Posts Tagged journeys
Here’s to a future filled with ample parking spaces and better mobile phone apps…
I would like to take this opportunity to talk about Dan’s favourite subjects of journeys and serendipity. I found myself in Newport last night, not the most exotic of locations but I was there for a gig (the awesome Kooks to be precise). The doors opened at 7pm so leaving Cardiff at 5:45 I thought I’d have plenty of time to get myself in before the first support act came on.
For a change I was organised, before leaving the house I checked driving directions, traffic reports and parking facilities. Making good progress in rush hour traffic I found myself in Newport by 6:30, however what Google maps hasn’t told me is that half of the roads that I need to use are closed due to road works! Mild panic sets in but it’s OK because I’ve got half an hour until doors open and my trusty Cardiff and Newport road map which I never leave the house without, is at hand.
6:45pm – Making my way around the back streets and one-way systems of Newport, I decide to drop my boyfriend off at the venue so we at least get a decent place in the line, you see I can see the venue, but due to a couple of core road closures I can’t figure out how to get there, but it’s OK, I spot a tour bus with the support band still in it so I still feel positive I can still get there in time…
7:00pm – Doors are open and I have finally found my way to the venue, where the website tells me I can park for 50p… bargain! So I pull up, only to find the car park is closed as they are resurfacing it! But it’s OK, there’s a car park down the road so I set off back through the maze of back roads…
7:25pm – Five car parks later (all of which were full or closed) and I pull over (in a rather flustered state) to take a call from my boyfriend who is wondering where I am, I can hear music in the background and I’m cursing the promptness of sober bands, if I were going to see Amy Winehouse I’d be guaranteed that the gig would be delayed by at least an hour!
7:35pm – I finally find a free, legal parking space outside a chip shop and spend ten minutes stuffing anything that might resemble anything valuable into the boot… iPod, bag, empty McDonalds wrappers (well you can never be too careful). I then realise that having been driving in very odd circles for the best part of an hour that I actually have no idea where I am in relation to the venue, so I spend another ten minutes running around Newport feeling a bit like an unfit Anneka Rice in an episode of Treasure Hunt. Finally getting to the gig at about 8:00!
11:00pm – Upon leaving the gig I realise that I have absolutely no idea where the car is and spend another half an hour wandering around the streets of Newport looking for familiar chip shops…
As the only piece of technology that I carried around with me the whole night was my mobile phone I find myself thinking how much easier my journey would have been had my phone been able to tell me where the nearest car park was that had spaces, what roads were closed and alternative routes and used GPS to show my location (and indeed the location of my car). When I got to the venue it could tell me where my boyfriend was and if anyone else that was in my phone book was also at the gig, it could have warned me that it was going to be raining when the gig finished or the crime levels of the area that I’d parked in…
So, with the labs starting on Monday, I’m hoping for a relatively uneventful journey, with plenty of free parking spaces and hopefully a successful week!
*** Claire
Add comment April 25, 2008
A Problematic Journey
I mentioned in a previous post that journeys were particularly complex datasets; how so?
If we begin by looking at a (relatively) simple definition of the term: a journey is a directional route between two geographic locations, at a particular time, via a particular mode of transport.
This, in itself, is a bit of a mouthful, with a number of variables already rearing their ugly heads. However, if we now think about how we may want to compare a ‘journey’ to other sets of data – as a case in point, travel warnings – we can uncover even more complexity:
-
There could be multiple sub-journeys (e.g. by different modes of transport: walk, then car, then train, then tube, then bus).
-
Defining a route between two points does not necessarily provide all the necessary information, e.g. which bus or train is being used.
-
There are no standard conventions for identifying ‘parts’ of a road (the primary type of ‘route’ for walking, car, bus and bike), with the exception of motorways.
-
A journey might not just be concerned with getting from A to B in the shortest time/distance, but also with a number of intermediate locations (e.g. for a preferred route through a park, via a coffee shop, or to pick-up a friend).
-
The ‘directional’ aspect of journeys is particularly important; roadworks on a southbound section of road may not be of any interest – for the sake of ‘comparing’ the data – if you are traveling northbound.
-
With the specific case of travel warnings, an incident at a particular point can affect routes/journeys ‘further up/down the line’, and not just at the specific location.
So, in the case of an application that compares user-defined journey data with other data sets, we can summarise the above as two fundamentally difficult problems to overcome:
-
A journey may be inherently complex (the route(s) and mode(s) within it), but much of this must be hidden from the user, so that they may quickly, easily and accurately define their routes – without frustration. The end-user benefit of the application must greatly outweigh the investment needed to use it.
-
The data-sets may be difficult to compare accurately (e.g. roadworks at a specific location, without knowing whether it affects north or south-bound traffic, or how a delayed train may affect a journey which includes part of that train’s route within it).
What potential solutions might there be to these fundamental problems?
-
In reality, most users may not care about every detail of their journey. Instead, they may focus on an individual part of their journey, probably that which occupies the majority of their time, e.g. a single train journey, or a commute along the motorway, without being concerned about how they get to/from the train/motorway.
-
With regards to the lack-of a systematic identification system for parts of roads, data-sets may be compared purely on their geo-spatial attributes (long/lat), assuming they are available in both sets (although the geo-spatial width/area of the road/incident will need some thought, to see if there is ‘overlap’ in regions).
-
Google Maps already has a sophisticated, intuitive system for defining ‘waypoints’ for a journey – we could use the API.
We’ll be thinking more about these (and other) problems/solutions over the coming pre-lab weeks. In my next post, I’ll talk a little about the scope of the project.
*** Dan
Add comment March 31, 2008
