Web Conference 2022.03.22 Curb - openmobilityfoundation/curb-data-specification GitHub Wiki

Web Conference - Curb Working Group

Every other week Tuesday call at 9am PT, 12pm ET, 5/6pm CET

Conference Call Info

Meeting ID: 898 5980 7668 - Passcode 320307
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0lcuCgrjwsHNyZRagmc86b12iCmWGBHfjq

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Agenda

Main Topics

Welcome (5 mins) - Marisa Mangan, SANDAG
Who is using CDS? and call for more orgs (5 mins) - Michael Schnuerle, OMF
Curb and CDS Presentation 1 (20 mins) - Populus and Curb Innovation Cohort
Curb and CDS Presentation 2 (20 mins) - Automotus and Pittsburgh DOMI
Q&A (10 mins)

Organizers

Hosts: Marisa Mangan, SANDAG
Note Taker: Eric Mai, Lacuna
Facilitator: Michael Schnuerle, OMF
Outreach: Angela Giacchetti, OMF

Recap

41 Attendees
Meeting Recording - Password Au^uN^.7
OMF Slide Presentation
- Populus Presentation
- Automotus/Pittsburgh DOMI Presentation

Notes

Action Items

None

Minutes

CDS overview reminder (Marisa Mangan)

CDS is being built in the open.
On January 25th we released the first candidate of CDS on Github.
1.0 of the spec is approved by the tech council. The OMF board will give their final review of the spec later this afternoon.
Work has progressed on privacy guidance.
We have several helpful resources on policy, privacy, and pilot programs.

Who is using CDS (Michael Schnuerle)

We have 22 organizations (cities, software companies, hardware companies) that are actively developing on CDS or plan to in the near term.
Contact us if you want to be added to this list. We want to keep it up to date.
Sensor providers and delivery providers can register as providers with CDS.

Populous Curb Innovation Cohort (Eliot Mueting)

Populous overview
- Populous is transitioning from mobility management to curb management and see lots of parallels between the two.
- Populous is a mobility management data platform used by may cities.
- Populous works with data in two directions:
  - They process data (MDS, GBFS, etc.) from fleet operators and display it to cities.
  - They also communicate regulations from cities to providers
- They have a mobility manager product with a live map, data validation, reporting, and many other features.
Populous curb manager
- Background and approach
  - They see micromobility as a testing ground of sorts for their curb product. There are many parallels between micromobility management and curb management.
  - Curb innovation cohort: From May through December 2021, they met with 10 cities in a curb management pilot project
  - They also talked to as many commercial fleet providers as they could.
  - This will continue in a Phase 2 over the next 6 months.
  - Their goal is to come up with an action plan for their customers on how to solve their curb pain points.
  - The challenge: the curb is crowded, demand is high, and access is difficult
  - Their objectives: bring cities together to share ideas on how to rapidly iterate to improve the curb using data.
- Goals
  - Operators are eager for cities to digitize their curb policies.
  - Some curb operators are primarily interested in commercial loading use cases.
  - Others are most interested in understanding how their curbs are current used.
  - Others are most interested in dynamic digital curb management to improve access.
  - Others are most interested in improving their management of specific business districts.
- Curb Management Product
  - There are three primary features in their curb product:
    - Commercial Loading Trend (CLT) data, based on a 10% sample of commercial fleet activity. Helps cities measure existing curb activity.
      - Establishes a historical baseline for decision making.
      - Cities used this tool during the pandemic to quickly set up priority food delivery loading zones, and measure their effects.
    - Inventory management: digitize and manage curb zones and regulations.
      - Lots of cities have their assets partially digitized.
      - One learning is that fully digitizing their assets is daunting. But in just 2 staff days, curb operators can digitize an important subset of curb assets (e.g., downtown) and start to see value there.
    - Automated loading zone payments
      - Cities can generate invoices based on parking events according to digital policy
- Questions
  - Question: How can you keep physical signange up to date with digital policy? How can we make digital policy not overwhelming?
    - There are two schools of thought:
      - We could have high tech digital signs. However, that may be unrealistic.
      - Cities could have a schedule of their regulations which is referenced by a sign but not replicated in full. The signage could use language like "priority access for certain uses".
      - Physical signage won't go away but may become more "reference based".
  - Question: How hard is it to convert arbitrary digital curb data to CDS?
    - There is a lot of variance but the most difficult piece is defining the curb geographies.
    - Coding in curb policies has not been difficult so far since they are already limited by the physical size of the sign. Once the policies are defined, it is a one time effort to translate them into CDS.
    - One staffer can code in all the curbs in downtown Oakland in about 8 hours.

Pittsburgh Smart Loading Zones Pilot (Anil Merchant, Automotus and Caroline Seifert, Pittsburgh)

Project outcomes
- Massive increase in e-commerce at the start of the pandemic. Huge demand for curb loading activities.
- They want to align parking and loading activities with realtime data.
- They have implemented some short term loading zones for delivery activities.
- They wanted to decrease parking caused traffic by 20% and double parking by 60%.
- Ensure curb space is being used equitably and efficiently. Increase turnover.
- Increase safety
- Generate parking revenue.
The zones and tooling
- There are 20 loading zones instrumented with cameras and signage.
- 15 are installed so far.
- The zones automate payments and data collection.
- They hope to scale to 150 smart loading zones by the end of the year.
- Most are near downtown and a specific nearby commercial area (Southside Flats)
- They have a dashboard that shows turnover, dwell time, and revenue
Automated payments
- Automotus is helping Pittsburgh price the curb.
- They're using a progressive rate structure that changes more as dwell time increases.
- They are onboarding commercial vehicles at the fleet level to ensure high usage.
- Drivers like being charged per minute spent at the curb, rather than paying for time they end up not using.
- No app is required for each parking session. Just a one time onboarding of license plate and payment source. This reduces friction.
What's next?
- DoE awarded a 3-year grant to Automotus to continue this work specifically to increase safety and incentivize EV adoption.
- Representing all events as CDS Event objects; using CDS enums for event types
Questions
- How are operators onboarded?
  - One-off agreements.
- Are curb events processed by their computer vision rather than CDS events?
  - Yes, because fleets are hesitant to jump into sending CDS data.
  - This lets them ease in, providing some data (license plates) while waiting on more detailed data.
- How did the local businesses receive the introduction of paid parking in loading zones.
  - The reaction has been great, they're excited about better efficiency and turnover.
  - Some businesses were hesitant and they didn't receive loading zones.
- What about legislation for parking payments?
  - No additional legislation was required for smart loading zones.
- Was bill by mail already in place? Or did it require additional legislation?
  - It will likely require some state code to be changed. It's complicated.

Closing thoughts (Michael Schnuerle and Marisa Mangan)

The OMF Board will vote to approve CDS 1.0 this afternoon
- There is one conversation to have about whether Metrics API should be private or public.
- We will give an update following the meeting.
Reach out if you want to be added as a CDS user or have any other questions or thoughts