PlaNYC Team Releases Transportation Technical Report

The PlaNYC team has released the technical report providing the detailed background data for the transportation recommendations made in Mayor Michael Bloomberg's April 22 Long-Term Planning & Sustainability speech. It's a big download -- 25 megabytes and 166 pages -- but if you are a New York City transportation policy wonk, it's totally worth it.

The report provides a comprehensive rundown, in one place, of all of the various transportation initiatives that are currently planned, underway or being discussed for New York City. Those who have been following the work of independent consultant Bruce Schaller will recognize some of this material. (Speaking of which: Is Bruce Schaller the Bill James of New York City transportation policy, or what? When is city government going to offer the guy a job?)

The report contains some really interesting maps and charts, like the one above, graphically depicting where Manhattan-bound car commuters come from. The map is broken down by census tract. Height represents the total number of single-passenger drivers and color represents the percentage of commuters who chose to drive alone to workplaces below 96th Street. A darker color means a higher percentage of single-passenger drivers and a lighter color means more people used transit, walked, carpooled or used a ferry or bike. It turns out that only 4.6% of New York City residents drive to work in the Manhattan core in single-passenger motor vehicle.

Here's another great factoid from the report: If New Yorkers owned cars at the same rate as the rest of the nation, it would take 11,000 acres, or all of Manhattan below 136^th Street, just to park them end to end.

Meetings and Networking

I was recently participating in meetings based in NY. Below are some of these meetings:

NY Tech Meetup - Organized by Scott Heiferman CEO/Co-Founder of meetup.com. Last week 5 startups presented there work: What payed most to my attention were: Hitchsters, and HouseParty.

New York Dot Com Hatchery - Organized by YAO-HUI HUANG, CEO of Gigapixelcreative. The HATCHERY is the next level to an incubator. Looking for ideas and businesses to Hatch, making them grow and succeed. And they have the team to guide the process along. It's an opportunity to present and hear a feedback from experts. Some ideas were in the startups, some were just on paper. This was one of the best meetups with a selected panel of experts.

Web2paradigms at Cooper Union/ Students at the Cooper Union for the advancement of Science and Art, NY presented there projects from the class instructed by Sanford Dickert.
Below is the list of the students team products, and a short description of them. :
Course Advisora web interface for the Engineering School course catalogue providing students with the ability to register for classes, remark and print out their schedule for submission to the Registrar.
GeoCart a shopping assistance site to help urban dwellers optimize purchasing products on major auction sites with regard to price and physical location.
SudoView a video interviewing service, allowing recruiters to send out and receive video submissions from candidates - all from their home computers.
ForkOut helping online video producers generate exposure by providing a one-stop site for distribution of videos to major video sites.
Red Hen a community-based chemical spectral service providing incentives for action to drive user submissions and involvement.
To read more about the event and the program go to web2paradigms/

And to subscribe to the Meetups go to www.meetup.com

Hope to see you there

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