two tables and dinner is really an experience accompanied with Francisco teaching you about traditional food and wine from the region.

We spent a lot of time walking around the area of Albaicin, which is a neighborhood located on the north side of the Alhambra. It's a neighborhood built on the side of a hill with narrow winding streets. Lots of scenic vistas towards the Alhambra, historic churches and buildings, and some shops. We walked down to the Plaza de los Tristes, a square filled with restaurants along the Rio Darro. Then up a street called Calle del Rey Chico up to the Alhambra visitor center. Since we could not get tickets we spent some time in the excellent bookstore so we know what to look for on our next visit.

The Alhambra from the Albaicin neighborhood.

Walking down from the Alhambra to the Plaza Nueva, we had some superb Gazpacho soup served in a glass (to go!). We went back to ask how they made it and after trying to speak English a little, the proprietor asked if we spoke German, which he spoke fluently. We got the recipe quickly: one (only!) clove of garlic, fresh tomatoes, old bread (soaked in water), olive oil (the quality of the olive oil determines the quality of the soup), salt and pepper. We made it when we returned to Vienna and it was pretty good. I still like my version with more garlic and green peppers/cucumbers etc. but that's cooking isn't it?

Bar Los Diamantes, Granada Spain

One of my favorite foods is tapas. In Granada whenever you order a drink you get a free tapas. And, we are not talking about a small bowl of peanuts. Many of the free tapas we had were quite substantial. You could easily make a meal of free tapas going from one bar to another. We did this with the friends we were visiting and it was lots of fun, not necessarily a balanced meal, but order a couple small plates to go with the free ones and you will do fine. We visited the Bar Los Diamantes (which is in lots of the books) and it was great: busy, fast, casual. We ordered two beers and were immediately confronted with a rather large plate of deep-fried calamari. True, it made us want to order another beer, but then we received a plate of zucchini (also fried). The beer was an excellent local beer called Alhambra.

We really loved Granada and hope to visit again soon.

All my Granada photos on flickr.

Practical Information

We took a local express bus (2 Euros) from the airport to the intercity bus terminal, then took the intercity bus to Granada (10.01 Euros, the 1-Euro-cent is kind of odd, we did not pay it when we went to the ticket window, but I did have to pay it when I went to a ticket machine to buy a return ticket). We took a cab to our hotel (8 Euros) since the Granada bus terminal is out of the city center.

The bus schedules are not well coordinated so we waited about 30 minutes at the Malaga airport (we just missed the bus) and about 45-minutes at the bus station (buses leave for Granada about every hour on the hour). We tried to buy a ticket on-line for the return trip but the website was not accepting credit cards; we bought a ticket at a machine at the station which was fine, the line to buy a ticket in person was incredibly long.

We stayed at the Room Mate Leo hotel, which was very nice. As the on-line reviews say the staff is really great, for example, they spent lots of time trying to reserve bus tickets for us (and other guests).

Friends on Facebook Tribute

2011-04-21T19:44:00.000+02:00

Altoids "Curiously Strong Awards" from Marc Ritzema on Vimeo.

Just in case you have not seen this yet. I seem to know all these people.

Vacations without cars!

2011-04-05T08:51:00.002+02:00

Scuol Switzerland Railway Station - 05, originally uploaded by andynash.

One of my favorite places in the world, Scuol Switzerland. You don't need a car as this photo shows ... it says: Engadin Scuol - for vacations without cars!

More photos of the Scuol Railway station, a wooden bridge and the great food we ate on my flickr set: Scuol Switzerland.

(B)eat Pizza!

2011-03-10T13:59:00.000+01:00

You can't beet this pizza!

I couldn't help but think about my friend Walt when I made this pizza on Tuesday night. Walt's an American ExPat in France. He writes a great blog with lots of posts on the wonderful food they cook and eat (here's one for okra and tomato pizza). But Walt can (and does!) make a pun about pretty much anything. So when I thought about the possibilities for puns from this pizza (how do you beet this pizza), I had to think about Walt. My pun's not perfect, but I am still learning from the master! Maybe Walt will add a pun in the comments!

Here's how I made the pizza. Christa had cooked and sliced the beets a couple nights before. After cooking, she marinaded them in oil, vinegar and caraway seeds (she had planned to use them in a salad). Instead, I made a pizza with them. I used (sorry to admit) roll out dough from the dairy case. First I pre baked the crust with a little olive oil and salt for about 10 minutes (I always find it necessary to pre bake these refrigerated pizza doughs).

Beet Pizza and Beer ... Yum!

Then I spread the pizza with yogurt, placed thinly sliced onions and freshly ground horseradish on the yogurt, ground some pepper, then added the beets. On top I added a little more horseradish. In the oven for about 10 more minutes and voila!

It really tasted good.

Buffalo Freeways to Remove-Part 2

2011-02-20T17:53:00.000+01:00


Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, behind the freeway. (Source: Andrew Nash, 2010)

Yesterday I wrote about Rust Belt city planning in general. As I was looking through my Buffalo photos for the post I came across the photo above.

Can there be a better illustration of the insanity of building freeways through parks? The huge bright green freeway signs in front of the only building remaining from Buffalo's Pan-American World Exhibition (1901). Looking over Delaware Park's Hoyt Lake from the Casino towards the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society building ... and there they are, the huge green freeway signs.

Of course the freeway also generates noise and pollution in addition to creating a wall that splits the park into pieces.

Many will argue that once a freeway is in place you can't remove it, but Portland and San Francisco both did and have not looked back. (Check out the great StreetFilms on San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway replacment). Previously I wrote about tearing down several Buffalo freeways, maybe that's too much to start.

How about this? Just close the freeway between the Elmwood exit and Parkside. Just this summer. Give people plenty of warning. Install some improvements (and directions) on alternative routes and give it a chance.

Create a Buffalo Beach, just like Paris.

Rustbelt City Planning

2011-02-19T12:00:00.001+01:00

They had a way with words back then.
City Hall Mosaic Buffalo NY (source: Andrew Nash, 2007)

As a city planner who grew up in Buffalo NY I can't help but be interested in how to revitalize Rust Belt cities. My solution: Rustbelt Cities need to be bolder and more creative (DUH.. what city/company/person doesn't need to be bolder and more creative?).

Rust Belt city leaders will say, we are being bold and creative, we're planning a big box store to compete with the suburbs or we're planning a festival marketplace/ convention center/ casino to attract tourists. What's not bold about that?

Buffalo waterfront and downtown: looking for a few truly bold and creative ideas.
(Source: Andrew Nash, 2008)

Well, big's not always bold and it's rarely creative. Truly bold and creative ideas are place-based. In other words you can't create a festival marketplace without the festival and you can't build a big box store without the suburban streets and parking.

There's a saying: if you're an apple don't try to be a banana, you'll always be a second-rate banana. It's even worse for a city: if you try to be a suburb you'll destroy what's good about the city (and, you probably won't be successful anyway).

What can cities do? Create the festival and place-based development will follow. Support businesses that fit into the existing infrastructure and complimentary businesses will follow. As anyone who has ever practiced this type of ground-up planning can tell you, developing bold and creative ideas that are place-based is much harder than it sounds.

Buffalo's Omstead-designed park system is a
bold and creative idea that's place-based.
(Gates Circle, source Andrew Nash, 2010)

One of the biggest challenges is that often Rust Belt city leaders are so desperate they'll support anything short of a chemical waste dump (and sometimes even the waste dump). Once leaders embrace an idea anyone opposing it is a NIMBY or against progress.

This "with us or against us" view came to mind when I read the fascinating post the Problem with Boosterism in the Rustwire blog. The post and very thoughtful comments describe how Boosterism can blind people to addressing real city problems.

But, and here I return to my current work, social networks and Web 2.0 technologies can be used to help develop and implement the kinds of bold and creative - but place-based - ideas needed to revitalize Rust Belt cities. It's an exciting period and there's much to learn about how this will work. Some resources I have found who are using social networks and Web 2.0 techniques to help improve Rust Belt city planning include:

Rustwire Blog - a group of journalists doing some serious thinking about Rust Belt issues, check out their Blog Roll for more excellent blogs and their flickr group Rustwire for sharing photos.

Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo
(Andrew Nash, 2010)

Buffalo Expat Network - this is a really cool idea, mobilizing people with connections to a city (e.g. who have moved away) to generate ideas and support for revitalization; (they have fun too!) ... includes a Facebook social network.

Art Voice Buffalo - great example of an alternative newspaper covering local issues without the Boosterism that seems to be required of 'traditional' city newspapers (see especially the stories by Bruce Fisher - here's a recent one on fiscal policies and urban planning). I am sure that there are similar newspapers in other Rustbelt cities.

GLUE - Great Lakes Urban Exchange - founded in 2007 as a forum for people to exchange stories, ideas, and best practices between otherwise isolated cities ranging from Buffalo to St. Louis to Minneapolis. An excellent platform for learning from each other.

PPS - Project for Public Spaces - while PPS does not focus on Rust Belt issues, their approach to "placemaking" is exactly the type of ground-up planning that's needed in Rust Belt cities.

The list is far from complete. Please add more links and ideas in the comments!

I will tag future posts on Rust Belt city planning: Rust Belt Cities. Several of my previous posts tagged Buffalo also deal with Rust Belt city planning ... I think some are bold ideas - like tearing down a couple of freeways. Finally, here's a link to all my Buffalo flickr photos.

Cafe Sperl Vienna

2011-02-17T08:47:00.000+01:00

I know it's in all the tourist books, but still ... we had guests visiting over the weekend and wanted to show them a real Vienna coffee house. Homemade cakes. Good solid food. Plenty of newspapers. Music on Sunday afternoons. And, now, no smoking!

I took the advice of a recent Independent Column (Graham Greene's Vienna) - thanks Gavin Plumley - and had my first Fiaker (coffee with schnaps). Even though we had just had a huge brunch we "forced" our friends to have cake (chocolate truffle cake and topfen torte) while we enjoyed our coffee.

As the top photo shows ... the coffee is comes fast-often more quickly than that horrible self-service system used in places like Starbucks. I am pretty sure our 7 different kinds of coffee, each with its own water and balancing spoon, arrived within three minutes of ordering ... I have stood around longer for a short latte.

Come visit Vienna while places like Sperl still exist! It's even better in the summer when you can sit outside on the large shaded square in front. My flickr set Cafe Sperl.

For more about Vienna and especially coffee in Vienna check out Merisi's Vienna For Beginners ... a truly beautiful blog.

Ljubljana Recommendations

2011-02-10T15:30:00.002+01:00

Last week I visited Ljubljana on a (too) short business trip. I had a good impression on my first visit in 2002, and this time confirmed that the city is a nice place to spend a few days.

On this trip I really only had time to walk around in the small historic city center. There is a small river running through the center of Ljubljana, on one side are lots of buildings from the middle ages on the other from the Jugendstil period mixed up with some non discript modern buildings. Here's a map of the city that is on the wall in the City Hall courtyard. The castle and older part of the city is on the left side, the newer part of the city is on the right (although the map is from the middle ages so on the right side are only buildings along the river and farm plots).

It's fun to walk around through the market place: there is an outdoor market in a large square and a long building along the river with lots of small shops. One market building has baked goods, another has meat, another milk products. The shops are connected inside the long narrow building. Everything looked great. Here's a photo of the open air market, the market building is in the background.

We ate in two notable restaurants (sorry I did not take photos of the food!) both of which were located on the pedestrian streets that run along the river. The restaurant Most is at Petkovskovo nabrezje 21. We had an excellent dinner here that combined Italian with traditional Slovenian food. They also had many Slovene wines that looked great but since I was suffering from a cold I needed to stick with beer. I did take a sip of a really nice local red wine that reminded me of Barollo, quite tasty. Here's a photo of the market building at night with river reflections when we left the Most restaurant.

For lunch the next day we stopped at Pri Vitezu restaurant (Frommer's Review from NY Times) at Breg 18 (the other end of the river walk from Most). It was also fantastic. We ate so much at lunch that I could not eat dinner that night. We started with a pasta dish that was a combination between gnocchi and spatzle (two of my favorite things!) in a meat sauce - perfect for a cold day. Then a turkey roulade. And topped off with a traditional layer cake made of several different things: poppy seed cake, apple filling, sponge cake and several types of frosting (our host told us that the piece we received was about 1/4 the size of a normal piece and that everyone had their own special recipe for what layers were included). We waddled along for the rest of our tour.

Pri Vitezu was also interesting because of the quality of their wine list. I noticed that they had bottles of Ridge Vineyards 1996 Cabernet Sauvignon wine. It's rare to see Ridge outside California and so it looks like the owners really care about wine.

Our walk took us along the river side where Ljubljana has slowly created non motorized zones. It's wonderful to walk along the banks of the river and take in the scenery and people watch (the area is full of cafes and students). The walk took us to the three bridges area which seems to be the center of the city. Here you can see examples of Jugendstil architecture and look up the mountain to the castle.

Here's a photo of the Dragon Bridge, on the other side of the market from the three bridges area. The Ljubljana city coat of arms features a dragon since they were thought to come from the marshy areas surrounding the city. I love these dragon sculptures and the Jugendstil design of the bridge (more photos on flickr).

I visited the Ljubljana Castle on my first trip to Ljubljana and it was nice. You can see the castle in the background of the top photo. There is a funicular railway that you can ride up, although I hiked up through the park and that was fine too. (What, Andy missed an opportunity to take a rail trip? ... Well it happens.)

We stayed at the Hotel Slon which was very nice. Especially nice was the excellent breakfast. Also, even though it was a buffet the servers went out of their way to help you by bringing coffee, tea and more food. They were really nice.

In summary, I hope to visit again soon. Ljubljana is a wonderful place to spend a few days relaxing and enjoying life on the riverside. Here's a link to all my flickr photos of Ljubljana.

Graz Austria Main Train Station

2011-02-10T15:30:00.000+01:00

Since my wife is from Wolfsberg Austria (Carinthia) we travel frequently through the Graz Hauptbahnhof on our way south. There are hourly trains from Vienna to Graz, but then the fun begins.

There is no train service between Graz and Wolfsberg, but there is an "Intercity Bus" which is not bad, about an hour nonstop between the cities operated approximately every two hours. Unfortunately the bus and the train schedules are almost perfectly uncoordinated.

The bus from Wolfsberg (and Klagenfurt) is scheduled to arrive one or two minutes after the train to Vienna leaves. So you need to hang around in Graz Hauptbahnhof for about an hour. In the other direction many of the buses also require a long wait (Friday we waited 57 minutes, since the bus leaves 3 minutes before the next train from Vienna arrives).

Perhaps the reason for this sloppy scheduling is that the buses used to leave a few minutes after the train from Vienna arrived. If the train from Vienna was at all late you missed your connection - then it's almost two-hour wait until the next bus. The new system allows the train to be almost an hour late and you can still make the bus.

Another problem with the bus is that it is frequently overbooked at peak travel times like Friday and Sunday evenings. We were lucky last Friday and they put another bus into service, but we have also been forced to drive to Graz because the bus is full.

You may think - like the sign at the right says - "Missed your train? Great, you can have a coffee at the station" - but I don't know many people who think "Great" about missing their train. Yes, it is great that the station has restaurants and shops, but my goal is to get somewhere not to spend time in the station.

Oh, and one more thing as long as I'm ranting. You need to pay to go to the restroom in Graz! Why can't railway stations - especially railway stations with shopping centres - have free restrooms? I can't think of an automobile-based shopping centre that has restrooms where you need to pay. I understand that railway stations seem to attract people with social problems, but deal with the problems, don't make everyone pay. (Especially if you have restaurants serving coffee and beer!) By the way, the problem is not unique to Graz, they also charge for the restrooms in Vienna and Zurich.

This kind of sloppy scheduling and lack of attention to providing basic customer amenities causes people to drive. Why put up with the hassles of railway travel?

Poor service is especially dumb on this route because the Austrian government is spending about 4 Billion Euros on a tunnel that will replace the bus with rail service; they should be doing everything possible to build up demand on this route so that when the tunnel is finished people will be used to taking public transport. Instead people like us will probably have bought a car since the drive from Vienna is about 3 hours and the train takes 4 and a half hours with the bad connection.

Chicken Wings at Buffalo Niagara Airport

2011-02-08T17:00:00.000+01:00

Chicken wings at Buffalo Niagara Airport (from my flickr photos).

Just returned from a trip to the USA. No trip would be complete without having chicken wings in Buffalo. Here's a photo of the wings I had at the Anchor Bar restaurant in Buffalo Niagara Airport. They were pretty good!

Dulles Airport Transit Blues

2011-02-03T20:14:00.000+01:00

Dulles Airport mobile "lounge" (from my flickr photos).

One of my favorite authors is Tyler Brûlé, the chief editor of Monocle Magazine and a columnist in the Financial Times Weekend Edition. Many of his columns focus on transport system design issues. Recently he described some of the problems at Washington's Dulles Airport. Brûlé especially criticizes the truly awful mobile lounge system for transporting international passengers to immigration and customs.

As an aside, I sort of like the mobile lounges, especially as an example of an innovative idea for getting people between the airport terminal and airplanes. Unfortunately the idea never worked well and with the rise of the airline hub-and-spoke system the mobile lounge approach was doomed to fail. (To see how it was designed to work watch the movie Scorpio. A Russian double agent is threatened with deportation as he is being driven up to the door of an Aeroflot plane in a mobile lounge.) But, I digress.

Map of airport transport system (sorry for the quality).

Dulles has made many improvements to the immigration and customs areas during the last several years. They have also introduced a rail shuttle system to connect the terminals. The system works pretty well but they made one very significant mistake (in my view).

They built the airport rail system station for the "C/D" concourse several hundred meters south of the "C/D" concourse so that it could also serve as the station for a future "E/F" concourse. This means that passengers using the "C/D" concourse have a long walk back to their concourse and passengers using the future concourse will also have to walk a long distance to their concourse - equally inconvenient for both sets of passengers. Instead of building two stations (one for each concourse), Dulles built one. That saved money, but adds time and inconvenience for air passengers. It would be one thing if the second concourse existed today, but who knows when it will be built? Why inconvenience all the passengers today for a possible money savings later?

Long walk back to Concourse "C/D" from air train station (maybe they should use the mobile lounges here?).

To paraphrase United Airlines: "We know you have a choice of airports and hope to see you again soon on a Dulles flight." Well, not if I can choose an airport that gives more attention to making it easier for passengers.

Bus Meister Game - Thanks for the Feedback!

2011-01-28T13:55:00.000+01:00

Double Decker Bus in London: from my flickr photos of London.

Thanks to everyone for providing feedback on the Bus Meister game via e-mail, comments and at the TRB meeting!

One funny question was, "Why are the buses traveling on the left (curb) lane?"

The answer is that we wanted the buses to travel left to right and also wanted to show the buildings in the background ... so the buses need to travel "British style". Maybe we should make them double decker?

Our next steps are to revise the factors to make the game work better (i.e. show the benefits of PT priority more clearly), then we will make Bus Meister a real game with levels (top level is "Bus Meister" of course!). When we launch this version of the game it will be on facebook and have a more interactive website so that players can use social networking to get involved in improving public transport in their own communities. ... Lots to do, but quite exciting.

Bus Meister game: http://www.greencitystreets.com/busmeister

Bus Meister Public Transport Priority Best Practices wiki: http://busmeister.wikispaces.com

Please keep those comments coming!

Bus Meister Game (beta) - Now online!

2011-01-25T15:30:00.000+01:00

I have just finished the beta version of a game designed to help citizens understand public transport priority. The game is linked to a wiki that provides detailed information about measures to improve public transport. Once we are happy with the game we will place it on facebook and add social networking features so that players can discuss how to improve public transport in their own community.

I am looking for people to try out the game and wiki and to give me comments (also join the wiki as contributors!). The game is available now at: http://www.greencitystreets.com/busmeister

The wiki is available at: http://busmeister.wikispaces.com/

This page on the wiki provides instructions on how to play the game: http://busmeister.wikispaces.com/BMG_playing

Right now the game works, but we need to refine the values used to run the simulation and calculate the happiness and cost values. We will adjust these in the coming weeks and also add levels (so players advance to more difficult challenges) and other standard game features. We also will add more information to the pages. But, for now, the game works and we would love your feedback.

Finally, I hope to extend the approach to other modes of transport (biking, walking, street design) in the future.

Thanks for your help,

No Pants Subway Ride 2011

2011-01-18T08:52:00.000+01:00

Improv Everywhere does it again!

Martin Wolf: East and West Converge on a Problem

2011-01-12T09:33:00.000+01:00

Today's column by Martin Wolf (East and West Converge on a Problem) in the Financial Times discusses a recent book by Ian Morris (Why the West Rules – For Now, Profile Books, 2010). As always Wolf's analysis is very interesting, for example:

For Prof Morris, “social development” is an amalgam of four factors: energy use; urbanisation; military capacity; and information technology.

Wolf's column focuses on the energy side, but all four factors are fascinating. Morris' book is on my to read list!

High Speed Rail in the USA

2011-01-09T11:50:00.000+01:00

Pendolino Train in Prague - From my flickr photos.

I just commented on a very interesting article in The Infrastructuralist: A Powerful Argument for US High Speed Rail. The article discusses the fact that no US transportation system actually pays for itself and therefore arguments against HSR because it does not pay for itself are wrong. Here's my comment:

I think an important point is that we need a transportation SYSTEM that works. High speed rail is part of that system and we all realize it’s not appropriate everywhere and it will be impossible to build quickly enough even where it is justified right now. What’s to be done?

1 - Focus on improving the existing railway system. It may not be possible to build a real HSR system through New England, but I am sure there are many projects that could shave ten minutes off the travel time.

2 - Improve multimodal connections. Travelers care about door-to-door time not speed. Any rail traveler can tell you the horror stories involved with connecting to local public transport networks. Most of these problems are “simply” institutional, they would cost almost nothing to fix. Again, this could save tens of minutes.

3 - Build a couple HSR lines where they make sense. California for example. Let’s see how they work, even starter lines with (1) and (2) above could show whether the concept will work in the USA.

These seem like pretty uncontroversial suggestions. A country as innovative as the USA should be able to try out an idea like HSR and spend some money improving the rail system without all the controversy that seems to have been generated by what is really a very small program.

Reading through the article comments is really enlightening. There is so much negative energy being thrown around about what amounts to a very small amount of money. It seems strange that people would object to spending a little money testing something that works pretty well in other countries and which could be implemented successfully in carefully chosen US corridors.

Furthermore, many of the investments in Obama's High Speed Rail program fall in the first category of improvement above: small projects to improve railway travel in the USA. Again, a small amount of money to make pretty useful improvements (and create jobs in a depression economy - no small benefit). Critics say these are not "real high speed rail," fine, but useful, yes.

Most depressing of all is the fact that normal people have been coerced by politicians and the media to get fighting mad about these small expenditures on relatively benign infrastructure improvements. To be against simply trying out things that just might really improve our society, and certainly won't hurt. A pessimist would say that it's useful for those in power to keep the middle class fighting with each other about peanuts rather than questioning why, for example, hedge fund managers only pay a 15% income tax rate.

Happy New Year 2011

2011-01-02T17:35:00.000+01:00

Happy New Year from Vienna! This is how we celebrated New Years day ... that's the Vienna Philharmonic in the background ... like most people in Austria we watched it on TV. Christa is pouring a glass of Austrian sparkling wine. Cheers!

Bus Meister: Public Transport Priority Best Practices wiki

2010-10-19T14:08:00.000+02:00

I have started developing the Public Transport Priority Best Practices wiki as part of my Bus Meister project. The wiki is being developed on wikispaces and here's a link to the page that describes how the Bus Meister game will calculate how long it takes passengers to board a public transport vehicle, and therefore how long the vehicle will need to stop at a station.

The page has links to the other pages too. Since it's a wiki please feel free to edit it ... it's quite easy really, but I may need to invite you, so just let me know if you want to help!

Creating City-Scale Collaboration with Games

2010-10-18T14:32:00.001+02:00

Jane McGonigal has developed this slideshow about using games for city scale collaboration. It's something I am working on as part of my Bus Meister project (http://www.andynash.com/projects/busmeister/index.html). It looks like we are going to get a small amount of seed funding from the city of Vienna to develop a game and start the social network and best practices wiki database. More later, but McGonigal's work is extremely interesting and well worth seeing.

Creating City-Scale Collaboration with Games

View more presentations from avantgame.

Copenhagen Recommendations

2010-10-14T16:45:00.000+02:00

Last month I attended the CIVITAS Forum 2010 conference in Malmo Sweden. I arrived early and spent Monday walking around Copenhagen.

The region is very interesting because since the Oresund bridge was built the Copenhagen and southern Sweden area have essentially become a single region including Malmo and Lund in Sweden with Copenhagen. The regional train (S-train), Oresundstag, runs every twenty minutes between Copenhagen, Copenhagen Kastrup airport, Malmo and Lund. It's easy, convenient and fast.

I started my Copenhagen walk at the central train station and then headed to the neighborhood north of Tivioli and the main pedestrian street (Frederiksbergg). It's pretty cool with lots of cafes, hip stores and young businesses.

I walked to the Norreport metro/S-train station, it's a fairly typical urban station, the regional trains are underground - they travel underground through the center of Copenhagen. The station has lots of bike parking, but not enough for Copenhagen's seemingly limitless demand. At the Civitas Forum we saw a great photo of bikers in the winter - they were covered with snow and ice but biking!

From Norreport I walked to the King's Garden park through the center of town. I walked around a little in the neighborhood just to the west of the park, and wandered down a small street called Lille Strandstrædet until I reached number 24, the location of a wonderful bakery/chocolate producer called Gryberg. I had a coffee and they treated me to one of their dark chocolate-passion fruit (two of my very favorite things) truffle with the coffee.

The person working there told me this truffle had just won first prize as best in Denmark, and I could easily understand why. The store is located right near where the canal boat tours leave (Nyhavn). By the way, I took one of these boat tours in 2008 and it was lots of fun (see my flickr Copenhagen photo set).

After my coffee I walked over to the Amalienborg Slot (Royal Palace) and quite unexpectedly I arrived just in time for the changing of the guard (actually I did not even know that they did this in Copenhagen!). The palace square is shaped in an octagon, and the west side opens towards the harbour.

After viewing the changing of the guard, I walked over to the harbour and walked north to the Kasteliet, a fort with earthen walls and a moat that's still used as a military headquarters (although people are free to walk around and enjoy the views from the walls). Then on to the Little Mermaid statue ...

But, the statue was gone - visiting Shanghai for the worlds fair! I saw it on my 2008 boat tour, but still, it's funny to think that a city would give away its most famous tourist attraction for six months. There must have been some debate about that!

Then on to a pedestrian bridge crossing over the railway tracks north of the Osterport railway station. The main railway tracks go right through Copenhagen from the main station to Norreport station and on to Osterport station.

Through railway service is very convenient and makes railway service much more efficient for operators. I have written about Zurich's S-Bahn through service (Zurich is building another through line now), Malmo is also building a through tunnel and Vienna is building a new central through station to replace the old South and East railway terminals ... to name just three current through railway projects under construction.

I walked through the Holmens cemetery to Oster Farimagsgade street. There I found a whole series of one block long streets with very simple and small houses but all these streets were woonerf streets. I have never seen such good examples of the woonerf concept. I love this photo of the playhouse and picnic bench in the middle of the block. Sorry it was a school day and too early for children to be outside, that would have made a good photo.

By now it was time for lunch, so I stopped at Aamanns take away smorrebrod ... it's an informal place, with a couple large tables so you can eat there or take away. I had three of their open face sandwiches ... the Fish: Pickled herring with compote of plus, fresh plums and a dice of cabbage ... the Beef: Fried loin of beef with remoulade, crispy onions and horseradish,

and ... Vegetables: New Danish leeks with fried potatoes, wood sorrel, carrot/celeriac emulsion and "fedtegrever" ... all washed down with a local draft beer from a brewery called Hersler Bryghus. It was a yummy lunch in very pleasant surroundings. The restaurant, next door, also looked fine. My lunch cost about 200 Danish Kroner, which is about 28 Euros.

Then it was time to walk back to the main train station for my train back to Malmo, the conference was about to begin and I didn't want to be late.

All my photos - from my harbour tour in 2008 and this trip are available on my flickr Copenhagen photo set.

Berlin Recommendations

2010-10-02T01:45:00.000+02:00

I was in Berlin last week for the Innotrans conference. Berlin's one of my favorite cities, it's a very special place - especially when the weather cooperates as it did on this trip.

One of the reasons I like Berlin is that I really have learned my way around - 3 one-month long German courses at the Goethe Institute helps a lot. I think I have walked through all the city neighborhoods and the Goethe Institute's culture program introduced me to the museums and the city's history.

Riding the S-Bahn above the city from Charlottenburg to Ostkreutz is probably the best urban rail experience in the world. You pass all the main Berlin sights including the Reichstag (with its transparent dome), the new government buildings, the fantastic new main train station (Hauptbahnhof), the historic art museums on Museum Insel and of course the Spree River. Many of the stations are works of art in and of themselves: Freidrichstrasse, Hackescher Markt, Alexanderplatz ... I could ride this line all day long ... but alas, I had work to do at Innotrans.

Innotrans is a huge exhibition for all types of public transportation. All the major manufacturers of buses, railway vehicles and equipment, vehicle components, software systems, consulting firms, ticket machine vendors, ... you name it, they are there. It's almost too much, even for a public transport guy like me. The main reason I attended was to help the Rail Technology Cluster Austria (RTCA) with a couple projects.

On my trip I returned to several old favorite restaurants and tried two restaurants recently reviewed in the Financial Times - all were great and were a wonderful antidote to public transport overload. I had an appetizer of cold smoked trout served on potato salad with bacon the first night. I enjoyed a really fresh draft Augustiner (Munich) beer with it. The kitchen and bar at Alte Europa (in Mitte) is quite creative and the food is always great.

On Tuesday I went to Kurpfalz-Weinstuben (photo above). The restaurant has a limited menu because one person, Rainer Schultz (the owner), cooks. I spent a long time discussing the menu with my waitress and finally selected the 'wild' soup (wild is meat that traditionally is hunted: deer, boar, etc. and is generally available in the fall). My soup was made with boar and wild mushrooms. It was delightful.

Did I mention the wines? The restaurant is justifiably famous for its wines - they offer probably 50 wines by the glass. I asked my waitress to make recommendations for me, and she did a great job. A very dry Riesling with the wild soup.

My main course was a kabob of pork fillet and pieces of apple wrapped in bacon (actually Tyrolean dried ham). The meat had been marinated and was as tender as could be. It was served with a potato salad made with apple cubes and tiny diced pickles. I don't like heavy potato salads, but this was incredibly light - Chef Schultz told me he made it with creme frache instead of mayonnaise. I was bad and asked if I could taste the sauerkraut (a side dish that accompanied one of the other main courses). My waitress brought me a large bowl full and it was wonderful: very light and fresh tasting, not at all sour, again, home made. That's Herrn Schultz in the photo below.

I ended the meal with honey parfait which was the perfect compliment for all the food and wine I enjoyed. Kurpfalz-Weinstuben is a wonderful place. My meal with wine was about 45 Euros without tip.

On Wednesday I returned to a place in Mitte called Schwarzwaldstuben. I actually lived on the third floor of this building on my last Goethe Institute course, so I had eaten here several times. They specialize in cooking from the Black Forest (in German: Schwarzwald) and also have Rothaus Beer from the region. I had the lunch special shown in the photo above, Wild Goulash - goulash made from deer meat - that was perfectly cooked and seasoned. It came with green Spätzle - perfect for soaking up the wonderful goulash sauce.

That evening I went to another restaurant recommended in the FT: Weinstein. It's located in Prenzlauerburg and is also a wine lover's paradise. One of the nice things about this restaurant is that if you order three courses they give you free mineral water and coffee, so I ordered three courses!

I started with celery soup: bright green with little bits of sausage in it. It went perfectly with the Pfaz wine recommended by my waiter.

My main course was deer fillet served on top of a bed of green beans (which were cooked with bacon and onion) surrounded by four oven roasted cherry tomatoes (at the corners). The meat was so tender you could cut it with your fork and the vegetables were cooked well enough to stand up to the meat. Incredibly, the recommended wine was a Ridge Lytton Springs Zinfandel ... my favorite California Zin from my ZAP days in San Francisco ... served by the glass! You know what I drank.

Dessert was mini quark cakes in a compote of plums marinated in cinnamon. The quark cakes were little balls, light as a feather, served warm in the bowl full of compote. Yum. The recommended wine was a sweet German Riesling from the Mosel region, and while I am not normally a sweet wine drinker, the waiter said it was really worth trying, and he was right. While sweet, it also had a touch of mineral taste that gave it more depth than many sweet wines I have drunk. My meal cost about 52 Euros without tip.

Weinstein also has a tasting menu on Monday to Wednesday that lets you try small portions of their seasonal menu, perhaps I should have done that since everything I ate was superb. The price for the tasting was 36 Euros (without wine and tip).

I needed to fly through Zürich on my way back to Vienna, and our flight was quite delayed leaving Berlin. But, I just caught my flight from Zürich to Vienna (I was one of those guys running through the airport and they closed the door right after I walked on - thanks Swiss!) and arrived at home to ask Christa when we can go to Berlin for a holiday.

Liz Castro: Corollary to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

2010-09-15T15:53:00.001+02:00

Here's a great post from Liz Castro's blog "Pigs Gourds and Wikis": Corollary to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle:

Yesterday in the metro on the way to pick up the kids from school, it occurred to me that there should be a corollary to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. My extremely basic memory from seventh grade of that principle is that you can't observe a particle with absolute accuracy because the very act of observing it affects the particle and makes it do things it wouldn't have otherwise.

But what I'm realizing is that observing not only affects the particle in question, but these days as I drown in tweets, it affects the observer (me). I need to keep track of what's going on, but if I keep completely up-to-date, I don't have any time to create. If I only create, I don't have any time to keep up to date on what's going on outside my office.

Thus, the Corollary: I can neither keep completely up-to-date, nor only create. The trick, as ever, is to find the balance.

Waterfront Planning in Buffalo NY

2010-09-14T15:23:00.000+02:00

Here's a fine article "Our Waterfront, Ourselves" by Bruce Fisher about what to do when a large big box retailer pulls out of a waterfront development project. This has been a shock to Buffalo's planning and development community - providing for lots of discussion and questions (be sure to read the comments).

An excellent feature is that Fisher starts from the - should be obvious - point that the Buffalo area is shrinking and therefore whatever is done needs to be quite different from what's done in growing regions. Hmmm... why don't we ever think this way in planning school?

Too many cities chase the chimeras de jour - festival marketplaces, downtown ball parks, convention centers, casinos, ... all big plans that capture the imagination but fail to spur city economies.

In this context Fisher's suggestion that funds be spent to clean up the water, increase public access and encourage local initiatives rather than subsidizing big box retail and parking make lots of sense.

Fisher's article is refreshing as both planning theory and in Buffalo's public debate over this important issue.

Seth Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world | Video on TED.com

2010-08-29T12:59:00.000+02:00

Seth Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world | Video on TED.com

I just watched this TEDx video. It's really a great analysis of how games can be used to help make social change and how they are, in fact, being used. Priebatsch's discussion of dynamics of games will be helpful in developing Bus Meister (http://www.andynash.com/projects/busmeister/index.html).

Thanks for the votes!

2010-08-05T18:20:00.000+02:00

I've been traveling, but the big news is that my Singfrancisco music video won one of the runner-up prizes in the Swiss International Airlines contest promoting their new service to San Francisco. I won two round trip tickets for a flight in Europe ... cool! You can still see the video on my YouTube channel.

By the way, as I was catching up with my reading I checked James Fallows' blog and he had a post recommending Pamplamoose (links to their cover of Lady Gaga Telephone on YouTube). They are really fantastic and show how good a modern music video can be ... highly recommended!

More when I recover from my jet lag.

But, what about the beer?

2010-07-15T15:19:00.000+02:00

Beer from wooden keg, der Pshorr, Munich, from my flickr Munich photos.

Monocle recently ranked Munich the world's most livable city. I love Munich and I think that the Monocle video presents a very nice view of the city.

I was particularly struck by the comments from BMW's head of design, Adrian van Hooydonk. In the video he says Munich doesn't take energy from you (the way living in many cities does) but gives you energy (about 3 minutes into the video). I remember thinking something similar when I first visited in the 1980s ... waiting for the U-Bahn, which was clean, fast and reliable as clockwork, I thought how nice it must be not to have to worry about public transport ... a real difference from most big cities. This frees up energy for creativity.

My only complaint about the Monocle video is that it did not mention beer, and, for me at least, the beer in Munich tastes better than anywhere in the world. My posts and recommendations for Munich.

Why doesn't this happen on the Vienna U-Bahn?

2010-07-14T10:28:00.000+02:00

Improv everywhere is at it again! Let's try to organize something similar in Vienna!

Watching Scorpio in Vienna

2010-07-13T11:17:00.000+02:00

Scorpio: Chase scene through Vienna Karlsplatz U-Bahn station.

On Saturday I went to the Kino unter Sternen (movies under the stars) on Vienna's Karlsplatz. The program is being held at Karlsplatz this year (in addition to the regular Kino unter Sternen at the Augarten) because the Wien Museum has a great exhibition called Wien im Film on right now.

The Kino unter Sternen is showing a whole series of films made (at least partially) in Vienna. Scorpio was particularly good because the big chase scene was filmed at the Karlsplatz U-Bahn station when it was under construction during the 1970s. Sorry the photo is out of focus. More photos on my flickr photos tagged Scorpio Vienna Kino untern Sternen. More photos are available from the flickr user Kino unter Sternen including one of the Wiener Beschwerdechor (Vienna Complaining Choir) singing before the July 3 movie - see if you can find me!

Swiss International Air Lines: Minding the network (SFO 1)

2010-07-10T15:04:00.001+02:00

Swiss Airlines just started a blog about flying and their operations. The first post was Swiss International Air Lines: Minding the network (SFO 1) is about scheduling flights. It was quite fascinating.

Another great source of information on flying is Patrick Smith's Salon column "Ask the Pilot". Patrick even answered one of my questions (about how flights are controlled over areas where there is no radar coverage, e.g. over the Atlantic Ocean). His explanations are clear and I really enjoy the fact that he says exactly what is on his mind (see some of his columns on security!).

The second Swiss Blog was on preparations for starting service in San Francisco. Of course I asked if they were making any special arrangements for "cows who come to San Francisco with flowers in their horns" but no response yet!

Cali Columbia's Bus Rapid Transit System Film

2010-07-09T20:13:00.000+02:00

Here's a film from current TV on Cali Columbia's new bus rapid transit system which is called MIO. It's a nice film illustrating many of the benefits of BRT. At one point a user complains that she likes the older minibuses better - because the new system is too crowded! Not sure if that's really a negative ... a few more buses might solve the problem.

For a slightly less serious look at South American BRT systems check out my music video parody: The Bus From Curitiba on YouTube.

Urban Track Final Conference 2010

2010-07-08T12:24:00.000+02:00

Czech Pendolino train in Prague main station.

I went to the Urban Track Project final conference in Prague because I am helping the Wiener Linien (Vienna’s public transport operator) on a research project intended to better understand the motivation for implementing good maintenance procedures. The conference presented results of the four year research project on how to design and build better urban rail (streetcars, metro, subway, etc.) track work. Several of the presentations were about how to design slab track to reduce noise and vibration.

Since I am more of a planner than engineer a couple of the less track-engineering presentations were more interesting for me. These were on: green track, rehabilitation processes and socio-economic impacts of rehabilitation projects.

Green Tram Tracks on Avenue Louise in Brussels (from my flickr photos)

The Green Tram Tracks, The Advantages of Implementing Vegetation Systems in Tram Tracks presentation was by Henrikje Schreiter from the Institute of Agricultural and Urban Ecological Projects (IASP) in Berlin. She described her phd dissertation on the benefits of using a specific plant species (Sedum, which is a succulant plant) for green tracks. In summary, there are a lot of benefits including water retention, reducing noise (small, but something), reducing airborne particles and just creating a nice visual environment. She discussed lots of the practical reasons why Sedum is a good choice (e.g no need for mowing) and how you actually build these systems (e.g. building them so that emergency vehicles can drive over them).

The IASP is holding a seminar on the subject of green tracks (German) – who knew that Berlin has been using green tracks since the early 1900s? – on 20 September 2010 (before the Innotrans Exhibition). The seminar is in German, but I may try to go and can do some translation of interesting presentations.

Westbahnstrasse Tram Track Rehabilitation, Vienna July 2009

Several speakers talked about rehabilitation of tram tracks. As visitors to my website and YouTube channel know, tram track rehabilitation is a subject close to my heart! Speakers described a replacement project in Bremen where the tram service was only stopped for a weekend (although roadway traffic on the adjoining lanes was stopped for four weeks) for a traditional tram track replacement project, and one in Karlsruhe, where the city took about three weeks to install pre-fabricated track slabs in a historic district.

The contrast between the two projects was quite interesting. In Bremen the goal was to minimize service disruption and in Karlsruhe the goal was to install historic-looking track as efficiently as possible. In the project area Karlsruhe’s track is set in cobble stone pavement, so the prefabricated sections had a cobble stone surface. Also interesting was the fact that the work was done under the catenary lines – which made it difficult to maneuver cranes and lifting equipment. Both projects were partly funded by the Urban Track project and lots of practical lessons were learned.

The final presentation I will talk about was by Marjolein de Jong from Hasselt University in Belgium. The presentation was on evaluating the socio-economic impacts of tram track rehabilitation projects. What I found so interesting about her research was how systematically she identified the potential impacts and her findings regarding various potential staging strategies. When I talked to her later she said, well it’s just impact analysis 101, but I think it’s important because it starts to develop an organized framework for thinking about some of the problems planners face when considering rehabilitation programs.

More information about the UrbanTrack project is available at the UITP website.

Tour de France - Brussels

2010-07-07T10:28:00.002+02:00

Tour de France Brussels 5july2010-07, originally uploaded by andynash.

I was in Brussels on Monday for a meeting of the High Speed Regions group. As it happened the Tour de France was traveling through Brussels - a block from our meeting location - on Monday too, so I had time to watch the racers go by.

Unfortunately it was right at the start of the day's race, so the riders were going quite slowly and were all in a pack. Well actually mostly team packs. It was funny because the streets were blocked for hours but the race took about 30 seconds to go by (and, they were going slowly!). Also odd is that there were probably more cars, trucks, motorcycles etc. going by than bikes. More photos on my flickr photos Tour de France Brussels.

Die Prinzen: Mein Fahrrad - My Bike

2010-07-01T09:42:00.000+02:00

I just heard the song "Mein Farrad" (My Bicycle) by Die Prinzen on the radio. It's a very catchy tune and the words are lots of fun. I thought I would translate it for my English speaking bicycle friends, so here goes:

The other day I was going 120 (kph)
Riding round town on my bike
And as usual I could only hope
The police wouldn't catch-up to me
Because they'd give me a ticket
And take me to the station
And my poor little bike
Would be left all alone out front
Oh how I love my bike
Although I really don't know why
To her I'll always be faithful
In contrast to my wife
Never will I leave her
Never will I give her away
Because we fly together on the clouds
And understand each other perfectly

Every grandpa drives his Opel
Every monkey drives his Ford
Every idiot drives his Porsche
Every asshole drives his Audi Sport
Every crazy man drives his Manta
Every complete idiot his Jaguar
Only connoisseurs are cycling
And they're always faster there

My bike is surely not purple
That's not my color at all
And it's certainly not brown
Because I can't stand brown
No, mine is painted blue
From head to toe that shade
Blue's the perfect color for me
Because sometimes I'm blue too

Every grandpa drives his Opel
Every monkey drives his Ford
Every idiot drives his Porsche
Every asshole drives his Audi Sport
Every crazy man drives his Manta
Every complete idiot his Jaguar
Only connoisseurs are cycling
And they're always faster there!

I took a few liberties with the lyrics, but I hope it does justice to the great song! Feel free to add improvements to the comments.

Two Vienna Musical Stars

2010-06-28T20:28:00.000+02:00

Last fall IKEA set up a truck with their catalog cover furniture minus people at the MuseumsQuartier. Passers-by could have their photo taken in the scene. Thinking quickly I went downstairs into the U-Bahn station and asked to borrow the Mozart Kugel (a type of candy) man. Back upstairs to the photo shoot and now, here it is, two of Vienna's musical geniuses together on the same stage!

Don't forget to vote for my latest music video: Flowers in your Horns!

Prague Arcades

2010-06-27T15:32:00.000+02:00

Lucerna Arcade Prague

I've always been fascinated by arcades, those ‘shopping mall precursors’ in cities where a set of shops runs in a corridor through the middle of a building. Paris and Brussels have a couple of great old ones, I even like the modern Funf Hofe in Munich, but for some reason I never noticed Prague’s arcades on previous trips. This week, while walking around aimlessly looking for a good place to eat (one of my favorite activities), I found myself in a really cool one, the Lucerna, which made me notice many more.

Adria Arcade Prague

Like most of Prague all the arcades I visited are showing their age. Most of the shops, restaurants and cafes located in them are not flashy or the latest trends (in contrast to Munich!) but seem to cater to the normal needs of locals.

The Lucerna, like many of the arcades, was actually a series of arcades connected together so they differed stylistically and in terms of tenants and state of repair. Only one of the arcades is actually the Lucerna, the others were called Rokoko and Dum u Novaku (sorry for not using the Czech spelling, no keyboard). These were particularly interesting since the connected arcades were in very different styles.

Kino Cafe in Lucerna Arcade, Prague

The Lucerna arcade is built around a movie theater with several places to eat and a music/beer club. The architecture features lots of marble and a huge hanging sculpture of a knight riding a horse, but the horse is upside down (feet up) and the knight is riding on the horse’s stomach (see top photo). I had a coffee in the coffeehouse with windows over looking the sculpture. The coffeehouse was great, it was clear that it was used for performances (there was a grand piano), there were some children playing in a corner with the parents having a coffee and chat. The cafe probably gets lots of visitors after shows.

The Adria arcade was located on Jungmannova Street near my hotel. There I was most impressed with the old art deco architecture and decorations. The mosaic caught my eye with two railway scenes. There was a very nice old sign for a record producer around the doorway of a former tenant. As I left I noticed that the building seemed to have originally been built for one of those old transport insurance agencies (there was a sculpture with a powerful figure seeming to protect a ship in heavy seas).

Not really an arcade, but opening on to one, was the Franciscan Cloister garden. This is a truly beautiful urban open space. Located in the middle of a block, it’s a quiet oasis (except for the sound of children playing) in the center of the city. It’s well maintained with beautiful flowers and lots of benches (many of which are full). There’s a great fountain sculpture of a naked child playing with water … the children around all loved it.

Finally, I discovered the Trznice arcade on Rytirska Street. I was drawn in by a beautiful painting of a market scene over the interior doorway (photo). As I walked though I found that the arcade had been remodeled with a grocery store, drug store and a couple other 1980s style shops. The space itself had been given one of those dropped ceilings (it was still quite high) but there was a skylight through which you could see the original metal and glass roof (photo). It’s too bad there is not enough money to rehabilitate all these beautiful structures.

All my Prague arcade photos are here.

Prague - June 2010

2010-06-27T14:55:00.001+02:00

I visited Prague last week for a conference on urban railway track construction best practices (more on the Urban Track conference in a future post).

Prague is a fantastic city: you can walk from one highlight to the next. One of my favorite neighborhoods is the old Jewish Quarter. I have visited the historic sights before and so now I just like to walk around the neighborhood, being gently reminded of the Holocaust.

Many buildings in this neighborhood were built at the turn of the 19th Century and are Jugendstyle (Art Nouveau) – perhaps my favorite building style. I skipped breakfast in my hotel both days and walked to a really fine bakery-cafe called Bake Shop for espresso and pain au chocolat … a real treat (some Prague Bake Shop photos here).

The weather was beautiful and I could sit out doors and enjoy my breakfast. One of the things I love about Prague is that it is so quiet on the streets (at least in the center) and so you can really enjoy sitting outside eating.

As I was leaving I noticed how the roof lines were making nice patterns against the clouds and started taking photos of rooflines meeting the skyline. Many of the photos are buildings from Parizska street and the Jewish Quarter. I couldn’t help but notice that today’s contribution to how buildings meet the skyline is generally cellular telephone antennas or satellite television disks.

Another really cool thing I noticed about Prague is the very large number of arcades running through buildings between streets. I talk about Prague’s arcades in future post.

After the first day of the conference we had a reception at the Prague Tram Museum (website lists all Prague museums, scroll down to tram museum info). The museum is really great, many old vehicles all very well restored. It is an old tram barn, naturally, and it has been very nicely cleaned up. The descriptive texts are in the Czech language, but there is a brief guide for the museum in English. It’s one of the better tram museums I have visited. (Some photos of the Prague Tram Museum are here.) Here's a link to information about historic trams in Prague.

The reception was very nice, good food and local beer/wine. They served a very nice Goulash made with lots of cumin and also green beans. As a real Goulash fan I enjoyed it very much. Another nice touch was a six-piece jazz band. They did lots of standards including Girl from Ipanema … of course after hearing that I talked to the band leader and “casually” mentioned that I had written new words for the song (The Bus From Curitiba) thinking he might suggest that I sing it, but alias that was not to be, so the YouTube version will need to be it for now, but they were really good and what a wonderful place to perform the song. I’ll keep looking for more opportunities.

After the reception we took a night walk through the city, first stopping at the main square where live outdoor viewing of the world cup was going on, then through the old city to the Charles Bridge, it was dark by then, but everything is well lighted. Over the bridge and then up to the castle where there were only a few people, but again, everything well lighted. Then back down the hill to the hotel where I had to wake up early to make it to the Bake Shop before the conference started.

I’m writing from the train on my way back to Vienna. The fast trains between Prague and Vienna seem quite crowded (especially 1st class – many tourists). On the way to Prague there was only one 1st class wagon – with several children playing video games (with the sound turned on) and two infants crying … so it was really not relaxing. Today the air conditioning is not working very well - in the second 1st class wagon it's not working at all! The railways really need to do a better job!

The Truman Show - Vienna

2010-06-23T09:31:00.001+02:00

One of my favorite movies was The Truman Show, I thought that the plot was quite good, but also enjoyed seeing the new urbanist city Seaside Florida, the movie setting.

Anyway Oliver Hangl, the artistic director of the Vienna Complaining Choir among many other artistic projects, is doing a project this week called Kino im Kopf: Die Truman Show where the audience rides through Vienna on a streetcar (they have headphones for the soundtrack) and people on the street act out scenes from The Truman Show movie. Oliver needed extras so, along with many members of the Complaining Choir helped out. We worked at Lancaster Square (actually the Josefstadterstrasse U-Bahn - Tram stop).

Here's a photo of the people on the tram enjoying our performance. Our job was to bend down and hold our ears for the 15-seconds while the tram went by. (I had the camera balanced on my leg and just shot, so it's out of focus). More photos are on my flickr site tagged Truman Show Vienna.

EXTRA: We helped out throughout the week and on Saturday we were in the audience on the tram. The show was great and I took more photos which are also on the flickr site.

It's going on until Saturday 26 June 2010, highly recommended if you are in Vienna!

Tre Porcellini in Macelleria Falaschi - San Miniato

2010-06-19T10:13:00.000+02:00

I helped with the Slow Food Terra Madre in Vienna last fall. My job was to help make the group of vendors from Italy feel at home (I know, tough work, but someone's got to do it!).

I spent a lot of time talking and eating with Andrea Falaschi from the Falaschi butcher shop in San Miniato. They host an annual "Jazz at the Macelleria" party at the butcher shop (macelleria means butcher shop in Italian) and this week I received this invitation for a puppet show from them ... unfortunately I can't attend but wish I could, their sausage and prosciutto are fantastic! The photo on the right is Andrea making a point, note the knife in his left hand ...

DEAR FRIENDS,
The Sergio Falaschi's Butcher, this year at the international exhibition of street theater "La Luna è Azzurra" in San Miniato, has decided to offer a show of puppetry, inspired by the Group " Teatro a Dondolo" from Pisa, based oa reinterpretation of the Three Little Pigs story, inspired by the three figures of pigs raised in the wild state, the ones rised in the semi-wild state and the pink pig raised in stable. The show will be accompanied by a live musical performance, conceived for the occasion by "Bill Gorazde".
During the the show, entitled " I TRE PORCELLINI IN MACELLERIA" (The Three Little Pigs in Butcher), a tasting of three different types of salami will be offered to the pubblic: The Cinta Senese Dop (from pork raised in the wild), the Grey (from pork raised semi-wild state) and classic Tuscan salame with wine (from pink pig raised in stable). The salami tasting will be all accompanied by "Annick" and "Nicole" wines by Cosimo Maria Masini.
.......We kindly requires adults accompanied by childrens.............
The evening event will be held on Thursday, June 24.
The performances will start at 21:15 and 22:15.
We are waiting for you!

A little more to the left please!

2010-06-18T12:34:00.000+02:00

Here's a photo from my recent visit to Trieste. On the Piazza Italia, it looks like the main figure in this statue is directing the crane operator. Well, a little bit. My Trieste flickr photos.

Rate My Street

2010-06-16T18:45:00.000+02:00

Here's my street in Vienna rated on Rate My Street.

Just found a cool new website called Rate My Street that allows you to rate your street according to several criteria. It was developed in the United Kingdom, but since it uses Google Maps as a base you can rate any street anywhere.

Other great sites that can be used to rate streets and indicate problems that I discuss in my TRB Paper: Web 2.0 Applications for Improving Public Participation in Transport Planning include:

seeclickfix
walkscore.com
cyclopath.org - Twin Cities Minnesota Area

The ultimate goal of my Bus Meister project is to develop a similar application that helps city residents use an internet application to help identify, plan and support public transport priority measures that improve the attractiveness and efficiency of public transport routes they use every day. I'm struggling to finish a proposal right now ... more later!

Vienna Linchpin Meetup - June 14, 2010

2010-06-15T14:10:00.000+02:00

MuseumsQuartier Vienna from my flickr photos.

We held our Vienna Linchpin Meetup at the MuseumsQuartier. The highlight was meeting a group of people who wanted to discuss Seth Godin's ideas. On the way home I was amazed to note that three hours had passed, although the fact that they pretty much had to throw us out of the cafe should have been a hint.

We discussed a wide variety of subjects, listed below. We decided to meet again in September to continue our discussion with more people.

Can cleaning people be linchpins? We think that it's possible to bring art to cleaning and cleaners can be an important connection between people working in an office. Our model is not the outsourced cleaning companies, but rather the cleaners who were really part of the organization, like the janitors in our elementary schools in the old days (Mike Mulligan of steam shovel fame). Maybe not forever, but being a linchpin cleaner (to pay the bills) while you are doing some other art at night.

How do you transfer Seth's ideas to old businesses and institutions? An especially important question in cities like Vienna with long traditions.

Can you be a linchpin in a large business or do you need to work for yourself? Of course Seth discusses this, but it was on our minds. We felt that learning to get along in existing structures can provide you with the freedom to implement innovative ideas. But, it's a balancing act.

We should always ask, "Where's the fun?" at work. Work should be a playground where you can fail. Interestingly some organizations allow failure but sweep it under the carpet preferring to ignore it rather than learn from it.

What about colleagues to whom work is simply 8 hours plus a paycheck?

Finally, as a mixed German and English speaking group, we had a lot of fun translating and debating how to interpret Seth's work (starting with "What does linchpin mean?") in another language.

Bus Meister and BRT

2010-06-11T10:28:00.000+02:00

Bus Meister will help citizens lobby city hall (this is Vienna) in support of public transport priority (from my flickr photos).

I just returned from a meeting in Udine (Italy) where I spoke about my Bus Meister idea of creating an integrated suite of web applications (game, social network and wiki best practices library) to help educate citizens on how to improve public transport operations (by introducing public transport priority measures) and to empower them to help actually implement these ideas. It's a general approach that I think could be used to solve many urban problems.

Going through my e-mail I was glad to read about Barcelona's new BRT lines which one of my UC Berkeley professors, Carlos Daganzo, is helping plan. The article in the ITS Berkeley News is a very good summary of for the importance of public transport priority and BRT. Daganzo is a brilliant scientist, it's great to see him working on improving public transport!

Web 2.0 for citizen involvement

2010-06-03T14:48:00.000+02:00

Schedule information screens on Zurich public transport vehicles, from my flickr photos.

The Infrastructuralist just had an interesting article about IBM's Smart Cities program and some work they are doing in Viet Nam. I added a comment suggesting that a good solution for many urban problems is the use of Web 2.0 techniques to involve the public in planning and operating urban services. Read the article and my comment here.

New broom?

2010-06-02T08:44:00.000+02:00

Here's a photo from my visit to the Melk Monastery. A broom standing in front of the garden pavilion (link to photo from my flickr photos). It got me thinking about the need to clean up all that oil in the Gulf of Mexico, Robert Reich has a good article with suggestions.

Rivets are not just for frogs!

2010-06-01T09:36:00.000+02:00

One of my civil engineering professors at RPI used to always talk about the 'built up' columns in the New York City subway stations. The "I" beam shape is very strong and efficient, but it was impossible to make "I" beams directly before the 1908 when a man named Henry Grey invented a mill machine that could roll the shape. So steel workers needed to build their own "I" beams in the field by joining steel plates with rivets. I was reminded of my civil engineering studies when I visited Melk last week and used the pedestrian bridge to cross the tracks.

By the way, Grey worked for Bethlehem Steel, my first employer after graduating from RPI. I actually worked in one of the original "Grey" mill facilities in Bethlehem.

Melk Monastery Austria

2010-05-27T16:40:00.001+02:00

The Benedictine Monastery in Melk is a UNESCO World Heritage site about 90-km from Vienna so I wonder what has taken me so long to get there. All photos are from my flickr set Melk Monastery (lots more photos there!).

I took the train and got there at 9 am. It was an easy walk from the train station through a pedestrian district where a farmers market was just being set-up. There is a stairway from the pedestrian street which leads up the hill to the Monastery gate. You buy your tickets at the second courtyard; my ticket was for an English tour at 10:55, so I had some time. (The ticket cost 9.50 Euros.)

I went into the museum where the guard marked my ticket so that I could go in again with my scheduled tour. Even at this early hour there were many groups of visitors from Danube river tour cruise ships (Melk is located on the Danube and is a popular stopping point for river cruises). By staying in between the tour groups I had the museum rooms to myself for a few minutes. It's a very interesting exhibit of the Monastery history combined with the history of the Dominican order of monks.

At the end of the museum is the marble hall which has a beautiful trompe de oeil painting of main characters from Greek mythology on the ceiling (most of the marble is painted stucco, by the way). Leaving the marble hall you walk out on a curved walkway overlooking the church on the one side and the Danube river valley on the other.

The walkway leads to the Monastery library, a treasure house of old books and ideas. Only two of the rooms are open to the tourist public, but the other rooms are accessible to scholars. A flight of circular stairs takes you down to the ground level and the entry to the church.

The Melk Monastery is famous because the whole complex was built at the beginning of the 1700s, and is all in the Baroque style. The church is where the Baroque really lets loose. It's almost impossible to do justice to the space with a photograph. My early visit was quite nice because I was almost alone in the church (at 11:45 the church was almost full with tourists).

After leaving the church I visited the Monastery garden with its very nice garden lodge - cool frescoes - and took a walk down the garden path overlooking the Danube. Then it was time for my tour. The tour guide was excellent, he spoke very good English and knew his stuff.

After the tour I was hungry and had a nice lunch of Schweinsbraten and beer at the Monastery restaurant located just outside the main monastery buildings on the way to the parking area. The food was quite good and the service was very good (fast, friendly and efficient). My lunch cost 14 Euros.

Buffalo Architecture: H.H. Richardson's Buffalo State Hospital

2010-05-25T09:57:00.000+02:00

H.H. Richardson: Buffalo State Hospital main building from my flickr photos.

On my recent trip to Buffalo I visited the Buffalo State Hospital grounds in an early, jet-lag induced, walk. Some of my photos are on my Buffalo flickr set tagged with H.H. Richardson: Buffalo State Hospital.

As I grew up the imposing main building (in the photo above) seemed always to be in view. We lived nearby and went to elementary school on the campus of the adjoining state college. It's a fantastic building, unfortunately it really seems to need repair.

Francis R. Kowsky, a Buffalo architectural historian, wrote a nice description of the complex and its history in 2000, it is reprinted on the web page Buffalo as an Architectural Museum: A Towering Masterpiece: H.H. Richardson's Buffalo State Hospital.

International Conference Calls

2010-05-22T09:08:00.003+02:00

Telephone booths in Basel railway station (Switzerland) from my flickr photos.

GigaOM's Web Worker Daily has a nice article summarizing tips and best practices for international telephone conference calls. These would have helped me in numerous cases!

Munich update

2010-05-18T13:00:00.003+02:00

I visited Munich last week and had a great time. I re-visited my favorite "bio" lunch stand at the Viktualienmarkt, then headed to the nearby Stadtmuseum (City Museum) for a very nice exhibit called "Typisch München!" ... not enough on Munich food and beer for me, but otherwise fine (here's the German description). They had the Munich medieval period city model on display in the exhibit. More on city models here.

It was a dreary rainy day, so after walking around a bit I decided to head to the Munich Film Museum, which is in the basement of the Stadt Museum. They were showing an American film called "The Lusty Men" about rodeo cowboys. It was really good, I learned a lot about rodeos and the film itself was excellent.

I had dinner at one of my favorite Munich restaurants Der Pschorr located at the edge of the Viktualienmarkt. I had Sauerbraten with a knodel and rot kraut (red sauerkraut), the food, and the draft helles beer from a wooden keg was fantastic as always.

On my return trip (I flew to the USA via Munich), I stopped for lunch at the Augustiner Keller brewery, which is about 400 meters from Munich's main train station (I was taking the train back to Vienna). I had the lunch special: hackbraten (meat loaf) with spatzle and the JW Augustiner Edelstoff beer. Also very tasty ... what is it that makes beer taste so good in Munich? Let it suffice to say that I had a relaxing trip back to Vienna!

Over Greenland

2010-05-17T21:38:00.000+02:00

I've been doing a lot of traveling lately. Here's a photo from my trip back from the USA, we had to fly a more northern route over Greenland because of eruptions from the volcano. So, while I wasn't "sleeping in the airport cuz of you" ... as I sing on YouTube, it did delay my flight by about an hour, really nothing to complain about.There are a couple more photos on my flickr set of aerial photos.

Power Point Presentations

2010-05-06T11:17:00.000+02:00

Here's a great article by Slate's Farhad Manjoo No More Bullet Points, No More Clip Art - PowerPoint isn't evil if you learn how to use it.

Farhad summarizes how to make presentations better and mentions several of my favorite authors and bloggers including Edward Tufte and Garr Reynolds (Presentation Zen). An article well worth reading and bookmarking.

Kristian's Monastiri Vienna - Restaurant Review

2010-04-23T17:35:00.000+02:00

Last Saturday we had an excellent dinner at Kristian's Monastiri in Vienna's 7th District. The restaurant was totally full and everyone seemed to be having a nice time. The restaurant staff were friendly and attentive - even though they were so busy - a welcome change.

Our waiter recommended two bottles of wine, first a Grüner Veltliner - one with a nice mineral taste (so good we drank two bottles!), and then a red curvee. The wine list focuses on Austrian wines and these two were excellent. It was especially nice because the recommendations were relatively reasonably priced (25 Euros, 39 Euros).

We were served an very nice amuse bouche to start, there's a photo above. (Sorry for the photo quality, the lighting was very romantic!) It was a small piece of smoked duck breast and a pepper mouse.

Then several of us had the artichoke - sheep cheese salad, also very good. Several of us also had the manzanitas pork: two different cuts of meat served together. Also quite nice.

We tried three desserts and the cheese plate. All were excellent. On the left is the variation of sorbets and ice cream. On the right are the Bohemian pancakes and rhubarb ice cream. At the top of the article is passion fruit, creme brulee and passion fruit ice cream.

Our only complaint was that some smoke wafted in from the adjacent smoking section a couple times, although it was not bad by Austrian standards. Dinner for five with three bottles of wine cost about 300 Euros including tip.

I used to walk through the wonderful pedestrian passageway alongside the restaurant everyday for a project I was working on in 2007 and always wanted to eat here, now I wonder what took me so long. We'll be back again soon!

What the iPad means for social media

2010-04-02T12:44:00.003+02:00

Nice article from Salon on social media:

What the iPad means for social media

And, don't forget my music video Psycho (Social) Networker on YouTube.

Posted using ShareThis

Bern Switzerland Recommendations

2010-04-01T11:41:00.000+02:00

Bern rooftops and the Alps in the distance from the roof of Bern's main station (from my Bern flickr photos - click on any of the photos to enlarge).

We traveled to Bern often when we lived in Switzerland and recently visited to attend a conference. Here are some recommendations.

Bern is Switzerland's capitol and is less than an hour from Zurich by train. The train is a great way to travel: it's faster than driving and you can see exactly how Switzerland's "taktfahrplan" system works (it's a timed transfer system where all trains arrive in stations a few minutes before the hour - then passengers transfer between trains - then the trains all leave a few minutes after the hour). Here's some information on transport in Zurich and Switzerland from my website.

Bern Cathederal and center city (shot near the Barengraben).

The Zurich - Bern route is especially interesting because to make the one-hour "takt" work, the SBB had to build a high speed section of track on the route. Now the non-stop trains take about 57 minutes - the high speed section was designed exactly to fit the one-hour takt. If you take the train, look around: there is a non-stop train every half hour and several local trains - and they are almost all full. The Swiss rail system is a great example of how creating an integrated network of high quality public transportation can get people out of their cars. But, back to Bern.

Kornhaus Bridge in Bern (note the tram on the bridge and the Alps faintly in the background).

Bern's main train station is in the center of town. Like most Swiss rail stations Bern's is very busy. It's filled with stores (which, due to a special law, are open late and on Sundays - in contrast to most stores in Switzerland). From the main concourse you have two choices: go towards the city center or towards the parking garage.

Surprise! First, go in the direction of the parking garage. A set of elevators will take you past the parking floors to the fourth floor: the elevators open onto a huge park called the Grosse Schanze in front Bern University's main building. This photo shows elevator building, cafe and university building (unobstructed view). In the other direction is a view over the city and if it's clear you'll be able to see the Alps in the distance (see top photo). There is a restaurant here which is pretty good, it's actually a cafeteria for the SBB workers, but Swiss cafeterias can be quite good.

The historic center of Bern is a UNESCO world heritage site. Much of it was built during the middle ages and it's filled with brightly painted fountains and cobblestone streets. The most noticeable feature are the arcades: there are continuous arcades on many of the central streets. The first level of these buildings is filled with stores, restaurants and cafes. There is a farmers market on Saturday in front of the Swiss Parliament and extending down some of the adjacent streets. The photo is behind the scenes at the market: coffee to go. The center of Bern is a wonderful place to wander around.

One of the highlights in Bern is the Zentrum Paul Klee. Klee grew up in Bern, became a teacher at the famous Bauhaus school in Germany, and then moved back to Bern. A large collection of Klee paintings was donated to the city on the condition that they build a museum for it. The Zentrum Paul Klee museum, designed by Renzo Piano, is a beautiful building with an undulating grass covered roof. The site overlooks the city and is easily reached by the #12 bus from the main train station (the museum is at the end of the line and so the buses say "Zentrum Paul Klee" on the front). The museum can be crowded so plan accordingly.

Also note that if you are coming on the train to Bern you can buy a combination ticket for the round-trip train ride, the local bus and the museum from your originating train station. Just ask for a "RailAway" ticket for the Zentrum Paul Klee (German only). Also note that RailAway (English) has lots of great rail ticket combination offers. These not only save you money, but also reduce the hassle of figuring out how to buy tickets and use local public transport systems (although using public transport is not difficult in Switzerland).

You can also walk to the museum, the city has recently created several "trails" through Bern connected with Paul Klee. The trails also take you to other Bern sights and have signs describing the connection with Klee. The sign at the right has a drawing Klee made when he was growing up showing the same perspective of the city as you can see.

We have three restaurant recommendations, although there are plenty of great places to eat in Bern. The first is the Altes Tram Depot, a modern microbrewery built into, well, an old tram depot. It's directly adjacent to the Barengraben: an open-air cage for bears (Bern's city symbol is the bear, you'll see bear images a lot in Bern). Right in front of the tram depot is the old bear pit, just looking at it makes you feel sorry for the bears kept there; but on the side is the newly completed bear area: a large expanse on the banks of the Aare River with its own river water. It's a huge improvement and another popular tourist site.

New Barengraben in Bern.

The Altes Tram Depot restaurant has traditional Swiss and "beer hall" food not to mention excellent beer. We have eaten here many times and it's always been good. Last time I had their wild (venison) shown in the photo, and our friends had Zurich geschnitzels (veal in cream sauce), Munich Weisswurst and spatzele - everything was tasty and high quality. It's a busy restaurant but service is quite good although it can get loud (after all it's a beer hall!). They have a wonderful terrace/ beer garden overlooking the Aare and historic center, it's a great place to have a beer and enjoy the view. (It's also on the #12 bus line to the Paul Klee Zentrum - bus stop: Barengraben).

On our last trip we had dinner in a wonderful restaurant called Brasserie Bollwerk. It overlooks the railway viaduct that leads into the Bern main station, so there's lots of trains going by (especially just before the hour and just after the hour, have you been paying attention?). They also have a nice terrace for outdoor dining, although it's on a busy corner so there is lots of automobile traffic. The restaurant is a member of Slow Food Switzerland and so much of the food is local and organic - they are also non-smoking! They have drawings from a local artist, the photo shows a set of postcards to help explain the local Bern dialect of German.

We started with a calamari and fennel dish (shown in the photo), then the special of the evening, a wonderful roast lamb (perfectly cooked) with potatoes and vegetables. Dessert was a really find chocolate mousse. They also had a wonderful Côtes du Roussillon wine that went perfectly with the food. The staff at Brasserie Bollwerk were friendly and efficient. They are open for lunch and dinner during the week.

Note that across the street in the ground floor of the rail station is the SBB Heritage Foundation library. This is not really a museum, but the historic archives of the Swiss National Railway. They often have small exhibits in the lobby area. They are only open on weekdays 9-12 and 13:30-17, and you need to ring the bell to visit.

We had lunch at another great restaurant called Moléson. One of my favorite foods is tarte flambée, the Alsacian pizza-like dish. I like the traditional version with creme frasche, muenster cheese, bacon and onions; Moléson's tarte flambée had a couple more ingredients, but was very tasty. The service could not have been better - they even let us substitute the traditional tarte flambée for the one on the daily special menu (a chicken-curry based model, maybe ala Wolfgang Puck's spicy chicken pizza, but, to me a bit of a travesty ...). We had a wonderful salad to start and coffee was served just right. The restaurant in the back looked excellent too (we ate in the front cafe). They also try to use local ingredients and organic food.

The Bus from Curitiba

2010-03-27T00:11:00.000+01:00

My latest music video: "The Bus from Curitiba" probably needs some explanation, so here's a little bit about bus rapid transit and then the words with a couple comments.

Bus Rapid Transit and Public Transit Priority
Curitiba Brazil is famous for pioneering the development of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). In the 1970s the city decided to build a very efficient bus-based public transport network instead of a relatively short section of metro line (which would have cost the same amount of money). The results have been nothing short of fantastic.

Curitiba's BRT system has been replicated throughout the world, although not to the extent that it deserves. Many cities are seduced by the thought of rail-based public transport preferring the sexiness of rail over the benefits of creating a more comprehensive public transport network.

Rail-based public transport is critical in large cities where there is sufficient demand, but I think it's better to build an attractive and efficient public transport network - based on buses - and then replace buses with higher capacity rail lines when necessary rather then building 'starter rail lines' and hoping to attract riders. It's the network that enables people to get 'from everywhere to everywhere' thus addressing the oft heard complaint that "I can't get there with public transport."

For more information on Curitiba see: the great Streetfilms Curitiba video showing the system in operation and describing how it works; Professor Robert Cervero's excellent book The Transit Metropolis (which also describes many other interesting examples of public transport throughout the world); and the wikipedia article Rede Integrada de Transporte.

BRT can be defined as the systematic application of public transport priority techniques. Zurich is a great example of another approach towards systematically applying public transport priority techniques; rather than building any large project Zurich incrementally added improvements that speed-up bus and tram service over the last thirty years thus creating a fast and efficient surface public transport system. You can read more about Zurich in Professor Cervero's book and in some of my publications and on my website improving public transport efficiency.

The Bus from Curitiba - Words and Comments

I visited Curitiba to ride the buses in 1997. The city was extremely pleasant and enjoyable. In addition to the buses I remember a fantastic passion fruit smoothie. Here are the words:

Fast and fun and clean and quickly,
The bus from Curitiba comes cruising,
And when she comes the people all say ahh ...
When she moves she's like a Samba that
Rides so smooth and sways so gentle
That when she passes each one she passes says ahh ...
Oh I would ride her so gladly,
If transport planning wern't done so badly,
Yes, I would ride her so gladly,
But each bus that we put in a plan,
Just gets replaced by a tram,
Fast and fun and clean and quickly,
The bus from Curitiba comes crusing
And when she passes I smile
But we don't BRT
Not in our city,
No we just don't BRT.

OK, I am not being totally fair. Planning isn't always done badly, but as I outline above, I think too often we ignore the bus option (of course capital and operating funding programs also enter into the picture, but that's for another song). And, of course, trams make sense in larger cities with strong demand, but gladly and badly is a pretty good rhyme don't you think?

Builder Bob on Westbahnstrasse

2010-03-24T08:22:00.000+01:00

From my flickr Westbahnstrasse Tram Track Renewal set.

I just finished my series of website pages describing the Westbahnstrasse Tram Track Rehabilitation Project completed during the summer of 2009. The two new pages present aerial views of the work (from a neighbor who was also fascinated by the construction process) and photos of the workshop where the Wiener Linien prefabricate the track by cutting, bending and welding together sections of rail. The website pages include photos, descriptions and YouTube video links.

Now I can get started on this summer's Westbahnstrasse project: the Westbahnstrasse Chronicles! Stay tuned.

Scoul Switzerland Recommendations

2010-03-21T22:27:00.000+01:00

We returned to Scoul, one of our favorite places in Switzerland, for our ski holiday this year. The weather was great and the snow was fine. Scoul is about four hours from Zurich by railway. This post lists some of the reasons we love Scoul.

First, of course, is the Rhaetische Bahn; Scoul is the terminal station (shown in the photo above) at the southeastern end of the Engadine Valley (St Moritz is at the other end of the valley). The Rhaetische Bahn is a narrow gauge railway that serves the canton of Grabunden. It operates the famous Bernina Express and Glacier Express. This is a special year because the Bernina line is 100 years old. Anyway, the Rhaetische Bahn is exactly as you imagine a Swiss railroad: small red trains traveling through a magnificent landscape. If the weather had not been so good we would have taken a few joyrides over the Bernina Pass, but that will need to wait for this summer.

The skiing in Scoul is very good. Switzerland is spoiled for all the wonderful places to ski and Scoul, which would be on the top of the list in any other country, is not as popular as the more famous resorts. But, of course that has the positive side that it's a little less crowded and a little less expensive. The lifts are also a bit outdated (they have several Tee bars and old chairlifts in addition to the brand new gondola and a couple new chairlifts).

Another great reason to go to Scoul is the mineral bath. They have a relatively modern bath complex right in the middle of the town. My favorite part of the bath is the outdoor section with a view of the mountain peaks in the not so far distance (see the photo on their website). You can visit the bath for three hours (bring your own towel) or do something called the Roman-Irish bath, which is a two-and-a-half hour experience of going from sauna to massage to steam bath to different temperature mineral pools, followed by a half-hour rest. We've done both and they are highly recommended. You need to book the Roman-Irish bath in advance, see their website.

Scoul is a tourist destination and there are many places to eat and sleep. The old town down the hill from the main street, has wonderful historic architecture and traditional guest houses. The main street has several historic and modern hotels with all the comforts you would expect in Switzerland.

We have stayed at the Hotel Traube, an historic hotel, the Hotel Curuna, a very nice hotel with a very good breakfast, and Chasa Sofia, a four-room bed and breakfast that is out of this world. All three are located right in the center of Scoul, within five-minute walk of the bath.

Finally there's lots of great food in Scoul. We visited a wonderful cafe on our trip in February: Mund Art. It's a great place for cake and coffee or a drink anytime (try the local beer: Biera Engiadinaisa). The people are wonderfully nice and friendly, the owner gave us a tasting of his homemade chili pepper syrup.

We had a wonderful dinner at the Hotel Traube restaurant (they also have Biera Engiadinaisa). Their wine list is superb, they probably have 50 different wines from the Canton of Grabunden; we had an excellent Pinot Noir (Blauburgunder) from Annatina Pelizzatti. We all had variations of venison (Wild), either steak (shown in the photo upper left) or stew with spatzele, one of my favorite wintertime mountain village dishes.

Finally, no trip to Scoul would be complete for us without a visit to the Pizzaria Giovanni adjacent to the Hotel Curuna. They have a wood-fired oven, use local organic ingredients where possible and have a wide variety of dishes beyond pizza, but the pizza is great. Service was a little scattered on our visit but the food was fine.

We can't wait until our next visit to Scoul!

MIT Media Lab's Bill Mitchell Interviewed

2010-03-17T15:06:00.000+01:00

Here's a great video interview of Bill Mitchell, the Smart Cities Director at MIT's Media Lab. They are developing ideas like the cars in the photo above, rethinking the entire concept of cars from technology to the transport systems in which they operate.

I was especially interested in his description of the 'future of mobility' where he talks about the need for sophisticated management algorithms helping to make more efficient use of existing resources (11:15 into the interview). This is exactly the idea behind the Bus Meister concept for using Web 2.0 applications to help provide priority for public transport.

Psycho (Social) Networker

2010-03-16T08:13:00.000+01:00

My newest music video on the perils of on line social networking. Hope you like it.

Signs and Wayfinding from Slate

2010-03-10T10:23:00.003+01:00

From my flickr London photos set.

Julia Turner has a great series of articles on signs and wayfinding in Slate. The first article describes the importance of signs in general. The second article takes us on a tour through Penn Station in New York looking at how well (or badly) the signs work in helping us get from an entrance to the Amtrak trains. It reminds me of an experience I had in the Paris Metro Châtelet - Les Halles station in 2008.

The third article is on urban wayfinding, which Turner describes as completely different from wayfinding in transport stations or other controlled environments (e.g. Penn Station). She uses the example of Transport for London's Legible London project to describe the concept. This is a really excellent article filled with lots of good information.

The photo at the right is another solution: people at the Copenhagen Airport who help guide visitors (the other signs there are pretty good too).

The fourth article describes research on the hand-made maps made by normal people. The fifth article describes the 'war over exit signs' which includes a nice summary of the idea behind pictograms and their use on signs. The sixth article is forthcoming, but I am sure it will be good.

I have always been fascinated by signs. Here is a link to my flickr set signs and here is a link to my flickr set WC Signs ... I find wc signs to be especially interesting because they give businesses and people the ability to be creative about how they use graphics. As they say, "You can tell a lot about a place by their WC signs" ... well, at least that's what I always say.

Finally, my restaurant review of the Hallwylerhof restaurant in Zurich. They have a wonderful graphics and signage design used consistently throughout the restaurant, and the food is great too.

City Models and Miniatures

2010-03-09T15:59:00.000+01:00

Wien Museum model of Vienna in about 1900 from my flickr photos.

Here's a great post from the Web Urbanist on 22 miniature cities ... different physical and virtual models of cities (I learned about it from Planetizen). I especially loved the film by Sam O'Hara "The Sandpit" at the end of the article.
Here are some more examples of physical models for the list:

San Francisco - when I studied at the UC Berkeley City and Regional Planning Department Professor Bosselmann had a laboratory with a miniature San Francisco; it was used to model how new buildings fit into the visual environment;
San Francisco - there is an old model of the city that used to be in the Powell Street BART station ... but I have not seen it in a while.
Zürich - the planning department has a large model of Zürich today (German) cut into sections mounted on wheels so you can move the sections (they are on tracks) and then walk through a cross section to find yourself in the middle of any neighborhood;
Zürich - the Zurich city archives museum has a nice model of Zürich around the year 1800, the museum is a delightful place for history buffs and is located on a wonderful square in the old city (try the Neumarkt Restaurant across the street for a nice lunch or dinner).

Munich - the Munich city museum has a model of the city in 1570 and a nice brochure (available in English) about city development (Munich as Planned). The model (shown in photo) is a copy of another model that is in the Bavarian National Museum. The Munich city museum is well worth a visit (have lunch at the Vitualmarkt - one of the greatest urban spaces in the world! - in good weather, try Der Pschorr at night and if the weather is bad).

Vienna - the Wien Museum (the city history museum) has two models at about the same scale (one on the second floor and one on the third) showing the city in about 1800 and in about 1900 (overview shown above and detail shown at the right). The Wien Museum is well worth a visit, here's a link to my Wien Museum flickr photos set.

Add more in the comments!

Lund Sweden Recommendations

2010-03-07T16:11:00.003+01:00

The first in a series of blog postings on nice places I have stumbled upon on my travels.

I have been to Lund twice in the past two years reviewing an interesting transport research project. The first visit was in June 2008 when the city was in the midst of their university graduation celebrations. Great fun with lots of noise. The second visit was last week (early March 2010).

One of the cool things for a transportation planner about Lund is that from Vienna you get there via Copenhagen (Denmark) airport. There is a train station directly under the airport and trains leave every 20 minutes on the about 45 minute trip to Lund (trains will be even faster next year when the tunnel under Malmo opens). The train drops you off in the center of Lund.

I stayed at the Grand Hotel on both my trips. The first time I was sent their by the hotel I had a reservation with because they were full (normally I would not stay in a place called "Grand Hotel" but boy was I wrong!). It was great, not cheap, but a wonderful old hotel (high ceilings, nice rooms, not so hermetically sealed windows, a great open staircase with art nouveau stained glass - why take the elevator? - etc.).

The Grand Hotel has a very nice restaurant with a large selection of wines by the glass and the bar seems to be a favorite place for locals to gather. Breakfast is great, they even have fresh passion fruit! It's not cheap, but a great experience.

The old town in Lund is very nice to walk around. Lots of interesting buildings and crooked streets (many for pedestrians and bikes only). The cathedral is quite beautiful, don't forget to go downstairs to the crypt. There are nice parks to sit and relax: the weather was great in June, but I had less desire to sit outside in March.

On my first trip we had a very nice dinner at a restaurant called Stortorget, first we had a beer outside watching the graduation parade and activity on the square. Then we went indoors for a very nice dinner, somewhat French bistro style. I had venison and my colleagues had steak. We also shared a nice bottle of Italian wine.

On my second trip we had dinner in the Grand Hotel restaurant. I had an appetizer of smoked tuna with a cold bean salad, then the Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes (what can I say, I wanted comfort food!). I had a dessert that combined chile with passion fruit ... two of my favorite tastes.

The next night I went to dinner at Klostergatans Fisk, a combination fish market and restaurant. It was perfect. I was eating alone and the waitress remembered me from making a reservation. She showed me to probably the best table in the restaurant for someone eating along (in a warm corner, away from the door, with a view out of the window and the whole dining room). When was the last time you ate dinner alone and had such a nice table?

I started with an amuse bouche a small piece of smoked fish, fabulous. Then a superb Jerusalem artichoke soup with fish roe toast served with a great glass of French Chardonnay. My main course (photo above) was a steamed fish covered with fresh horseradish on a combination of boiled potatoes and beets served with an Alsatian Riesling (one of my favorite places and wines!). I ended the evening with a glass of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, a nice dessert.

I probably would never have gone to Lund if it had not been for the research project, but I would certainly go back to enjoy a peaceful day or two if I am ever in Southern Sweden or Denmark again. Here's a link to my google map of Lund Recommendations.

Games as a platform for city-scale collaboration

2010-03-07T10:35:00.002+01:00

Here is an extremely interesting slide show by Jane McGonigal from AvantGame about the role of computer games in helping solve urban and social problems.

The BusMeister game I am developing has a similar goal, but what McGonigal is doing is fantastic. The slideshow gives a nice background on the idea.

Also check out AventGame's new game EVOKE - it's really well done.

Games as a platform for city-scale collaboration

View more presentations from avantgame.

Books about maps

2010-03-06T09:07:00.000+01:00

Bus map from Scoul Switzerland from my flickr photos.

I just read a review in the NY Times (The World as Their Canvas by Stephen Heller) surveying several books about maps and graphic design. Great survey article, I want all the books!

Benefits of High Speed Rail

2010-02-28T17:27:00.000+01:00

I just read an interesting article on high speed rail that takes a more comprehensive look at the benefits of high speed rail ... it's not just travel time savings, but what these make possible for the economy. The article presents a very nice analysis by the University of Toronto's Martin Prosperity Institute. Here it is High Speeds, High Costs, Hidden Benefits: A Broader Perspective on High-Speed Rail.

Lakeside Conference on Transportation Data

2010-02-17T08:39:00.001+01:00

Zurich's on-board transport information system from my flickr photos.

I am helping organize the 3rd Lakeside Conference on Data and Mobility. The conference will explore ways of using data to improve mobility. The last conference focused on weather data but this year the scope will be broader. I am particularly interested in learning about new ways non-professionals can use data to collaborate on transport planning similar to the ideas in my 2010 US Transportation Research Board paper: Web 2.0 Applications for Improving Collaboration in Transport Planning.

We are looking for papers! Here's the call for papers - the deadline is somewhat flexible, send me an e-mail if you have a good idea for a paper but don't have time to do a full abstract by the February 26 deadline.

The conference will run from October 6-8 in Klagenfurt Austria. I am trying to organize a small meeting in Vienna on October 5 for people who come early to learn about some of the interesting things going on here. Contact me for more information.

Vienna Museum: Kampf um die Stadt

2010-02-16T15:15:00.000+01:00

The Wien Museum (Vienna city history museum) has a great exhibition on right now called "Kampf um die Stadt - Politik, Kunst und Alltag um 1930" which I would loosely translate as: "Battle for the city - politics, art and everyday life in 1930". The exhibition runs until March 28, 2010, and I recommend it highly.

The exhibition is about the years following World War I until about 1934. One of the main themes is the 'practical' socialism that was introduced in the city of Vienna during this period. After WW I the Social Democrats came to power in Vienna, a city of almost 2 million people. Vienna did not fit very well with the rest of Austria which was mostly agricultural and quite conservative. Vienna, in contrast, was a modern industrial city with a huge number of workers. There was great fear in Austria that Vienna's workers would lead a Communist revolution, but the Social Democrats focused instead on "practical improvements" that would lead in the long run to socialism.

The Social Democrats' practical improvements included a huge public housing program (the city still owns over 200,000 apartments and continues to build new public housing), kindergartens and health clinics, schools, and one of my favorites: a box of diapers, baby blankets and clothes which was given to new mothers (this was quite important because many people were poor). The exhibition has a great film of children in one of the public housing project's parks being taught how to brush their teeth.

One interesting fact is that Vienna was able to pay for these programs because it was made a separate Austrian state in the early 1920s. This gave the city a relatively large budget and the leaders chose to spend the money on social programs. A key problem in many US cities is the lack of funding created by inner cities being separated from the more prosperous suburbs that depend on the city; Vienna was (and still is) a very large city in terms of area and it includes many 'suburban' areas with high income. This helps explain how Vienna has been able to maintain and improve its impressive quality of life.

I have been on two tours organized by the museum in conjunction with the exhibition. On the first tour we visited several public housing projects (I hate using the word 'project' here because it brings to mind the idea of US public housing projects and the ones in Vienna are completely different) in the Margaretenguertel area of Vienna - the so-called Ringstrasse of the Proletariat. One of the public housing complexes is shown in the top photo.

On the second exhibition we visited some of the sites where there were actual battles between the Social Democrats and the conservative parties which controlled the national government. The first site we visited, Karl Marx Hof, is one of the public housing complexes built in the 1920s and is really an impressive site (see photo). The Austrian Army actually had to bring out the artillery to battle the residents.

My photos of both tours are available on my flickr site Wien Museum set.

Emergency Brake

2010-02-10T21:12:00.000+01:00

emergency brake from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

Here's a great video about the emergency brake in the NY City subway cars. It explains a lot about New York.

Transportation for Communities Collaboration Website

2010-02-06T10:31:00.000+01:00

Figure illustrating coordinated set of Web 2.0 tools for collaborative transport planning from my 2010 US Transportation Research Board paper: Web 2.0 Applications for Improving Public Participation in Transport Planning.

I just saw the website Transportation for Communities - Advancing Projects through Partnerships (TCAPP). The website "has been created to enhance collaboration in transportation decision making". My major research interest right now is improving collaboration in transportation planning so I was quite interested in seeing what the website had to offer.

In summary, it is a very good description of the transportation planning process (although specifically designed for highway projects many of the concepts are quite similar for public transport). The main purpose seems to be to help citizens better understand the transport planning process and it does a good job. It also includes a tool to help either stakeholders or practitioners "identify what is going wrong in a process". That's quite an interesting and helpful feature I think. Other interesting features are the decision guide and case studies.

The website does not provide Web 2.0 tools that actually enable citizens to collaborate in the transportation planning process as I have proposed, but is a very valuable addition to the "library" of information needed to help support an integrated set of applications (see illustration above).

Itay Talgam: Lead like the great conductors | Video on TED.com

2010-02-02T13:30:00.002+01:00

Itay Talgam: Lead like the great conductors | Video on TED.com

This is a wonderful video, not just because he shows several clips featuring Vienna musicians, but because it so clearly illustrates different management styles and the art helps you distinguish what works from what doesn't. I was saving this until I really had time to watch and enjoyed it immensely.

I read about the talk on Garr Reynolds' Presentation Zen blog.

What Is Living and What Is Dead In Social Democracy? Tony Judt

2010-01-27T11:15:00.000+01:00

Zurich's Hauptbahnhof - A great example of a main train station (from my flickr photos).

I just finished reading Tony Judt's fascinating article What Is Living and What Is Dead In Social Democracy? from the New York Review of Books (December 19, 2009).

The article is especially interesting to me because is uses transportation, particularly privatization of transport services, as an example to explain the need for considering social benefits rather than very strict adherence to market-based economic considerations. Judt's example of private shops in a public railway station is excellent.

I read about the article in the equally interesting opinion article The Public Works by Nancy Levinson in Places. The article outlines how some of Judt's ideas could be thought about by designers (architects, engineers, and planners).

No Pants Subway Ride 2010

2010-01-20T19:49:00.000+01:00

Improv Everywhere's film of their 2010 No Pants Subway Ride ... great fun.

ITS Berkeley California High Speed Rail System Seminar - Videos

2009-12-19T09:42:00.000+01:00

In October I blogged about the California High Speed Rail seminar organized by UC Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies. The seminar was videotaped and the tapes are available from the ITS News Bits website.

Dynamic Pricing

2009-12-11T12:19:00.000+01:00

What an interesting post by Seth Godin on dynamic pricing yesterday, here's the final line:

Technology puts a lot more pressure on your imagination and creativity, even in pricing.

Web 2.0 and California High Speed Rail Planning

2009-11-28T00:17:00.000+01:00

I have been working with Nadia Naik from Californians Advocating Responsible Rail Design on ways to use Web 2.0 techniques to improve the California high speed rail system planning and design by increasing the ability for citizens to collaborate in the planning process.

We just wrote a draft paper called: Peer-to-plan CSS 2.0: A Web 2.0 application to facilitate public collaboration in the project planning and design process. It builds on the work described in my Transportation Research Paper: Web 2.0 Applications for Improving Public Participation in Transport Planning - described in a previous post. As it is a rough concept, I would be interested in your comments and ideas.

Web 2.0 and California High Speed Rail Planning

2009-11-19T10:00:00.004+01:00

TGV at Zurich Hauptbahnhof - October 2009 - from my flickr photos.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I just finished revising my TRB paper on Web 2.0 applications for improving public participation in the transportation planning process (download here: web2transport). Yesterday I was talking to someone about some of the ideas in the paper and I remembered a story I wrote in 2005 as part of a proposal for completing the Regional Rail Plan for the San Francisco Bay Area.

The story was a speech given by one of the participants in the Regional Rail Plan planning process given 25-years after completion of the California High Speed rail system. I just re-read the story and I was surprised about how good it is and how relevant so many of the points it raises are today. So, here's the link to a pdf file. As they say, sit back, relax and enjoy the trip!

San Francisco Bay Area Regional Rail Plan - A vision (2005)

(By the way, although people I talked with on the inside said that this story was an important reason for selecting the consultant team, the consultants never asked me to help with the project and I'm not sure what ever happened to the plan itself.)

Web 2.0 applications to improve transport planning

2009-11-17T13:12:00.001+01:00

Sunny day in Stockholm from my flickr photos.

I just posted the latest version of my US Transportation Research Board paper: Web 2.0 Applications for Improving Public Participation in Transport Planning on my website. I would love to get comments on the paper, so add one below or e-mail me directly.

I will be making a presentation on the paper at SPUR in San Francisco on January 7, 2010 and at the TRB Annual Meeting in Washington on Monday January 11. See my website for more details.

Car Trap in Holland

2009-11-10T11:11:00.000+01:00

Daniel Sparing, a colleague from Hungary, just posted the photo above on his flickr site. It's a good picture of a public transport priority measure. He calls it a bus trap but says in the comment "or to be more precise, a car trap. Buses can pass through." He's got lots of great bicycling photos on his site too.

Ode to a Miele

2009-11-06T10:32:00.001+01:00

By Andy Nash (realname TM) "Vac-Master Nash"
Seriously? You want me to write a review for a vacuum cleaner? A vacuum cleaner. How is it that gmail doesn't catch these e-mails anyway? Oh well ...

It's a vacuum cleaner. I mean it's not like I bought it because I wanted to. Or because I really really liked it. What can I say? It was a gift. For my mother. In honor of all the vacuuming she did for me growing up. A thoughtful son, wouldn't you agree?

She sent me an e-mail saying she liked it. But, then, isn't that what all modern mothers do?

Photos? Now you want photos too? Well I do remember one with an old girlfriend. It was a hot steamy day and it was our first time doing serious ... cleaning ... what did you think I would put in a review? She began vacuuming TOPLESS! Thankfully Facebook wasn't around for sharing embarrassing photos then (what did we do without it?) so it's lost. But, wait, it was another brand of vacuum (funny the things you remember about relationships), so never mind!

What about design? Well if I wanted a cool design I would have bought a Dyson. By the way, aren't those Dyson Blade hand driers great? Most of those hand dryers in public restrooms are like Republicans, lots of hot air with no real use, but I digress.

The Miele does look cool. Perhaps I should draw a picture of it, making it look smaller and send it to the Transportation Security Administration. I could say that I saw someone trying to sneak one into an airplane restroom for who knows what evil purpose. Imagine being searched at airports for mini vacuums. Ignore this paragraph, in addition to shamelessly ripping off Graham Greene (Our man in Havana), it doesn't have anything to do with this review. (By the way, the book and film are great - oh no, now I'll need to write two more reviews.)

Is there a word requirement for a review?

Actually, I'll fess up. I actually have a Miele too. That's why I bought one for my mother. I can't say I like it, I mean who really likes vacuum cleaners? I hate using it, although I hate using it less than I hated using my old vacuum cleaner. As a vacuum cleaner it's pretty good.

I guess that's enough. Aren't you glad I didn't say the vacuum cleaner "sucks"?

Posted to Amazon on November 6, 2009 - I wonder how long it will last?

BART and Web 2.0

2009-11-04T16:12:00.001+01:00

Sorry, I couldn't resist this photo from my

1992 campaign for BART Board Director.

I've been working on my TRB paper about the use of Web 2.0 applications in transportation and recently checked the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) website, and I have to say BART has done quite a good job.

First, the BART website provides all the information you need to use the system (schedule, station information, fares, etc.), so the basics are covered, but what I was interested in was how they are using Web 2.0 features.

I had read about BART's open policy for providing schedule data to outside developers and, there it was under schedules: a link to a page called BART developer resources describing how outside developers could use BART data to create applications. BART also has a page listing some of the applications developed by 3rd parties using this information.

I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I learned about BART's work in this area in a report by Patrick Gendre and Didier Danflous from CETE Mediterranee called "User participation in Public Transportation and Multimodal Information". The report is only available in French right now but I am working on translating it (in all my spare time!). Their report focuses on important issues with data availability. They believe that all public agencies need to recognize that Web 2.0 applications from outside the organization are coming (like it or not) and recommend that public agencies embrace this change.

Back to BART ... their website also enables people to submit photos to BART for use on their webpage, facebook and twitter pages. The photos are selected by BART, so it's not totally consistent with Web 2.0 openness, but a nice effort. Also it's refreshing to find a public transport operator that encourages people to take photos (safely!) rather than one that considers everyone taking photos to be terrorists.

All in all I think BART has done a good job with their webpage and think other public transport operators could learn a great deal from it.

I am still working on my Web 2.0 in Transport paper, so if you have any ideas or other websites for me to check out, add them in the comments!

Why Dilbert is Doomed

2009-11-03T08:30:00.000+01:00

Zurich's Ingenieure Tram - encourages people to study engineering!

Here's an very interesting article from Salon by Michael Lind about jobs in the future called: Why Dilbert is Doomed. Health and education will be most in demand, and of course science/engineering will still be important.

Terra Madre Austria - Slow Food Vienna

2009-11-02T11:52:00.003+01:00

Meat from Sergio Falaschi butcher shop, San Miniato, Italy.
Last week I helped Slow Food Vienna (German) with the Terra Madre Austria conference in Vienna. Terra Madre is a program sponsored by Slow Food to highlight local foods and local growers/producers. There is an International Terra Madre every two years in Turin Italy, and local Slow Food chapters organize their own versions regularly.

Enrico Gaggini with his Sorana Beans from Pescia, Italy.

The main idea is to highlight traditional local foods that are in danger of being lost due to the homogenization of the food industry. Heirloom tomatoes are a good example. The big food companies want consistent, easy to pick, easy to ship long distances and 'durable' tomatoes, we want taste and diversity.
Terra Madre consisted of three parts: a market of variety, a series of classes on specific local foods and an international congress.

Giuseppe Bartolomei with his Podere del Tordo wine, Pistoia Tuscany, Italy.

This was the first Terra Madre in Austria and several local foods were highlighted in the market of variety including: Wiener Gemischter Satz wine, Wachauer Safran (safran grown in the Wachau area of Austria), Grubenkraut (a very old method for conserving cabbage - you bury it four meters deep in the ground for up to three years), several old varieties of pork, traditional mountain cheeses, a unique version of corn that you grind, cook into small cakes and then serve with apple sauce and several other tasty treats. The idea is that a food is designated as a 'Presidio' and then a group is formed to support its preservation and encourage others to adopt it.

I volunteered to help a group of Italian producers who participated in the Terra Madre as guests. (I know a little Italian, but my wife and niece are quite good, so actually I volunteered them ... although they were only there a little while, but I spent the whole two days at the show.) We helped Alberto Bellesi, from Poggione, an olive oil producer (the green oil in this photo is only five days old), Enrico Gaggini, a producer of Sorana Beans, Giuseppe Bartolomei, from the winery Podera del Tordo in Pistoia (Tuscany), Andrea Falaschi from the butcher shop Sergio Falaschi in San Miniato, and Gulio Malvezzi who makes olive oil in Tuscany, but was showing traditional Pistola Mountain Peccorino cheese.

As a volunteer I found myself being pressed into action when the Rathaus Keller kitchen staff realized that they did not have enough people to peel all the "ox heart carrots" (another traditional food) needed for all the delicious carrot soup. So, I helped with several other volunteers for a couple hours peeling carrots in one of Vienna's finest restaurants. A good story....

The conference was also very good. The Slow Foods International founder Carlo Petrini gave a great call to arms explaining why food diversity is good for the planet, society and the economy. I loved the point he made that 'politicians always arrive too late to solve problems, so the people need to take the initiative for improving the world" amen to that!

One final thought, the Terra Madre was partly sponsored by the city of Vienna. The conference was held at city hall, the market was held in the city hall hof, the school for taste was held in the city hall. The city provided financial and logistic support. This is really a great thing about Vienna, the city supports lots of these types of conferences and seminars. The photo in the left is Andrea Falaschi carving the last pieces of the wild boar prosciutto from the bone, leaving a wonderful taste in our mouths as Terra Madre Austria 2009 ends.
More photos of Terra Madre Austria on my Flickr site.

Happy Birthday IRT Subway

2009-10-27T11:14:00.000+01:00

Steam tram in Bern (Switzerland) from my flickr photos (the subway replaced elevated steam trains in NY ... sorry I could not find my photos from the fantastic NY Transit Museum).

The IRT subway in New York began service on October 27, 1904! Here's a link to the NY Times article Our Subway Open, 150,000 Try It.

Picking Gemischten Satz Grapes in Vienna

2009-10-26T17:17:00.002+01:00

On Saturday I finally did something I have always wanted to do: pick grapes for wine! It started with an e-mail from Slow Foods Vienna asking for volunteers to help winemaker Jutta Ambrositsch harvest her "Sommeregg" vineyard (one of several she has) for Gemischten Satzes wine.

Vienna produces the most wine of any city in the world; the main reason is that the city has a huge land area and over 50% is open space (forest, hills and agriculture). Many of the hills surrounding Vienna produce excellent wine. The city even owns a winery called Cobenzl. Cobenzl has a wonderful view overlooking the city, a restaurant and an adjoining mini farm for children.

A big plus for public transport fans in Vienna is that you can take the city bus to the vineyards! The 38-A bus (direction Kahlenberg) takes you from the U-Bahn (U4) terminal station Heiligenstadt to Cobenzl and on to Kahlenberg (another great view with a nice hotel and restaurant). On the way the bus goes through the Grinzing neighborhood where there are many Heurigen (local wine restaurants).

Anyway, back to the picking. Unfortunately Saturday was gray and cool - but at least it did not rain! - so I dressed warmly. After a brief description of what grapes to harvest (no moldy grapes, no dried out grapes, no grapes damaged by hail or wasps - when the skin of the grape is open it gives a chance for vinegar bacteria to get in - and, very important, no lady bugs - they make the wine stink) we were on our way up the hill with our collection bins.

There were about 30 people helping harvest about a half-hectare area of grapes. The volunteers consisted of friends of Jutta's and Slow Food members. It was a fun group with lots of talking during the work. I was lucky enough to work with someone studying agriculture and wine making, so I learned a lot and could always ask her if the particular grapes were OK or not before throwing them in the bin. Many hands make light work and we finished the field by about 3 pm (and even had time for a one-hour lunch break).

Lunch was cold salads, cheese, bread, ham and some of Jutta's 2007 Gemisches Satz (from the same vineyard we were picking) and a 2008 Riesling which was really excellent. When we were finished we had a piping hot goulash soup - nice since when standing around (as opposed to picking) you became quite cold quickly. A little more wine and then back to the bus stop in Grinzing for the trip home.

You may be asking yourself what is "Gemischten Satz"? Translated literally it means "mixed batch". It is typical to Vienna and is made from vinyards that have many different grape varieties planted together. In Jutta's half-hectare Sonnenegg vinyard there are about 20 different sorts of grapes including Grüner Veltliner, Weißburgunder, Neuburger, Riesling, Müller-Thurgau, Gelber traminer, Gewürztraminer, Zierfandler, Rotgipfler, Roter Veltliner, ... and several traditional Austrian grapes that are unique). The Sonnenegg vineyard was planted in 1955 but has probably been used for grapes for centuries.

Later this week we will attend the Slow Foods Terra Madre Austria congress at the Vienna City Hall. The congress highlights traditional foods from Austria and Gemischten Satz will be one of the foods that are officially recognized by Slow Foods at the event. We will go to a class on Gemischten Satz and learn lots more about it, so expect to hear more later. In the meantime, when you visit Vienna look for Gemischten Satz and give it a try - it's not for everyone, but fun to experience.

All photos from my flickr site, here's a link to all the photos from picking Gemischten Satz at Sonnenegg 2009.

Wiki Government by Beth Simone Noveck

2009-10-25T21:22:00.000+01:00

Mural in Buffalo NY City Hall, from my flickr photos.

I just finished reading Wiki Government by Beth Simone Noveck. It's a great book on a critical subject and has given me many good ideas that I will integrate into my Bus Meister (soon to have a new name!) project. (Here's an article she wrote for Democracy magazine that summarizes the main concepts: Wiki Government.)

Noveck is a law professor from NY University who teaches patent law. Wiki Government showcases the a Web 2.0 application she developed to improve the US patent process. She uses this "Peer to Patent" application as a case study in the book to help analyze and explain how Web 2.0 applications can be used to improve many aspects of government work. I especially liked how she structures the problems inherent in public participation and her suggestions for improvements.

Noveck believes that citizens should be able to really collaborate with government rather than simply interact via the "anemic conception of participatory government." She proceeds to explain the problems with current public participation processes (e.g. most only allow comment on well-defined regulations and plans, and worse, generally the only ones who have the expertise and time to comment are the impacted industry and their lobbyists).

Her problems with public participation ring true to me. As a veteran of transport planning processes - from both sides of the table - I recognize that it really does not work. We did try an innovative approach in preparing the Caltrain Downtown San Francisco Extension project planning study in 1996-97 (the link takes you to a page on my website, about half way down I describe the Caltrain project).

We called the effort the Caltrain DTX Decision Options Screening (pdf of Transportation Research Board paper) process; the idea was to provide citizens with information about several different planning choices and then ask them to vote on the best decision. I think that the process worked pretty well and the citizens who participated did a good job choosing between the various options ... and that was all done with paper (pre-Internet), a much better job could be done with today's internet technologies.

However, real collaboration means more than simply voting. As Noveck says, "The bureaucrat in Washington often lacks access to the right information or to the expertise necessary to make sense of a welter of available information. This can pose a challenge to good decisionmaking and to creativity in problem solving." Again this sounds right to me. I remember reviewing information we received on a planning study from citizens and thinking, wow, it would have been great to have this information early in the planning process, not now when many of the key decisions have already been made.

Noveck makes the point that while many new technologies are being integrated into the democratic process, most of the time "The focus is on deliberation, not collaboration; on talk instead of action; on information, not decisionmaking." The book describes this problem and suggests ways to use Web 2.0 applications to help citizens collaborate effectively with government, using this input to make decisions and take appropriate actions.

I have only scratched the surface of this excellent book, but will close by listing Noveck's lessons learned (her lessons in italics, my comments following) for improving government by making better use of new technology:

1 - Ask the right questions - government needs to ask (the right) questions, not simply provide plans, regulations, etc. for comment;
2 - Ask the right people - allow people to self select based on their expertise and interests;
3 - Design the process for the desired end;
4 - Design for groups not individuals - this means break work into small logical chunks;
5 - Use the screen to show the group back to itself - Noweck spends a lot of time in the book explaining how important it is to design a good user interface that allows the group to achieve a sense of itself;
6 - Divide the work into roles and tasks - as she says, Wikipedia works because people know what to do;
7 - Harness the power of reputation - this means using techniques like digg or rating systems to recognize team members and contribution quality;
8 - Make policies, not websites - understand the process and goals before developing the website;
9 - Pilot new ideas - try things out;
10 - Focus on outcomes, not inputs - the goal is not to have lots of comments, it's to have a good end result.

Finally, if you are interested in making government and planning work better, read this book! It is an excellent introduction to an important new subject. I will certainly be incorporating some of Noveck's ideas in Bus Meister.

The future of automobiles - A3PS Conference Vienna

2009-10-23T16:57:00.000+02:00

Concept cars at Volvo Museum in Goteborg Sweden - from my flickr photos.

Last week I attended a fascinating conference organized by the Austrian Agency for Alternative Propulsion Systems (A3PS). The A3PS is a quasi governmental agency that supports research in new propulsion systems. They are oriented to automobile propulsion since Austria is a net exporter of automotive products, especially drive trains.

The day consisted of five keynote presentations and then several parallel sessions where Austrian research groups presented results of their research in electric mobility, fuel cells and alternative fuels. A total of 19 different research projects were discussed. Most interesting for me were the keynote presentations by Karl Rose from Shell oil, Remi Bastin from Renault and Peter Froeschle from Daimler.

Karl Rose, who works on strategy development for Shell Oil, made several very interesting points. First, he criticized the "cycles of hype" in alternative energy, namely everyone goes crazy over one type of alternative energy (think hydrogen fuel cells several years ago and now electric cars) for a while then forgets about it and picks another form to hype.

Rose believes that there are three hard truths facing the energy market: (1) a surge in demand as world population and development continue (especially for electricity); (2) supplying this increase in demand will be difficult; (3) environmental concerns are becoming more critical. These truths create a complex situation for government policy and businesses. He sees two approaches: a Scramble World (where countries scramble to secure energy resources leading to a type of energy nationalism and reactive situation), or a Blueprint World (where countries work together to ensure energy supply and distribution).

An important point about the Blueprint world is that different countries and regions have different needs, and they should solve their energy problems differently. Much of the discussion of energy is in terms of averages, which masks these regional differences.

According to Rose, replacing oil will require a mosaic of solutions. The first part will be to make existing transport more efficient (think hybrid cars), over the next 10-15 years biofuels will begin playing a key role (it will take a while before enough biofuels can be refined and distributed), later electric cars (there are still major issues with batteries, to say nothing about electricity generation and distribution on a scale needed for a world of electric cars), and finally hydrogen fuel cell cars.

Rene Bastien described Renault's strategy for sustainable mobility for all. He made the very interesting observation that automobiles are beginning to be negatively perceived today in developing countries (due to increasing costs, congestion, parking problems, etc.) and are viewed as "a product that has not adopted to a changing world." On the other hand, cars are still highly desired in developing countries where they provide freedom (at least compared to other forms of transport).

Renault seems to agree with many of the points made by Karl Rose outlined above. They are also building electric cars for Better Place which will be a big test of an electric car based business model.

Peter Froeschle from Daimler also echoed many of the points made by Rose and Bastien. He discussed Daimler's portfolio of options (optimized engines, hybrid autos, emission free options, and future energy sources).

Froeschle emphasized the industrial stages of development: (1) technology demonstration (will the technology work?); (2) customer acceptance (will customers like the new product?); (3) cost reduction (multiple cycles!); (4) mass production.

Most alternative fuel vehicles are currently in stage 2, we know that they will work, but are unsure if customers will like them. (Will they be willing to put up with the work needed to charge electric cars? An interesting note, he said that electric Smart cars can go 180 km on a charge ... but without heat or air conditioning, will customers accept that?)

During the question and answer period there were several questions focused on what role government should play in helping make the transition to alternative energy. Most agreed that regulation would play a part. Klaus Bohnhoff from Germany's NOW (a public-private agency designed to encourage the development of alternative fuel vehicles) made the excellent point that there needs to be a more detailed discussion on how public support can be provided ... the public should probably set goals for the program, but not dictate specific types of energy, there is too much uncertainty right now.

All the participants agreed that infrastructure whether distribution systems for electricity, biofuels or hydrogen will be a huge issue in the future of alternative fuels.

In summary, it was an excellent and thought-provoking conference.

The Astounding World of the Future

2009-10-22T10:39:00.001+02:00

This is one of the funniest videos I have seen in a long time (aside from my own of course!). A look at today - especially with respect to transport and land use - from the perspective of yesterday. Thanks to Planning Commission Journal.

Grocery Store Musical

2009-10-21T10:54:00.000+02:00

Just returned from Zurich and found this in my mailbox ... as I have written before, ImprovEverywhere makes me want to move to New York!

Vienna Photos Mapped

2009-10-15T15:13:00.000+02:00

Here are some of my Vienna flickr photos on a Google Map.

Boston Aerial 5oct09-05

2009-10-14T12:46:00.001+02:00

Boston Aerial 5oct09-05, originally uploaded by andynash.

Here's another Boston aerial photo. I am working on my settings, let's see if this one fits in the Blogger format.