Web Conference 2022.09.06 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

Implementing CDS

  1. Welcome (5 mins) - Marisa Mangan, SANDAG
  2. San Jose CDS Presentation (10 mins) - Elias Khoury, City of San Jose
  3. Automotus and Pittsburgh CDS Policy Presentation (10 mins) - Harris Lummis, Automotus
  4. Omaha CDS Workflow Presentation (20 mins) - Jacob Larson, City of Omaha, Parking and Mobility
  5. Discussion and Your Implementation (15 mins) - Community

Organizers

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

Recap

Notes

Action Items

  1. ...

Minutes

Introduction (Marisa Mangan, SANDAG)

  • Marisa kicked things off with an overview of CDS and summarized its goals and objectives.
  • Links to various CDS resources were provided, and attendees were given an update of upcoming meetings and topics.

Three OMF panels at NACTO (Michael Schnuerle, OMF)

  • The OMF will be at NACTO, and will participate in 3 panels
  • One session is about designing digital infrastructure
  • Another is about New Curb Management - most closely related to CDS
  • Finally, Andrew, the OMF Executive Director, is doing a presentation related to Procurement, which could be more related to CDS than people might initially think.
  • The OMF will also be involved with workshops
  • If you're there, come say hi, come to our sessions, and give us feedback!

Status and Challenges of Curb Data in San Jose (Elias Khoury, City of San Jose)

Status

  • Started collecting curb data a while back related to parking enforcement and compliance
  • They are using ESRI to map their curb data, and have collected data in this format.
  • The density of data they have collected varies by area
  • They have collected data on timed parking, metered parking, time-restricted parking, and residential parking.
  • This information helps them deploy their parking compliance and enforcement staff.
  • They also have data on timed, unmetered parking (with in person enforcement).
  • Downtown, they have collected data on freight loading zones, passenger loading zones, ADA, and red curbs.
  • Part of the challenge: they could collect this data and plot it on a map but didn't have any underlying data set to connect it to.
  • They're planning on taking this data they have collected and using it to implement CDS.

Challenges

  • Limited resources.
    • Elias manages the curb but has no technical support team.
  • They are dependent on other groups within the organization to make progress on CDS
    • The shared DOT IT team helps some but also has limited resources. The IT department supports all departments within the city.
    • The only way to really move forward with CDS is to hire a vendor.
  • Also, the current data is not uniform or standardized. It was collected at a time before a standard existed.
  • The inventory is also incomplete but it can be completed with time.

Next Steps

  • Complete the inventory, focus on specific curb types. They have the least amount of data on non-FLZ, non-PLZ curb areas so they will focus there.
  • They need to standardize the data they have already collected, using CDS.
  • They need to implement the CDS APIs, even before the data is complete.
  • Finally, they need to be able to maintain the data. They are also introducing lots of bike lanes, which change the curb activities. Need a platform to maintain the system with these changes going forward.

Pittsburgh Smart Loading Zones Project (Harris Lummis, Automotus)

Project overview

  • 20 smart loading zones around Pittsburgh. Started with pure analytics then moved to automated billing and enforcement.
  • The city's goals: increasing turnover, reducing double parking, enabling additional commercial loading zones to be allocated.

Policy development: graduated rates

  • Developed a graduated rate policy with the city.
  • Started by understanding existing meter rates (min and max charges), then work with the city on an ordinance change to enable graduated rates, and finally establish a new graduated rate structure with the city.
  • Establish a few new KPIs to monitor success; establish mechanisms to get feedback from public.
  • 60 min max stay. Increase the rate in time buckets up to the 60 minute limit.
  • The goal of the graduated rate structure was to incentivize efficient turnover.

Making the policy CDS compliant

  • It worked well because CDS is flexible, even though this is a complex policy.
  • The policy could be expressed with a single rule.
  • The policy was an array of rates, each of which applies to a different interval of the parking session. Only one TimeSpan was needed.

Future Work

  • Expanding to 100+ zones to increase adoption and usability.
  • New policies to make zone availability more dynamic
  • Offer preferential pricing to electric vehicles.

Questions

What about incentivizing smaller more efficient vehicles? (Marisa Mangan, SANDAG)
  • They're starting simple by just incentivizing electric vehicles. More granular policies like that could come later.
Was this work just on instrumenting and regulating commercial loading zones? Or on standardizing / collecting other types of zone inventory as well? (Elias Khoury, San Jose)
  • Inventorying existing assets was outside the scope of the project. They did inventory the new assets (sensors and loading zones) with CDS.
Does the program include a reservation system? (Tom Carranza, LADOT)
  • No. There are limited enforcement personnel and reservations break without 24/7 enforcement.
How to identify electric vehicles? Registration or computer vision? (Mary Gray Cunningham, Passport)
  • The project is focused on billing registered parties. Make and model, and propulsion type are collected during registration.
  • For users that use the space without registering, they use their computer vision systems to identify that information.

Omaha's CDS workflow (Jacob Larson, Omaha)

Background

  • Omaha started mapping their curb with lines in 2019.
  • They started branching out from that later using CDS.
  • They're still using ESRI, working with a hosted feature layer.

CDS Translation Workflow

  • They use FME for this workflow, and a lot of other automated processes in the city.
  • FME integrates their systems with ESRI, through CDS.
  • The geometry is tricky. ESRI hosted feature layers use web mercator referencing automatically. Jacob had to play with that to get that into GPS (SRID 4326 - GPS). After that he just did a time conversion and then mapped it into their hosted postgis database.
  • They will host their CDS endpoint on www.parkomaha.com soon (e.g., parkomaha.com/curbs/zones/, etc.).

Current Status

  • Finished loading all known activities (parking, loading, unloading, stopping).
  • Starting with flex zones (loading and unloading in the morning, parking in the afternoon, rideshare in the evening).
  • Jacob has been creating the rates and timespans. They'll create those policies and put them into the database next.
  • They also have an escalating rate schedule, similar to what Automotus did in Pittsburgh.
  • It looks like a lot of work, but it's just loading data that takes the most time.

Questions

How are you getting this done? Which departments? Who is doing the actual work? (Michael Schnuerle, OMF)
  • Jacob created the databases with Dotcom (the city's technical contractor). Jacob works with their contact over there to create the databases in AWS. They enabled Jacob's local desktop computer to connect to that database. Jacob published the workflows into an online server and that will allow the data to flow through.
  • The parties working on it are just Dotcom and Jacob's parking and mobility team so far.
How will you publish this when you get it all into your DB? (Michael Schnuerle, OMF)
  • They will work with Dotcom to host this once the data is all loaded.
  • The web developers will build the APIs once the data is there.
  • The APIs will be open to the general public.

Summary

To summarize the workflow:

  1. Start with ESRI definitions.
  2. Tranform those into CDS with FME.
  3. Once it's transformed, it goes to an AWS postgis database. FME has postgis readers and writers built into their system.

ParkOmaha.com has been live since 2013. It has hosted other smaller things (e.g., sandbox projects) during that time. Dotcom is confident this platform should work to host CDS though. It will be easy to use and open to anyone.

Open discussion - updates from other cities

Tom Carranza (LADOT)

Existing efforts on digitizing the curb:

  • Definitely have experienced some of the same challenges as Elias has in San Jose.
  • They presented LADOT's code-the-curb (> 1M signs, 34k parking meters) program before. When complete, that digital inventory will allow for city-wide dynamic pricing and regulations. That's the dream.
  • They advanced several pilots in 2021, but that was all pre-CDS.
  • As part of the digitizing-the-curb effort (led by IBI, with CurbIQ), 85 miles of LA county curb were digitized with the CurbLR data spec. IBI is working on translating this platform to CDS.
  • SCAG provided LADOT with a grant from their Smart Cities Mobility Innovation Program for a curb data collection and inventory study - just kicked off with IBI last month.
  • They want to use this grant to advance the work already begun on digitizing the curb, but use CDS this time.
  • Also working with Automotus on a smart loading zone pilot, albeit on a much smaller scale than their Pittsburgh work.
  • Looking at integrating CDS with an ALPR component.

Challenges:

  • Lack of internal resources and technical depth of staff.
  • Have been under resourced for 2+ years. Had a hiring freeze during the pandemic.
  • Freeze is lifted now - want to fill some parking management vacancies.
  • Need more technical staff who understand CDS - how to consume, transform, publish. Need someone like Jacob Larson!
  • They are looking at hiring a new Chief Technology Officer, a database architect, and a program analyst. This new team will lead code-the-curb and digital infrastructure.

Closing thoughts from the OMF (Michael Schnuerle)

  • We need more real world experience before we can start thinking about the next CDS release.
  • This is very helpful feedback to think about how CDS could be improved in the next release.
  • Looking for momentum and feedback from people as they use CDS.