Web Conference 2022.12.13 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

Announcements

  • USDOT WZDx 4.2 approved with CDS referenced
  • WG meeting Dec 27 cancelled, back on Jan 10 for a look deeper into to next CDS release
  • Call for nominations for new Curb WGSC members soon, open to any OMF member organization

2023 Next CDS Release w/ Vianova and Bellevue, WA

  1. Welcome - Jacob Larson, City of Omaha, Parking and Mobility
  2. 10 min presentation: Vianova, Thibault Castagne, Founder/CEO
    • leveraging telematics data to provide Paris with curbside usage analytics and city freight traffic flows
  3. 10 min presentation: Bellevue Washington, Chris Iverson.
    • Bellevue’s Curb Management Plan: In recent years, Bellevue WA has been on the leading edge to test curb pilots and technologies, but the city does not have a legacy curb management or parking program. Bellevue is now developing a Curb Management Plan, which is setting a broad policy and planning framework for curb space in the city’s rapidly growing areas.
  4. 2023 CDS Release - What would the next release be? What do you need?
    • MDS connections, like WZDx, car share support, on street bike/scooter docks, trip start/end point overlap
    • Include other curb area adjacent elements that facilitate or impede curb transactions: trees, utility box, bench, ramp, art, bike rack, planter, meter pay stations, signal cabinets, scooter parking.
    • EV Charging in spec - possible now in a limited, but more details, like properties, status Active/Charging/Inactive, reliability, uptime, involve utility companies and fleets/TNCs/private user groups
    • Open Issues to Review. Open your own.

Organizers

  • Hosts: Jacob Larson, City of Omaha, Parking and Mobility
  • Note Taker: John Good, Ford Next LLC
  • Facilitator: Jacob Larson, City of Omaha, Parking and Mobility
  • Outreach: Michael Schnuerle, OMF

Recap

Notes

Introduction

Michael introduced the objectives of the Curb Working Group group again, and thanked the service of the Steering Committee over the course of 2022.

Presentation from Vianova on "Paris Curbside Analytics", by Thibault Castagne

Commercial Vehicles in Paris: The Big Data Approach

Project objectives:

  • Shared mobility, taxis, and/or logistics
  • Vianova won a large tender with the City of Paris to better understand the urban freight flows and the use of curbside, also to prepare for the Olympic Games in a few years.

Context and Rationale

  • After COVID, many more parcel deliveries, creating more competition for the same constrained space
  • More transition to car-free/emissions-free zones in the central city No data available

Limitations

  • Hard to scale a camera-based solution to many city streets, because it is expensive
  • No legal authority to compel data sharing from operators; in many cities, there are few legal requirements
  • Although many cities are setting up new certifications for logistics and freight vehicles, certainly not a form of data sharing

Key Questions

  • Can we begin to understand how commercial vehicles interact with the city?
  • Can we understand the effectiveness of the existing loading zones? Do they match the changing demand flows?
  • Can we prioritize the areas we need to investigate?
  • Can these insights guide infra/policy changes in the future?
  • Note: Paris decided that 50% of current on-street parking will be transformed into new uses, like loading zones, micromobility, etc.

Available Data & Methodology

  • Public Sources: Delivery zones (not currently in CDS), including locations/sides of street and time slot restrictions; 50m road segments
  • Private Sources: Commercial vehicle stops, including geolocation, timestamp, duration of "standstill events" (between 30s and 2hrs), and vehicle types
  • Private Sources: approximately 1 million observations per month
  • Aim was to generate CDS-compliant information
  • A bunch of challenges to get data from logistics companies/operators
  • We had to go to the 3rd party telematics companies
  • Vianova’s geospatial data then gets organized into streams
  • Data snapped to the closest 50m street segment

Key Findings

  • With 3 months of data, Vianova started to identify patterns.
  • Where are hot spots and nodes of heavy congestion? We saw them starting to emerge, including public markets, commercial centers, etc.
  • Parcel delivery a big driver of congestion, especially B2C stops
  • Delivery zones: Vianova identified every 50m street segment as either having or not having delivery zones to answer which were most used
  • Key finding on delivery zones: Little difference between segments with loading zones and those without, Loading zones are not more used than any other location on the street; Operators told them that they don’t use loading zones, they don’t match with their needs
  • Urban IKEA location often a key point of congestion as customers loaded vehicles

Communication to City of Paris

  • Most congested areas time of day/week – provided this information to the city
  • The most used corridors, based on the aggregation of telematics data that you collect
  • Vianova correlated with congestion data from Tom Tom and Waze
  • GPS precision, in collaboration with our data providers

Comments and Questions

  • Observation from Michael (OMF): it seems like what you are doing with a citywide view, with onboard telematics, that is suited for the MDS 2.0 release -- That is not an area that we are specifically including in MDS, as we are focusing on delivery robots, not delivery vehicles -- The definition of the dynamic load zones would be defined in CDS -- Identifying more overlap between MDS and CDS

  • Response from Vianova: if MDS were available, we would definitely use it; if all providers transmitted data, that could be helpful -- The telematics data quality was pretty good, latency was very good, almost real-time data (5-10 mins lag) -- I cannot say the same thing about the logistics providers themselves, who are often small subcontractors, and building the API is not their priority

  • Q (Stephen Hanrahan): How did you map the events as bands or segments rather than circles or nodes?

  • A: We defined clear segments of street/curb, and then we developed a very good street snapping algorithm. It allowed us to aggregate the data.

  • Q (SH): How did you obtain the data?

  • A: We worked with OEMs and telematics providers. A few large providers that own the European and American markets. Companies that add the OBD device for information for fleets

  • Vianova: no physical hardware required, no public or legal requirements to make sure the data is being shared; specific data agreements between telematics providers and Vianova

Presentation from City of Bellevue (WA) on Curb Management Plan

Bellevue Curb Management Plan, by Chris Iverson, City of Bellevue (WA)

Overview and Context

  • A more holistic view of dense curbs in the city
  • A lot of curb pressures in the city, but no legacy way of tracking these curb behaviors
  • Many pressures, including fast commercial/residential growth and the upcoming SoundTransit East Line LRT

Rationale and Strategy: What is curb management?

  • It is important to highlight the concept of curb management to a wider audience
  • Speaking out from our technical context, a pretty technical and wonky term
  • We have learned this from our public outreach – need a good communication plan

Purpose and Objectives

  • Bellevue: a very holistic and comprehensive view of curb management
  • The Curb Management Plan will "establish new policies and guidance on how curb areas should be designed, maintained, and operated over time." -- Vision and policy framework -- Prioritization framework for curb use -- Dedicated curb program by analyzing options for various uses -- Curbside guide with tools needed -- Organizational and staffing framework to implement
  • A vision and values-focused framework
  • We have updated our comprehensive plan, and the approach for how we allocate space
  • Prioritization framework, a dedicated curb program as a possibility?
  • Creating the foundational building blocks, including a curbside guide, to act as a one-stop shop

Why now?

  • Rapid growth in Bellevue's urban core affects curb designs/uses
  • Increase in new mobility, e-commerce, growing multimodal needs
  • Responses to COVID-19 pandemic have inspired innovative curbside strategies
  • We will be more connected with more transportation options
  • You didn’t really have this built environment up until the last 30 years, since the 1980s
  • With this rapid growth, there are major issues that this has caused

Current Conditions

  • We don’t even have a legacy on-street parking program when we began discussions with City Council
  • No paid on-street parking, and light enforcement
  • We also don’t have a great approach for approaching curb designs through development review
  • We have generally been taking an ad hoc one-and-done approach
  • How to make pilot programs more programmatic?

Focus Area

  • Curb management to focus first on Bellevue's growth corridor in the northwest of the city
  • Including Downtown + LRT corridor neighborhoods

Public Engagement

  • Stakeholder interviews & focus groups
  • March 2022: Curb Summit to highlight best practices
  • Engaging Bellevue Questionnaire
  • Objective to get the general public aware of these issues
  • Curb stakeholders: what is their perception of the curb?

Recent Developments: Comprehensive Plan & Policy Changes

  • Recently amended Comp Plan to repeal some existing policies, modify others, and adopt 8 new policies
  • City Council just approved (last night!) the concept of paid on-street parking + parklets + EV chargers + food trucks

Key Principles and Concepts

  • "Curbonomics" - focusing attention on the essential reality of supply and demand - this resource only changes slowly over time, but demand can change much more quickly
  • Identifying different Curb Typologies, a prioritization/zoning framework, reflecting citywide transportation plans, and incorporating urban design/character, existing/future land use, access management, flexibility, etc.
  • Curb Typology Framework identifies four curb types, based on use priority: Movement, Access, Place, and Storage (MAPS)
  • Given the size of the focus area, we can look at every single block in our study area and determine what the vision is

Curb Pricing: What can it do?

  • Pricing places a monetary value on mobility-focused curb uses, such as on-street parking, passenger pick-up, and shuttles
  • It directly reflects the full economic value that this space provides, streamlines enforcement practices, and generates revenue to grow mgt program and reinvest in the community

Curb Pricing: Discussing potential principles

  • A candid conversation about the tools that we need
  • Pricing can be set to achieve target occupancy goals, ensure optimized mobility
  • Pricing should be easily communicated to and understood by the public, with simple/transparent permits
  • Pricing should ensure equitable outcomes and achieve city goals and policies
  • Performance-based enforcement to help communicate the value of the curb

Implementing the Curb Management Plan

  • Work has been ongoing since March 2022
  • Draft plan is currently available
  • Aim to approve CMP by end-Feb 2023

Updates on CDS 2.0 and Curb WG Next Steps

Discussion guided by Michael Schnuerle (OMF)

How to get to CDS 2.0

  • What will be included in the next release?
  • It’s up to us all in the public Working Group
  • If we are going to break something (i.e. change a field name, etc.) then we will need a major 2.0 release (otherwise a minor 1.x release would be ok)

Suggestion: connections to MDS

  • Connections to other specs, including USDOT WZDx
  • Car share support via MDS 2.0
  • Inclusion of on-street bike/scooter docks
  • Address overlap issue of trip start/end point

Suggestion: Curb Adjacent Elements

  • Include definitions for other curb area adjacent elements, especially those that facilitate or impede curb transactions
  • Which items should be included?
  • Potential elements: trees, utility boxes, benches, planter, meter pay station, signal cabinets, etc.

Suggestion: EV Charging

  • It is incorporated in a limited way in the current CDS about
  • More properties about the charging devices
  • Involving utility companies and fleets/TNCs/private user groups
  • Investigate existing ideas: HERE Charge Points, Plugshare
  • Input from companies/utilities/etc. for larger spec development
  • Possible create an OMF Task Force

Other Suggestions for CDS 2.0

  • Michael: Otherwise, leave your ideas in the discussion area in the Github
  • (No one had anything in the chat)

Farewell/Conclusion

  • We welcome your input and involvement
  • Michael: see you all next time in the new year